Carla shifted in her bed. Even with her head buried in the pillow, she couldn’t sleep. She was a big girl now, nap was for babies. She rolled on her back and stared at the ceiling. Chinks of light glimmered through the shutters, mitigating the room’s darkness. The house was silent. She sat up and climbed down. Though she had no precise notion of what ‘time’ meant, she felt that it was still early in the afternoon and dad had not come back from work.

    She clasped her cuddly toy and padded across her room to the door. Then she exited into the corridor, and followed it until she reached the top of the stairs. “Dad?” she called. As she expected, there was no answer, so she descended to the ground level, where her shoes were waiting for her. She sat on the first step and set about putting them on. Tying the laces wasn’t an easy task for her tiny fingers, but she was a big girl and eventually pulled off two fragile bows. Satisfied, she went outside into the garden.

    The ambient light made her blink. When she could open her eyes again, she looked around but saw nobody. She moseyed across the grass to the big tree that stood in the middle of the lawn. Dad had patched a rough swing together out of old, frayed ropes attached to a low bough. She sat on the slat and started to shake her legs rhythmically, gazing at the branches above.

    This place was not like the one where she’d been born. She remembered trees, but not the same ones. Their leaves were different: they warbled in the wind. They turned yellow and red when the days became chiller, just before snow came, then fell. And when the snow melted away, new ones budded. Here, there was no wind. There was no snow either. It seemed all the days were the same: the sky would always light during breakfast and darken during dinner. But what she missed most was the birds. She couldn’t understand why she heard them sing, but she’d never seen one. Probably they were much shyer here than where she’d lived before.

    She was lost in her reverie when two big hands grasped her by the hips. She startled and let out a yelp. A familiar, warm laughter broke out behind her. “Dad!” she said with a reproving voice. “You scared me!”

    “What were you thinking? You seemed so far away.”

    She jumped on to the ground and turned to face him, looking up with serious eyes. “Dad, will… will we ever go back home?”

    The smile on dad’s face faded. “I don’t think so, Carla.”

    “Why?”

    “Oh, sweetie. We’ve been over it a thousand times. That stupid war. We don’t have a home any more. This is our new home… at least for a while.”

    Carla nodded in silent resignation. “And mum?”

    Dad knelt down until his face was level with hers. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked straight in her eyes. “You know she had to stay behind to take care of the wounded, don’t you? She’s a doctor, that’s her job. She’ll soon join us.” He hesitated. “I hope…”

    A hush fell. “Come on!” Dad said in a merrier tone as he rumpled her long blond hair tenderly. “I’ve got something to show you!”

    “What is it?”

    “Come, you’ll see by yourself!”

    Dad led the way across the garden back into the house. He drew a keyring out of his pocket, and unlocked an unremarkable door to a small, dingy corridor sloping downwards. They strode by gloomy openings, rounded several corners, until they arrived in front of another door that he pushed open. They entered a room full of strange whirring devices. Carla gaped in awe at a large picture window opening to the vastness of space.

    “It’s a stunner, eh?” Dad said. “And —” he knelt again and pointed at a faint shining speck lost in darkness, “you see that tiny spot there? That’s where we are going.”

    “Our new home?” Carla asked.

    “Yes. That star has one habitable planet. Just like Earth.”

    Carla looked through the window for a while, then lowered her gaze to the purple plush unicorn she’d been holding all along. “Do you think I’ll meet her there?”

    Dad smiled. “Maybe? Who knows?”

    Carla’s free hand sought her father’s, and together they stood silently, their eyes lost in the boundless night ahead.