by Ahmet Zappa
Finally, Piper picked up her latest dream diary. She wanted to replay her last dream—the one from her afternoon nap. Frequently, those dreams were her most vivid. At night Piper listened to class lectures while she slept, studying in the efficient Starling method. And sometimes the professors’ voices blended with her dreams in an oddly disconcerting way.
Once, she felt on the verge of a mighty epiphany—a revelation about the meaning of light. What is the meaning of light? was a question that had plagued Starling scholars for hydrongs and hydrongs of years. And the answer was about to be revealed. To her!
But just when Piper’s thoughts were closing in on it, her Astral Accounting teacher’s voice interrupted, monotonously intoning the number 1,792. And Piper felt sure that wasn’t the right answer.
But that afternoon’s dream proceeded without numbers or facts or formulas: Piper was floating through space, traveling past planets and stars, when a Wishling girl with bright shiny eyes and an eager expression grabbed her hand. Suddenly, the scene shifted to the Crystal Mountains, the most beautiful in all of Starland, just across the lake from Starling Academy. It was a sight Piper looked at with pleasure every starday. But now she was climbing a mountain, still holding hands with the girl. As she led the way up a trail, the lulling sound of keytar music echoed everywhere, and she laughed with pleasure as a flutterfocus landed on her shoulder. Another flutterfocus settled on the shoulder of the girl.
“It looks like a butterfly!” the girl said, as delighted as Piper. “But sparkly!”
“And they bring luck!” Piper answered. But with each step the girls took, more and more flutterfocuses circled them. Now the creatures seemed angry, baring enormous sharp teeth. “What’s going on?” the Wishling cried. She squeezed Piper’s hand, beginning to panic.
“I don’t know,” Piper said, keeping her voice calm. “These aren’t like flutterfocuses at all! They’re usually quite gentle, like all animals here!” Maybe if she could say something, do something, the flutterfocuses would return to their sweet normal ways. “Concentrate,” Piper told herself, “concentrate….”
Perhaps if they reached the plateau at the very top, edged with bright-colored bluebeezel flowers, the flutterfocuses would settle down.
Meanwhile, she held tight to the girl, pulling her up step by step. And finally, there was the peak, just within reach. She opened her mouth to tell the girl, “We’re there,” when a blinding light stopped her in her tracks.
“Oh, star apologies!” Vega had said, turning off the room light with a quick glance. Vega was very good at energy manipulation. But she wasn’t very good at realizing when Piper was sleeping.
Thinking about it now, Piper wondered why the dream, which had begun so well, had turned so unpleasant. She didn’t want to call it a nightmare. First of all, she’d dreamed it in the middle of day! Second, Piper believed that even the scariest, darkest dreams held meaning and could bring enlightenment. Piper felt sure this dream meant something important.
A Wishling girl…a difficult journey filled with danger and decisions…It was obvious, Piper saw now.
“I’m going on the next Wish Mission,” she said aloud. It would be a successful mission, too, since in her dream, she and the girl had reached the mountaintop. Her smile faded slightly. Well, they had just about reached the top.
“What’s going on?” Vega asked groggily, hearing Piper’s voice.
“Nothing,” Piper said quickly. Practical Vega wasn’t one to believe in premonitions or dream symbols.
Once, while Vega slept, Piper had tiptoed over to watch her face for signs of emotion as she dreamed. Vega had woken up and been totally creeped out to find Piper star inches away and staring. The girls generally got along, and they were friends—not best friends, but friends. And it helped for Piper to keep her insights to herself. She didn’t want to upset the delicate balance.
Now, thinking about balance, she decided on a new bedtime visualization. She pictured a scale she’d seen in Wishling History class. It had a pan on each side, and when they were balanced, the pans were level. Adding weight to one would lift the other higher.
In her mind’s eye, Piper placed a pebble first on one pan, then the other, again and again, so the scale moved up and down in a rhythm. Piper felt her head nodding in the same motion as she drifted off into another dream….
