When the Stars Align Over Palette Suite

The Milky Way is not a photograph here; it is a living thing.
On new-moon nights we lead no more than ten guests across the dunes to a circle of cashmere blankets and low lanterns turned to their lowest ember glow. A single astronomer — barefoot, of course — waits with a 1932 brass telescope once owned by a Jordanian prince.
No light domes for three hundred kilometres. The sky is so dark you can see the zodiacal light, that faint pyramid of sun-dust that follows the ecliptic.
We serve only one drink: warm saffron milk in tiny silver cups. Phones are surrendered at the door (a rule no one has ever broken).
By midnight the temperature drops to perfect. Someone always whispers, “I had no idea there were this many.”
We never correct them. There are always more.