The secret epilogue to the Liora Trilogy.
Page 1 — A Strange Feeling at Breakfast.
Liora stirred her porridge.
Potentia hovered nearby in a lazy spiral.
“You feel it too, right?” Liora asked.
Potentia bobbed.
“A tug. Like something wants to be understood
by being looked at differently.”
They exchanged a knowing glance.
Category Land was calling again.
Page 2 — The Mysterious Map.
When they arrived, a gentle figure with a cloak of arrows
was waiting.
“I am Yoneda,” she said, voice like chalk on a clean board.
“And I have a puzzle for you.”
Liora sat up straight.
Puzzles were invitations.
Page 3 — The Puzzle Box.
Yoneda placed a tiny wooden box on the ground.
It hummed softly.
Inside was… something.
But every time Liora peeked,
it looked different.
Sometimes like a bird,
sometimes like a diagram,
sometimes like a question mark.
“What is it?” Liora asked.
Yoneda shrugged.
“That’s up to you.”
Page 4 — Potentia Gets Excited.
“Oh! Oh! I know this game!” Potentia squealed.
“It’s not about opening the box.
It’s about observing how the box relates
to everything else!”
Liora blinked.
“That sounds impossible.”
“Exactly,” Potentia said.
“That’s why it’s fun.”
Page 5 — The Visitors.
One by one, characters from all over Category Land
wandered over to the Box of Many Faces.
Arrow approached it.
So did Functor, Tensor, and even shy Associator.
Each touched the box,
and when they did,
a new glow traced a path from themselves to the box.
Liora watched.
“It’s… mapping itself through them.”
Yoneda smiled.
“And through you.”
Page 6 — Liora’s Turn.
Liora touched the box.
It shivered, then glowed warmly.
And suddenly she didn’t see the box—
she saw every way the box could be reached
from every other thing she had ever met.
Arrows.
Functions.
Paths.
Transformations.
A whole web of “how it could be interacted with.”
The box itself remained hidden—
but the web around it became perfectly clear.
Page 7 — The Insight.
Liora gasped.
“I can understand what it is
by understanding how it relates
to everything else!”
Yoneda clasped her hands.
“Yes. That is the Yoneda Trick.
You do not understand a thing by looking at it.
You understand it by looking at all the ways
it can be approached.”
Potentia chimed in,
“Meaning is relational!
Objects are basically shy—
they tell you who they are
by how they act on others!”
Page 8 — The Box Reveals Itself.
As Liora traced more and more relations,
the box began to stabilise.
Its shifting shapes slowed.
It glowed steadily.
A bird.
A diagram.
A question mark.
All at once.
Liora held it gently.
“I understand,” she whispered.
“You’re not a thing at all.
You’re a pattern of approach.”
Yoneda bowed.
“And that pattern is the object.”
Page 9 — A Gift for the Road.
Yoneda handed Liora a thin silver compass.
Its needle didn’t point north—
it pointed toward the most illuminating relation
available at any moment.
“Whenever something seems mysterious,” Yoneda said,
“don’t stare at it.
Study how it can be reached.
Meaning reveals itself through interaction.”
Potentia hummed.
“The whole world is one big presheaf.”
Liora giggled.
“You’re getting carried away again.”
Page 10 — Home Again, Thinking Differently.
Back in the Land of Maybe,
Liora set the box on a shelf.
Every so often she poked it.
It still changed shape.
But now she didn’t mind.
She knew its essence
was in its relational readiness,
not its appearance.
Potentia curled up nearby.
“So what will you explore next?”
Liora smiled slyly.
“Anything that lets me use my new trick.”
Final Page — The Yoneda Moral
A message appeared on the breeze:
“To know a thing,
follow its relations.
To know it deeply,
follow all of them.”
Liora tucked the silver compass into her pocket
and whispered:
“The world isn’t made of objects.
It’s made of the ways we reach them.”
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