The Wisdom of Elder Maeve

The Second Lander watched the child, Elara, trace patterns in the dust with a twig. The sun, a pale disc in the perpetually hazy sky, offered little warmth, but Elara seemed to find her own sunshine within. She hummed a tuneless melody, a sound that pricked at the Second Lander’s unfamiliar senses like a tiny, bright spark. They had learned to observe, to catalog the strange behaviors of Earth’s inhabitants, but Elara was different. She moved through the grey, worn landscapes with a lightness that defied the heavy atmosphere.

“What are you drawing?” the Second Lander finally ventured, their voice a soft, resonant hum that still startled Elara sometimes.

Elara looked up, her eyes, the color of moss after rain, crinkling at the corners. “Just… a happy sky,” she said, pointing to a wobbly circle with radiating lines. “Sometimes, if you draw it hard enough, it feels like it might be real.”