I.
No time for introductions before the loud roar, wind pushing around her, pressing against her tracheas.
It was bright, dark, and then bright again. Nothing to hold on to except him, this stranger, her legs suddenly weightless, her breaths exploding out of every spiracle.
II.
She found her space legs before he did. I am Nedezhda, she said.
She felt a strange feeling they identified as cold. Cold, they found, could be overcome if they stayed close.
III.
Soon, she was heavy with children. She spread open her wings, stridulating. They somersaulted across the glass walls.
Then, a plummet, wind pushing against her, pressing. She held her eggs close to her body. He wrapped his six legs around them. They prayed to an ancient god.
It was bright, dark, and then bright again.
IV.
She gave birth to 33 nymphs. They were pale, but they had all their legs. Her space babies.
She told them tales of their lineage—how they owned all the grasslands of Pangea, feasted with the scaled giants to the two-legged. She told them of the rarified air where she had soared, close to their gods, their benediction to build her own legends.
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“A Russian cockroach called Nadezhda (Hope) has given birth to the first creatures ever conceived in space, scientists in Voronezh, central Russia, said on Tuesday. Nadezhda conceived during the Foton-M bio-satellite September 14-26 flight…part of an ongoing experiment into the effects of space flight by the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP).”
“’Hope’ the Russian cockroach gives birth to first space babies,” Sputnik News
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Tingyu Liu has been published in The Normal School, Four Way Review, Borderlands, Bodega, and elsewhere, as well as various scientific journals for her neuroscience research. She was born in Huaian, China, grew up in Miami, and currently works in Boston in biotech strategy. She has degrees from Pomona College and MIT.