Grandmother Baking Between the Stars

A white-haired woman in a floral red housecoat arranges fresh cookies aboard what appears to be an orbital vessel, steam curling upward through shafts of amber warning light while porthole windows reveal a pale sky beyond the hull. The collision of the deeply domestic and the coldly industrial is the whole point — her latex gloves and bracelet catching the glow, oblivious to the banks of blinking consoles behind her. I wanted the warmth of a kitchen and the unease of a cockpit to occupy exactly the same breath.