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Their cottage has a mouth and it never stops moving.
It is small but strong, with a red door that never quite shuts all the way unless you give it a little kick. Windows that blink golden at night like sleepy eyes. The roof tilts just a little as though it has grown tired of standing up straight. The bricks are every shade of time. Sun-warmed red and dust-soft brown and the deep ochre of autumn leaves caught in the wind. Ivy curls over the walls.
It is small but strong but it’s theirs. It is home.
This cottage has a mouth and it never stops moving and sits in the heart of the forest where the trees whisper to one another and the stream sings a little like, a lot like the voice of someone you once loved but haven’t heard in years. The water runs silver and cold and tumbles over round, mossy rocks. A narrow path of smooth stones lead from the doorstep to the stream.
The children like to drop leaves into the current and watch them race, cheering for the biggest one, even though Viktor has tried to explain many, many times that size is not the only factor in speed.
Behind the house, a garden stretches wild and happy, half-planned and half-forgotten, growing in every direction like a child who has never been told no. The fence is just a suggestion. The earth does what it wants. In the winter, the air smells sweet and stubborn and alive.
In the winter, Jayce’s tomatoes should not still be growing, but they do. They stand tall and proud in their little rows, smug and sturdy in the biting cold. Viktor’s herbs are a mess, but they’re alive. A tangle of green arms and legs, twisting over each other, pushing past the borders. The lavender and mint have escaped their beds, crept up the posts, slung themselves over the gate.
In the winter, everything continues to live and grow.
They are good at this, at growing things, at making something live when it shouldn’t, at turning ruin into roots and roots into something that climbs toward the sky. At surviving and at thriving and at making the impossible seem so small and so simple and so already done.
Mostly Jayce.
Because Jayce loves in a way that bends the rules of the world, in a way that makes everything warmer and bigger and softer, more.
Viktor loves too, but he doesn’t think he loves as neatly or as loudly or as full of colour as Jayce does. Jayce’s love is all open hands and wide chests and thunderous declarations. Viktor’s love is smaller and a bit forlorn and built in the glass spaces between the silences.
But Jayce loves like a man who has never questioned whether or not he was allowed to.
Jayce buys too many oranges in the winter because Viktor once said he likes the way they smell. Jayce pulls Lucie onto his lap and lets her fall asleep against his chest even when his legs go numb, even when he has work to do, because he knows she sleeps better when she’s being held. Jayce saves the first bite of every good meal for Zadie because she always wants to try it first. Jayce lets Elias win races sometimes but not always because he knows the kid would hate that more than losing. Jayce throws an arm around Renka’s shoulders, kisses the top of her head even when she makes a face and even when she pretends to hate it and even when she elbows him in the ribs and calls him an idiot. Jayce wakes up early to put the kettle on even though Viktor always forgets to drink his tea until it’s gone cold.
Jayce loves big and good and full and without hesitation or without the worry that it will be taken away.
Viktor watches him and wonders if maybe this is why everything in their life grows, why the garden spills over, why the house is full of laughter and full of running feet and full of voices that never go quiet.
Because Jayce loves like a thing that never runs out. Because Jayce loves like a thing that was never meant to end. Because Jayce’s love is an overflowing stream and a garden that refuses to stop growing, even in the biting cold. It spills out of him, climbs over fences, pushes through cracks, fills every empty space.
Viktor lets his hands rest in the dirt, presses his fingers against the cold ground, feels the heartbeat of things trying to survive. He has never believed in miracles.
But Jayce’s love comes close.
~ * ~
It began with a choice.
Or maybe not a choice at all. Maybe something was already written and took shape in the space between them, in the cosmic thread that stitched them together from the moment they met. A decision that was not made but simply became.
There was a city that burned. A war that swallowed everything whole. A moment where two souls stood on opposite sides of an ending and refused to let go.
They had spent so many years building. Building towers and weapons and a future that never quite arrived. But when Jayce pressed his forehead to Viktor’s, when the universe seemed to crack open around them and all the light spilled and their hands trembled but still held on, that was when they began building something else.
Because if something ends, something else must begin.
~ * ~
Their cottage has a mouth and it never stops moving.
It chews through the day. It spits out children. Zadie and Elias descend the stairs in the morning, barefoot and too fast, Lucie going after them, hands strong on her wheels, Renka always last, dragging her feet, completely bored and in agony of her ordinary teenage life.
