The day had started off usual. And then, there was a spot. It wasn't a comet, or a plane, or the moon, or even superman. It was a spot. To the untrained eye, it looked like nothing. A blink and it disappears kind of moment. But a lot of people did notice. Some important people noticed. They deemed it a threat. And they started working on it right away.

Harry was not the first to see it, that title belonged to his daughter, Melanie, who pointed at the spot with her pudgy hand, other wrapped around her sippy cup and said “Moon! Moon purple!”

Harry laughed, exasperated, and scraped applesauce from the pot, trying to get Melanie to eat more. “Mel, there’s no moon out now,” he sighed. The picnic was not going as planned.

“Moon! Purple!” Melanie had insisted, waving her small hand up at the sky in frustration.

Harry had paused then, deciding to humour the small girl by glancing upwards.

He saw it then, a small spot too bright and uniform to be the moon, free from craters and entirely round. It was purple, a deep purple, almost black, like an inky well set deep into the sky. He pulled his phone out then, to Google it, things like “eclipse near me,” “which planets are visible in London now?” and “meteor showers near me,” though he was certain that this was none of those things.

Then, his wife called.

“Dalia?” He asked. She was supposed to be at work, about to go on air for the 10 o’clock news. She never called him now unless it was an emergency.

”Harry, thank God, you need to get Melanie inside now.”

”What? Why?”

Dalia paused. “Intel from the Met Office. Get inside.”

”Is this about that spot in the sky?”

There was a silence. “I can’t—“

”Dalia, is your daughter in danger?” Harry asked, voice firm, punctuating every word.

“Yes,” Dalia whispered, and then the line went dead.

Harry stared at the phone in bewilderment. And then Melanie cried out, and when Harry looked back at her, the spot in the sky hung directly above her, and she was bathed in an ink-purple glow.