Solar Drift

Tabish remembered Earth as it had been, green and restless, rivers spilling over rocks that caught the sun.

- Inam Lateef Wani

She walked through corridors of the space station, feeling the hum of engines beneath the floor, the lights reflecting in her eyes like distant worlds she had not yet touched. The air smelled of metal and recycled water, sharp but familiar, and she carried memories of home in the curve of her hands.

She looked out of the observation deck at the stars, endless in their black, each a promise or a warning. Months ago, she had trained to steer spacecraft, to read the patterns of gravity and light. She had studied the drives that bent time, the machines that could reach planets no human had walked. The universe waited, patient and immense, while she prepared to cross it.