Contact, Again

She chose the star long before humans knew of it, long before there was a human colony on the star's pretty blue planet, indeed, long before humankind even existed. She came from far away, traveling through the starry darkness at a fraction of the speed of light, chilled to a temperature nearing that of liquid helium. It was the Great Voyage, the trip every seed made to found a new home, to become the matriarch of a new nest. After millennia of travel she awoke to a world that was everything she might have hoped for. Except that someone had found the world before her.