Radiance

The cotton and linen are vast starry spaces

Where nothing goes quite as it goes where you go

And no one you’ll meet will be someone you know

And the fantastic pin that we mentioned before?

Is a callowhale swimming through infinite doors

The stars coalesce into a cheerleader with GO WHALES! stamped on her megaphone. She throws nebulae into the air like pom-poms.

So cheer on the whales and treat them with care

Don’t tease and don’t poke, don’t startle or stare

Without them, the silk would slide right off the linen

And who knows what trouble we all would be stuck in!

The cheerleader frowns and explodes into a puff of animated smoke. The slide whistle slides again. Mr Bergamot takes over once more, and the image he holds changes to Calliope with an enormous thermometer in her mouth and a cold compress on her head.

Now sometimes a whale can get hurt or get sick

Though their hearts are so strong and their skin is so thick.

But we can’t go without, not for one single day

So they make a new whale to play callowcroquet!

A baby whale appears in a shower of glittery fireworks. It wears a lacy bonnet and shakes a rattle with its fin. Calliope and her baby wind up a pair of croquet mallets and whack Jupiter and Saturn through identical hoops.

Marvin the Mongoose, darling of Capricorn Studios, brings it home, while Bergamot’s tentacles fill with smiling faces:

Oh, the life of a great callowhale is amazing!

We hope you’ll forgive us our upside-down phrasing

And the next time your loved one gets vaporised flat

Just remember the pin, and that will be that.

A smattering of awkward applause picks up. The octopus relaxes his arms, the filmstrip clicks off, and our performers bow. But Marvin can’t resist starting up again, high-kicking into a reprise:

If our song has got you spinning

Just go back to the beginning!

OH! A callowhale isn’t much of a whale!

Not a bug! Not a cat! Not a fungus or a snail!

“May I ask a question?” Arlo interrupts the mongoose’s encore.

“Yes, of course. I’m so sorry,” Cythera says, and she means it.

“I understand the girls. But what did you do to me and Horace? We never touched the kid. We drank bottled water. We never did anything.”

Callio