She placed her hands above my head, as if crowning me. In the mirror I glimpsed the ghostly image of cloud linings around my head—encircled by something with a lot of legs! “The canopede will travel with you because they only grow if away from home,” she explained. “They need the mixing of airs.” I asked if I would feel it. “Nah. Just like the bigger ones in the treetops, they just make sure we’re breathing the air we’re supposed to. They shuffle ‘meændair’—air that is in several places at once. No matter what the atmospheres are like on those alien worlds you’ll visit, thanks to the clutches of the canopede, you’ll literally be breathing the same air we have here.”

© 2020 Kelly Ishikawa

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