The Lore Wall
The official constellations have a bureaucracy. These have a porch, a kettle, and a teller. Everything below was given to me by visitors, neighbours, or my late husband Walter, who invented constellations the way other men invented excuses. I have corrected the attributions where the truth improved the story, and left them where it didn't.
The Farmer's Coat
Attribution: Walter, 1988, amended 2003. Four dim stars southeast of Pegasus, shaped like a coat thrown over a fence rail. The coat belongs to a farmer who left it out every autumn so that the first cold night could find it without asking. The stars are the buttons. It is the only constellation Walter ever admitted to inventing, and he only admitted it once.
The Long Bridge
Attribution: Danny Okafor, age 11, during the 1997 blackout. Six stars in a shallow arc across the southern sky, invisible unless the city lights fail — which, Danny noted, was when everyone came outside anyway. The bridge is said to appear "only when people need somewhere to stand together." The 1997 blackout lasted four hours. The bridge has been crossed, by this account, eleven times.
The Kettle
Attribution: shared, Kettle Valley, provenance unknown. A triangle and a handle, west of Cassiopeia, steaming visibly on cold nights, which is to say it is not visible at all on cold nights and therefore the steam is real. The Kettle is always about to boil and never does; town legend holds that the night it finally does, it will be a good year for the valley. I have seen the handle flash. I stand by this.
The Lost Mitten
Attribution: Ruth, age unknown at time of invention. A faint pair near the winter Milky Way. It is not much of a shape. It is, however, the only constellation here I truly believe in, because it turns up every February exactly where you stopped looking for it.