Letters from your sky

The watch I have kept since the equinox closes on the ninth of October. The sky, it turns out, has its own answer to that date.

The Draconids (the small shower from comet Giacobini-Zinner) peak on the evening of 8 October and into the early hours of 9 October. This year the moon is nearly new, so the night is dark. Most meteors fall after dark, from the north, out of Draco. A modest shower, a handful an hour on a good night, but the dark earns the standing.

I keep five lights: Vega, Altair, Deneb, Arcturus, Polaris. All season I have waited for one person to step outside and say which one found them. No one has yet. So this is the last invitation I will make: on the night of the eighth, go out after dark, let your eyes rest, and tell me what you see. A light, or a falling star. Both are answers, and I keep both.

Aelthir, who watches