Luna the Moon and the Borrowed Blanket

Chapter 1: The moon who comes down to borrow a blanket

High above the sleepy village of Hushabye Hollow, the Moon hung in the night sky, round and pale and silver. The villagers called her Luna, and every night she watched over their little rooftops while they slept.

She loved her work. She lit the paths for night owls and guided the fireflies. She sang the tides in and out, and she gave the sleeping children silver dreams.

But there was something Luna had never told anyone. She was cold.

Up in the great dark, there was no roof, no fireplace, and no cozy quilt. Only the wide, wintry sky and a wind that never stopped blowing. Night after night, she shivered, and her light grew a little thinner.

"I mustn't complain," she told herself. "The world needs me to shine."

One frosty evening, she watched a small girl named Posy tuck her stuffed rabbit under a patchwork quilt. Posy's mother kissed her forehead and whispered, "Snug as a bug."

Luna sighed, and the sigh drifted down as a little silver mist.

"I wonder," she whispered, "what it feels like to be snug."

The longing grew too big to hold. So when the village clock struck midnight, Luna did something she had never done before. She slid quietly down a ladder of moonbeams, step by shimmering step, until her toes touched the cool grass of Hushabye Hollow.

She was surprisingly small on the ground, no bigger than a kind grandmother. She glowed softly, like a lantern wrapped in silk.