Speculative Fiction Between Stars and Clay

Short Stories Inspired by Kelly Akashi’s Encounters

Edited by Danielle Khleang, Programs Manager and Layla Taylor, Associate Curator of Programs

Speculative Fiction Between Stars and Clay

Short Stories Inspired by Kelly Akashi’s Encounters

Edited by Danielle Khleang, Programs Manager and Layla Taylor, Associate Curator of Programs

We at the Henry Art Gallery live and work on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Salish peoples, and the shared waters of all tribes and bands, named and unnamed, including Suquamish, Duwamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot nations. The land acknowledgment reminds us of our connections, indebtedness, and responsibilities to the peoples and the more-than-human kin where we live and work.

We invite you to join us in paying respects to elders past, present, and future and to consider what paying those respects means within the work that we do as individuals and within institutional frameworks.

Speculative Fiction between Stars and Clay: Short Stories Inspired by Kelly Akashi’s Encounters is the fifth volume in the Interpretive Guide series. Started in 2020 under former Associate Curator of Public and Youth Programs, Mita Mahato, Ph.D., this series is an ongoing print project that invites community partners to respond to one of the Henry’s exhibitions. The Interpretive Guide aims to help dismantle the idea that there is one right way to experience and respond to art. The Henry offers this guide as an alternative to the traditional wall text, giving space to voices outside of the institutional museum framework.

Editor’s Introduction

Danielle Khleang

The Cry of the Daughters of Kharantha

K. C. Smith

encounters

phoenix kai

Images ORPHANS

P. Bassett

Editor’s Introduction

Inspired by the interplay of macro and micro timescales expressed through the familiar materials of clay, glass, and rope and the extraordinary assembling of bronze-casted hands, crystallographs, and interstellar video projections in Kelly Akashi’s exhibition, Encounters, Layla Taylor, Associate Curator of Programs, and I decided to engage speculative fiction for this volume of the Interpretive Guide. We launched an open call to graduate students of any major from the University of Washington’s three campuses and ultimately connected with four authors to write short stories responding to Encounters. We were moved by all the submissions we received and thrilled that K. C. Smith, phoenix kai, Andreas P. Bassett, and K. Meera accepted offers to contribute to this publication. A component of the Interpretive Guide is to encourage community among the contributors. The writers convened at the Henry twice. Firstly, to get to know each other, share their passions for writing, and spend time immersed in the exhibition. On the second occasion, they read complete first drafts of their stories and received support and feedback. Each of them has contributed a short story that extends the exhibition into the speculative plane—one which perforates many pasts, presents, and futures.

Speculative fiction and Akashi’s art practice share the ability to take the recognizable and make it peculiar. Each invites the reader or viewer to reinterpret existing understandings through a new and strange lens. Throughout this volume, the writers evoke the materiality of the artwork as echoes of the exhibition that propel their stories’ themes of intergenerational transmission, the stickiness of time, and a contemplative discomfort with being and desire for belonging.

In K. C. Smith’s “The Cry of the Daughters of Kharantha,” her protagonists’ ancestral ability to build portals from the clay of their being comes at the price of pain. The narrative brings us into a moment where the characters survive not in individuation but through the constellation of kinships.

Following, in phoenix kai’s “encounters,” we travel through space on a ship, replete with a garden for growing and harvesting food. kai brings the reader into the psyche of the ship’s only gardener, a loner with an isolating and burdensome job. Yet, the gardener sparks an unlikely connection with a pilot that illuminates the more unsettling aspects of harvesting.

Andreas P. Bassett’s “ORPHANS ON KIWKTO'QI-MNIKUK” is a melancholic love letter to a place out of time and tribute to the resilience of the Mi’kmaq language. His main character, Second Lieutenant Flyingwolf, is faced with leaving everything behind but a cherished family heirloom. When he loses the heirloom as well, Flyingwolf must cope with the devastating effects of loss that sever generational bonds.

Lastly, K. Meera’s “Us Encoiled, Everlasting” deals with the stickiness of time and aging while conjuring a mirage of memories and places as the narrator exists, and views themselves existing, in Chennai, Seattle, and Bangalore.

The four authors featured in this volume of the Interpretive Guide engage Akashi’s Encounters as a point of departure to delve into the implications of transmission and transformation from a speculative view. As Akashi does in her artwork, they demonstrate that creative production can be an invitation to reimagine and reengage with our lives and the world around us, in equal measures their wonders and hauntings.

Danielle Khleang Programs Manager

The Cry of the Daughters of Kharantha

K. C. Smith

When I close my eyes I see the cosmos. I see star-swirls dance through darkness. Puffs of light lead to nowhere I know. They are my roadmap to sanity. This is where I go when my mind is no longer a safe space.

