30,880 Words

The blood test was supposed to be routine. Cassidy Hollis has managed her rare mitochondrial condition since adolescence with the same dry practicality she brings to everything else: periodic panels, occasional inpatient stays, and a general refusal to find it interesting. Cass is 28, a graphic designer, self-sufficient to a degree that occasionally crosses into isolation. She has not asked about her father in years, and concluded long ago that it wasn’t worth the excavation. That conclusion does not survive the genetic panel. When her DNA returns anomalies her doctor cannot explain and a mitochondrial signature with no match in any human database, Cass hands the results to her mother without comment and watches her face. Her mother, Paula, reveals the truth: she was taken; abducted by aliens. She didn’t understand it at the time. She made sense of it over years, within a community of people who share her experience, and she named her daughter after a constellation for reasons she has never been able to fully explain, even to herself. At the Experiencer’s community’s gatherings, Cass meets David Morrow: skeptical, direct, and carrying the same inheritance. They recognize each other before they understand what they are recognizing. The connection is immediate and slightly unsettling to both of them. Star Child is a romance. It is also a story about what you inherit, what you choose, and the specific courage it takes to love someone when you don’t know what you are.