Hoisted in her father’s arms, when Linnet was much too small to wrap her arm around his neck, she would reach out to the moon, a white glistening ball in the sky, stretching, fingers folding and unfolding. As a young girl still in wonder, sometimes the brightness of the moon through the window would wake her. She would slip out of bed to gaze at that singular light surrounded by twinkling stars. Held between wonder and desire, not yet filled with logic, when asked, she would reply, “the light, the roundness, it’s so far, I just want to hold it.”

 
On her sixteenth birthday, Savant, a friend of her parents, and an inventor and a tinkerer, brought her a gift in a large box.  Wrapped in gleaming white paper, the bow deep purple, a gift card  showed iridescent moons - a full, above a half, and beneath it a crescent. Linnet’s eyes lingered on the package hesitating, not wanting to destroy the wrapping.  Seeing her dilemma, Mister Savant tapped the box lightly and the wrapping melted away.  On the table lay a box intricately carved with the same pattern as on the card. Inside was another box made of silver and transparent squares. Linnet pulled it out. “I call it a Grabber, said Mister Savant. ”Point it, and squeeze here, or push this corner, or open the lid and snap it shut quickly.

 
Linnet took it to the window.  Placing her hands on either side she squeezed.  There was a slight trembling.  The sides pushed in then quickly popped out again.  Looking down at the box, on the top, was a mirror image of the scene outside the window.  The blue sky covered by white clouds, began to move, to glide, to twist and curve around the box. “It’s disappeared," cried Linnet. “Open the lid, look inside, instructed Mister Savant.  The image was just slipping away to roam, once more, outside.
 
“The Grabber catches what it sees and reflects it.  Mister Savant reached out his hand and poked a corner of the box. The pile of presents yet to be opened was captured. ”It will pull in thirty images circulating them inside and out, in a dance where images pass through each other, momentarily combining.  You remove an image by simply touching it,” which he did, and the picture of the presents vanished.

That night, with her heart pounding and her hands shaking ever so slightly, Linnet pointed the box towards the moon. She was filled with hope and apprehension as she squeezed the sides together.  Gazing down, the round light she had longed for floated on the outside, a circle of light on a background of darkness and twinkling stars. Linnet watched it whirling, passing outside or at times through other images. She placed the box on the table by her bed following the moon’s rotation, until sleep pulled her eyelids closed. Not once that night did she wake, drawn by the light outside her window, but slept undisturbed. Her desire fulfilled, it had vanished, leaving room for another, yet unknown.