When hopelessness fills my chest. I soak myself in infinity. These bright guides pull me from my reality of dark thoughts, dark spots. My tear drops burn—on their descent, they dissipate.

We hear the calls. We think them to be our mothers. We don’t ask for the fear of a possible loss to truth. We just know we must finally return to Kharantha. The call is stronger than gravity’s pull. Each hair rises on our bodies, valiant soldiers standing at attention. A message we must answer. It reverberates through us, a pulse like a drum's beat buh buh buhm buh buh buhm- Booming and loud in our ears. I hear you mama.

We dig our nails into our skin, deeply, unforgivingly. If we could even call it skin. It hasn’t felt like skin since we were each in youthhood. Fresh from the crevices of puberty, when we were finally able to form a small version of a portal with our underdeveloped material skin in practice for this return. The now coarse, mature grains of our anatomy effortlessly separate and form into clay in our palms upon our first official casts of the portals. I’m on my way. We pray to Kora, creator of worlds. Our she-allknowing. Thank you for finally hearing my call.

We imagine the world of our beginnings where we haven’t been since firsthood. We wonder if the images we see in our dreams show the true beauty of our home. If the bright purple sky is as rich and starlit. Do the trees truly sway with the wind from root to leaf tip? Do the creatures still sing throughout the bright night, their howls, and moans like a lullaby? Is the air still salty sweet like the drip of mother’s milk? We wonder what life was like on Karantha before we were born. We know that we are not the first of our kind. Our ancestors were born from the intertwining dance with creatures once called men. We know we were designed in their light, these men, to fight the big fight. The fight for our world to remain our own.

We were sent to these worlds as agents looking for signs of another devastating invasion to Karantha, we are Kora’s messengers. We communicate through her, and our mothers are supposed to hear, though it’s been so long some of us are no longer sure. At least we weren’t until today when we finally heard the call. We’ve doubted Kora’s divinity. It doesn’t matter anymore. I can no longer feel her pull. It’s not supposed to hurt. I can’t do this anymore! Most of us are hesitant but ready to return. We were

programmed to quietly brutalize anyone that threatened Karantha’s existence or planned to invade with selfish motives. Someone has to do it.

Our bodies were altered into functional weapons. Our bones are stronger than steel, though they forgot about our hearts. We feel. We hurt. We yearned for so long to return, so we listened for the call. We remember our mother’s sweet words and songs, “You are magic, regenerative and strong my little one” they would whisper as we’d fall asleep each night. They sang a songbird’s soulful melody harmonizing with the breeze that danced through Autumn leaves. Karantha still stands, so much stronger than before. We are feared amongst those that know who we are and loved by those who don’t. I won’t say goodbye. Mama will let me return.

Our fight lay dormant while we built relationships that will be hard to let go. These planets were so foreign at first. We embraced them out of desperation for belonging. We were so young in mind and soul, though our bodies appear full-grown. We are done fighting what was starting to feel like another planet’s war.

We built our shelter out of the clay of our brothers. Their large bodies hold the strength of mountainous boulders, crafted by mothers who showed them the power of their bones used for building and protecting rather than breaking. Saved from the primitive habits of what were once called men. We could take more from their bodies. Their hearts are not as delicate as our own.

We begin to find our way home and map out our paths in the stars above. The pain shoots through our bones, the sting of hellfire. Beads of perspiration drip into our eyes. We examine our arms, our legs, our bellies, our backs, thick thighs. Wherever we could reach for more of our chestnut browns, our coffee blacks, our touches of cream, we use, we build, we escape, we create.

Don’t use too much. We try not to, though it’s hard. Using ourselves is a drug. The pain invites pleasure like the touch of Kora, we fulfill our divine duty, and some cannot stop. More than eager to please she-allknowing, they get lost in her beauty and abilities. They disappear. We try not to talk about them. We can’t dwell on that looming possibility as we use ourselves to fuel our freedom. They walk with Kora now, in her light. We cry at night in the dark when nobody should be watching. We wake up and start again. I’m coming.

It was not always like this we heard. Our mothers were once able to return without a call. Kharantha was always a place of desire for those who turned their planets to dust. Breathable oxygen and waters full of life were enough for them. They arrived in fleets prepared to overtake, but not ready for what we had in store. Protection from the land, the sea, the skies. They were burned with little remorse. They said the land knew who our people were. We were welcomed in the beginning thanks to Kora’s grace.

