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[COVER]

🎨 __N1__, a proud girl in dungarees with a toy spanner in the pocket, standing in a garden at dusk beside a wonderful homemade rocket built from a cardboard box, a dustbin lid, fairy lights and a colander helmet; the full moon huge and golden above. Open sky at top.

1

__N1__ was a builder. Not the kind with bricks and vans — the kind with cardboard, string, sticky tape and very big ideas. She had built a robot (it was mostly egg boxes), a submarine (the bath still remembered), and a den with a working doorbell. But this week, __N1__ was building something much, much bigger.

🎨 __N1__'s bedroom-workshop full of wonderful cardboard inventions: an egg-box robot, drawings pinned to the wall, string and tape everywhere; __N1__ kneeling over a huge plan drawn in crayon, tongue out in concentration.

2

A rocket. A real one — well, almost. The body was the fridge box. The fins were a broken kite. The control panel had eleven buttons, and every single one was important, especially the red one, which __N1__ had labelled with a sticker that meant GO. Grandad donated the colander. "Every astronaut needs a good helmet," he said, very seriously.

🎨 The garden at golden hour: a magnificent homemade rocket made of a fridge box with kite-fabric fins and a bottle-top control panel; Grandad ceremonially placing a colander on __N1__'s head like a coronation.

3

"And where will you fly first?" asked Grandad. __N1__ pointed straight up, past the washing line, past the birds, past the everything. "The Moon. It looks lonely. And I want to check something — nobody ever says WHO turns it on at night." Grandad nodded slowly, the way grown-ups do when they know a good question when they hear one.

🎨 __N1__ pointing dramatically up at the pale evening moon above the garden washing line; Grandad crouched beside her, following the point with a thoughtful smile; the rocket standing ready behind them.

4

That night, when the house went quiet, something tapped the window. A moonbeam — bright as a torch and twice as polite — slid into the room and rolled itself out like a silver carpet, all the way from the windowsill to the rocket in the garden. Some invitations don't need words.

🎨 A magical silver moonbeam sliding through the bedroom window and unrolling like a glowing carpet down into the garden toward the cardboard rocket; __N1__ sitting up in bed, eyes huge, colander helmet already half on.

5

__N1__ climbed in, checked all eleven buttons twice, and took a deep breath. "Three... two... one..." She pressed the red one. The fairy lights blazed. The dustbin-lid base rumbled. And the garden — the fence, the shed, the sleeping flowerpots — dropped away below like toys on a bedspread.

🎨 Lift-off: the little cardboard rocket blasting up on a cushion of warm sparkling light, fairy lights blazing, __N1__'s delighted face in the round cut-out window; the garden shrinking below, the washing line waving goodbye.

6

Space was quieter than a library and blacker than blackberries, and the stars — up close — hummed. They actually hummed, a tiny silver sound, like a fridge full of secrets. __N1__ steered carefully between them, because a builder always respects other people's lightbulbs.

🎨 The cardboard rocket drifting through deep navy space between softly humming, gently glowing stars; Earth behind like a blue marble; __N1__ steering with great care and wonder at the window.

7

The Moon was bigger than a hundred playgrounds and silver like the inside of a bell. The rocket landed with a soft crunch, right in the middle of a dusty plain. And there, sitting on a crater's edge with a very long face, was the Man in the Moon himself — holding an enormous, unlit lamp.

🎨 The rocket parked on the silvery moon surface, dust settling; nearby, on the rim of a crater, sits the gentle Man in the Moon — a tall silvery figure with a kind sad face — holding a huge old-fashioned lamp that is dark.

8

"It's the switch," sighed the Man in the Moon. "It's been wobbly for a hundred years, and tonight it finally gave up. No lamp — no moonlight. No moonlight — no dreams down there. They'll all just... sleep in the dark." __N1__ was already rolling up her sleeves. "Wobbly switches," said __N1__, "are my favourite kind."

🎨 The Man in the Moon showing the huge lamp's wobbly broken switch, sighing; __N1__ rolling up sleeves with a confident grin, toy spanner already in hand, tool-belt improvised from a pyjama cord.

9

It took a spanner, two twists, a bent paperclip (a builder ALWAYS carries a paperclip), and one very small thump in exactly the right place. "Try now," said __N1__. The Man in the Moon touched the switch... and the lamp bloomed like a giant silver dandelion. Light rolled across the craters like spilled milk.

🎨 The triumphant moment: the enormous lamp blazing to life in a soft silver bloom, light flooding across the crater plains; __N1__ standing on the lamp base with the spanner raised, the Man in the Moon shielding his happy eyes.

10

Far below, the Earth began to glitter. Ponds lit up. Windows glowed. Somewhere down there, a million bedtime stories suddenly had moonlight to read by. "You fixed the night," said the Man in the Moon quietly. "Nah," said __N1__, polishing the spanner. "I fixed a switch. The night did the rest."

🎨 View from the moon: the distant Earth beginning to sparkle as moonlight touches oceans and cities; __N1__ and the Man in the Moon sitting side by side on the crater edge watching it, legs dangling, sharing quiet pride.

11

The Man in the Moon walked __N1__ back to the rocket and pressed something into her hand: a tiny silver bolt, still warm. "From the lamp. So you remember — the whole sky can depend on one small part that works. Rather like one small builder." The moonbeam carpet unrolled all the way home.

🎨 Farewell at the rocket: the Man in the Moon placing a tiny glowing silver bolt into __N1__'s palm; the moonbeam carpet stretching from the moon down toward a tiny distant garden; the rocket's fairy lights warming up.

12

In the morning, the rocket was just a fridge box again, a bit dented by weather. But on the shelf above __N1__'s bed, next to the egg-box robot, sat a tiny silver bolt that glowed — very faintly — every night when the moon came on. Right on time. Every time. __N1__ checked.

🎨 Morning bedroom scene: __N1__ asleep, and on the shelf the tiny silver bolt giving off a faint silver glow beside the egg-box robot; through the window the pale morning moon; the colander helmet hanging on the bedpost. Warm final scene.