As soon as the first glimmer of morning light landed on Piper’s face, she opened her eyes. It was Star Kindness Day! She had a sense of expectation; something was about to happen.
She glanced at her Star-Zap. A holo-text was just coming through from Astra: LET’S ALL MEET AT THE RADIANT RECREATION CENTER BEFORE BREAKFAST.
Piper half groaned. She loved going to the rec center for meditation class, but she doubted Astra wanted them all to sit still and think deeply. Most likely, she wanted to organize everyone for an early-morning star ball game. Well, Piper could be a good sport, so she made her way to the center, only to find the place deserted.
Then Leona holo-texted: I’M AT THE BAND SHELL. AREN’T WE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A PRE-BREAKFAST BAND REHEARSAL, WITH AN SD AUDIENCE?
Immediately, the Star-Zap buzzed again with a message from Cassie: NO! WE’RE SUPPOSED TO MEET AT LUMINOUS LIBRARY!
Not knowing what to do, Piper went to the band shell, then to the library, then searched across the quad for the Star Darlings. But everywhere she went turned out to be wrong. Her Star-Zap buzzed again and again, with message after message, louder and louder each time, until Piper shut it off with a flick of her wrist and realized she’d just turned off her alarm.
It was another dream.
Piper quickly entered it into her dream diary. She’d have to analyze it more, but it seemed to focus on mixed-up communications—not a good sign. Frowning, she looked toward Vega’s part of the room.
“Are you going to the Celestial Café?” she called out.
Vega looked at her strangely. “Of course. It’s breakfast.”
“Just making sure,” Piper said. “I still need to sparkle shower. So I’ll see you there.”
The sparkle shower made Piper’s skin and hair glimmer brighter, and she felt its energy like a gentle boost of power. But the dream lingered, making her feel somehow off-kilter. She couldn’t shake the feeling she’d show up at the cafeteria and everyone else would be having a special picnic breakfast at the orchard, or by the lake, or anywhere she wasn’t.
By then, Piper was already late. No one would be concerned, though. Piper was frequently the last to arrive. She often needed to go back to her room to retrieve a forgotten item. But sometimes it was simply because she liked to take her time. Even now she paused to add a few more notes to her diary, while the dream was still fresh in her mind. It always helped to get everything down in writing, though she could usually remember details for at least a double starweek.
Even as a young Starling in Wee Constellation School, Piper could tell her mom specifics of her dreams, right down to what color socks she wore. Starmazingly, her mom sometimes wore the same color socks in her own dreams—and their actions often matched, too.
It had been hard to make friends growing up in the Gloom Flats; there weren’t many girls Piper’s age. The homes were spread so far apart it didn’t make sense to have a Cosmic Transporter linking houses. So Piper had always felt an extra-special close connection to her mother.
When her granddad completed his Cycle of Life, Piper and her mom both dreamed that Piper and her older brother moved in with their grandmother on the other side of town. It seemed it was meant to be. Besides, her mom and dad were busy giving meditation workshops throughout Starland. It made sense for Piper and Finn to stay with their grandma. And Piper loved her grandmother’s home, a mysterious old house floozels from everything, with a musty attic filled with odds and ends and a basement that echoed with eerie noises in the middle of the night. Piper found it all oddly comforting, even if classmates refused to visit. But now she had more classmates living on her floor than there were Starlings
in all of Gloom Flats. And at least some of them—the Star Darlings—were waiting for her at the café.
SHANA MULDOON ZAPPA is a jewelry designer and writer who was born and raised in Los Angeles. She has an endless imagination and a passion to inspire positivity through her many artistic endeavors. She and her husband, Ahmet Zappa, collaborated on Star Darlings especially for their magical little girl and biggest inspiration, Halo Violetta Zappa.
AHMET ZAPPA is the New York Times best-selling author of Because I’m Your Dad and The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless. He writes and produces films and television shows and loves pancakes, unicorns, and making funny faces for Halo and Shana.