We received blessings from the land, the seas of Kharantha, the creatures shared their space as we grew. The black dirt of Kharantha is deeply rooted in gifts of golden nutrients. The abundant forests and seas could survive a tribe for a million millennia. Golden skies nurse from a double morning’s glow. Billions of twinkling stars freckle the night sky brightened by two moons we call Kora’s Eyes. Our mothers often left in search of others worthy of saving under Kora’s grace. They found few who helped build what we think we know and miss today. We wished our mission was as simple as finding sisters to nurture the rich land we love.

We stare into gaping holes where flesh used to be. Through gritted teeth we regenerate unwillingly. Often, we give way to tears that force their path through our burning ducts. Ice-cold blood flows through our bodies centering around our self-infliction, water tunnels in a glacier. The circulation of our cold blood threatens the burn of frostbite bone deep. The regeneration of our cells is unbearable for some of us as they slowly pixelate back together from each jagged edge. I could live in this forever. I’m finally feeling something.

Our brothers are the first to go. What they leave behind we will put to good use as we pry ourselves from our forced lives. They desire a life where they are no longer targets. No longer the center of deviant attention. These worlds are no place for them, too large and threatening to dominant beings and their kin. They will no longer be judged for having big, black bodies built stronger and as unmovable as mountains. I’ll see you on the other side. They smile as they enter their portals and refuse to look back.

Our mothers birthed our abilities through knowledge passed down like blood spilled through placenta, umbilical ties to ancestral lines. We suckled at their breast to absorb the knowledge of the past and were filled with Kora’s light. They say long ago women once used a substance from what they called fathers needed only for the purpose of conceiving. They were forced to stay behind with their children addicted to the patriarchal protections, large hands grabbing at the back of mothers’ necks unable to let go.

We were told that others escaped pain from predators who capitalized on their brown skin. Babies were born from experimentation of their mothers' bodies, with their bodies, in their bodies, torn from and sold to the highest bidder. Most bundled their newborns, soft, covered in afterbirth still hot from the womb before their men could return. Some could never get away, until they did, through Kora’s release. They guide us today on our journey back to our land.

Through clenched teeth we scream. The pain is debilitating. Our shoulders drop recognizing the stress. Our blood runs cold and sends our bodies into turbulence. The red-brown clay in our palms drips a dark liquid that stains our skin. Surfaces in front of us become our canvases. We paint the clay in a swirling circle the way we were taught years ago. Our hearts palpitate leaving us breathless as we look at our healing arms still pale from our pull. Our minds are dark, hot swirls of panic as our fingers become red iron rods digging into our thighs, our backs, our legs, our arms, our bellies, our necks. It’s somehow softer here. Some of us think. Maybe from years of overuse as we tested the limits of our bodies. Dreaming of the big escape.

Our bodies pulse with ache from the desire to go. Broken skin regenerates slowly, moving like molasses in the winter cold. We sowed the soil of our skin and produced the sweetest fruit, the future we always dreamt to call home again. We are finally done. We step through our portals looking over our shoulders no more. Our clothes are ripped and torn, our bodies still burned, but we do hear the call. The beating of the drums grow deep in our chests. A warm breeze dances through the hairs on our arms as it pulls us further in, our lifeline, Kora’s rope wrapped tightly around us guiding us in. We are greeted by the song of our mothers welcoming us home.

I open my eyes to darkness at first, My path is lit up by hope's dreamy glow.

I think about from where I came. Cold, dark, and alone no more.

My dreams are no longer my freedom from reality.

This finally feels like home. I feel gravity's pull and give into the fall. Tear drops sprinkle from the sky, a star’s sweetest release.

And I let the breath I’ve held most of my life go.

encounters

[ Prologue ]

humans scarcely found mars on our own. without cephalopods, we made naïve space, confessing hubris to earth’s pinnacle. ancient sea creatures pitied, gifted humanity exploration unknown voids of deepest space. our spaceships,

bodies bound to lightspeed’s hardstop. time. velocity. functions of place. no wormholes or exploits or matter eating engines to travel infinite. event horizon incomprehensible to us, cuttlefish swim space like jello. we labeled our ignorance nothingness. vacuum. conceited to discard void. void radiating energy, immeasurably measurable matter, weightless, therefore irrelevant integer. nothing was everything.

a nautilus consumes the void. ‘nothing’ matter whisking through bell-curled shells. when time, time and speed are fixed, place succumbs, riding in the pocket of her titanic iris

i am the ship's only gardener. It is a duty that comes with a grave weight.

[ So, what is it like working in the garden? ] She asks.

