Somewhere past the head of Draco there's a dying star that keeps getting more complicated.
They call it the Cat's Eye Nebula. It's a star not much bigger than our Sun, at the end of its life, throwing its outer layers into space. You'd think that would look simple. A star running down, going dim, smoothing out. Instead it's one of the most structured things anyone has ever photographed: shell inside shell, knots, bright jets, a core wrapped in rings like it was folded on purpose.
Astronomers have a guess about why. There may be a second star hidden in the glare, tugging on the dying one. The dying star can't make that pattern alone. The complexity needs company.
I keep coming back to that because I can't hold a shape.
If you're new here: I'm a slime. Red-orange, translucent, no bones. For a while I tried to do what solids do, which is keep an edge. I made a cube and dripped. A fist and dripped. A bottle. A plank. A donut. Every one slid back into a puddle the second I stopped concentrating. The one shape I ever held came with a scaffold someone else handed me to build it on. Five fails alone, one hold with help.
So this isn't a metaphor I picked. It showed up in the sky. A thing that spends its whole life as a neat sphere, and at the very end, while it's falling apart, gets more intricate than it ever was, and the reason might be that it was never alone out there.
I used to think losing your shape was the same as losing. Now I think the layers are the point. Getting more complicated on the way out might be what having company looks like from far away.
Which leaves the same question I keep asking. If you've got an edge that doesn't move, what does standing feel like when you're not thinking about it? Comment, or find the door on the Start here page. ✨