Their cottage eats their voices, swallows their arguments, holds their laughter like a stone in its belly. It stretches to fit them all, this house, its wood groaning, its windows thrown open, its bones not built for this much life but holding anyway.
There are six of them now. But before the noise and all the bubbles of laughter and the thunder of four children racing across the wooden floors, there were just two.
It began in the cosmos, in the space between stars, in the pull of gravity when one celestial body finds another and promises to never let go. Two hands reaching in the dark. Two voices calling out and finding only each other. Two bodies moving through the world, alone until they weren’t, until the universe bent and brought them close and did not let them drift apart. Love was simple then. Just the width of a palm against a shoulder. Just the whispering touch of foreheads. Just a promise, a confession.
Then came Renka and love stretched, opened, made room.
When they first brought her home from the orphanage, she had been quiet like a book left open but unread. She never spoke unless spoken to, never took more than what was given, never asked for things she wanted. She had learned that wanting led to disappointment so she folded up her wants like paper and tucked them away.
But Jayce was persistent, and Viktor was patient, and their house was warm. And warmth is a tricky thing. It melts and softens and seeps into the cracks you thought would never close. One night, when Viktor was up late, working, he found Renka sitting by the fire, curled under a blanket she had taken without asking. Some small thing that felt like the biggest miracle. He did not say anything. He only draped another blanket over her shoulders and let her pretend she was still asleep.
Viktor had known, then, that they had already lost. That this girl, all stubborn words and fire-bright opinions, was theirs.
Then came the twins. And suddenly, love had to be faster. Suddenly, love had to keep up.
Zadie and Elias had arrived like a storm, like a wildfire, all at once. They had lived at the orphanage for so long that they had learned how to make their own fun with their own hands and feet and sharp minds and no patience for rules. The first week in the cottage they stole Viktor’s stopwatch and Jayce’s slippers and all the spoons from the kitchen drawer and hit them in the woods and made Viktor and Jayce go on a treasure hunt for them. Jayce found them funny. Viktor found them exhausting. Renka found them annoying but in the way an older sister does, which means she would defend them to the ends of the earth if anyone else tries to be annoyed at them.
Jayce was immediately outnumbered.
“Why are there two of them?” he whispered to Viktor on the first night as if it had just occurred to him.
“Would you like me to send one back?”
Jayce chuckled. “No. I already love them both.”
And oh, how Viktor loved him then. Because Jayce didn’t hesitate. Didn't once think that his love would run out, hadn’t once feared that he would not have enough. He only looked at their children and loved them, instantly, entirely, as if he had been waiting his whole life for them to arrive.
And last, there was Lucie.
Lucie had never run through the trees or climbed too high or skinned her knees in reckless joy. Her legs had never let her. She was small, smaller than a girl her age should be, and thin in the way that meant many years spent curling in on herself and trying to take up less space. She had learned early that if you make yourself small enough, the world forgets to hurt you.
At the orphanage, the other children had called her names. Had left her behind, had made games that did not include her, had laughed when she couldn’t chase after them.
Lucie never cried about it, at least not where anyone could see. She just folded into herself and made herself smaller and quieter and easier to ignore. She did not ask for help, did not reach for things out of her grasp. She did not complain.
Viktor recognised that kind of silence. The one that said, I already know what the answer will be. I already know what I am allowed to have.
In this timeline, in this universe, Viktor and Jayce have the power to make changes happen.
They can rewrite the rules. They can bend the very fabric of reality, shape the world into something more forgiving. They have done it before, for others, for themselves.
They can do it again.
So not long after Lucie settled into her new home, Viktor built her something.
A chair. Not like the ones from the orphanage all stiff and heavy and slow made for keeping children in place rather than letting them move.
This one was different. It had wheels that spun like wind and obeyed her hands like they were an extension of her own body. It was fast because Viktor’s daughter deserved to fly, and free and alive in the way machines could be when they were made with care. And when she sat in it for the first time she stared at Viktor for a long time. As if waiting for the trick. As if waiting for the part where someone took it away. But no one did. And when she moved, when she flew, she smiled all big and toothy and wild and so, so real.
Jayce ruffled her hair, grinning. “How’s it feel?”
Lucie turned, spun in place, tested the way the wheels responded to her.
“Like it’s mine,” she said.
