[Squirrelloid]

Ux'xthllphlai contemplated the pool of dark liquid in the bowl before [it], heavier than the surrounding sea water. It swirled erratically. The glowing corals in the room pulsing along with its movements, creating the effect of a strobe light triggered by the movements of a rabbit in a sealed plastic bag. Suddenly the behavior of the liquid changed. It eddied into dimensions other than the physical. The bowl deformed, becoming a klein bottle; similar to the proverbial cat in a box, it both contained and didn't contain the universe. When the universe was in the bottle, it had no volume. There was no in the bottle. Ux'xthllphlai looked out of the bottle at [itself] looking at [itself]. Colors out of space and shapes out of time paraded in the nothingness that may or may not have been contained by the bottle with no volume. An electron traveled forward in time, and when time ended, it became a positron and traveled backward in time. Ux'xthllphlai became the bottle, and suddenly the path became clear.

Hours later, Ux'xthllphlai regained consciousness. The corals glowed but dimly, a low constant light. The bowl was once again a bowl, empty of anything except the usual sea water. Righting itself, Ux'xthllphlai went to find the council. [It] had seen what [it] needed to see, the things with the fish tails would soon understand that the falling of the star was to be their doom.

*translators note: [it] denotes a genderless pronoun that nonetheless is distinct from the pronoun used for objects, and specifies a member of the elder peoples who remember the time before the star fell.