"Some nights you can pick out the really bright ones," says Leon, idly, though he does notice how much of a shock this seems to be to Ylva and pauses in his task to look over at her. "But yeah. Between the city lights being so bright and sometimes the smog in the air from all the engines running? Most of them aren't visible."

The next question draws him up short, and he thinks about it a bit before answering.

"I think they do," he says. "In smaller towns and cities there are sometimes ordinances, about what kinds of lights to use, or how bright they can be, or how late you can leave them on unless it's an emergency, all to keep the stars from getting blocked out. But in bigger cities it's just not practical or enforceable to do that kind of thing. So they don't, and if you're like me you don't get to find out what they look like until you go somewhere else.

"Most people probably don't really think about it all that much? But if you asked them, I bet they'd wish they could still see them."