When all hope is gone, the crew of Hestia's Hearth will make their own.
The Known Universe has been at peace for almost 100 years, but for most of Brenn's life, trapped on an Earth controlled by the genetically superior Aesir Empire, it hasn't felt...
This story has been the accumulation of many years of thought and love and creative energy. It began as a seed from a fanfiction and grew through many iterations, and the growth of myself and my identity. In the process of writing, I found I needed the community of writers I'd had in fanfiction, so here I am.
In many ways, this is an own-voice story. I am a lesbian, I am disabled, I am a mother who has rarely seen myself as a hero in science fiction and fantasy. I long for deep, emotional stories where being among the stars and alien species shines a spotlight on our humanity. I hope those who've chosen to stick with me enjoy and feel the same passion I do.
Note: I'm searching for an Irish cultural reader and am more than willing to trade for general beta services and/or sensitivity reading. A list of the things I can read sensitivity or culturally read for can be found in my profile. If you see any errors in my portrayal of the Irish language or culture, please feel welcome to respectfully point it out so I can do further research and correct it. Thank you.
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Three things jumped out at Tara upon entering the Senior Peacekeeper's office to explain why her typically level-headed, just-one-glass-on-the-holidays, crewman had been involved in a mid-afternoon bar fight. First, the date that shifted in bold, bright script through the most common intergalactic calendars on a screen just inside the door read June 3, 2674 when it reached Sol Standard. Next, Brennan's antique pearl rosary beads were wrapped around and tangled up in the tools half fallen from her backpack on the Peacekeeper's metal desk. She wasn't the most devout of souls and only took them out on a few very specific occasions.
Tara winced, taking another step inside. The poor pack looked trampled on with the contents tossed in haphazardly as if someone had shoved everything inside with little knowledge or care of the value—and much of it was quite valuable. It wasn't the state of the pack that gave her the final clue though, but the hologram frozen beside it. In a dimly lit pub of the sort where trade deals were agreed upon with a drink and a bow, Brenn, a petite woman by almost every definition of the word, had placed herself between an even smaller woman and an Aesir man nearly twice her size.
The woman had red hair.
God. The moodiness last night. The silence at breakfast this morning. It all made sense now. How could she have forgotten? She should have—No, no sense in going down that path. The past had come and gone already and this was where they were now.
"Captain Ostara Eridani, I presume?" The Senior Peacekeeper said, rising from behind her desk. Tara looked up and nodded to the peacekeeper, a tall and golden-brown skinned woman with dark hair tied at the nape of her neck. Her eyes shifted back to the frozen image as she took another step forward, drawn to it.
While most Aesir strove to appear godlike as a rule, this boy was an Adonis chiseled from stone and come to life, at least if Adonis had stood 2.07 meters tall and sported the brow-ridge, mask-like coloring, and feathery striations of the Aesir. His were teal and purple, framing his face and traveling down his neck until they disappeared beneath his collar, set against flawless cream skin like the thick paper Tara's mother hand wrote letters on. The effect when paired with his narrow, black eyes and hooked nose gave the impression of a falcon circling its prey. Horus then, not Adonis.
