Merge branch 'more-sawtooth'

_posts/2016-12-17-centerpiece.md

@@ -0,0 +1,260 @@
+---
+author: Madison Scott-Clary
+categories:
+- Sawtooth
+- Short Story
+- Rated R
+counts:
+    characters_real: 18804
+    characters_total: 23200
+    file: _posts/2016-12-17-centerpiece.md
+    paragraphs: 118
+    type: jekyll
+    words: 4366
+date: 2016-12-17
+layout: post
+rating: X
+tags:
+- Furry
+- Romance
+- Sexuality
+- Kink
+title: Centerpiece
+---
+
+
+"Hey E," Aaron mumbled, the cat nudging the turn signal lever up to make his way toward the right lane.
+
+"Mmm?" Erin peeked up from her book to see how far they'd made it into their journey. Still about twenty minutes. She lowered her gaze once again.
+
+"Put any more thought into the idea of a donor?"
+
+Slinking lower into the passenger seat, Erin gave a half-hearted shrug. "Not really any more than before. Just want someone we know already and who we trust. Don't want to go to a bank."
+
+Aaron nodded and settled back into his seat as they made their way onto the highway. "Anyone you can think of, minkypie?"
+
+Erin caught herself about to shrug again and shook her head instead, "Only really know a few other minks out there --- the Redstones from work, and there's that Matthew guy from your office...Matthew Lederer, was it? --- and I don't know if they swing or not. Come on, though," she laughed. "Figure out something sexier to talk about. We're supposed to be getting psyched for a night of debauchery, not figuring out sperm donor paperwork."
+
+Erin and Aaron had been one of those couples that had been insufferably cute when dating. When they'd been friends, they'd been teased about it enough, but when it turned to romance, it all seemed a bit much.
+
+It was the names that got most people, of course. They'd react in a few very predictable ways when they found out that the couple had homophonic names. Most folks would gush over how adorable it was, asking how they referred to each other when alone, what they'd name their children if they could have any, and so on, The rest seemed to fall into two camps: those that would ask, "doesn't that get confusing or weird in conversations?" and those that would make some lewd comment about sex, whether referring to threesomes or whether they'd ever played with another Aaron or Erin or something like that
+
+The answers were all fairly straight forward, too, especially after several years of being asked the same questions. They would say that they called each other by their names like regular folks; they'd joke that if they had kids, they'd name them Erin and Aaron; they'd say that conversations were made easier when eye contact signaled which individual was being talked to; they'd say their sex life was private but give a wink.
+
+Below the surface, though, were the more intimate truths. In private, they really only used each other's first initials, going by E and A respectively. They'd done the threesome thing quite a bit, actually, and even once with another Erin, it had been really rather nice, and they were looking forward to seeing her again tonight. And perhaps the most intimate truth was just how sore a subject parenthood was for the two of them, how much being an interspecies couple got in the way.
+
+Aaron laughed and nodded. "Alright, alright," he said. "You looking forward to being a useful mink tonight, then?"
+
+Despite all the planning and negotiation that had gone into tonight, despite all the times she'd heard it before, being called a 'useful mink' right before the first night in far too long where she really would be useful had Erin squirming in her seat, ears pinned back against her head.
+
+The cat in the the driver's seat laughed, "I'll take that as a yes, then. Tell me what you're looking forward to most, then."
+
+"Being...being useful."
+
+"Mmm, so it's more the serving others than the bondage?"
+
+Erin felt her tail start to frizz out, something she could never seem to help when agitated. A fact that Aaron was always keen to exploit. "Mmhm...mink wants to be useful more than anything."
+
+"More than anything?" Aaron asked, risking a glance away from the road to grin at his wife. "More than the pleasure of the act, you just want others to use you to feel good?"
+
+If his goal had been to make her flustered, Aaron was succeeding. If it had been to get her more worked up, it was also very, very much succeeding. "Yeah," she began, voice thick with embarrassment. "Yeah, I want...I want people to come away feeling fulfilled, I want to be a tool to help them feel that way." The mink thought for a moment longer before adding, "The sex is good too, you know I'll enjoy that, but being useful is what I want."
+
+Aaron nodded. "Not to drag us back to where we were, but is that part of why you want to be a mother so badly?"
+
+"Mmhm, at least a little part of it. It feels like the strongest, highest, and, well, purest form of being useful."
+
+"Well, that makes sense," Aaron said with a chuckle. "So..."
+
+"'So...' what?" Erin sat up within her seat. "What are you planning?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing!" Unable to lift his paws from the steering wheel, the cat did his best to imply a disarming gesture with his shoulders. "Only, I was wondering, what if you got to be useful at a party like this one, and that led to a child?"
