The Erebus Veil has always been more mausoleum than starship, but tonight she feels like a confessional. I press my forehead to the viewport again, the cold glass a thin barrier between me and the churning nebulae that swirl like spilled ink and blood. My breath fogs it in ragged bursts each one a small rebellion against the vacuum waiting outside. Sixty four years, I rasp to the empty deck, voice thick with the kind of ache that settles in bones and doesn't leave. Sixty four years of rewriting myself sentence by sentence, and the universe still hasn't bothered to notice. Or maybe it has. Maybe that's why it left me here to watch the stars burn without apology. My gloved fingers curl against the pane, kid leather creaking. The gown of satin so dark it drinks light, chiffon whispering like secrets I used to be afraid to keep shifts with the faint tremor of the hull. The high-waist satin panty girdle beneath bites just enough to ground me, to say: You are here. You chose this shape. You paid in blood and time and nights spent crying into star charts. I laugh once, sharp and wet. It echoes off the pitted bulkheads. You know what the cruelest part is? I ask the ship, or the nebulae, or the ghost of the girl I used to bury every morning. I finally like the sound of my name in my own mouth. Hanımefendi. It used to taste like ash. Now it tastes like victory and no one’s left to hear me say it. A distant fusion coil whines in sympathy, or maybe that's just my pulse in my ears. I dreamed of this, you know. Not the derelict part. The space part. Vast and indifferent and beautiful. I thought if I could just get out here away from gravity wells and small minded gravity bound people I’d finally breathe easy. Instead I learned the void doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t applaud your courage. It just… waits. My reflection stares back: sharp jaw softened by decades of estrogen and stubborn hope, eyes lined in kohl that’s run from earlier tears, raven cameo pinned like a medal over my heart. The chiaroscuro light paints me half angel, half wraith crowned in bruise purple nebulae fire. I swallow hard. But I’m still here, I whisper, fierce enough that it hurts my throat. Still standing in this ridiculous, glorious dress I sewed myself on a ship that’s falling apart. Still breathing air you recycled for me when no one else would. Still choosing every damn day to be this trans, tired, terrified, and incandescently alive. The flare comes again brighter this time, gold and merciless. It floods the deck, turns every jet bead to molten starlight, every fold of chiffon into rippling shadow and flame. My silhouette burns against the glass like a brand. I don’t flinch. Look at me, I snarl at the cosmos, at the empty chairs where crew once sat, at the woman in the reflection who finally stopped flinching. Look at what survives when everything else leaves. A trans woman in a Gothic mourning gown, orbiting a nebula that doesn’t give a damn. And I’m not done yet. Tears cut fresh tracks through the kohl. I let them fall. I loved once, I confess, softer now, the words cracking open like overripe fruit. Her name was Mara. She called me ‘starlight’ when no one else dared call me anything at all. We used to stand right here, hands linked, watching these same nebulae. She said we’d outlive the stars. I believed her. My voice breaks completely. She’s gone. Everyone’s gone. But I’m still wearing the earrings she gave me the ones shaped like tiny crescent moons. I’m still carrying her in every stitch of this gown, every bead I sewed while crying over star maps. And if that’s all the legacy I get a solitary trans woman adrift in opera-scale darkness, dressed for the funeral of a life I refused to let kill me then let it be enough. I straighten. Shoulders back. Chin up. The girdle holds me like armor. So keep turning, you beautiful, heartless nebulae, I say, voice steady at last. Keep your silence. I’ve got enough words for both of us. I’ve got enough me for whatever comes next. The light fades. Shadow returns, satin soft. But this time, when I meet my own eyes in the glass, they’re blazing. No more apologies. No more smallness. Just Hanımefendi trans woman, space wanderer, survivor in satin and lace standing defiant against the dark opera of the stars. And for the first time in years, the silence doesn’t swallow me. It listens.
The Erebus Veil has always been more mausoleum than starship, but tonight she feels like a confessional. I press my forehead to the viewport again, the cold glass a thin barrier between me and the churning nebulae that swirl like spilled ink and blood. My breath fogs it in ragged bursts each one a small rebellion against the vacuum waiting outside. Sixty four years, I rasp to the empty deck, voice thick with the kind of ache that settles in bones and doesn't leave. Sixty four years of rewriting myself sentence by sentence, and the universe still hasn't bothered to notice. Or maybe it has. Maybe that's why it left me here to watch the stars burn without apology. My gloved fingers curl against the pane, kid leather creaking. The gown of satin so dark it drinks light, chiffon whispering like secrets I used to be afraid to keep shifts with the faint tremor of the hull. The high-waist satin panty girdle beneath bites just enough to ground me, to say: You are here. You chose this shape. You paid in blood and time and nights spent crying into star charts. I laugh once, sharp and wet. It echoes off the pitted bulkheads. You know what the cruelest part is? I ask the ship, or the nebulae, or the ghost of the girl I used to bury every morning. I finally like the sound of my name in my own mouth. Hanımefendi. It used to taste like ash. Now it tastes like victory and no one’s left to hear me say it. A distant fusion coil whines in sympathy, or maybe that's just my pulse in my ears. I dreamed of this, you know. Not the derelict part. The space part. Vast and indifferent and beautiful. I thought if I could just get out here away from gravity wells and small minded gravity bound people I’d finally breathe easy. Instead I learned the void doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t applaud your courage. It just… waits. My reflection stares back: sharp jaw softened by decades of estrogen and stubborn hope, eyes lined in kohl that’s run from earlier tears, raven cameo pinned like a medal over my heart. The chiaroscuro light paints me half angel, half wraith crowned in bruise purple nebulae fire. I swallow hard. But I’m still here, I whisper, fierce enough that it hurts my throat. Still standing in this ridiculous, glorious dress I sewed myself on a ship that’s falling apart. Still breathing air you recycled for me when no one else would. Still choosing every damn day to be this trans, tired, terrified, and incandescently alive. The flare comes again brighter this time, gold and merciless. It floods the deck, turns every jet bead to molten starlight, every fold of chiffon into rippling shadow and flame. My silhouette burns against the glass like a brand. I don’t flinch. Look at me, I snarl at the cosmos, at the empty chairs where crew once sat, at the woman in the reflection who finally stopped flinching. Look at what survives when everything else leaves. A trans woman in a Gothic mourning gown, orbiting a nebula that doesn’t give a damn. And I’m not done yet. Tears cut fresh tracks through the kohl. I let them fall. I loved once, I confess, softer now, the words cracking open like overripe fruit. Her name was Mara. She called me ‘starlight’ when no one else dared call me anything at all. We used to stand right here, hands linked, watching these same nebulae. She said we’d outlive the stars. I believed her. My voice breaks completely. She’s gone. Everyone’s gone. But I’m still wearing the earrings she gave me the ones shaped like tiny crescent moons. I’m still carrying her in every stitch of this gown, every bead I sewed while crying over star maps. And if that’s all the legacy I get a solitary trans woman adrift in opera-scale darkness, dressed for the funeral of a life I refused to let kill me then let it be enough. I straighten. Shoulders back. Chin up. The girdle holds me like armor. So keep turning, you beautiful, heartless nebulae, I say, voice steady at last. Keep your silence. I’ve got enough words for both of us. I’ve got enough me for whatever comes next. The light fades. Shadow returns, satin soft. But this time, when I meet my own eyes in the glass, they’re blazing. No more apologies. No more smallness. Just Hanımefendi trans woman, space wanderer, survivor in satin and lace standing defiant against the dark opera of the stars. And for the first time in years, the silence doesn’t swallow me. It listens.
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