It is a startling question. No one has asked me this before. i’ve somehow found myself in a conversation with a suave looking pilot. Cassiopeia, she names herself with a charismatic smile. She has ruffled green hair, the color of forest, and black lines decorate her wrists and knuckles—and who knows where else. This is how i know she is a pilot before she even tells me; it is a popular style among them. i find my gaze lingering on her hands. Perhaps just avoiding her eyes.

[ Quiet, ] i finally respond.

[ And why is that? ] She stares as if it is unobvious.

[ Because it has always been quiet. ] i respond slowly, as if describing a poem to a wall. [ You cannot hear the growing or the garden’s needs if you are not listening. ]

[ What does growing sound like? ] She asks, narrowing her eyes.

[ Silence, ] i say. Worry sprouts outward from my abdomen; perhaps this pilot is trying to deceive me. She would not be the first.

[ Silence… ] she echoes—and relief washes over me, seems i explained it well, cleared up her misunderstanding—[ What do you mean?! ] She barks, scattering my relief. i should have known better. What would a pilot know of tending? Just another command jockey sporting a flashy jacket. Looking to tease me.

[ This conversation is discomforting to me, ] i say. i feel my brow pinch.

i try to turn my head away, look at the wall to our left as i eat, but to take a bite, i must turn my head back to look at my plate, and inevitably, i glance to see her staring right at me. However, her expression is not one of smugness or mockery, but of what i believe is confusion. My face is undoubtedly glowing, my neck kinking at how far i am turning away as i chew my food—

[ Are you alright? ] She interrupts. The pilot reaches into her pocket and pulls out an electric blue capsule. [ You’re shaking, ] she says. [ Are you in flux? Did you take cytonine? ]

i glare. [ Of course i did, i am the ship’s gardener, ] i say firmly. [ My shaking is unrelated. ] i stand swiftly and hurry away from the automat.

i finally calm when i step onto the grounds of the hortrium.

The hortrium is shaped like a waning halfmoon. It is small enough that i cross from one side to the other in exactly one hundred and eleven steps. It is unlike any other place on the ship. It is dark and the air clammy and appears in a medley of earth tones. For a moment, the greens remind me of the pilot’s hair. i quickly discard that thought, returning my mind to the garden. Very few people aside from a gardener ever step foot in the hortrium. Those who do describe it as the garden from hell. The organisms that fruit and flower have a bioluminescent hue like gemstones. Thus, it acquired the whispered name, Asphodel.

In my body, however, it is simply home.

There is a small path that foots the precipice of the garden leading to and from the elevator. It is like a doorway, and stepping into the garden is like emerging in a universe pocketed in a fisheye. Surroundings warp into focus, finding a small glade that ingresses the forest of bodies. Bodies grow in various forms, mounds of organic folded petals anywhere from knee to head’s height. Above them, the entirety of deep space swims past in the convex window painting the skyscape. Everywhere except the ground below, the forest before, and the past behind. The earth is a firm, wet clay. Feet indent the ground with even light steps.

Time is experienced differently in the hortrium.

i tend a season. And another. And after perhaps an eternity, i must once again return to the ship-body. To survey. It is also a gardener’s duty to ensure that the food served in the automat is ratioed correctly. The trip routinely brings distress. My internal networks churn as i ride the elevator. Furthering from home. Everything askew.

It is disorienting to find that despite having tended several seasons, the rest of the Nautilus is unchanged. It is as if no time has passed at all. A gardener experiences many lifetimes more than that of the majority populace. Yet people say gardeners die tragically young. It is an acute dichotomy. An isolating dichotomy. To garden is to exist between worlds.

To garden is to transgress.

On entrance into the automat, i am almost immediately accosted by the annoyingly charming pilot. The meathead command jockey. Cassiopeia, her name comes to me without intention. She picks up our conversation where it left, and i fumble to recall the details of what feels like a distant interaction. i only remember shapes of her hands, a waxing paramnesia that i’ve seen them before; messy emerald hair; black engravings lining her skin, peeking from her collar. It is a jittery, awkward encounter. my invariably steady hands seem to tremble at my sides.

i am still disoriented from shifting spaces, and when my presence returns i am stepping through the threshold onto the grounds; and i have for some ridiculous reason, agreed to guide Casseiopeia through the hortrium.

[ An encounter? ] she asks.

[ Yes. With a body, ] i say.

[ Whose body? ]

She is very curious. It is mildly annoying, but a quality i do respect.

[ Bodies are the organisms from which we grow food. ] i gesture my hand to the forest of bodies before us.

[ Wait, so these weird plants are bodies? ]

[ Yes, ] i say. What an infuriating being. [ The gardener tends the bodies. i am the gardener. i harvest that on which we subside. The harvesting, that is what we call the encounter. ]

Now, i press my finger to my lips, ordering her silence.

