Galaxy and planets full sleeve

She had forgotten the chart and remembered the dome instead: the cold brass of the old telescope, the rule that only Year Elevens could climb the ladder to the hatch, the way he let them stay past the bell on clear nights. He used to say the universe was mostly empty, and that this was the good news, because it left room for everybody to be wrong about something and still find their way home.

He pulled a folded print from his jacket pocket. It was a photograph of the ceiling they had painted one summer on a borrowed scaffold. Lydia had insisted the black hole above the hatch should glow like a kettle element, so they had dabbed orange and gold into the swirl until their fingers stank of turpentine. Someone had drawn Saturn lopsided, its rings tilted like a dropped hoop. Dev had blamed the ladder. Nobody had ever repainted it.

Nadia took her own chart from her bag, its corners soft as cloth from twenty years of being unfolded and refolded, and laid it beside his under the strip lights. The old man bent over the two of them, squinting, and began very carefully to find Saturn.