Aside from the science fiction trappings, this is a portrait of an adult daughter’s relationship with her aging mother. The daughter has left home—Earth—for a distant star. She returns, braving the hyperspace travel, bringing her children for a visit with their grandma.
The daughter straddles both worlds now: her adopted home and Earth. She knows her mother will never know what it’s like to live on her world, to “To feel the gene-mods reshaping your lungs, your blood, so that you may breathe the alien air. To undergo the Kairos training and mods that allow a person to see through time.” She, on the other hand, will never know what her mother went through, a single mother, desperate and angry at the end of the Empire.
The daughter knows all this. Yet neither she nor her mother will say, “I understand.”
This was a quiet, thoughtful piece, longer than most in DSF. I gave it 6 out of 7 rocket dragons.
*****
According to her bio, author Vanessa Fogg lives in Western Michigan, a magical land. She used to work as a research scientist in molecular cell biology and now works as a freelance medical writer, with apparent sidesteps into fantasy and science fiction.
I gave it 6 out of 7 rocket dragons.
Story published 5/25/2018 in Daily Science Fiction
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 