The small universe was still there. Gaia had looked away from it several times, then turned back quickly, as though it might disappear while no one was watching. Each time, she found its faint brightness moving within the surrounding dark.

They had brought it into being without knowing how. Now none of them seemed able to leave it for long. Uranus circled above it, following shapes that changed as he moved. Erebus watched from below, where the pale movements cast small shadows through one another.

Eros stayed close to Gaia.

Near the centre, a thread of light curved around a cluster of dark grains. It passed behind them and disappeared. Gaia leaned closer. On the other side, the thread emerged again.

“There,” she whispered.

Uranus stopped circling. The light travelled outward, bent slowly, and returned to the grains. It followed the same uneven curve once more.

“Are you doing that?” Eros asked.

Gaia shook her head. They looked at Uranus, then Erebus. Neither was touching it. For a while, the four watched in silence. The little thread completed another journey. Eros smiled first.

“It remembered the way.”

“Perhaps,” said Erebus.

“Or something keeps bringing it back.”

Uranus was already leaning around the other side.

“What if there were another way?”

He stretched a finger towards an empty space beyond the curve, then stopped just short of touching it:

“And another beyond that?”

Gaia cupped her hands beneath the grains. They had once rested in her palm, small and dense, made with something of her own energy and something she had caught from lightning. Now they were part of a place she could look into.

“Perhaps things could stay here,” she said.

“Long enough for something else to grow around them.”

Eros followed the returning light with his eyes.

“And what one part has could reach another.”

Erebus moved closer.

“We would need to find out what lets it continue.”

Their voices began overlapping: Could it become larger? Could there be places unlike this one? Could new forms appear without being shaped by their hands? The world around them had been moving for longer than they could remember. Its currents continued when they slept.

Its distant brightness gathered and faded without waiting for their attention. Perhaps this little universe could become like that. The thought made Uranus laugh aloud. Gaia looked up at him, and soon she was smiling too.

They began with the returning thread. Uranus gently drew its outward curve wider. The light followed him, stretched thin, and nearly lost its way back. Gaia lifted a few grains into its path. The stream curled around them, but their loose arrangement trembled beneath its passage.

“A little closer,” Erebus said.

Gaia moved the grains together.

“The other side,” he added.

“The light is pressing there.”

Uranus lowered himself beside her. With surprising care, he guided the stream towards the opening she had left. Beyond it, a second, fainter current wandered past. Eros reached towards both, then waited. When their movements approached one another, he warmed the space between them. The currents touched.

One brightened as the other dimmed. Then the brightness passed back.

“Let go a little,” Erebus murmured.

They loosened their hold. The light faltered. Gaia almost caught it, but Uranus touched her wrist.

“Wait.”

The stream brushed against the grains, found the opening, and slipped through. It returned.

Eros made a small sound of delight. Uranus caught his shoulder, and Gaia laughed as their movement nearly tipped all three of them into Erebus.

“Carefully,” Erebus said, laughing too.

They called it the little turning place.

For a long while, whenever one of them discovered something elsewhere, they brought the others back to compare it with what happened there. Uranus found currents that divided and joined again. Gaia learned which arrangements of grains could endure repeated movement.

Eros watched exchanges spread between forms that had never touched before. Erebus noticed that something which lasted beside a gentle current might come apart beside a stronger one. There were failures. Sometimes all four stared at an empty space where a promising creation had just dissolved.

Sometimes they argued briefly over what had happened, then tried again. But there were successes too, and the small universe grew more intricate.

One day, Uranus discovered a pale ribbon moving beyond the turning place. It twisted as it travelled. Wherever it passed close to a smaller stream, the stream bent towards it. He followed it, fascinated.

“Come and see.”

Gaia was strengthening the outer edge of the grains. Eros hovered beside a newly formed connection. Erebus came first.

“If this passed through our turning place,”

Uranus said, “it could carry something much farther.”

“It is moving faster,” Erebus observed.

“I can slow it.”

Uranus eased the ribbon towards them. Its movement softened. Inside it, tiny folds opened like something unfolding from sleep. Gaia forgot her work for a moment.

“That is beautiful.”

Uranus glanced at her, pleased. He guided it closer. The returning thread rose towards the ribbon. For an instant, the whole turning place brightened.

Then one of the outer grains shifted. Gaia caught it. Another pulled away on the opposite side.

“Wait,” she said.

Uranus curved the ribbon back, but the small thread had already changed its path. It struck the edge of the opening instead of passing through. Eros reached towards the broken exchange.

“Just hold it there.”

He drew the drifting light back. The connection steadied, and relief warmed his face. Nearby, a quieter stream began to fade.

“That one too,” Gaia said.

Eros turned. By the time they restored a gentler movement, the ribbon had drifted far away.

Uranus watched it go.

“We almost had it.”

Gaia was still holding two grains in place.

“We almost lost this.”

He looked down at her hands. For the first time, their excitement did not quite meet. Gaia yearned to show him the fragile edge where the grains nearly dissolved into nothing. Uranus wanted only to unfold for her the endless horizons where the light might still wander.

But the words stayed trapped between them, neither knowing how to speak their heart without making it seem as though the other had loved the wrong sky.

Afterwards, Uranus approached more slowly. Gaia checked the grains more often. Eros stayed near the connection he had repaired, delighted whenever it brightened without his help. Erebus watched them all. He wondered why the ribbon had changed the thread so quickly.

He wondered whether Gaia’s firmer arrangement had left the light too little room. He wondered why the neighbouring stream had faded when Eros restored the first. He was still wondering when Uranus brought another idea.

“What if we give it two openings?”

