“Ooh, look at these ones, Nicole!” cried Jackson. “They’re brilliant!”

Indeed they were. From the top storey of her mansion in the clouds, Nicole the cloud-dweller could see brilliant arrays of colours lighting up the sky. Every year on the Fourth of July, though she didn’t know why. She’d marked a circle around the numbers on the page the minute Jackson had returned after one of his clandestine flights to Earth. He’d always bring along a ‘clalendrar’, because he claimed that down on terra firma, the dates moved one day ahead every year. Those humans might be wondrous, fascinating creatures with all sorts of gizmos and gadgets, but they sure could act odd sometimes.

There was an explosion which jolted Nicole from her musings, and the sky was illuminated once again. Red, green, gold, pretty. The sparks fell back down to the Earth, spiralling as though playing a game. If she went over to Martha’s at seven, she could see the one that made special shapes in the sky. It was like the humans manufactured their own brand of lightning, different but as beautiful as the cloud-dwellers’ own.

“Come down to the bottom floor, Nic, it’s much more beautiful here!” Oh no. Nicole couldn’t possibly do that. She’d feel all woozy and dizzy, as she did every time she descended too low. Jackson was fearless - he practically lived on the bottom floor - but for Nicole, getting over her fear of depths was nearly impossible.

“Oh, stop acting like such a sissy and come on down, Nic! It won’t kill you!” Jackson yelled, accurately deducting the thoughts running in her head. She slowly descended, shutting her eyes tight, until she felt Jackson’s hand wrap around her wrist and tug her down to cloud level.

“Open your eyes, dummy. The whole point of coming down is to see them up close.”

Slowly, Nicole opened her eyes. Whatever terror still filled her mind suddenly disappeared. She looked around in wonder. It was just magical. She heard a faint bang. Looking down, Nicole saw something rocketing upward, higher and higher, getting larger and larger, until it exploded a few inches below their colony, dissociating into a mix of lights and sparks, so close to her that if she just leant down a bit, she could probably catch one of them.

She continued to stare at the beautiful twinkling lights, approaching her in a never-ending sequence. She liked to think she was beckoning them- they came rapid and numerous, always exploding just when she anticipated their crash. This was her favourite night of the year. When she could see each little nuance of the sky in vivid detail due to the lights. When she could see colours she did not know even existed. Sure, the smoke was pretty hard, but it was all worth it. For those pretty twinkling lights. Jackson called them ‘fireworks’, but he never knew what he was talking about anyway.