CharacTarot: Silent Sight or → Download Silent Sight with journal prompts
A card pulled from the stars, representing EchoHub’s archetype.
Red’s Star Maps
Some of the content—some of my favorite—that didn’t make it into the final draft.
A Note from Red
Sometimes you need to remember how something began to understand where it’s going. Before Echo fizzled, before the green flash, before everything changed—I used to take off my shoes. Not to run. Not to rest. But to remember.
The stars weren’t just something I looked at. They were something I carried with me.
This was my first signal. Even if no one else heard it.
Even if it didn’t make sense.
Even if it wasn’t real.
I knew what I felt.
And I had to believe something out there was trying to reach back.So… here’s a little bit of before.
Before the call. Before the proof.
Just me, my sneakers, and a whisper I couldn’t let go.—Red
Continuation of what didn’t make the final cut … and more about EchoHub …
The universe could have her full attention now. Red gazed out to the blue smudge in space that was a distant galaxy and felt sure there was a voice out there somewhere. The stars were Red’s promise of connection, and all she needed was a hint of otherworldly existence, someone else out there, someone else reaching out for connection.
The EchoHub buzzed. Not its usual buzz, but one accompanied by an unusual vibration. Red tapped the screen. Following a flash of green, things went dark.
The family pod was always well lit, even though it was often uncomfortably silent. What was not well lit suddenly was the EchoHub. No lights dancing around its frame. No blue. No yellow. No green. Just dark.
Red’s heart dropped as her lifeline to the stars kaputed. She shook the prototype lightly at first, but hoping to regain the ‘flash of green’, she next shook it desperately. Nothing. Her eyes darted back and forth between what was outside the bubble window and what remained blank on the EchoHub screen. Her heart sank further. Had she missed it? The voice?
Her racing thoughts fixed on Poppy, then just as quickly evaporated, leaving her with the vision of the thrumming sign too often alit on his door — Do Not Disturb. She flashed an alternate truth.
“Little Red, I'm always here for you. You could never disturb me,” he had said as he patted her head before turning back to the series of screens before him.
And though Red had understood his words were sincere, she also understood her truth. She remembered, bending her head down and quietly shuffling toward the door that day.
“Hold on there, Little One; I have something for you.” And that’s when Poppy handed her the funny-named teardrop-shaped gizmo that took both of her tiny hands to hold. Red wide-eyed the microphone grill; it looked like a tiny constellation of pinholes. And the ring of soft pulsating lights at its base was “customizable,” Poppy had said.
But what Red marveled most at was the ‘radar-like feature’, a signal detection screen. Poppy showed her how a series of prismatic waves would pulse across the EchoHub’s screen when a signal from space was detected, followed by a fluorescing arrow that would point the way to its source.
“I call it an EchoHub,” Poppy had said.
Red squeezed her eyes closed and hugged the EchoHub to her chest as she spun around and declared, “You’re going to be my best friend.”
“It listens to the universe, to the stars, like you.” Poppy smiled, and his words echoed to Red as he once again disappeared back into his work.
That day was one of her best memories.
The present day was questionable.
A button push for ‘power on’, but no response. Red shook EchoHub once more, but heard only a tiny rattle.
“Test; one, two.” No response.
Closing Reflection
In stories, sometimes what gets cut is what lingers longest in the silence between beats. This quiet ritual—removing her magnetos, honoring the constellations, listening with her whole heart—was always part of Red’s journey. Even if the main episodes didn’t leave room for it.
Thank you for stepping into that silence with her—and maybe, if you’re the kind to doodle on your soles, you’ll understand why she needed to start there. Why the stars had to be hers before they could be anyone’s.
And if you’re listening closely, you might just hear a whisper too.
Speak to me,
JL Tooker