+
+The mink in the passenger seat sat, mouth open, for a moment before finding the words to respond, "You...you're sure you're not planning anything?"
+
+"Promise. No plans, or we'd be negotiating a hell of a lot harder."
+
+"Well, I...I don't know." Erin realized that she was fiddling too much with her book, bending the pages, so she set her bookmark in place and slipped the paperback into her bag. "It would be a lot to process. But I'm pretty sure all of it would be good."
+
+Aaron grinned toward the road, making his way over to the rightmost lane once more --- they were just about to the end of the freeway stint of the trip, Erin guessed, so probably just a few minutes left. "Well, alright then. So if we wind up at a party like this and there just happens to be another mink there-"
+
+Erin cut him off with a quiet whine, her tail bristled from base to tip and swishing against the back of the seat. "A! Come *on*!"
+
+The cat's grin turned to a laugh. "What do you mean, 'come on'? You'd love it, you said so. You'd love to be a Centerpiece and come away with motherhood, I know you would! And you know I'm game, too."
+
+Brushing furiously at her tail in an attempt to soothe her nerves, Erin let a stony silence fall, fighting to sort out a turbulent mixture of embarrassment, arousal, and that longing she'd always associated with her drive towards motherhood, biological imperative and otherwise.
+
+Erin's silence and Aaron's grin lasted the next few minutes until they parked at the curb before a squat, suburban ranch house.
+
+Aaron turned off the car and tugged up the parking break, leaning over to kiss his wife on the cheek, "Sorry if that was too far, E."
+
+When Erin didn't respond, he reached for her paw, twining fingers with her. Looking back up to her face, he was surprised to see a bashful smile there.
+
+"No, was just thinking," she murmured. "I *would* love that."
+
+The cat's grin snapped back into place almost immediately, along with the start of a quiet purr. He leaned over to give another quick kiss before slipping his paw away and swinging wide the driver's side door. "Come on, then, grab the bin and let's get inside, catch up with folks."
+
+-----
+
+Those who travel among the play parties, orgies, and swing groups often think of themselves as being sexually liberated.
+
+However, they'll all be the first to admit that the time before the play party begins can be the most awkward part. Milling around with a plastic cup of too-sweet spiked punch in one paw and a little plate of store-bought cookies in the other sometimes made it feel a little too much like a social function put on by a group of employees.
+
+The hosts of this party, another couple that Erin and Aaron had known for a few years now, two ferrets named Elise and Joan, had set up a few things to help alleviate that feeling, though there's not much that could make it go away entirely. For every bowl of chips or plate of cookies, there was a bowl of condoms (with several different sizes present) or lube packets (silicone or water based). The cooler of drinks, normally holding just beers and sodas, also contained a few drinks made from stronger things. Small, printed signs listed the rules (play safe, wear clothes outside, and so on) near every doorway. The plans for segueing from "party" to "play" involved strip poker.
+
+Despite all of the effort, there was still some difficulty in loosening up. This was due in no small part, Erin suspected, to anticipation for later. Even the most sexually liberated could be in the time leading up to sex.
+
+Thankfully, as Centerpiece, she had little to worry about, in that sense. For her, the start and end to the night were clearly delineated. No strip poker for her. It would start when she was bound, gagged, and blindfolded, and it would end when she tapped out or was set loose, whichever came first. That would come soon, and the gear was all in the bin that Aaron had dragged in and set in the living room next to the neatly decked mattress that would be her spot for the night.
+
+"First things first," Aaron said, once Erin had gotten a drink. "Lift your chin."
+
+Erin did as she was told, letting her husband deftly swing a collar up around her neck and fasten it in front. Although she couldn't see the collar, she knew what it looked like --- black nylon webbing with some yellow nylon woven into it to spell 'TOY' along the back and a tag saying the same in front. Feeling the weight of it around her neck, the slight constriction of her fur beneath it, Erin tensed up and swished about, her short, rounded ears canted back.
+
+"Finish your drink, minkytoy," Aaron continued, waiting for the mink to down the rest of her soda before clipping a leash to the D-ring at her throat.
+
+When the cat gave an experimental tug, Erin felt herself jerked forward an inch or two by the collar at back of her neck. Beyond that, though, she felt that latent arousal that had been dwelling within her the last few days finally begin to assert its presence, felt sub-space start to surround her like a warm blanket.
+
+Her husband grinned at the obvious change and leaned in close enough to whisper to her, "Mmm, cozy there, pet?"
+
+Ears pinned back, Erin gave a bashful nod.
+
+"Going to be a good pet tonight?"
+
+Nod.
+
+"Still comfortable with this?"
+
+Another nod, more vigorous this time.
