The Sky Above, the Rivers Below, Ch 17: No Way Back

On the day Sook-ja Kim left her ancestral home for the second, and likely final time, grief arrived with an unwelcome companion: relief.

The goodbyes tore through her. Her sister clung to her arms, face wet, hands iron-tight against the pull of the future. The children - dear, familiar now - cried openly. "Do not forget us, Aunt. Tell us you will return."

Sook-ja murmured promises she knew were lies. Tears came. Her chest burned. To sever this blood-bond again was agony layered on old wounds. She breathed the woodsmoke and damp earth one last time, tried to brand it into memory for the journey across centuries.

And yet. Beneath the sorrow, that other feeling persisted - quiet, insistent, shameful. Relief.

Two weeks of performance had exhausted her. Every gesture monitored, every word measured. Playing the proper Joseon woman in a costume that no longer fit. Her body, softened by climate-controlled rooms and yielding mats, ached from hard floors and village labor. Her mind strained under the weight of unspoken hierarchies and constant vigilance. And Min-ji - every modern mannerism a lit match near kindling.

Walking away down the rutted path toward the hidden clearing, Sook-ja's shoulders burned. Two weeks of rigid posture demanding payment. She caught herself anticipating the Millipede Craft's clean silence. Water from a tap. Meals at the press of a button. A bed that didn't leave her joints screaming.

The guilt tasted bitter. My heart breaks leaving my sister, watching the rooftops shrink. Every part of me born to this land mourns. But another part - changed, shameful - craves that strange easy world. Craves a place where Min-ji's sharp mind is gift, not flaw.

Have I betrayed my ancestors by finding comfort in the time that stole me? What have I become?

Caught between a past she loved but couldn't inhabit, and a future she didn't understand but was beginning, shamefully, to accept.

The clearing opened before them - grass ringed by pines. After the chaos of goodbyes, the silence pressed down like stone. Min-ji stared back toward the village, face unreadable, posture rigid.

Sook-ja thought they'd wait in separate silences as always, each locked away.

But her heart was too full. "It was… difficult," she whispered. "More difficult than I remembered."

Min-ji turned. Her expression softened with unexpected empathy. "For you, Eomeoni? You seemed so happy."

Sook-ja shook her head. A lifetime of stoicism cracked. "Happy to see them, yes. My heart rejoiced. But the life itself. The way things are." She looked at her daughter - brilliant, difficult, beloved. "You were right, Min-ji-ya. About many things. The injustice. Women holding their tongues. Good harvests snatched by greedy officials. I'd forgotten the weight of that burden. You saw clearly. My eyes were clouded by memory."

Min-ji's careful composure softened. "I didn't want to be right, Eomeoni." New weariness threaded her voice, sadness deeper than her usual anger. "I wanted to understand the place you loved. But it was hard. I was a ghost. I looked like them, spoke their language, but every word was wrong. Every thought foreign." She studied her hands. "The children stared. The elders corrected. I've never been so alone, surrounded by my own blood."

In that moment, Sook-ja saw past the formidable scholar who debated Chronic officials. Saw instead the lonely, bewildered child at the Transition District school, still searching for where she fit.

And Sook-ja, desperate to reclaim her past, had demanded Min-ji be someone she couldn't be.

"I am sorry, my daughter." Sook-ja reached for Min-ji's hand - not maternal fussing, but acknowledgment. Apology from one traveler to another. "I was so busy fitting you into our old world, I didn't see the hurt. Didn't see I no longer fit there either."

Min-ji's fingers curled around hers, grip surprisingly strong. "You've changed too, Eomeoni." A sad smile flickered. "You argue with the dispenser about rice. You expect lights to obey. And you stood up for me, even disagreeing with my words. The Sook-ja Kim of Joseon might not have done that."

The words struck home. She had changed. The future had seeped into her bones, her expectations, her spirit. She was no longer just a woman from Joseon.

I look at Min-ji and see her 'otherness' is not choice, but existence itself. Like mine has become. We're both translated people, meanings shifted by the journey. In this strange reality, perhaps we only have each other to understand.

The shared vulnerability closed a gap widening for years. Still mother and daughter, but now something else: fellow travelers in shared, lonely exile.

The air shimmered. Their Chronic transport arriving - ferryman to carry them from past to bewildering, complicated, strangely familiar present.

