I was a bit taller than the average spacer, a result of my planetside origin. I had not been destined for the deep dark, but life has a way of reaching down and taking what it wants, then destroying any pathway back. Sometimes it gives a few kindnesses, like a Space Fleet Admiral and his wife willing to foster a broken kid. Sometimes it knocks that kid into the heart of life’s sun first, to burn away everything he loves.

Life moves around you, however, and you adjust and continue forward, or you hang in the darkness and shrivel to a cold cinder. Life on the Thief’s Hand keeps me moving forward. If I ever lose that I would stop. I would become a cinder. I knew that.