Backstage for "The White-Haired Boy" (Patreon)

There is actually a lot of complicated backstage here.

In the GalConfed universe, which is kind of like what if Battle of the Planets had a horrible transporter accident with Star Trek, there are two races (well, there are a lot more, but this story focuses on those two.) Most races look almost exactly like humans, a la Classic Trek. The two races here are the Tallese and the Laon'l. 

Talla's sun is a blue-white star, and puts out a *lot* of UV, so all of its people are dark-skinned; there are no white people on Talla, and albinos die young (or did, before technology came up with sunscreen.) Laon's star is a white dwarf. All of its people are albinistic, and have varying levels of psi power; they also have what appear to be oversize eyes to other humanoids, and tend to be short and neotenous. In other words, they look very young. Laon is also technologically more advanced than everyone else.

I wondered what would have happened if, in the days before space travel, a Laon'l child was stranded on Talla. I was also reading a lot of Sandman at the time, and it shows.

Fun fact: in 1992 or 1993, I forget which, I attended DragonCon dressed as Death from Sandman and gave Neil Gaiman a copy of this story. I doubt he read it.