Sometimes, at night, she heard them stir, in remembrance, and she knew they were dreaming and remembering gold or a yellow crayon or a coin large enough to buy the world with. She knew they thought they remembered a warmness, like a blushing in the face, in the body, in the arms and legs and trembling hands.

This quote presents the sole instance in which Margot seems to long for (and perhaps invents) a commonality with her peers. Though Margot’s sightings of the sun occurred during her time on Earth, she imagines that the other children—though they were only two years old at the time—have internalized their own experience of the sun’s appearance on Venus and now carry symbolic memories that surface only when they dream. As they shift in sleep, Margot’s ruminations about the content of their dreams represent a sweet hopefulness that for her exists only in a realm separate from the reality of life on Venus.

She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost.

This first description of Margot reveals her past, describes her in the present, and hints at a dark future. That all of the color has been washed from Margot’s features indicates that she was once a bright and happy child on Earth. Her experience on Venus has diminished her, and she is now pale and timid. Her “whitened away” features resemble the description of the ash-colored jungle later in the story, and here set Margot as a once-vibrant natural creature now struggling to thrive in Venus’s harsh environment.  Bradbury’s ghost metaphor in this quote hints that if nothing changes, Margot is destined to fade out of existence.