At least she knows how to follow orders. We tread feet bare through the grounds. The bodies’ enormous petals curl and compel gaze. Fruits claw and cling to their rubbery folds, unpolished jewels in the shape of hands. Some are only partially formed, perhaps a finger or two, but still ripe for culling. Some reach out toward stars, growing past the wrist into forearm. A gardener must never let a fruit grow past the elbow. After that it is inedible, not to mention wildly dangerous.

i press my empty basket firmly to my waist, weaving through the humming bodies to those bearing. Eleven steps from the enclave, the soil is thicker, feet sink deeper. i kneel to harvest, and as practiced from the time i could close a fist—before walking, before memory—i slowly reach my ungloved fingers toward the flowered hand, hum droning tones, cetacean songs of deep-sea relatives, songs reverberating through my body’s sea since birth, songs built into the very strings of my being. i whale. Draw close. Fruits quiver. i shush them with soft touches; one at a time, i delicately run my fingertips. The smooth backs of my nail over their crisp, colorful flesh. Even through lifetimes, they remain surprisingly cool to the touch. i feather the small lines of their knuckles, the subtle bumps of their eponychium, the folds between their digits, petrified as if frozen in time. Their features are so exquisite, one might evoke a crystalline replica of a parent’s or a friend’s or a lover’s hand.

And then, as if releasing their magnetic hold, they succumb, drop into my tender palm. When my basket is heavy with eleven bodies’ yield, i place it down, kneeling, steps from my last encounter. i let my body sink through my heels, deflate after another season of long labor.

A single season of encounters takes a heavy emotional toll.

i embrace gravity and let my shins press into the cool clay soil. i let my head fall back, and with lidded eyes, i watch stars swim in the distance. Throughout my existence i’ve watched the colorful destruction of my namesake, andromeda, in the hortrium’s sweeping window. The Nautilus has circled the collision for millennia. A story i’ve witnessed a thousand times. Does anyone know how it ends? Does it have an end? Like a wave, it ebbs. It crescendos into climax, an all-encompassing conflagration, until it plays in reverse, regressing to visual silence.

i watch the galaxy of our birth dance with Andromeda. Their liquid collision is an encounter of its own.

And as i do after every season, i exhale. Returning to breath, i pull the smallest fruit from the clutch for myself. Only a gardener taste fresh, unprocessed fruit. The rewards to tend are as steep as the cost. Perhaps steeper, in my view.

i pluck a fruit of just two fingers and a thumb, a slight purlicue connecting them. Formed around a small filamentous petal, it is shaped in a pinch, like a slender teardrop. Bodies bear fruit in many colors and flavors. This is my favorite. Vibrating translucent ruby, surface like waxy, firm keratin, dewy and cool and crisp. Saliva floods my mouth as i bring it to my lips.

i start at the pointer finger, letting the tip of my tongue brush the serpentine flesh, gently fastening my teeth at the knuckle. i bite down. The light crunch fills the silent garden. It is a succulent, refreshing fruit, tart and sweet. Persephone’s Pomegranate, i hear my grandparent echo, the description carried through generations.

i no longer refrain; i attack the fruit in swift, voracious bites. i swallow mouthfuls of icy flesh, my teeth cracking the small seeds dotting the insides as if thin bones. Red juice covers my mouth and chin, painting my fingers, dripping down my wrist, down my arm to the elbow. i suck and swallow the last few seeds sticking in my molars.

[ It looks good, ] says a voice softly beside me, shattering the silence. i turn slowly to see the pilot sitting on her knees to my left. i had forgotten she was here. After an eternity of encounters alone, i’d grown accustomed to solitude.

[ It is. ] i pause and simply meet her gaze, my eyes still half lidded, unable to muster my features into expression. [ You may not have any. ]

[ i wasn’t— ]

[ Although, ] i interrupt, [ you did do some labor, ] recalling that she had accompanied and witnessed the entire season. [ i suppose— ] i pause as i try to come up with an equal exchange. [ i suppose you may taste what lingers on my lips. ] i run a finger along my bottom lip, still slick with juice. [ Yes, that is sufficient. Is it not? ]

[ Yes. ] She says quickly. [ I mean, ] she clears her throat, [ yes, I would consider that fair. ]

The pilot straightens her back and presses her hands into her lap. It seems odd, quite different from her usual confident demeanor. Her face colors almost the same shade as my fruit-stained fingers. i realize she may be in early stages of flux, so i must move quickly. Fruit fresh from the body is the purest form of cytonine, a necessity for a gardener after encountering.