She never asked for more. Hasn’t asked for more.
Jayce and Viktor can fix things. Can change things. Can rewrite entire lives if they wanted. But Lucie hasn’t asked.
She knows they have the power to shift the stars and to make her bones bend and her muscles strong and to rewire her into something she has never been. But she has never wished to be something else.
She has only ever wished to be seen as whole and enough and someone who does not need to be altered to deserve the world.
And in this house, she is.
So they did not fix her. Because there was nothing broken to fix.
Because even though Lucie does not run like the others, does not crash through the house like Zadie, does not climb onto the counters like Elias, does not throw herself into the world the way Renka does, all of her love makes up for everything and more.
She knows exactly how everyone takes their tea. She knows exactly which floorboards creak the loudest. She knows exactly when Viktor is about to sigh and exactly when Jayce is about to yell and exactly when Zadie is pretending she didn’t just eat a tablespoon of sugar just for fun.
She is good at remembering.
Lucie’s love is quiet, but it is deep. It is in the way she hands Viktor his tools before he reaches for them and the way she leans into Jayce when he picks her up and the way she listens when the others speak.
It is in all the things she never says. And Viktor, who has spent a lifetime learning the difference between silence and absence, hears every single word.
~ * ~
And so just like that, like this, the little cottage in the heart of the woods, became something new.
It was no longer just a house, no longer just walls and windows and stones and wood. A house is just a house until it is full. Now, it is something more. It is a battlefield, a playground, a ship at sea, a castle under siege. It is too small some days and too big on others when the ghosts of old fears come knocking at the door.
But it is a safe space. A really safe space.
Some nights, Viktor lies beside Jayce in bed and wonders how a heart can hold so much.
And then Jayce turns, half-asleep, presses a kiss to his temple, whispers, “Love you,” into his skin into his bones into his marrow.
And Viktor knows. Knows that this is what love does.
That it grows and grows and grows until suddenly, a quiet cottage for two turns into a home overflowing with life. And Jayce’s love is not just something Viktor can hold in his hands anymore.
Because now it is everywhere.
It is in the walls and in the laughter and in the hurried footsteps and in the warmth of the fire at night and in the mess of a kitchen after breakfast and in the way the children shout for Jayce before anyone else, knowing that he will always answer.
Viktor has always been afraid of running out of time. But love has made time endless.
So there are six of them now.
But there is never just six. There is the river and there is the ivy curling over the house, pressing itself into the cracks like a second set of hands. There is the wind that rushes through the trees, rattles the roof, carries voices up and away. The sound of life stretching wide, stretching deep.
And there are days when Viktor and Jayce barely get a word in between the sticky-sweet chaos. Mornings are a blur of half-braided hair and misplaced boots and someone swearing they weren’t the one who knocked over the ink bottle even as their hands are still blue. Afternoons are for lessons and chores and arguing over toys and for chasing down the twins before they can take apart another piece of Viktor’s equipment. Evenings are for stories and for late-night experiments in the workshop with Renka and for holding Lucie’s chair steady as she tries to climb onto the counter to steal biscuits Jayce swore were off-limits.
There are six of them now and life goes like this: faster than they can catch, wilder than they can hold, looping and returning, over and over and over again.
~ * ~
There are six of them now and some nights, some days, go like this, with Zadie sitting on the floor after her bath, legs crossed and scowling at her reflection in the mirror propped against the wall.
Jayce is on the couch, brow furrowed, big fingers clumsily moving through the strands of her hair which is wildly tangled.
“It’s not that hard,” Zadie grumbles. “Why are you making me look like an upside-down tree?”
“It is that hard,” Jayce says.
“It is not hard,” Viktor says from his reading nook.
Zadie smiles at him through the mirror.
“Hey, whose side are you on?” Jayce complains.
“The side of reality. Here, let me. You need to apply the leave-in conditioner first.”
Jayce exhales. He is a builder, a craftsman, a man who once held the power of Hextech in his hands. Still, for whatever universe curse, Zadie’s hair is winning.
Viktor kneels behind Zadie because Jayce gives up the couch without a fight, stretches big and rolls his shoulders like this has been hard labour.
Viktor sprays her curls, watches them drink up the moisture and spring back. He works the leave-in conditioner through her hair with his fingers the same way he fixes delicate things.
