#elsewhere

"Did it work? I... remember, you told me to try to see if I could make myself see... " He squints at the paper to see what he scribbled there...

She looks, too! "You seemed to sense something. You were listing off celestial bodies..."

And then blinks again. "I... what is this?" A swirl of lines, and dots.

"It... I don't remember at all. It was just here... and now, piff. Like I sneezed and it flew into the wind?!"

"Strings connecting... Sculptor, Polaris, Pyxis... Forn-something.. Draconis... and Charon."

"I don't think it worked." He shakes his head. "I guess you can't make a vision happen." Somewhat disappointed. "Those are just stars. I was reading the charts earlier... mishmash. Like when you have a dream, and it's just stuff from the day, and nothing deeper."

"You sure?"

She squints at the drawing.

"Pretty sure." Sounding defeated.

A series of ovals, similar to planetary revolutions, but intersecting, like the world's weirded venn diagram.

"Polaris is the Dog star, and Draconis is a dragon, and we do dogs and dragons..."

Trying to piece together a pattern, some kind of unity...

"The telescope is still really cool though. Fornacis... that's Alpha For, part of the binary system of Fornax. Here, I can find it, I think. It's the Forge. The constellation it's in, that is."

"Forge!"

"We have a forge! It's Willy's, but still!"

"Forge, or Furnace? I don't speak latin, really. I bet I could learn...."

"Okay. Dog, dragon, forge... Charon's the boat guy?"

Writing notes on the page opposite the drawing.

He finds it and shows Thistle... underwhelming a bit, it's just a couple lines, you can't quite make out a shape. But to the right of it, a triangle. "There, next to the Sculptor."

"It should be called the Kiln, if it's by a sculptor." He says, with a grin, trying to shake off the disappointment.

"But you said sculptor, too!" And she smiles. "Yeah."

"I guess that's where you would go, if you were a star."

"Sirius is the dog star, though. Polaris is in Ursus Minor..."

"Imagine what you could make in a Star-Kiln? Yeah..."

"Star bear? Oh, well, clearly that's you."

Correcting notes. "What's Pyxis?"

He looks thoughtful. "I don't remember that one. Pixy? Something to do with Nevers, maybe?"

"Maybe. We can google it." She nods.

"And Charon, that's not a star at all. That's a moon!"

"Or perhaps a planetesimal... a bit that got knocked off Pluto."

"Well, sometimes you need to let things kinda percolate? Just simmer in the back of your brain. That's what I do when I'm stuck on something."

"Like Gwen's coffee pot. I should make sure to not let ot go too long. She might like the overcooked sludge, but that doesn't seem healthy for a brain." He lays back on the blanket again. "The telescope is fantastic, but some things are almost better by bare eye? If you zoom in, you cannot see the entire milky way... you miss the forest for a tree."

"See, look..." He moves over to make space.