I decided, when I woke up, that I was going to make plates with my families faces on them. Though they may not be faces in the traditional sense, paintings of wolves and hands and flowers, I see my relatives clear as day in the coloured clay. I wrap them up, warm and safe, in muslin printed with memories and words that bring back family I’ve never met from the dead. I keep them close to my chest, both wooden and living, and tuck them away, to occasionally be brought out and looked at, remembered, as the people who were before me and have contributed to the formation of my features like water shaping the Elgin coastline. I’m the first Murray to not be brought up there, and though that is just one fragment of a splintering family tree, it really makes me feel so melancholy. Would my ancestors recognize me if they saw me today, so far removed from them, in distance, time, and feeling?