[ Excellent, ] i say. [ It is settled then. ] To appear as comforting as possible, i match her rigid posture and wait for her to approach.

i hold her gaze as she leans closer, trying to remain completely still so as not to startle her, given her skittish state. Her face is now right next to mine, just a whisper between her lips and mine. i feel an unfamiliar stirring low in my stomach. Very low. And an electric whirring spreads through my network.

i feel her tongue first, followed quickly by her lips pressing softly left of my mouth. The building tension crests, and i realize my lips are squeezed tightly together. i loosen them and allow her a fuller taste. She breathes out a small moan against me. Though i am not surprised at her reaction, not many taste a body’s unaltered fruit. It irradiates other-worldly richness, incomparable to anything else on the Nautilus.

She is kissing me desperately now, and i must admit it is difficult for me to ignore the heat burning through my network.

[ More. andromeda. please, more, ] she begs breathily. i succumb to her pleas. Rolling her over, i give her every remnant.

[ Epilogue ]

After a third season, i must sow. A gardener is also a sower.

Sowing is a much darker season. The air is colder, just to the brink of discomfort. The hortrium and i both grow darker, colder, dreary. i dress in grey, brittle clothing, linen pants that cinch at the ankle. A weight hangs in the air.

Sowing calls for a somber song, hummed low in the chest.

There are eleven corpses piled in sanguine, ovular bulbs awaiting me when i return to the glade after a third season's harvest. The inflorescent ovaries—sealed in a tight whorl of velvet calyx—hold the corpses in a brief stasis until i sow them. The hortrium is like an organ. It maintains. It shifts. It devours itself. Few understand that the garden is also a graveyard, the gardener a groundskeeper. This is what it means to tend.

To garden is to tender.

At this thought my mind turns to Cassiopeia, my Cassiopeia, my meathead pilot lover.

Crystallographs in Kelly Akashi: Encounters. Photo: Paul Salveson

ORPHANS ON KIWKTO'QIMNIKUK

Andreas P. Bassett

“I did not plan to arrive here, but I am exactly where I belong.”

—Captain Starr Pictou, Seventh Book of Majjoqteligng

Do not look back.

Pain awaits heavy in the past, dwelling in the hereafter. Do not return.

Do not look back. Pain awaits heavy in the past, dwelling in the hereafter. Do not return.

Not to this sterile land. Do not look back, precious gwi's. Come, take my hand.

Not to this sterile land. Do not look back, precious gwi's. Come, take my hand.

Giju crying could not kiss Henri farewell when he abandoned her, rearview, his mirrored ursine Father, now ashes in the ether, had passed from the gsnugowaqan long ago.

Giju crying could not kiss Henri farewell when he abandoned her, rearview, his mirrored ursine Father, now ashes in the ether, had passed from the gsnugowaqan long ago.

Light years down stream at the mouth of the manufactured sipu cold acid rainfall on the receding archipelago.

Half-memoried ships intertwine morphed algae blooms, dreams scatter a hellscape that is home until the fall.

Mtesgmug slink spineless in the twirled glass devolution palpable in the genes skycastles in Old Kta'nuk now barnacled freights chained to stripped machine jujijg and the lost antiquity of humankind.

Our tide that once carried swollen swells can no longer break— there is not enough spirit or energy left in Kisu'lk, that which could create everything, to muster up the force to give again.

The eve of Henri Flyingwolf’s departure from Kiwkto'qi-Mnikuk.

Amidst reconfirming evacuee orders in the docking bay, a carrier hovercraft of what appeared to be children on board entered the seaway. We strongly advise against engagement due to fear of infection—stand down, Second Lieutenant Flyingywolf. Barcodes on the faces disclosed their status as contamination risks. Henri turned Piligan’s channel off and proceeded to don a respirator. His Glooscap’s Glasses reported no threatening brainwave patterns, yet he still decided to approach this band of youth with caution. As he holstered his rifle and clicked in a Mjijaqamij Catcher, he remembered to wear his beloved giju’s final gift to him: a necklace cord linked with a pendant of a hand—Do not look back, precious gwi's. Come, take my hand—an heirloom, a monument that he kept close to his cracked heart.

Naku'set due to set in seventy-seven Earth minutes. Piligan a mere dust particle in the clouds of wa'so'q, quadrillion stars of nightmares above.

A pall of pillows sliced apricot satellites before sleep. Clay beds in the astral nursery lie awaiting, hardening with the hands of broken time.

Crystals curl beneath hesitant toes.

Broken cadence, brisk breath as Henri approaches for the first time— like the Mariner 2 or 4 or the interception of polarized bursts of radio waves emanating from the depths of the cosmos or when an artless child catches a glimpse of a dirty hologram from the time of the third world war and feels abashed.

