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Before my birth, the stars were gone.

My grandmother, who had lived long enough to remember their light, would whisper of their loss in the hush of evening, saying they had been stolen, scattered like embers from a fire left untended. I was raised beneath a sky black as iron, knowing nothing of what it meant to lift my eyes and see the heavens gleam. The stars were spoken of as one speaks of the dead; lost, distant, never to return.

And then, the crows began to bring them back.

Since childhood, I had left offerings for them, mostly crusts of bread in the lean months and water in the dry. In return, they had given me trinkets, small tokens of their own design: a polished bit of glass, a key without a lock, a button bright as silver. But one morning, in the hush of winter, their gift was something else.

A coal of light, feather-wrapped and flickering.

I cupped it in my hands, fearing it would vanish, but it did not. It pulsed with quiet life, warm against my skin. The crows gathered in the bare branches above, dark against the wan morning sky. One of them, a great bird streaked with white, let out a low call and dropped another ember at my feet.

By nightfall, there were six. By week’s end, two dozen.

I kept them in a wooden box by my bed, where they shivered and glowed, like fireflies caught in glass. I asked the crows where they had found them, though I knew they would not answer. The white-winged one only tilted its head, then rose into the sky, vanishing into the dark.

That night, long after the crows had gone, something vast stirred in the silence. A shifting, distant presence, waking.

I stepped outside.

And for the first time in my life, I lifted my face and saw light where there had only been emptiness. A single star, flickering in the black.

Not in my hands. Not in my wooden box. But where it was meant to be.

The crows would return. Of that, I was certain. And when they did, they would not come empty-handed.

For the sky, after long forgetting, was remembering itself.

And it was not done.