I pushed Echo as fast as she could go, shouting out to the children to gather in the town circle. Once they all seemed to have gathered I gave orders as quickly as I could as we dumped the jars out in one big heap. Their frozen state pulsed out around all of us, dropping the temperature of the air significantly.

"Billy, come over here and help me. Everyone line up. We're gonna do this one jar at a time now."

I instructed Billy to hand the jar to a child until the right person came across it.

"Francis, what do you mean? How will we know?"

"Trust me you'll know Billy."

Billy grinned that dimpled smile of his and got to work. Forty kids made their way through the first jar, then fifty, then twenty more when it happened.

Laughter and subtle incantations of bedtime stories played from the jar as it illuminated from a young girl's hands. The visions of a childhood lost, stolen, flashed before us filling the canyon with light and sound. We watched as she spun on a merry-go-round and shouted for her dog, Charlie, with shrieks of delight. Scuffed knees from bicycle spills and ribbons fluttering from her hair had shot around on the chests of the other children in a whirlwind as if I had watched her grow up before my own eyes.

This continued on with a boy who'd been through the line for the fourth time on a whole new jar. I saw a boy running with friends down the sidewalk as the moon chased them through a neighborhood. They came to a quick pause and craned their necks, their eyes locked with mine as if they could see me standing here in the middle of the town surrounded by children.

My lungs forgot to breathe momentarily as I saw that it was Leslie and so many other children but from another time staring back at me. It was odd to see two sets of children eyeing me in wait with such pride at discovering the moonbeams were actual memories. They waved at me excitedly as the moon cast them in the most beautiful light, they appeared to be so happy.

"Billy, is that you and the others?"

I glanced at the live children before me when Billy gave me a knowing nod. The giggles from the memory poured their warmth over me releasing me from the chill in the canyon. One of the memories beckoned to me, and his face was that of the boy I saw back in my office.

It was me.

"Hey everybody it's Frankie! Look at you, you're all grown up. I bet you go by Francis now, don't ya?"

Cold sweat covered my skin and my heart warmed. The expanse of the moon that blanketed across the tops of the sun-bleached wooden homes at night acted like a projector upon the roofs, where the stars could dance and align in celestial artistry, and the children of then and now could play together with their jars of moon memories.