The Years Between Us

When astronomers detect an anomaly in the outer system, no one is alarmed. Objects pass through solar systems all the time. Most go nowhere near anything.

This one doesn't.

Told through the memories of Kaia Vasquez-Obi - born on the colony world of Aurelia, a lifetime away from an Earth she never knew - The Years Between Us is the story of what happens when humanity's first successful off-world colony discovers it has years, not centuries, to survive. Not a story of panic or collapse, but of something quieter and harder: the slow realisation, the controlled response, and the emotional cost of survival when survival means leaving everything behind.

A world is lost. A family is divided across the stars. And one woman carries the weight of both for a lifetime, watching a sky that holds more absence than she can name.

Until one ordinary morning, a message arrives.