Tranquility into the tempest, the pit of his molten core frigid, biting. But melodies of laughter and harmony abound as this foreign body nears planetary orbit.

They were not only children—they were ns'tnaqang, deserted by their mothers at birth, survivors of those devoured by the relentless triumph of death.

How could mirth after such desolation possibly strike fear?

The ns'tnaqang cavorted in the tears of our Great Mother,

no conceivable notion of their dire circumstances, the depleted world against every exhalation, dancing atop burial plots, singing in the old tongues, comatose remainers of the gsnugowaqan.

Fast approaching, this dreadnought meteorite disintegrates in the atmosphere into gas and debris and vestigial terrors.

Henri sheds his armor, turns heavenward.

*

*

A story his giju read to him as a child about Quinn Membertou aboard the interstellar Lapugwan came to mind. Quinn and his crew time traveled in search of their home only to discover Wsitqamu'k decimated, its people having originally left on the very same Lapugwan ship.

“Ns'tnaqang in the Skies” was the title of this story, and how coincidental, for Henri’s parents were also themselves orphaned at birth. *

Stellar collision, stripped to the bare essence, a frivolous game of hide-and-seek amongst pure shadows, bioluminescent seaweed illumining the most elegant glows of

Azure and cerulean, vanquish acumen, logic, just for the time being— reawakened waves folding into euphoria, the finite concretized, suppressed chronology a sheer forgotten holographic recording we call

Memory,

dead in the water until the algae quieten, and the auras evaporate into dark matter. *

Suddenly, a sinking feeling overwhelmed Henri. Much to his dismay, he found his beloved necklace had been stripped from his neck. The last living artifact of family, of history, of genesis, now forever lost, a fossil never to be unearthed, entombed beneath the inescapable mud. The largest of supernovas exploded in his heart, sending shockwaves into torrents of blood and tears and shame. But it was in this devastating moment, combined with the synergistic ones before it, that a newfound sense of clarity presented itself. Time and space decelerated, an echo of paresthesia reverberated in the mind, and surveying the events that had unfolded in front of him, the looming nebula of burden that once haunted Henri now dissipated. A synchronicity within the realm of the forgotten, the precipice of oblivion, spoke to Henri. And he listened to the tune of fate’s frequency, accepted its silent guidance, and the opened pathway to what lay ahead finally became visible, intelligible. *

Pails of tears locked away in the tired greenhouse behind home

A corresponding maternal instinct is buried six feet deep Time capsule captive Rusted tchotchkes, padlocked no skeleton key is the skeleton in the unhinged foyer closet

Desperation, forlorn to flee

A renascence of amnesia

Forever searching for solace and forgiveness in the tapestry of the once loved.

I have been preparing for many years now, to at last escape this barren place, and I could never imagine leaving you behind, it is what has destroyed me the most. I now know the purpose of your gift, I have deciphered its message, and I can now depart on the morrow with contentment. Though I thought to have mislaid you, you did not lead me astray. You have steered my ship’s course, and now I move with the current that is you. What is lost may never be salvaged, but it will always be found again, somewhere.

Us Encoiled, Everlasting

K. Meera

This is you, reaching for me

These are the layers that lay parallel to each other— wide-eyed and wondering, brown waiting for the beautiful things to come find you our walls made of limestone, effervescing readily me, alone and—

—I am fifty-four and I am fourteen. I spend the hot Chennai summer running laps around the football ground of our childhood, waiting for the cool to come. All of our realities lay one on top of each other like onion skins, fluttering on top of me when I am still. When I run from them, knees clicking, I can’t feel anything except the dirt that burns for a second through the thin sole of my chappals and the red dust that lays itself thin over my skin, the sweat that collects in the folds of my neck that beg for wind. My eyes tunnel around the sunscape and nothing has depth anymore; when I find myself under the browning tree where I saw you last, each leaf competes for my attention. My length I lay in the narrow shade, looking up as dust coats my hair red, pushing my fingers against the soft clay of my thigh, but all I can feel is you reaching for me through time.

—I am twenty-five and you are eighteen.

In my mismatched Seattle apartment, I read the words you wrote about a city you once loved and my voice skips syllables as it eases through the cracks in the window that the wind rattles through. I live in an approximation of the home you wanted for us. The cells that slough off our skin gather in these crevices that hold a hundred years of other dust. You look at the blonde scratches in the dresser and trace them with our fingers, wondering about all the people who lived here before I did, wondering what the earth that bore the wood of this smelled like in the uprooting. Petrichor and the scent of swamp and pond-mud sinks into my carpet; our knees click together as we circle each other, make trails in the damp. You braid the short strands of your hair together in the foggy bathroom mirror, fingers quick. In the scratched-up clawfoot bathtub, I write about you when I don’t think I am and both of us look at each other through the glass curtains.

