Cuentos Literarios A R

by Arthur Rojas

“We travel far to discover what we already are. 

We cross the stars unaware that the first constellations 

once lived in a woman’s womb.”

⸻

I. The House of Weightless Days

Melina lived in a low-roofed house of pale wood and blue skylights on the eastern side of Houston, where the trees still knew how to whisper to astronauts before they left. Her home seemed to hover above the lawn, as if it had already broken free from gravity. 

Santiago, her husband, a physicist and gardener of dreams, wrote equations on napkins and poems on misted windscreens.

They loved each other with the steadiness of an elliptical orbit. 

Yet there was one wish that refused to align in their calendars: 

he wanted a child. She wanted the stars first.

NASA had assigned her to her first crewed mission: Argia VI, bound for Titan. Twelve weeks remained until launch. For reasons of protocol and safety, she could not be pregnant. They would have to wait for her return.

She was resolute. He was patient. 

But the universe began to conspire with a disquieting subtlety.

⸻

II. The Clinic and the Unseen Gravity

Her closest friend, Clara, was eight months pregnant. 

Melina would go with her to the weekly check-ups, to that waiting room where heartbeats printed themselves on the foetal monitor like solar waves.

“You’re heading for space and I’m heading for the centre of the Earth,” Clara would say with a warm, rounded laugh. “But mine has gravity as well… it pushes from the inside.”

Melina took in the surroundings with a mixture of fascination and estrangement. 

The sounds of the ultrasounds were like signals from deep space. 

The images, nebulas in black and white.

Outside, in the city, everything started speaking to her in a maternal tongue: 

nappies in the supermarket, magazines with babies on the cover, intrauterine documentaries appearing by pure chance. 

The entire universe seemed intent on reminding her of something she was not yet ready to face.

Her body carried on training. 

But her soul… had begun to form.

⸻

III. The First Navigator’s Dream

Two nights before lift-off, in isolation at the base, Melina dreamt of a capsule.

But it was not Argia VI. 

It was a liquid space. 

Curved. 

Beating.

It floated without a name, without a history. 

A pink light rocked it gently. 

She did not know whether it was an embryo or a vessel. 

She understood only this:

“I was carried. I was held. 

Before conquering the universe, I was a universe for someone else. 

My first ship was a woman.”

The voice was hers, yet it came from somewhere else as well. 

From the core of something older than the galaxies: biological love.

⸻

IV. Clara’s Labour and the Inner Explosion

Clara’s waters broke in the early hours. Melina went with her without a second thought, wearing a borrowed gown and sleepless eyes. At the clinic, everything was in motion: dressings, monitors, held breaths.

When Clara’s cry filled the room, something inside Melina shattered.

She felt a vertigo that did not come from space, but from the Earth itself.

The baby’s first cry broke the silence and Melina… cried as well. 

But not out of joy.

She cried out of confusion. 

Out of doubt. 

Out of not knowing whether she had chosen well. 

Out of fear that she might be running away from something profoundly human.

She had to step outside. Lean against a wall. 

Her uniform weighed on her like armour she no longer wished to wear. 

The cosmos, all at once, seemed cold. 

Titan, remote. 

And her body… no longer knew whether it was ship or nest.

Then Santiago arrived. 

He saw her hunched, defeated. 

And without a single question, he held her as one might hold an entire world.

“Melina,” he whispered, “if you are going to stay for my sake, then don’t. 

I do not want a mother who resents her choice. 

I want a traveller who comes home. 

And you are coming home.”

She tried to speak, but her voice knotted in her throat.

“Meli, my love… go. 

I promise you this: 

I shall wait as long as it takes. 

And when you return, we shall be ship and shelter, 

planet and flower, 

science and honey.

And if, when you come back, you decide you wish to remain on Earth, to raise stars in a garden… I shall be there as well. 

But go. 

Because the world is your child too. 

And you, Melina… you were born to touch it.”

⸻

V. Lift-Off

At the Space Centre, the countdown sounded like a heartbeat. 

Argia VI gleamed white upon the launch pad.

Melina walked with firm, now lighter steps, like someone who has chosen not to renounce anything, only to postpone what also matters.

Her womb was not empty. 

It was full of meaning.

She entered the craft. 

She looked back at the Earth. 

She thought of Clara, of her daughter, of Santiago.

And as the ship rose, she knew she was not fleeing. 

She was flying for all of them.

⸻

VI. Epilogue

Years later, with a daughter asleep upon her chest and an old newspaper cutting in her hand (“First Venezuelan Woman on Titan”), Melina wrote:

“I travelled to a world without oxygen, 

yet there I thought of the first planet I ever inhabited: my mother’s body. 

Now I am a mothership for another life. 

And one day, she will take flight as well.”

We were all Neonauts once.

T  H  E      E  N  D