The Night Nox Overslept

High above the sleeping hills lived a moon named Nox. He was silver, and round, and older than the oldest oak in the valley. Every evening he had one small job… and he had never once forgotten it. He opened the night. He drew the dark across the sky like a soft blue blanket, and tucked the whole world in beneath it.

Nox had been doing this a very long time. He knew which windows wanted a little extra light, and which ones wanted none at all. He knew the barn where the goslings slept in a warm grey heap. He knew the crooked chimney on the baker's house — and the cat who waited there, every single night, for him.

But that day had been a long one. Nox had helped a lost cloud find its way back to the sea. He had polished the stars, all of them, one by one, until his hands felt slow and heavy as stones. And when he leaned back to rest — just for a moment — there was a cloud behind him. A big one. Impossibly soft.

It was the sort of cloud that feels like a pillow you never want to leave. Nox meant only to close his eyes for a breath or two. Just a breath. Just two. And then the cloud folded gently around him, warm as wool… and Nox, keeper of the whole world's bedtime, fell fast asleep.

Down below, the sun had already slipped behind the hills. The light went gold, then rose, then a strange pale grey. And there it stopped. It simply… stopped. The sky waited, holding its breath, the way you wait for somebody to finish a sentence they have quite forgotten.

The meadow noticed first. The clover lifted its little heads and looked about. Evening was late. Evening was never late. A young rabbit sat up in the grass with his ears straight as candles, and whispered to nobody at all, "Is it night yet? It feels as though it ought to be night by now."

But nothing answered him. The dark did not come rolling over the hills the way it always did. The sleepy flowers stayed open, blinking. The daisies, who liked to close early and go to bed first, held their petals wide and grew rather cross about it. Somewhere, something had missed its cue.