Obligations is at its heart a story about the myths of childhood and how they color Morgan's ability to relate to herself. It is a gender confused story about trying to live in one culture while relearning her humanity without losing herself. About being two-spirit and walking between worlds against a backdrop of Space Opera sci-fi that showcases the after effects of planetary war and manifest destiny. Originally written in 1994, "Obligations" speaks to the writer's struggle to find her science fiction voice after publishing romance books and was used as her primary writing sample during her career as a ghost writer. Obligations begins the Transition The Transition. A series of stories set in the future, after the sea level rose and the ice returned. A world population fast approaching 80 billion, driven by politics and fear and a very forced level of deliberate politeness. The Transition. A future Supreme Court ruling giving Native Americans back their land. All of it. Just not the ability to claim it. And old Japanese families offering to buy a person's rights in exchange for cash and a one way ticket to a colony planet. The Transition. An attitude of waiting for the other shoe to drop after you threw the first one. "We're Still Here!" is the battle cry of desperate Nations as young people sell out and move away and slowly the people are lost to a new colonialism. Kidnaped from Earth as a child, sold as a slave, discarded on an alien world as broken, Morgan is adopted by a Sansheren ruler and raised in a loving home. Now she finds herself desperately trying to hold onto her Sansheren identity while reconnecting with her human past.