Self-Portrait with Nothing

by Aimee Pokwatka

Sometimes they left messages with only the sound of a clicker, because they’d accidentally clicker-trained Pepper to sit when she was three, while training a puppy, and the sound of a clicker had since reminded her of their laughter.

This detail had much more significance in the earliest drafts of the book, which had a totally different ending. In the original ending, more than one Ula chooses to remain in this universe, and when Pepper returns from her trip to repatriate her burials, she finds her mothers have clicker trainer both the puppies and the Ulas to sit and offer either a paw or a hand for a shake. The last line of that ending: "Pepper did the only thing she could do, in this universe that was somehow her own—she went down the line and shook, puppies and Ulas alike." This ending eventually changed, because, though my intention was to show the Ulas developing a sense of humor and thus changing in a way this universe’s Ula never did, it felt incorrect to end with those Ulas being reduced to animals.