"Please, stars, let me fix this before he gets home!"

        "Starlight, star bright, first start I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight. I wish for Mom to come home safe from her business trip as soon as she can."

    "Please, night, let me hide, don't let them find me!"

"Oh stars, please oh please let me have a better and faster transition than the default years-long glitchy journey of HRT."

"Don't let them find me" sounds urgent. She grabs it hard.

There's a child hiding in a supply closet in a jeweler's shop —

She takes a moment to take in the full situation.

A group of eight thugs have broken into the shop, armed with guns and knives and a few crowbars and hammers. The boy's father was working late on a commission, and the boy was enjoying watching daddy make something pretty. The thugs broke in, and the father told his son to hide before they made it into the back room where he does his work. The father has been shot three times and stabbed twice, and is currently bleeding out on the cement floor of his workroom.

All the thugs' weapons are interpolated with air and they themselves are all transported to the nearest empty police holding cell. She makes sure it's locked.

Then her attention jumps to the father who is currently bleeding out. He's not dead yet — she vanishes the bullets lodged in him, copies flesh from his son to patch the wounds, then duplicates his own blood to replace all that he's lost. She takes a moment to adapt her patches so they won't be rejected by the father's immune system and then pulls back. 

She 'types' a letter to the police station and leaves it pinned to the wall across from the holding cell with a bright silver star sticker.

These men were in the middle of committing an armed robbery and had almost killed a man when I apprehended them. Make sure they harm none more. The robbery occurred at 2427 Market St at 9:47 P.M.— Stella.

She marks each of the thugs with a black diamond tattoo in their clavicles. She lets it sting a little.

Then she returns to the father and his son. They're teleported to the safest bed in their tiny apartment and wrapped up in a heavy blanket of midnight blue patterned with silver stars. She leaves the broken windows and display cases downstairs — as much as she wants to repair it all, it's evidence she shouldn't tamper with. She leaves the stolen jewelry on the transported thugs as evidence as well. 

She 'types' another letter.

You're as safe as I can make you now. Take heart; the night protects. — Stella

The police are somewhat bewildered to witness a group of thugs appear from thin air, live on camera while they watch from the office. A pair of officers head down to the holding cell to inspect the thugs.

"What the fuck? Who's Stella and how'd she do this?"

"Dispatch, get a squad car down to Market street."

And the thugs are quickly processed, and found to be holding quite a few necklaces and rings from the shattered display cases.

Meanwhile, at the jewelry shop on Market street, the boy and his father are hugging each other tightly in the father's bed, sobbing with relief. Eventually they calm themselves enough to read the note. "Thank you, Miss Stella, whoever you are," the father murmurs, running his hands through his son's hair. "Thank you so much."

Eventually, the cops show up and acquire a copy of the footage of the thugs breaking in and then vanishing from the jeweler's single very basic camera covering the shop floor, and get testimony about the assault. Samples of the blood are taken from the workshop floor, the store is dusted for fingerprints, and evidence is gathered to charge the thugs with armed robbery.

Stella has moved on to the woman who wants to fix "it" before "he" gets home, but her awareness registers a little satisfaction at the quick motion from the police.

(There's an ache in her from working in the harsh artificial lights of the police station, but it's not so bad. She can manage.)

It seems this woman has broken a football trophy belonging to her husband. From how she's thinking about it it's clear he's abusive. 

She repairs the trophy — it's just a matter of fitting the pieces together, she can glue them better than any bond can.

The wife doesn't have children. She gets a letter laying out that she can have the choice of staying, or getting a starting amount of cash (lost bills, mostly, or taken from those who genuinely won't miss it) and a teleport to somewhere she can start her life over (her choice of domestic violence shelter or relative's home in her country.) If she decides against, Stella will vanish the letter.

Stella thinks about marking the husband, but decides against it.

The wife gasps when she sees the trophy repair itself before her eyes. She checks it over carefully, murmuring quiet thanks to whoever or whatever fixed it. When she sees the letter, she shakes in place as she reads it. "I..."

Her breath catches in her throat, and a tear rolls down her cheek.

She wipes it away furiously.

"I can't. I can't. He'd come after me. And he's not that bad if I'm good. I appreciate the fix, Miss Stella, but I'll stay."

She starts looking around, deciding how to dispose of the letter.

Stella vanishes the first letter. Some problems you can't fix in one motion. 

She appears a second letter.

Pray to me again if you need me. I can't be there in the day, but at night I may hear you. — Stella

Once she's sure that the woman has read it, she'll vanish that letter too, then move on.

The woman shudders and frowns and nods a bit at the letter, shivers again when it vanishes, and returns to cleaning.

