"This is it, the tip of the tongue!" Michel exclaims, panting.

Michel finally finds himself at the edge of a tongue shaped cliff. He had climbed all the way up to the highest peak of the city since dawn and now he’d finally arrived. He 's not about to rest despite his sore body. Merely putting down his backpack, Michel takes a deep breath and composes himself, erasing all traces of exhaustion. His posture ever more dignified, determined and unwavering; he starts to stare at the sky. Eyes squinted to the stars; he scans each one that crosses his sight, watching out for those that don’t twinkle. Michel, a spike of human flesh sticking out of the highest peak like a splinter to the earth, obscured by the city below; he had come to see the giant purple turtle. I’ll stare at the sky all night if I have to. Head turned up, Michel watches in silence for a while. When he felt the cold wind creeping into his clothes, he 'dwrap his arms around him. Midnight and the universe was at its loudest, the wind hitting his ears, the blades of grass in an epic medieval war scene- swords rattling in the air, and the city- screaming mobs of light, letting off steam from the day’s toil. But Michel is unaware of this, his mind is enveloped by the night sky and the only sound in his universe is his own voice reciting the old rhyme:

Catch a star that doesn’t blink,

forbid your eyes to rest and wink,

and if you catch one, shout untamed

reveal to him your lucky name

Gima! Gima! Keeper of stars,

Bestow your gift, don’t fly too far!

To thine great shell, I offer thee

my humble name in history!

Miles above, Gima the giant purple turtle watches and listens to his tiny voice within another universe, a juvenile’s. His eyes fixed on Michel, this infinitesimal boy even smaller than his own voice. A boy he thinks has more life in him than any other human in the city. Michel’s mind is frail. He thinks. But his heart is the strongest. The strongest since a thousand years. Gima shook his head, they gave him the strongest heart but left him without a clue. How could they? A wrinkle the size of a river appears above the lake that is his left eye. The skin of his colossal face resembled wet stone, deep purple, glistening in the moonlight. His shell was deeper and darker in color, like an unpolished ruby, a vast plain of purple rising into its own horizon disappearing into the under-shell, an upside-down labyrinth of oversized crystals, reflecting the city lights below.

Hidden in the upper reaches of the Stratosphere, Gima floated unmoving. His eyes on Michel who had no idea he’d been staring straight at his prize all this time. He’d been observing the stars that were Gima’s crystals blinking with borrowed light. Gima let out a wind of breath. His lake eyes close and turn into rocky fields of purple and slowly unveil into blue and white lakes again. He sighs, displacing a cloud below. It is not time yet. The boy has come with anger in his heart. I cannot give him the gift. Tonight, he is not a lucky one. Gima shifts his massive body towards space, stops midway, hesitating, then decides, ascending into the starry void.