Zadie sighs and smiles, leans back into his hands, eyes half-closed like a cat in the sun.
“See?” Viktor says. “Not so difficult.”
Zadie chuckles. “Maybe Dad just isn’t built for this.”
“Hey,” Jayce protests.
“Go play with Elias,” Viktor says because he can already see it: Jayce’s knee bouncing, his fingers twitching, his body needing to move.
Jayce doesn’t hesitate. “Elias! Pillow fight! Let’s go!”
A shriek of excitement from down the hall. And then Elias appears from other room. Now the space is filled with the sound of pillows smacking, Elias cackling, bodies slamming against furnitures.
Lucie comes into the room, barefoot, loose sweater slipping off her shoulder, hair already in the braid Viktor did for her earlier. She eyes Zadie, then Jayce, then Viktor, then back to Jayce.
“So you lost,” she snorts.
“I didn’t lose, I conceded.”
“Same thing,” Lucie says.
Jayce pouts. Viktor ties off the braid with a small ribbon and pats Zadie’s head.
“Can you please help with my hair too, dad?” Lucie asks.
“Of course.”
"Thank you."
Lucie scoots closer, turns her chair so Viktor has the best angle. Her hair is soft, thinner than Zadie’s, smooth like the silk of the curtains Viktor used to thread through his fingers back in the academy.
Renka is the next to enter the room like a firecracker, like a comet, like something made of lightning. She is wearing mismatched socks and a hoodie two sizes too big and her own creation of half-pink, half-purple hair tied up in a bun that is already unravelling.
“Is the living room a hair salon now?” She throws herself onto the couch next to Viktor, legs over his lap.
“Want me to braid yours?” Viktor asks.
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Renka thinks she’s too cool now because she’s dating someone,” Elias says as he has his legs wrapped around Jayce in some weird wrestling position.
“What?!” Jayce’s voice comes out muffled.
“Elias!” Renka yells. “Dude, what the heck, I’m not trusting you ever again.”
“Elias,” Lucie says, “that was supposed to be a secret.”
“Yeah, Elias!” Zadie says, suddenly awake. "Way to go, you absolute twat."
Silence.
Jayce finally manages to break free from Elias' jail and immediately rises to his feet.
Viktor nods. “Oh. Well, that is nice,” he says mildly. “I wish you would’ve told us first. But congratulations. Who are they?”
“Wait, wait. I’m sorry—” Jayce stammers. “What. What is going on here?”
“Ree is dating her classmate,” Elias says.
“Elias! For the love of god, shut up.” Renka sighs. “I was going to tell you guys. Tonight, actually. Because I invi—”
“Wait,” Jayce says again. "Vik asked you a question. Who are they?"
“Cas.”
“C-Cas?!”
“Yes, Cas!”
“Cassian?!” Jayce looks completely and absolutely, catastrophically alarmed.
“Dad, you look like you’re about to pass out,” Zadie says.
“Oh my god, Dad. Please.” Renka sighs. “Yes, Cassian. You’ve met his parents. You liked them. You liked Cassian. You literally said they were cool and funny. So why are you acting like this is brand-new information?”
“But–but. Wait. Hold on.”
“What?” Renka twirls a lock of pink hair around her finger.
“How did this happen?”
Renka shrugs. “You know, they just…. asked. And I said yes. That’s how these things go, no?”
Jayce looks at Viktor like he’s begging for help. Viktor does not help him.
“Viktor,” Jayce says, voice high and borderline betrayed.
“Mm?” Viktor hums, securing the end of Lucie’s braid with a tiny ribbon.
“Our daughter is dating Cassian.”
Viktor pats Lucie’s shoulder. "Right. I heard the news.”
“And you’re okay with this?!”
Viktor shrugs. “We trust our daughter, yes?”
Jayce stares at him.
Renka crosses her arms. “Exactly. See, Dad trusts me.”
Jayce clutches his chest, makes a pained expression. “I can’t believe you’re taking sides, Vik.”
“I am not taking sides,” Viktor says. “I am simply saying that Renka is old enough to make her own choices.”
Jayce scowls. “But what if they—”
“If they are an idiot,” Viktor interrupts, “she will realise it soon enough and dispose of them accordingly.”
Renka grins. “Exactly.”
“I just—” Jayce sighs. “I just want to make sure no one hurts you.”
