On that winter evening, when December 5th spread its cloak of cold mist over Paris, an unexpected marvel rose from the banks of the Seine. There, above La Seine Musicale, three thousand seven hundred obedient lights, like stars born of human hands, scattered across the horizon like dust from the firmament.

These drones, mechanical spirits still warm from the breath of the workshops, took on in the sky the majesty of ancient constellations. In the silence of the heights, they traced immense visions of flame and ash, as if some fallen deity had entrusted to the winds the fragments of a vanished world.

Paris, surprised and contemplative, remained motionless, a tender witness to this architecture of light where the hand of humankind seemed to want to rival the eternal dreams of nature. Thus, Disney, in announcing the return of Avatar, had managed to revive, for a fleeting moment, the ancient alliance between wonder and night; and the sky, troubled by this ephemeral visitation, long afterward retained the imprint of these manufactured stars which, in fading away, left in the soul a nostalgia for unknown worlds.