The whole town had been on edge since morning, buzzing with the news: tonight came only once every hundred generations.
That night, two lights would appear at opposite edges of the sky. In the west, the Great Light. In the east, a small nameless one. Both would flare and vanish in about the time it took to blink. And the sky was too wide—there was no way to watch both at once. By the time you turned to catch the second one, the first would already be gone. The next chance, they said, wouldn’t come for another hundred years.
“Nono, look west. Keep your eyes on the west.”
Sato, her father, cupped her small head in both hands and gently turned it westward. Nono was five. But she clearly had her own opinion about all this. Maybe his beard was more fascinating to her than any Great Light. Her head kept swiveling right back to his face.
“Look, it’s almost time. It’s going to be amazing.”
“Don’t wanna.”
“That light left way before your great-great-grandfather was even born. And tonight, it’s finally reaching us.”
“Mm-hm.”
They had a picture book about the Great Light at home. The last page still bore a tear Nono had made once, patched back together with glue. Her father read it to her every night, so she knew the story of the Great Light by heart. And knowing it that well, she wore the face of someone who’d already heard it enough.
Eventually the western sky bloomed white and hazy. The whole town drew a single breath. The Great Light. Enormous, unhurried. Every mouth fell open, every face tilted west.
Sato watched too, one hand still resting on Nono’s head, keeping her from looking away. For an instant, he thought he caught a small flicker at the eastern edge of the sky. But there was no time to turn. Turn, and he’d miss the Great Light.
The Great Light slipped away. A hundred generations’ worth of light, gone.
In the middle of town, the Night Ledger lay open. It was an old custom—everyone recorded a sky that would never come again, together, in a single book. Though, generation after generation, the ledger held the same entry over and over. Of course it did. Everyone watched the same sky and wrote down the same name. People lined up and, one by one, wrote “Great Light.”
Sato joined the line with Nono in his arms. He picked up the brush, ready to write “Great Light.”
That’s when Nono reached out and grabbed the brush.
“That light was really up there.”
”…Yeah. It was.”
“So that’s fine, then.” Nono looked up at her father. “But you’re not written down anywhere. Tonight’s the only time there is.”
Sato couldn’t say a word.
With the short brush, Nono drew a round face. A lopsided face with a beard. Right there among the rows of “Great Light” the whole town had written, that little face sat, alone. Old Some, who kept the ledger, leaned in to look—and finally burst out laughing. In the western sky, everyone was still looking up, lingering over the light that had already gone, as if reluctant to let it leave.