"Studying space itself--what if space, in fact space-time, as I should say--what if it is like a foam that somehow creates more of itself?  Bubbles that split apart and cause the universe to expand from the smallest levels, pushing outward!  But matter greedily absorbs and destroys those bubbles, eating up the distance between itself and other masses, causing what we call gravity to manifest before our eyes!

"From these lofty theories to this humble stage, I am Madam Sinnelibra, renowned Bubbleologist, here to delight you with almost magical, but in fact purely scientific applications of the theories of minimal surfaces as the battleground between air pressure and surface tension!"  The small mink bowed and began to open a jug.

Remi had stopped fondling the neck of his fiddle as he waited his turn to audition the moment the mink had begun her impressive speech.  He wondered where she had studied, to be exposed to such lofty subjects.

"Madam what?"  The talent scout, a portly porcupine, looked over to his assistant, who was a rat like Remi.  

The assistant coughed and read from notes.  "Madam Sinnelibra."

Remi winced and tried to look sympathetic in case the mink happened to look his way.  Recent experiences had left him with an eye for ladies outside his own species, and something about her seemed irresistibly dangerous and exotic.  The other individual waiting for his audition, a large bullfrog, mumbled something to himself.  He carried a lot of balls, knives, and perhaps something flammable.  Perhaps he was a juggler?

"Yeah, you're gonna need a better stage name, honey.  And the whole space thing?  I say go big or go home.  Maybe you need a cape with some planets and moons and stars on it, or something.  Or go with a horoscope theme?"

She froze for a second, and then opened the jug and produced a wand with wire bent in the shape of a star at the end.  "Something like this?"  She tilted the jug with a flourish, sloshing some of the contents into a short trough before her.  She stirred the liquid with the star, then pulled the wand up and waved it through the air, creating a large tubular bubble that snapped into place as a sphere once it lost its connection to the wand.  It hovered above her and the stage, then drifted over the audience.  "It adopts the sphere, the perfect heavenly shape!  But a single denizen of the sky is not enough."

She flicked her wrist and somehow created multiple small bubbles with the same star-shape wand, which flitted around the large one, though a few collided with the stage curtains and more than one bumped into an merged with the first monster bubble.  A little bit of refinement of the technique couldn't hurt.

The porcupine nodded and snapped his fingers at his assistant.  "This would work at a party for little ones...porcupettes, cubs, whelps.  Write that down!"  He rubbed his hands together.  "I may have some positions for you, my lovely."

The freeze passed across her features again; disappointment, but also anger.  It was captivating, and terrifying.  

"Don't listen to him, sweetheart."  The bullfrog stood up, scratching himself, and eyed the bubbles.  "This reminds me of a game I played, right after metamorphosing and coming of age--if you can fill those with the right kind of smoke, or make them with some liquor, I know quite a few folks in my neck of the woods who'd have a great time with target practice with those."

Remi smiled to himself and thought "Target practice?  What a splendid idea."  He borrowed an acoustic trick he'd recently learned from a charming bat and added a small flourish for effect:  holding his fiddle up and strumming with his fingers:  "plink-plink-SHOT-plink!" A compressed air wave shot at the large bubble piercing its surface and causing it to collapse in a splash.  "A meteor, a comet?  Or just a loud shout of delight?  Depending on your answer, milady, will that fate befall my coming night?  Dreams burst like bubbles?"  He picked at his fiddle's strings, trying to burst some of the smaller bubbles and succeeded with two of them.

He needed some more practice.

The porcupine snorted.  "These musicians...can't focus on business at all."

Madam Sinnelibra held the wand before her face, peering at Remi with one eye through the center of the star, and smiled.