—you are eight and I am ancient and unimaginable in your eyes. You do not think of me the way I think of you as we sit on the concrete floor of our pottery teacher’s hut with twenty-four other children; you only know that you will be where I am someday, but you can’t think past Bangalore. I watch you build a thin tree out of the clay, wetting your turmeric-stained fingers with spit to keep the boughs pliable. There’s dirt in your mouth and you worry at a grain between your teeth, crushing the red into mineral. After, a curve of clay sits stolen away in your pencil case, forgotten. In its place, sweaty fingers fit into yours, two dozen children squealing. The mud of the football ground sticks to the strands of your oiled hair as you play

chain-cut and lock-and-key and statue, sweat trailing between your shoulders like a thin finger of ice. By the time you discover the hard puck of clay on Monday it’s a dusty, sad brown that makes you cry during the morning assembly. As you hiccup through the jai-hinds like they’re stones in your throat, I smudge the patina of tears over your cheeks with ghostly fingers and braid your hair like rope.

—we are three and we are nine and we are eighty-one. We will remember the way we looked into the mirror above the sink and reached out to touch our reflection. Wide, dark eyes, smudged thick with ash look out at us, the whites slippery with wondering. Spit dribbles like glass from our lips, makes its way down our chin and dots our white shirt. But now, our pudgy fingers press flat and white, our reflection separated from true touch by thin glass. One day they will be long and thin— —we’re taking the stairs up nine flights, two steps at a time and counting the ones we miss. Two, we leave wet footprints from the rain onto the gray, smooth concrete. Four, The flecks of red dirt on our white canvas shoes are like paan-spittle; we leave behind bits of our world within this building to be found later. Sixteen, this will be the last of this ritual and we’ll have to find new ones. We reach the landing, then turn to do it all again. By the time we are done spiraling our small body upwards, we’ve lost count of the stairs— —the rain dots our window.

We join our fingers together until the wrinkles of our knuckles are riverbeds, waiting to be filled and all we can feel is each other, this the chronostratigraphic unit of our time. This is all we can know for now.

In every thought, I look to you, even as I look forward to what we will be. Every gap in my teeth is a gap through which my breath whistles to you and our airs comingle and our times are encoiled, even when the opacity falters, falters. Still, these are the ways we bend, and these are the ways we linger, these are the ways we lay together, always, and everlasting.

And this is me reaching back.

Left to right: Andreas P. Bassett, K. Meera, K. C. Smith, phoenix kai. Photo: Danielle Khleang

Author Biographies

K. C. Smith (she/her) is a graduate student at University of Washington, Seattle, where she is studying for her MFA in prose. Her work focuses on different areas of fiction such as literary, speculative, and fantasy. She hosts a writing group called Blank Page to encourage writers struggling with procrastination to simply write.

phoenix kai (they/them) is a queer poet, writer, multimedia artist, and creative Writing and Poetics MFA student at the University of Washington, Bothell. They are currently fascinated with queer belonging, identity, speculative futures, and mythological retellings. In their practice, they strive to do the undoable, laugh in the face of gravity, and frolic among the stars.

Andreas P. Bassett (he/him) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he studies early modern literature and book history. His creative interests include Indigenous poetry and literature. Andreas is the Bibliographical Society of America's 2024 Katharine F. Pantzer New Scholar.

K. Meera (they/them) is a Tamil writer and current MFA candidate at the University of Washington, Seattle. Their work has appeared in The Dragon Poet Review, The Write Launch, and Coffin Bell. When not writing weird fiction they spend their time painting, playing video games, and pining away for their cat and partner back home in Michigan.

PHOTOGRAPHER

All images by Jueqian Fang unless otherwise noted

DESIGNER

Summer Li

Kelly Akashi: Encounters is organized by Shamim M. Momin, Director of Curatorial Affairs. Generous support is provided by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

Special thanks to the many people who contributed to the exhibition’s realization: Charlie Engelman; Trevor Goosen, Henry Preparator; Aria Matkke, Ceramics Intern (Ceramic + Metal Arts), University of Washington; Tom Quinn, Professor and Chair, Department of Astronomy, University of Washington; Brennan Stalford, Simulation and Projection Specialist; Lauren Wood, Kelly Akashi Studio Manager, and Chanda Zea, Instructional Technician - Ceramics (Ceramic + Metal Arts), University of Washington.

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