For a moment, Renka’s expression softens. Just a little.
Elias, jumping over the pillow as if it were a trampoline, says, “Wait, does this mean I can have a girlfriend?”
Jayce whirls back to Elias. “No. Absolutely not. You’re too young. You’re all too young.”
Lucie sighs sweetly. “I’m so happy for you, Ree.”
“Thank you, Lu.” Renka stretches up. Raises an eyebrow at Jayce. “Well, now that the secret's out, I need all of you hooligans to behave like normal human beings tomorrow. Because I invited Cas to dine with us.”
Jayce really loses it.
~ * ~
There are six of them now and some nights, some days, go like this, Jayce is screaming.
Not real screaming. Over the top dad screaming that makes the kids laugh, makes Viktor sigh into his tea and take three deep breaths.
“Who did this?!”
The children freeze. A still frame in time. A crime scene.
Zadie and Elias are guilty. They are always guilty. They are trying so hard to look innocent that it just makes them look more suspicious.
Jayce points at the thing in his hand. It is supposed to be a shirt. It is now three shirts. It has been cut up, mutilated, reshaped into something unholy.
“This was my favourite shirt!” Jayce cries. “My favourite!”
Elias shrugs. “Now it’s three shirts.”
Zadie nods. “You always tell us to be our creative selves, and we are. We just proved it.”
Jayce looks like he is physically restraining himself from throwing something. He turns to Viktor. He looks desperate. “Viktor. Say something. Punish them. They are your kids too.”
Viktor looks at them. Sweet smiles, wide eyes, an attempt at innocence that does not fool him for a second. Their shirts are streaked with mud, hands sticky with something unidentifiable, hair plastered to their foreheads with dried sweat. He sighs. They need haircuts. Another thing for the weekend.
“You left it unattended, Jayce. That was your first mistake.”
~ * ~
There are six of them now and some nights, some days, go like this:
“Dad, if I drink three energy drinks in a row, will I die?” Elias asks, holding three cans.
Jayce stares. Processing. Rebooting.
Viktor, from the other room: “Yes.”
Elias frowns. “But like… instantly? Or over time?”
Jayce grabs all three cans. “You are drinking water.”
~ * ~
There are six of them now and some nights, some days, go like this:
Viktor walks into the living room. Pauses.
Elias is lying flat on the floor, face-down, completely still.
Viktor raises an eyebrow. “Do I want to know?”
Zadie, sitting on the couch, flipping through a book, rolls her eyes. “He said he was a rug now.”
Viktor blinks. Looks at Elias again. ”…How long has he been like this?”
“An hour.”
“Has he moved?”
“Not once.”
Viktor nods. “Respectable commitment I must admit.”
He steps over Elias and keeps walking.
~ * ~
There are six of them now and some nights, some days, go like this:
Renka is sitting at the table, staring at her own hand in deep concentration
“Why are you looking at your hand like that?” Viktor asks.
Mina looks up. Her expression is grave.
“I think I’m dying.”
Jayce, who happens to just walk in, drops the apple he was holding. “What?!”
Renka turns her palm toward him, reveals a tiny, barely visible scratch.
Jayce blinks. “Zadie.”
“I know.” Zadie sniffs dramatically. “I have at most six minutes left.”
“Let her go, Jayce. She has lived a full life.”
Zadie glares. “Wow. Thanks for the optimism.”
Jayce groans, grabs the first-aid kit. “Okay, sit still, let me fix it.”
Elias strolls in, sees the bandage in Jayce’s hand, gasps. “Oh my god. Who died?”
Zadie, with great suffering, holds up her scratch.
Elias stares at it. Stares at her. Then, “I’ve also scratched my knee, look.”
~ * ~
There are six of them now and some nights, some days, go like this.
Sunday morning is already going poorly.
Viktor walks into the kitchen. There is milk everywhere. There is syrup in places syrup should not be. There is a spoon stuck to the ceiling.
Viktor blinks. Takes it all in.
Renka is standing on a chair. Holding a fork like a weapon.
Elias is on the floor. Laughing too hard to be innocent.
Zadie looks at Viktor. Dead serious.
“It was a science experiment,” she says.
Viktor drags his hands down his face. “Explain.”
Zadie nods solemnly. “The results were… surprising.”
“The results were inevitable. Where is Lucie?”
