This project involved many hours of sourcing photos to work together into a collage. The picture is of Ama, on the wall of the communications room in the mountain behind Kel’s house. The text describes her thusly:
Kel walked curiously around the odd room, and then reached out to touch the smooth, dark table with a play-roughened brown finger.
A bright spark glowed between their fingertip and the surface below, and the whole room came to life, lights on every surface.
Kel squeaked. Bot whirred and slid into the wall. “Wait, come back,” Kel called, but the bot was gone.
“Where did you go?” Kel asked the air. “Mama? Are you here?”
The wall opposite the door lit up with a face Kel had never seen before, and it said, “Mama is not here.”
Chapter three elaborates:
The room had gone dim again. This time Kel reached out with purpose, touched the tabletop and didn’t jump at all when the room brightened. The wall lit up, and the image appeared, but didn’t say anything.
Kel studied it. The person on the wall looked maybe Kel’s size, though it was hard to tell, but Kel didn’t have much to compare with. Mama was a head taller than Kel now, though sometimes she seemed so much bigger than that. And Mama was rounded and bumpy where Kel was flat. The person on the wall was also flat, but where Kel had short, twisty curls, and Mama had loose curls that hung to her shoulders, the person on the screen had the longest hair Kel had ever seen, brown waves of hair shot through with sparkling silver threads. Where Mama’s skin was light brown, with freckles, and Kel’s was a bit darker, without freckles, they both had warm undertones to their skin. The person on the wall was a pale olive brown, with strangely sparkling green eyes.
“Can you talk?” Kel finally asked, coming closer.
“Will you run away if I do?” the wall answered. The face looked dimensional, but when Kel reached out to touch, the wall was flat—just a little rough under their fingers.