Gaia drew her hands closer.

“We have only just made this one hold.”

“Then we can keep it and make another beside it.”

“Beside it is where the other stream weakened,” Eros said.

“I remember.”

Uranus had spoken more sharply than he intended. Eros lowered his eyes. He had meant to help them remember the weakened stream. Now he wished he had found a gentler way to say it.

The sharpness in Uranus’s voice stayed with him even after Uranus turned back towards the grains. It hung in the cool expanse between them like a frost, refusing to melt. Erebus opened his mouth, then closed it.

He had noticed something about the spacing of the grains, but he did not yet know whether it mattered.

They tried a smaller change. It worked, although Gaia needed to adjust the edge afterwards. Uranus was already following the light through its new opening when she called him back.

“Can you help me with this?”

He immediately turned back to assist her. But the next time a new movement caught his attention, he followed it without checking whether Gaia still needed him. As more time passed, small repairs gathered around larger discoveries.

Uranus would find a possibility, bright and compelling, and stay with it until another appeared. Gaia often remained behind, holding a changed structure until it could stand without her. At first, she liked doing this.

She liked the quiet moment when something settled and her hands were no longer needed. But sometimes, before that moment came, a new movement reached her from somewhere else. Her fingers would tighten.

“What has he changed now?”

She disliked the bitterness in her own voice. Only a little earlier, she would have wanted to see whatever he had found. Now she sometimes felt the new movement first as more weight against her hands. She missed being able to greet it with wonder.

Uranus began hearing those words even before she spoke them. He still brought her his ideas. Yet he increasingly brought the smallest version, leaving the rest unspoken until he could show that it worked.

He began watching her face before he finished speaking. A tightening around her eyes could make the rest of his idea feel foolish in his mouth. Sometimes he left angry with her; sometimes he left wondering whether there was something wrong with wanting so much.

Gaia noticed the unannounced changes. They made her quicker to object the next time.

Eros tried to ease these disagreements as faithfully as he tended the streams.

“Perhaps later,” he would tell Uranus.

“Perhaps only a little,” he would suggest to Gaia.

Sometimes they listened. Their voices softened, and he felt the tightness inside him ease. Then a current would strain somewhere below, and he would hurry away.

He often left with something of his own still unsaid. He wanted to tell them that their voices had hurt him, that he was tired too. But while they were quiet again, he was afraid to say anything that might make the disagreement begin anew.

Each new connection gave Eros more to feel. Some disturbances were brief. Others persisted, a dull pulling sensation that followed him even when he turned away. He could no longer always tell whether he was feeling a present strain or remembering one he had just repaired.

Once, Gaia found him beside two pale strands that repeatedly drew together and recoiled.

“Are they joining?” she asked.

“Nearly.”

She returned much later. He was still there.

“Eros.”

“They settle when I stay.”

“And when you leave?”

He did not answer. Gaia watched the strands tremble between his hands.

“Perhaps they need more space.”

“They had space before. They were alone.”

The thought of leaving made his hands tighten. He imagined the strands reaching towards one another after he had gone, and finding no way to meet. Perhaps they could learn another movement. But he could not bear to be absent if they failed.

Gaia could think of nothing gentle enough to say. Before she found the words, another disturbance pulled Eros’s attention away.

Erebus began spending longer at the dim edge of the universe. From there, he could see several regions at once. He traced one change into another, then another, searching for the place where their difficulties began. Whenever his friends disagreed, he felt a familiar urgency.

There must be something they had overlooked. If he could find it, perhaps he could help them stop hurting one another. But every explanation left something unanswered. He could hear their voices even out here.

Sometimes one rose sharply while he was following a thought, and he lost the thought at once. He would turn towards them, then look back, certain that if he left too soon he might miss the thing that could help.

He remembered his earlier ideas about how things came into being, and how certain he had once felt about things he now understood differently. He did not want to mislead them again. So he waited until he knew more.

“What do you think?” Gaia asked him once.

He looked up, startled to find her beside him.

“I am still looking.”

She nodded and went back to work. Afterwards, she asked less often.

He noticed. Once, he almost followed her to say that he had not wanted her to go. But she was already needed elsewhere. He stayed where he was, ashamed that even a simple question from a friend had become something he did not know how to answer.

One day, a tremor passed through the little turning place. It was small. Before, they might have gathered with interest to watch it. Now Eros reached towards it at once.

“Please be careful.”

Uranus drew back his hand.

“I have not touched anything.”

“I know. I only meant…”

“Something has changed,” Gaia said, inspecting the outer grains.

Uranus looked at her.

“And that means it was me?”

“I did not say that.”

Their voices tightened. Eros tried to answer both of them while holding the trembling connection. At the edge of the light, Erebus watched a grain turn slowly in its place. He thought the movement might have begun inside the structure itself. He needed another moment to be sure.

By then, Gaia had steadied it. The disturbance passed. They had preserved almost everything.

Uranus moved away first. He wanted someone to call him back before he had gone very far. He also knew he might answer sharply if they did.

It hurt to feel suspected before he had acted, and he carried that hurt away without knowing what to do with it. Gaia stayed beside the grains. Eros waited until the last strained thread softened. Erebus remained where he was, with a thought he had not spoken.

Much later, Gaia looked up. She remembered the day they had nearly tumbled into one another, laughing. All four were still close enough to see. She almost called them back. Then a grain shifted beneath her palm, and she lowered her eyes to hold it.

For a moment, she resented the small thing she loved. The feeling startled her. She steadied the grain more gently, as though it could have felt her impatience, and wished someone would come and sit beside her without needing to be called.