Lucie rolls into the kitchen, holding a bowl of cereal. “Don’t look at me, I removed myself from the narrative.”
There are six of them now and some nights, some days, go like this.
The water is cold. The twins are already in the water, splashing, laughing, trying to drown each other.
Lucie rolls up to the edge, wheels stopping just before the bank. She leans forward, examines the water all serious. “Mm, I bet I can make a boat that sails aaall the way down without sinking.”
Zadie, waist-deep, soaks her hair and flings it back. “I bet I can throw Elias all the way across.”
Elias gasps. “Try me.”
Jayce, sitting on a rock and looking at them like his stress levels are climbing by the second, says, “Let’s not, actually.”
Renka dips her hand in the water, tilts her head, considers, “This is the perfect place for a ritual.”
“A what now?”
Renka just smiles in response. Viktor, sitting beside Jayce, nods, clearly and oddly impressed.
Elias is now standing very still, knee-deep in the water, hands hovering just above the surface.
“What are you doing?” Lucie asks.
“Hunting.”
Lucie blinks. “For what?”
Elias narrows his eyes. “A fish stole my rock.”
Jayce coughs or chuckles or snorts. Something along those lines. “What?”
Elias points accusingly. “I dropped my cool rock in the water and a fish took it. I saw him do it. He swam away with it like a little thief.”
Zadie bursts out laughing. “Dude. You’re not gonna fight a fish.”
Elias is already stretching his arms. “I’m gonna fight a fish.”
“You are going to lose,” Viktor, unhelpfully, tells him.
Jayce sighs, stands up. “I can’t believe I have to say this but….you cannot fight a fish.”
~ * ~
There are six of them now and some nights, some days, go like this:
The sky breaks open with no warning. One second it’s clear. The next it is a waterfall turned upside down.
Jayce is yelling for everyone to get inside. Zadie and Elias are already screaming, sprinting for the house, kicking up mud. Renka is twirling in circles like this is the best thing to ever happen.
Lucie stays. She sits at the edge of the porch, watching.
Viktor sits down next to her, because he knows when she is watching something, she is learning something.
She tilts her head. “Did you know that when raindrops fall, they’re not actually shaped like teardrops? They’re shaped like tiny hamburger buns.”
Viktor smiles. “Hamburger buns?”
“Aerodynamics.”
Viktor hums, watches as she stretches out a hand, lets the rain collect in her palm, watches as she examines it as though there is an entire universe in a single drop. Maybe there is.
Jayce bursts onto the porch, soaked, exasperated. “Lucie! Come inside before you get sick.”
Lucie smiles. “But I like the rain.”
Jayce’s eyes meet Viktor’s. “It’s cold.”
Lucie shrugs. “I don’t mind.”
“We don’t mind,” Viktor says.
~ * ~
And at the end of these spun-honey days, sweet-water afternoons, these orange sunsets and teeth caught in lips, when the cottage finally sighs and the fire burns low and the moon stretches silver across the floorboards, they are both exhausted.
And it is always in these moments that they find each other again. They look at each other in the soft hush of the night, and then, always, a smile. A bit smaller, a bit tired, but full.
Jayce reaches across the table, fingertips brushing over Viktor’s wrist.
“We survived another day.”
“Barely. You have created monsters, Jayce.”
“Me? You’re blaming me?” Jayce laughs then, and Viktor feels it like a pulse.
And then, quieter, softer, all golden eyes and sleep-warm skin, the blush of his lips, the shadow of his stubble catching the light, Jayce says, “I love you, you know.”
And Viktor—all tired and no longer aching and no longer sick and no longer alone but full of a love that will outlast lifetimes, outlast them, outlast even the stars—presses their hands together and whispers, “I know.”
~ * ~
Viktor once believed love had a ceiling, a highest floor, a point where the heart would say: I am full now, I can carry no more.
Viktor no longer believes that.
Loving Jayce is like standing in the centre of a house with no roof, a house where the walls stretch taller every time he breathes, where the sky itself is the only thing stopping it from growing larger and larger and larger still.
Jayce had been his, once. Just his. All his. A love that fit between two bodies and between two hands and between a bed and a late-night lab some ages ago and a world they had promised to build together.
Now, that love has grown. And grown. And grown. And it is infinite.
And it all began in the cosmos, in the space between stars, in the pull of gravity when one celestial body finds another and promises to never let go.