Liora and the Puzzle That Couldn’t Finish Itself

(A tale about the secret that every world leaves outside itself)

Liora was lying in the soft moss behind her garden, watching clouds glide like drifting thoughts across the afternoon sky. Some clouds looked like mountains deciding whether to be giants, others like birds remembering old songs. She liked to imagine the whole sky as a great conversation the world was having with itself.

That was when she noticed it.

A small wooden box sat under the wattle tree — plain, unmarked, and softly humming, like a bee whispering a lullaby.

Liora sat up.

“There was no box here a moment ago,” she said to the air, though the air pretended innocence.

She lifted the lid.

Inside lay puzzle pieces — exquisite, shimmering pieces. Some glowed like droplets of moonlight, others like tiny painted worlds. Each piece was different, and each seemed to be dreaming of all the shapes it might become.

Liora smiled and began arranging them on the moss.

At first the puzzle behaved itself politely, forming what looked like the outline of a garden path or perhaps the beginning of a constellation. But as soon as she approached what seemed to be the final space, she realised one piece was always left out.

Always.

A star-shaped piece, perhaps.

Or a tiny green one with a swirl.

Or a delicate silver piece with an impossible angle.

If she tried to place that final piece, another piece — somewhere else — would pop out with a little plink of defiance.

Liora sat back and gazed at the shimmering almost-puzzle.

“It’s not broken,” she murmured. “It’s… choosing.”

The puzzle pieces glimmered approvingly.

She tried again — not to finish it, but to listen. And suddenly she felt it: a quiet, beautiful, magical truth, like a warm breeze rising inside her.

“This puzzle can never finish itself,” she whispered. “Because it always keeps one piece outside, so it can keep being a puzzle.”

The moment she said this aloud, a voice somewhere above her purred,

“Exquisite deduction, my dear.”

The Cheshire Cat drifted down from the branches, slowly assembling himself from stripes of violet and gold, as though he too were a puzzle choosing the order of its own pieces.

He landed, tail first.

“Most worlds,” he said, swirling around her, “need a secret they cannot swallow. Otherwise they would close like a book, and stories need openings.”

Before Liora could reply, a second box appeared next to her original one, this time with a jaunty bow.

Out popped Schrödinger’s Cat — or perhaps it didn’t, depending on how one looked at it. The cat strolled out with casual elegance, carrying the faint aroma of paradox.

“I would have explained it sooner,” Schrödinger’s Cat announced, “but I wasn’t sure whether I existed in this scene yet.”

The Cheshire Cat rolled his eyes so deeply they almost disappeared.

Liora giggled.

“So,” she said, “the puzzle works because something always has to stay outside the picture… so the picture can keep changing?”

Both cats nodded — one with a grin, one with a quantum shimmer.

“That leftover piece,” said the Cheshire Cat, “is the world’s way of remembering that it is bigger than any picture of it.”

“And also,” added Schrödinger’s Cat, “it’s more fun this way.”

Liora looked at the unfinished puzzle glowing softly in the moss — perfect in its incompleteness, complete in its becoming.

She placed all the pieces gently back into the humming box.

The last piece — the one that had refused to belong — settled itself on top, as though claiming its proper place as the guardian of possibility.

Liora closed the lid.

The box dissolved into sparkles that drifted upward like fireflies remembering the path home.

Both cats bowed in their very different styles and faded from view.

Liora lay back on the moss, feeling the whole sky shimmering differently — as if it, too, were a puzzle that kept one piece outside itself so it could go on becoming.

And she smiled, because she understood.