***

Stepping into the Millipede Craft "The Antiquarian" struck differently this time. On the journey out, an alien vessel to frightening unknown. Now the quiet hum, smooth surfaces, impersonal announcements felt comfortingly familiar. The landscape of her actual life.

Relief as real as sorrow. She and Min-ji settled into their seats. The earlier awkwardness replaced by quiet, shared understanding.

Margaret and Thomas Shepard boarded first - Colonial Virginia, 1763. Silent. Tiredness carved into their bones. Margaret's brittle pride replaced by haunted exhaustion. Young Thomas carried new, heavy stillness, eyes holding sad wisdom beyond his years. No gushy greetings, no long explanations needed. A shared glance, a small nod between Sook-ja and Margaret. The past had burned away pretense.

Hours later, Imran Ahmed boarded from Mughal Bombay, 1695. The transformation was startling. The confident, defensive tech innovator gone. In his place, a young man hollowed by grief deeper than losing his uncle. Pale, almost haunted. Eyes weighted with guilt and sorrow Sook-ja recognized instantly. He moved with somber seriousness, quick energy entirely absent.

As "The Antiquarian" plunged into fourth-dimensional currents, the atmosphere shifted. Not tense or awkward like before. A space for quiet, shared healing. All wounded, all changed. Minimal interactions, but filled with unspoken empathy.

One morning, Margaret noticed Sook-ja looking weary. Simply went to the nutrient station, returned with hot synth-coffee, placed it wordlessly on the table beside her. A small gesture speaking volumes.

Sook-ja caught Imran looking at Min-ji - not with old frustration, but with complicated expression of shared loss and flickering regret.

No longer random migrants thrown together. Survivors.

We're a sorry collection of ghosts. Sook-ja sipped the bitter beverage - familiar comfort now. Returning from lands that made us, that have unmade us differently. Ahmed carries new terrible sorrow; I see it in his empty stares. Margaret's pride stripped away, leaving only quiet weariness. We've all seen the truth. We cannot go back.

She studied her fellow travelers - different centuries, continents, faiths, histories. We're each other's only true countrymen now. A small, sad nation of the in-between. No homeland but this floating metal shell, this strange rootless present.

Not frightening anymore. Simply fact, solid as the low thrum beneath her feet.

Through the long hours, something fundamental shifted within her. The constant aching pull of the past, the desperate need to cling to fading Joseon silks, began to lessen. Not forgetting. Not loving less. But the painful visit had lanced a wound, allowing different healing to begin. Idealized memory replaced by complex, honest truth.

And in that truth, strange freedom.

Her priorities, once tangled in past duties and future fears, clarified. The desperate need for Min-ji to conform to old traditions vanished. Replaced by fierce, protective desire to see her daughter thrive as she was, in the world as it was. Her focus shifted from preserving a lost past to navigating the very present future.

Her community was no longer village ghosts in Joseon, but the living, breathing, wounded people in this cabin. Their well-being, their shared struggle, suddenly more immediate, more important than upholding forgotten manners from a dead era.

"Approaching Temporal Stack Designate: New York City, Neo-Kyoto Residential Sector, 2045."

The synthesized voice pulled her from thought. She looked out the window.

There. The glittering, impossible skyline. Soaring towers that once seemed monstrous and intimidating. Flying vehicle streams that had felt like terrifying magic. Now, after dirt and hardship and suffocating traditions of the seventeenth century, it looked different.

No longer alien or hostile. Orderly. Clean. With a startling jolt - like home.

She glanced at Min-ji, also staring out, face thoughtful. Sharp anger edges softened by new, weary wisdom. Then across the aisle at Margaret, Thomas, and Imran. All quiet, lost in their own thoughts, processing their painful pilgrimages. But together. A silent picture of shared experience.

The sorrow of what they'd endured, what they'd lost for a second time, pressed real and heavy in the cabin. But for the first time since arriving in this new world, Sook-ja felt something other than fear or grief. A small, steady flame of resolve.

She was no longer just a displaced woman from Joseon, mourning a lost world. She was Sook-ja Kim, resident of this new, complicated present. Matriarch, however unofficial, of this small, strange nation of fellow outsiders.

Their journey back to the past was over.

Their journey forward, together, was about to begin.