Meanwhile Stella's next focus is a young adult in a darkened college dorm room, staring out the window at the night sky. Their body shows all the signs of having gone through testosterone-based puberty, and they have a long-standing discomfort in their own skin. A brush across their mind reveals a plural system, five girls who wish they could be individually embodied so they could hug each other fiercely, who grieve the apparent lack of magic in the world, and who desperately crave a body that suits their shared aesthetics. Sure, they all have different individual preferences, but a compromise body could certainly be managed, and would be a massive improvement on their overall well-being. 

This one is going to be complicated, but what artificial light is here is distant, and she has nothing else extremely urgent at the moment. 

Stella goes looking for the woman's close relatives. She has two female cousins of about her age — she can copy and work their bodies together with this woman's to build her something that'll accommodate her present brain well enough. Separating the system out she can't do, and upgrading their body to be more than human using copied animal parts would take too long — but she can offer a cis body of more or less this woman's current age and state of health with only a moderately insane amount of detail work.

She makes sure she has the body settled, then sends a letter. It's on cream-colored paper and hand-typed on an old Selectric she copied from a warehouse. 

If you wish it, you can have a body based on a mixture of yourself and your cis female cousins. I don't have the time right now to give you each your own custom body but if you want to have five copies of the new body for each of you to primarily inhabit I can do that. I can duplicate your brain, but not pry individual people out of your neurons.

Whatever you need, wish it on a star and I'll see if I can help. — Stella

She also conjures a deep blue blanket with a pattern of stars on it around the woman. She deserves some comfort in her life.

That produces a storm of reactions. 

What. What. What.

Someone is appearing physical objects before their very eyes. That's supposed to be impossible. 

Very quick test to at least increase the complexity cost of any hallucinations involved here, though she knows she can't really rule anything out. 

Sable steps out into the common area and prods her roommate. "Hey. what's this look like to you?" She holds out the blanket.

"Dark blue blanket covered in stars? Why?"

"Mmkay, thanks. I'll explain later if things work."

"Um. Sure."

And Sable heads back into her room.

She tugs the blanket tighter around herself and walks over to the window, looking out at the stars.

They can't rule out hallucination, but quiet words spoken aloud in response to appeared letters don't really make for a high-cost scenario. Maybe let it play out?

"Miss Stella, star-themed lady who sent me this blanket and letter," she asks, gazing at the twinkling points of light, "who and what are you? Why are you helping me? How did you send these things? Is this magic?"

It takes a moment, but a return letter appears, printed on the same Selectric.

I don't have a lot of time to talk. All within the shadow of night people are praying or wishing. Most of them aren't wishing to me yet, but that will change.  

I don't know where I came from. If people wish or pray to me, I can — answer. "Oh stars," you said, with a fervent wish in your heart — that's enough. I can't make genuinely new things, but I can make a copy from anything that exists within the shadow of night, and combine those copies. I can also move things instantaneously. I type these letters on a real typewriter, actuating the keys with concentration. It's faster and prettier than trying to cut and paste from a thousand newspapers.

I am night's refuge. Protection. Aid to the lost. I know it deep in my bones. I exist to give succor. That's why.

Oh.

That's basically a claim to be a goddess. That's the kind of values a vaguely human-shaped goddess would talk about. That...

She's not sure how much she believes yet. She could be hallucinating. Sure, she never has before, but she's about the right age for it.

But her roommate saw the blanket.

And they've all been hoping the world would turn out to be magical for a long time.

And they badly need a different body.

"Yes," she whispers, eyes locked on the stars. "Yes, Stella. We want that body you're offering. We absolutely want it."

And she does it. 

Sable's body shifts, smoothly and easily, from her current body to the one Stella already has prepared. It does hurt in the process as the nerves unknit and reknit; Stella's doing it as gently as she can, but she doesn't want to introduce an anesthetic. Sable could be allergic, and Stella doesn't want to knock her out. She deserves to be able to see her new body. 

Here you are. Sorry for the pain, but I judged it safer not to drug you. 

Attached to the note is a cute little plush purple shark.

Holy shit.

Holy fuck.

She turns and rushes to her mirror, looking herself up and down. Wildly curly black hair, her familiar stormy blue eyes, a petite frame, a modest but noticeable bust, curvy hips...

Thank the stars, she thinks. Thank you, Stella. So much. This is amazing.

She hugs the shark, then sets it on her bed and rushes out. 

"Whoa," her roommate exclaims. "New girl. What're you doing in Sa— Miller's room? They didn't say they had a girl over."

"It's Sable, Mike," she replies, intense and excited focus overtaking her face.

"Oh, you know, then?"

"No, Mike. I mean I'm Sable."

She puts her hands on her hips and gives him a look.

"What!? How!? Prove it!"

She leans in close and whispers in his ear. "You keep an envelope full of costume scales taped to the inside wall of your desk behind a drawer, and that's how you could teach me about makeup."

"Well shit. How'd you get a magic transition, girl?"