+
+"Going to be useful for everyone tonight, no matter what?"
+
+Erin let out a low mewl, tucking her muzzle down toward her chest and hunching her shoulders as though she could hide her embarrassment that way. "Yes owner," she murmured, tail lashing this way and that. "Will be useful."
+
+Aaron grinned haughtily and wound the leash around one of his paws a few times, giving another little tug to help reinforce his position over her. "Good mink. Let's go see who you're going to be useful for, then."
+
+Erin felt like they into a feedback loop of power dynamics. The more dominant that Aaron got in showing her off to the party's other attendees, the more submissive she felt. The more submissive she acted, the more that seemed to egg Aaron on. Before long, he was encouraging her to spin and show off, to curtsey, to make small confessions to the other attendees.
+
+This was one of the other things that Elise and Joan did to loosen up their guests. Each party --- and there were several a year --- included one guest who would be the Centerpiece. The Centerpiece had become a coveted role in the circles that attended this party, one that had to be applied for ahead of time.
+
+And it was indeed a role to play. The Centerpiece was the one who had to start moving the atmosphere from party to play while the two ferrets tended to more mundane things such as maintaining snack levels and ensuring that the rules were followed. Once the atmosphere had shifted, the Centerpiece (almost always a known sub, but once or twice, a more dominant figure had surprised the group by serving) was to become literally that: a fixture at the center of the party, immobile. A figure to be discussed or a toy to be used in a public fashion.
+
+Although this was Erin's first time being the Centerpiece, the role fit her naturally. Elise had leapt at the chance to feature the mink for the party. To have a willing critter who was already a well-known sub (and already quite knowledgeable in bondage) made the hostesses' jobs easier and the party more fun.
+
+By the time they had made the rounds of the patio, Erin knew that she had done well. The timbre of the party had shifted according to plan, the curtains had been drawn, and the game of strip poker had already begun in the den. The mink was buzzing with a mixture of arousal and pleasurable embarrassment, along with a base note of that nearly primal need to please.
+
+Which is precisely when her smirking owner and husband tugged on her leash to get her to look up, saying, "And this is Matthew. Matthew Lederer. I believe you've met."
+
+Erin found her gaze sliding up along the slinky form before her, hidden by a half-unbuttoned dress shirt, to the soft features of the other mink. He was sleek and well groomed, whiskers bristled as if caught in the middle of searching for an intriguing scent. As everything from the earlier conversations clicked into place, she found herself tense at the end of the leash.
+
+Another mink.
+
+And here she was, smelling of arousal and desire: the Centerpiece, the offering to the party.
+
+Matthew's mind seemed to be going through some similar calculation, as his gaze shifted from shock through bemusement to hunger, grinning at the slender mink-toy being presented to him by the cat, giving an appraising glance over the rims of his glasses.
+
+Erin watched him turn to face her husband, "Good to see you here, buddy! And yeah, I believe we have." That grin widened, showing the mink's pointed teeth. "Wasn't expecting to be so lucky in my choice of toys for tonight."
+
+Looking positively smug, Aaron tapped the tip of his wife's nose with the end of the leash, nodding. "Mmhm. Was my turn to bring the Centerpiece. Just about to go get her all trussed up. But here, stand up straighter, minkytoy."
+
+Able only to muster a soft mewl, Erin nodded and stood up straighter, her tail flitting about erratically.
+
+"The Centerpiece should greet all her guests while she still can. Go on."
+
+Erin nodded and leaned in to give the other mink an embrace and a whiskery, bashful kiss to the side of his muzzle. "W-welcome..."
+
+Matthew returned the kiss with a grin, seeming to pick up on some of Aaron's bravado. "Thank you, ah..." he reached a paw up to lift the tag on the smaller mink's collar to read it. "Thank you, toy. I'm sure I'll be most welcome indeed."
+
+-----
+
+"I thought you said you didn't have anything planned," Erin said, still shivering from the mix of humiliation and arousal as she tugged her shirt off.
+
+Aaron, already nude, looked up from where he had been rooting in the bin of bondage gear, "I didn't, E, I promise. I didn't even know he was coming until he showed up just then."
+
+Erin nodded, anxious. She slipped shyly out of the last of her clothes and knelt, nude, on the mattress.
+
+"Do you want me to call in Elise? We can tap out, if it's uncomfortable, or Elise can ask him to not interact with you as the Centerpiece."
+
+The mink felt herself flush beneath her fur, whiskers bristling. "Mmnf..." she managed, then, "N-no. I mean, now I'm all curious. I've...never been with another mink before, after all."
+
+Aaron grinned and sat down on the edge of the mattress, holding a pair of soft, locking bondage cuffs and a snap hook connector --- two lobster clasps joined by a strip of nylon with a D-ring situated in the middle --- for binding them together. "Oh, so you're eager, then, toy?"
