Never understate the voyage we're embarked on, or what we knowingly forsake. Admit from the start, my sisters, that these partners cleaved to us by nature had their uses, their moments. Male strength and intensity have, on occasion, accomplished things both noble and fine.

Yet, even at best, wasn't that strength mostly spent defending us, and our children, against others of their kind? Are their better moments worth the cost?

Mother Nature works by a logic, a harsh code, that served when we were beasts, but no more. Now we grasp her tools, her art, down to its warp and weft. And with skill comes a call for change. Women — some women — are demanding a better way.

Thus we comrades sought this world, far beyond the hampering moderation of Hominid Phylum. It is the challenge of this founding generation to improve the blueprint of humanity.

 — from the Landing Day Address, by Lysos

Sharply angled sunlight splashed across the table by Maia's bed, illuminating a meter-long braid of lustrous brown hair. Freshly cut. Draped across the rickety night-stand and tied off at both ends with blue ribbons.

Stellar-shell blue, color of departure. And next to the braid, a pair of gleaming scissors stood like a dancer balancing on toe, one point stabbed into the rough tabletop. Blinking past sleep muzziness, Maia stared at these objects — illumined by a trapezoid of slanting dawn light — struggling to separate them from fey emblems of her recent dream.

At once, their meaning struck.