Every night, just after her mum tucked her in and turned off the light, seven-year-old Zara would lie very still and stare at the ceiling — and the ceiling, if she stared long enough, would slowly turn into the night sky.

This is not something that happened to most children. But Zara was not most children. She was the sort of girl who kept a yellow notebook under her pillow and wrote things down that she thought were important — things like “Why do clouds look like sofas?” and “Do fish know they’re wet?” and “Who decides what stars are called?”

That last question was the one that kept her awake the longest.

One night, as the ceiling melted away into actual sky — deep and dark and dusted with light — Zara felt herself float upward. She was wearing her silver spacesuit (the one she had imagined so many times that it had become entirely real), and in her left hand was her yellow notebook, and in her right hand was a pencil, and she was floating, weightless and wonderful, among the stars.

The nearest star pulsed — a soft, warm light, like a nightlight in the shape of a sun.

“We were wondering,” said the star, in a voice like a gentle hum, “if you might give us names. We’ve been here a very long time, and nobody ever has.”

Zara opened her yellow notebook.

“All of you?” she asked, looking around at the thousands upon thousands of lights stretching in every direction.

“Just the ones who want one,” said the star. “Not everyone does. But many of us have been waiting rather a long while.”

So Zara began.

She named the round, cheerful star near the moon Wren — because it reminded her of the little bird that sat on the fence post every morning. She named the tiny blue-white one that blinked slowly Boo — because it looked shy. She named a cluster of three that huddled together The Crumbles — because they looked exactly like the end of a biscuit.

She named a very serious-looking orange star Professor, and a wobbly pink one Jelly, and a tiny distant one that was barely visible Mim — because small things deserve names too, she thought, perhaps especially small things.

For a long time, Zara wrote and named and wrote and named, and the stars glowed brighter each time she found them a name, and the sky became warmer and warmer with all that happy light.

But then Zara noticed something.

One star — larger than the rest, silver-white, with four perfect points — had not asked to be named. It was simply floating quietly, a little apart from the others, watching her.

The star was quiet for a moment.

“I already have one,” it said softly. “I’ve had it for seven years. I’ve just been waiting for the person it belongs to to fall asleep close enough to hear it.”

Zara’s pencil stopped moving.

“What is it?” she whispered.

The star shimmered — and in its light, Zara saw her own name written in the sky, in letters made of pure silver: Z · A · R · A.

“There has always been a star with your name on it,” said the star quietly. “There is one for every child. Some children never look up long enough to find it. But you — you always wondered. And that is why you found yours tonight.”

Zara stared at her star for a very long time. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. And slowly — very slowly — her eyes grew heavy, and her notebook drifted closed, and she felt herself floating gently, gently downward, back through the soft dark, back to her pillow and her duvet and the quiet of her room.

By the time she landed, she was already asleep.

And in her window, if you looked very carefully, you could see one particular star shining just a little brighter than all the rest.

It had been waiting a long time for her to notice it. And it was very, very glad she finally had.