Rain would fall and rain would fall again, after sunshine. that’s how the world works at the very core. Is it even worth saying that things will change and go back? It’s reassuring at least but there’s not much you can argue about with it. Either way works, Cat thought. With that, he looked out the window. The glass was stained green with a bit of blue, and the rain fell smoothly. Instead of single pats and splashes, the rain sounded like a stream - almost silent and softly flowing. But it could just be the glass that changes how the rain looked. Past the rain, he could see the valley only behind the colorful clay houses of the mountain. the lights from the buildings were on, but faint. the painted walls of the houses were washed out and greyed from the clouds rolling out of the valley. a train passed by as silently as the clouds did, puncturing the thick and soft sounds with a slightly muted note, letting the passengers know they’d reached the central peak. Elsewhere, somewhere Cat could not see, was the creatures of the crater pond slipping into the room through another window, and falling asleep wedged in between two books on architecture. The room’s lights flickered on and off but not in a way that was too noticeable. The red and fluffy chair he’d been sitting on slowly felt more comfortable, and the warmth from the vents slowly made him feel tired. it had been a long day, after all.

The stars would roam the sky but always end up in the same place in the evening, she’d noticed. To her, space was a dense ocean, with heavy water and angels instead of fish, flowers that are blooming yet dead at the same time, and light that could itself somewhere else. she dreamed she could reach up into the sky and take out a piece of the celestial yet muddy substance, and do nothing but gaze at it in an attempt to see the worlds closer. Even if she could, deep down she knew it wouldn’t work: Once she’d gotten close to the stars, she would only see more stars even farther away - the stars wouldn’t end, they’d all go on and on and on, flickering here and there and finally all exploding into inconceivable spots of darkness and color. Exploding into inconceivable spots of darkness and color didn’t sound too bad of a way to go, she thought…

"what if I told you that the universe isn’t spherical?"
“What shape would it be then?”
“It wouldn’t.”
At this point Cat closed his eyes for a moment and tried to imagine what the universe might be if it wasn’t a shape. The sunlight blazed through his eyelids making his field of vision a mixture of black and red and yellow, and he opened his eyes again.
“that doesn’t really make sense to me”, he said.
“I don’t really get it either,” said Aza, “but it still works… “because, like, it’s really the matter in the universe that’s increasing, you know? But there just has to be a space for it to increase in, because that’s just how things are.”
The first part was already hard to understand, but this was like trying to stretch a rock like gum around a tree.
“It’ll make sense eventually,” Aza said. “Probably.”