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Her parents used to say that as soon as she learned to walk, she wanted to run everywhere. Her little legs were still unsteady, so she was always tripping, stumbling, and falling. But every time she got back up, dusted herself off, and ran right on.\nOr perhaps it was not running at all, but chasing.\n\nShe always seemed to have something to chase. Butterflies, drifting catkins, falling petals, fireflies... She loved to run after them, to watch them, to marvel at all the lively, unfamiliar things she had never known before.\nShe never minded the bumps and bruises herself, but each fall made her parents' hearts ache. So her clever-handed father made her a little fishing rod and found a clear, gleaming piece of colored glass for bait. It was not meant to catch fish, of course, but his own little girl.\n\nIn the sunlight, that shining glass stone was hung high above her, and she chased it for the longest time. At last night fell, and its glow began to fade. But this time, she did not lower her head to look for something else to chase. She kept looking up.\nAnd this time, what shone in her eyes was that ancient sea of stars.\n\nHad it truly never changed? No. The stars were alive.\nThere were intricate star charts, crossing celestial paths, and star after star that paid no heed to prediction and wandered where they pleased. There was a sky so vast that one could spend a lifetime studying it and still never know it all.\nSo above her was a living new world, full of vitality and endless mysteries, more than any one life could ever uncover...\n\nPeople grow up. And when they do, when they learn more and more, they begin to take such things for granted.\nThat is a butterfly. That is drifting catkins. That is a falling petal. That is a firefly. That is a star.\n\nOnce people know they might fall, they no longer like to chase.\nBut she had already fallen for that sea of stars.\n\nShe kept stumbling, bumping, falling, and chasing, just as she had when she was a child.