Nivi lived in a small town on the coast of Greenland, where winter nights were long and the stars seemed close enough to touch. One evening, her grandmother, Aanaa, knocked on her bedroom door. “Put on your warmest coat,” she said. “The sky is going to dance tonight.”

Outside, the snow squeaked under their boots, and Nivi’s breath made little clouds. They walked to the edge of the frozen bay, away from the street lights, and looked up.

At first there was only a pale green smudge above the mountains. Then it began to move. It stretched into a long ribbon, rippled like a curtain in the wind and flickered with streaks of pink and violet. The whole sky was shimmering.

“What makes it, Aanaa?” Nivi whispered.

“The sun is always sending out tiny, invisible particles,” said Aanaa. “When they reach the Earth, they are pulled towards the far north and the far south. High above us, they crash into the air and make it glow, the way a neon sign lights up when electricity runs through it.”

Nivi tried to imagine the particles travelling all the way from the sun. “So the sun is shining on us, even at night,” she said. Aanaa laughed. “In a way, yes.”

They stood together until Nivi’s toes were numb. Back home, Aanaa made hot cocoa, and Nivi drew the lights with every green and purple crayon she owned. Under her drawing she wrote the name Aanaa had taught her: aurora.

That night she fell asleep facing the window, just in case the sky decided to dance again.

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