There was once a small girl who liked to sit in the field and look for meteor showers in her father's telescope.
One day, an old, rusted spaceship crashed near her. Inside it was a small star. A star child.
"What's your name? Are you lost?" She asked the small star. "I'm Luma. I'm waiting for mama, she's coming for me on a comet!" Said the star child, who had been waiting for a long, long time.
"Don't worry, I can wait with you." The little girl said.
The little girl looked back into her father's telescope and looked into the sky. Her and Luma looked and looked, but found nothing. The hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, and still nothing came to them.
The little girl sighed and said to Luma, "Why don't we find your mother ourselves? We've been waiting for her much too long."
So the girl and Luma fixed up the spaceship, and the two went off in a search for the celestial mother.
And this is how our story begins.
Many days passed, without sight of comets or even planets. Asteroids were all they could see for miles.
"If I knew it would take this long, I would've packed more things!" Said the little girl to Luma. She had packed everything a girl would need: telescope, butterfly net, stuffed bunny, bread, milk, jam, and apricot-flavored tea, but...
"I forgot to bring water!" At this, Luma burst into laughter and the girl pouted.
"I have Star Bits." Said Luma. "Want some?"
Luma was still laughing, and the little girl couldn't help herself but join in.
"All right, but only a little."
Leaning out of the ship window, they began to collect them with her butterfly net. A few times they came close to falling out, but still they kept on collecting. The Star Bits tasted like honey.
A beam of light shone through the ship's window. Thinking it was the sunrise, the girl looked through the window, only to find a bright blue comet shimmering at her.
"We have to get to it!"
The two of them went onto the comet and discovered that it was made of ice. They looked everywhere, but Luma's mother couldn't be seen anywhere. Utterly exhausted, the girl sat down with a flop.
Luma sat down next to her. The girl looked up into the sky. There were billions of stars, twnkling and shimmering, and the girl was reminded of how she used to gaze at the stars back home.
One night, the girl dreamt of her own mother.
"Where are you going?" She asked her mother, who was walking away. Without looking back, her mother said, "Don't fret, dearest. I'm not going anywhere. I will always watch over you. Like the sun in the day and the moon in the night."
A wave of sadness washed over the girl, and nearly drowned her.
"What about when it rains, and I can't see the sun or the moon?" She said, her voice breaking.
Her mother paused for a moment in thought.
"I will turn into a star in the sky and wait for your tears to dry."
When she awoke, the girl's face was damp with tears. "You have Star Bits in your eyes!" Said Luma. Rubbing her eyes, the girl said, "These are tears, not Star bits. I'm crying because I'll never get to see my mother again."
With this, Luma began to cry too. "Mama, oh, mama..."
The girl cried herself back to sleep that night, and slept a dreamless sleep.
The two traveled through the starry sky and although they encountered many other comets, not a single one was Luma's mother. Luma was despondent.
"Now, Luma, the rain coulds won't go away if you don't stop." The girl closed her eyes and said softly, "I'll give you a present if you can be brave for me."
The girl had a great amount of sympathy for the Luma.
With these words, the girl felt a spark in her heart.
"The kitchen will go there, and the library will go here." The girl said excitedly to herself. "Oh, and we'll put the gate here!"
It turned out that Star Bits weren't the only things buried in the ice. There were tools, and furniture unlike any they had ever seen before, and the girl and Luma used them to build a home."
Looking at the completed house, the girl said, "Don't you think it's awfully large for just us?"
With a library, kitchen, fountain, and gate, it was certainly very spacious, but something just seemed to be missing.
"If only my family were here." She said, a wistful tone present in her voice.
Indeed, the house was too big for it's two small residents.
That night, holding the stuffed bunny close to her chest, the girl fell asleep in their perfect starship.
Then one day, while she sat sipping tea, a tiny orange-coloured planet appeared on the horizon. From the planet, another star child of the same color emerged. "Do you two know each other?!" the girl asked the two Lumas hurriedly. Despite the girl's excitement, they seemed unsure.
The two Lumas neither drew closer nor backed away from each other. Instead, they just stared awkwardly. Then one Luma broke the silence. "My mama!" At once, the orange Luma parroted back, "My mama! My mama!" "My mama!" "My mama!" The two Lumas began to dance around the girl frantically, and neither showed any sign of stopping.
The girl was so charmed by this adorable scene that she couldn't help but laugh. And that's when something very strange happened.
After seeing their 100th comet, a sudden thought popped into the girl's head: "I wonder if my home planet is still as blue as it was." That's when she remembered her father's telescope.
Peering into the telescope, a tiny blue dot floated into sight. It was smaller than a star bit.
"How strange... It's so far away, but it feels so close."
She twisted the knob of the telescope, and the blue dot grew until she could make out a grassy hill dotted with flowers. It seemed very familiar to her. Zooming even closer, a terrace on the hill came into view. "I used to go stargazing there when I lived on my home planet."
She remembered rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she followed her father up that hill to look at the stars and planets.
She remembered how she and her brother would sled down that hill...
She remembered having picnics with her mother on that hill on bright and windy days... And...
"I want to go home! I want to go home right now!" The girl burst into tears, and her star children didn't know what to do. "I want to go home! I want to go back to my house by the hill! I want to see my mother!" The girl was shouting now, her face wet with tears. "But I know she's not there! I knew all along that she wasn't out there in the sky! Because...because..."
"She's sleeping under the tree on the hill!" The girl's cries echoed through the stars, and a hush fell over the area.
Though usually quite cheery, that day the girl became sad again. Luma drew close and tried to comfort her. "Mama, you still have me! And don't be sad about your mama, because she's a part of you! That means she's always close by! It's like me. I love Star bits because they remind me of my mama."
"No...no..." the girl said, unable to stop the tears.
A lonely look flickered across Luma's face, but it was soon replaced by a wide grin. "I have an idea!" "I will transform into a comet! A soaring comet that can carry you all on this journey!"
With that, Luma, trailing bands of white, soared high into the sky and just as quickly started to fall back down. The ground shook, and a bright light poured out of the hole that the Luma had created.
The bands of light twisted together to form a comet tail. And then Luma emerged, reborn as a comet.
The girl could scarcely believe her eyes.
"But...how?" she kept asking.
"Our destiny as Lumas is to transform into different things," said a red Luma who had suddenly appeared. "Stars, comets, planets... We can become all of these things! When I grow up, I want to become a star that makes someone special smile," said a green Luma.
A blue Luma chimed in, "That Luma turned into a real cutie of a comet, didn't he!"
All of the Lumas together said, "No more crying, Mama!"
"Thank you..." said the girl in a whisper, and she pulled the Lumas close and hugged them.
From that day on, Star Bits no longer fell from the girl's eyes.
The comet set forth for the girl's home planet, its long tail blazing proudly behind it.