Page 8 of She Who Devours the Stars

The mood cracked just wide enough for all three of us to take a breath. Nobody relaxed, but the volume dial turned down by a single, barely noticeable notch.

Dad set his coffee down with too much care, like it might detonate if jostled wrong. Without a word, he crossed to the kitchen and started messing with the filters on the old coffee pot like it was some kind of ritual. I drifted after him, needing the smaller space, the thinner air, something less sharp than the emotional shrapnel still ricocheting in the living room.

We stood there together in the steam from the brewing cycle, shoulders almost but not quite touching.

“I know you don’t want to talk,” Dad said after a long, careful pause. “But you need to be smart. They’re going to come for you. And not with questions.”

I traced a crack in the tile with my thumb like maybe if I found where it started, I’d find a way to fix everything.

“I’m not leaving you guys,” I said, voice low but steady.

Dad nodded like he’d already rehearsed this part of the conversation in his head a hundred different ways. “I wouldn’t want you to. But you’re not safe here.”

The pot hissed and gurgled behind him like it had something to say about that.

“If you need to run,” Dad said, still staring at the counter, “take the maintenance tunnels. Don’t use the lifts. Stay low. Stay dark. Stay moving.”

I smiled, tired but honest. “You think I have a shot?”

He shrugged like it was the oldest truth in the world. “There’s always something bigger out there. Doesn’t mean it’s better.”

The coffee finished with one last spiteful burble, like it was even exhausted.

I reached for a mug, just as Mom reappeared at the kitchen doorway, holding a wine glass in one hand and a stun baton in the other, like she was still deciding which would be more useful in the next five minutes.

“Alright,” she said, voice back to full command mode. “Here’s the plan. You’re staying here. We’re calling in sick. And if anyone asks, you’re doing an internship off-moon.”

I blinked at her. “Internship in what?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Fashion curation.”

Dad almost choked on his coffee. “She doesn’t even own a jacket.”

Mom leveled a glare that could have buckled support beams. “I’ve seen the way people stare at her in those boots. That’s curation.”

Dad took a slow sip of coffee. “She wore a combat boot and a slipper, mismatched, to your dad’s funeral. You said it was a statement.”

I laughed, because what else was left.

For a few minutes, the world narrowed to this: the smell of cheap coffee, the warmth of home, and my parents arguing over how to save me from a planet that wanted me dead.

When the coffee was ready, I poured three mugs and carried them to the table. We sat, elbows touching, and drank in silence.

I knew it wouldn’t last.

But for the first time since I’d woken up burning, I felt something like hope.

Thread Modulation: Fern Meldin

Axis Alignment: Meldin Family Apartment

I thought the world had reached its maximum capacity for weird.

I was wrong.

It started with the coffeepot.

Not that it started there, I guess it all started back on Old Earth, but that’s where it broke containment for me. One second, I was sitting in the kitchenette, clutching a mug and wondering how the hell I was going to survive the next hour. The next, the battered old coffeepot on the counter blinked its LEDs at me, shivered, and said: