My name is Nova Reyes, and I am twelve light-years old.
Not years old in the Earth way—twelve trips around a sun. Twelve light-years: the distance the Odyssey has traveled since I was born, coasting at one-fifth c toward Epsilon Eridani.
We measure age in parsecs on the ship. It’s more honest. Time dilation makes Earth calendars feel like relics. My “birthday” is the anniversary of the ship’s current distance from Sol.
I was born in the mid-ring habitat, under a projected blue sky that cycles day and night for rhythm. My first steps were in 0.8g spin gravity—close enough to what the new world will have, far enough from Earth’s 1g that old videos of people running look comically heavy.
Childhood here is different.
We play in simulated gravity.
The zero-g pods are our playgrounds: vast spheres where the ship’s core is open during safe phases. We float, tumble, invent games with no up or down—tag where you push off walls, races along magnetic tracks, building forts from floating cushions that stick with velcro patches.
In full-g rings, we play Earth games from archives: soccer on grass fields grown in curved lawns, hide-and-seek in the forest domes where trees reach “up” toward the hub.
But our favorite is “gravity tag.”
We cycle the pods through settings: 0g for drifting chases, 0.5g for slow-motion leaps, sudden 1.5g bursts that send us crashing in giggles.
We measure distance in parsecs.
“How old are you?” visitors from blended feeds ask.
“Four parsecs,” I say proudly. (That’s about thirteen Earth years.)
They laugh. We don’t.
Parsecs feel real. They mark how far we’ve come from the blue dot that raised our ancestors.
School is everywhere.
No classrooms—learning pods that shift with curiosity.
Today I study exobotany: designing plants for the new world’s soil, simulated in the bio-labs. Tomorrow, stellar navigation: plotting our course by the unchanging stars behind us.
History is the voyage.
We learn Earth as myth: oceans that covered horizons, rain that fell without schedule, gravity that pulled the same everywhere.
We watch old videos—children playing on beaches, climbing real trees—and feel a strange ache.
“That was home once,” our teachers say. Teachers who were born Earthside, now old but vital from longevity treatments.
Play is serious.
We build models of the destination: continents guessed from telescope data, oceans we’ll seed, cities we’ll grow.
We role-play arrival: “First steps” in full-g training rings, planting flags made from ship fabric.
We invent games about it: “Proxima tag”—chasing through habitats pretending the far wall is the new planet.
Love starts early, but gently.
My best friend, Kai, and I hold hands in zero-g, floating slow somersaults, whispering about what the real sky will feel like—no projected stars, but a new sun rising over alien hills.
We measure time in light-years traveled.
Distance from Earth is our clock.
The adults watch us with quiet pride.
They boarded knowing they’d never arrive.
We will.
Our childhood is the bridge.
Born en route.
Raised on dreams of arrival.
Playing in simulated gravity.
Measuring age in the cold measure of starlight crossed.
One day, the engines will fire again—deceleration.
The stars ahead will blueshift.
We’ll feel real gravity under new suns.
And step out—
light-year children
onto solid ground.
The voyage shaped us.
Weightless play taught freedom.
Parsec birthdays taught perspective.
Earth legends taught gratitude.
We are ready.
Not for home as it was.
But for home as it will be.
The light-year childhood ends at the shore.
A new one begins.
Under an alien sky.
The stars we chased
will finally
catch us.