+
+Erin squirmed at the pet name. She hadn't quite left sub-space, hadn't wanted to, and so the words played readily into that. "I...maybe," she admitted, squirming tensely.
+
+The cat's grin widened as he turned and crawled over the mattress to her, muzzle tucking in against her cheek, his paws working to fasten one of the locking cuffs around her wrist. "Toy sure *smells* eager," he breathed.
+
+Tilting her cheek to her owner's muzzle and lifting both of her paws to offer her wrists to him, Erin whined quietly in return. "Can't help it," she mumbled, her breathing picking up.
+
+"I imagine not." Aaron continued slipping the other cuff onto the mink's other wrist, making a show of checking the locked status of each before attaching the connector to the exposed D-rings of the cuffs, effectively locking Erin's paws together. Although cuffs were a common accessory for her, she always got a thrill out of having them put on by someone else.
+
+"Hopefully not too obvious?" she asked.
+
+"This is a play party, E, it's kind of expected," Aaron said. The cat's laugh made Erin lay her ears all the way back. He tugged on the strap connecting her cuffs together pulling her up onto her knees and then onto all fours, his paw pinning the snap connector to the mattress. The laugh turned into a low growl as Aaron murmured, "And besides, toy, everyone noticed." With a soft nip to her ear, he lowered his voice further to a soft purr, adding, "Everyone."
+
+Any distance Erin had managed to gain from the sexual dynamic to ask about plans was quickly obliterated with the firm treatment and teasing words. She quickly found herself back in that cozy submissive space, her paws clutching at the sheets of the mattress, held only as far apart as the cuffs would let them. "Was toy useful?"
+
+Dragging the tote of gear closer, Aaron nodded, his voice muffled slightly by the fact that he couldn't hold back a purr. "Very useful. You got everyone up and moving. Lots of needy looks when we left to get ready." The cat brought up another snap connector and with an insistent push, nudged Erin's shoulders down until her chin nearly touched her paws, clipping this connector between the D-ring on her collar and the one on the first snap connector, leaving the mink with her backside hiked up and exposed. "But you're only just getting started, minkytoy. You're going to be very, very useful by night's end, aren't you?"
+
+Erin nodded, her breathing quick and shallow in anticipation. She could smell her own arousal quite strongly, now, as well as that of Aaron, a scent she was well accustomed to. "Yes owner," she panted, breaths tinged with a whine.
+
+There was a bit more fumbling in the bin before Aaron lay a few more items out in front of her, close enough to see but not touch. A ring-gag. A blindfold. A small remote control type device. A bowl of condoms. Two laminated signs --- one with rules, the other with a space for tallying just how the mink had been useful. A marker to go with the signs.
+
+Kneeling before her, Aaron took the blindfold in one paw and the gag in the other and leaned in closer. The familiar scent of the cat's arousal was filling Erin's nostrils, his stiff shaft dead center in her gaze, but, again, just out of reach. The scent of him was overpowering the scent of herself, but she could feel that burning arousal in her belly, feel the cool air against her groin, caressing warm and slick flesh.
+
+"Even that mink? Matthew?" the cat asked. It was hard for Erin to pick apart whether her owner was purring or growling, or perhaps a little bit of both. "Are you going to be a useful toy for him, too?"
+
+Erin felt her fur bristle, that perennial reaction to humiliation no longer restricted to just her tail, but creeping up her spine to her neck and ears, heckles raising. "I will," she whimpered. "I'll be usef-*nngh!*"
+
+She was cut off quickly. She'd been so focused on Aaron's words and the sight of her arousal in the center of her tunnel-vision that she hadn't noticed the paw with the ring gag.
+
+With one deft movement, the cat had taken advantage of her open muzzle to slip the gag in place, wedging her muzzle open with the ring of stiff rubber. His fingers quickly traced the straps of the gag to their ends, velcro straps that looped around her collar to hold the gag in place.
+
+"I know you will, toy," the cat growled --- and it definitely was a growl this time. A commanding, possessive, domineering growl that ensured she knew her place.
+
+Erin could only whine and pant, huff and whimper. She nodded shakily, as much as the straps restraining her neck to her wrists would allow.
+
+Those teasing growls continued as Aaron set up, clearly leaving the blindfold in his paw until last so that she would be forced to watch. "I wonder if toy will be able to tell it's him," he said. "By shape or by noise. Or maybe he'll lean forward and whisper to you how he's taking you. Maybe he'll just scruff the toy. I bet his teeth are sharp."
+
+Whimper, pant, squirm. Erin couldn't manage a whole lot more, as she watched her owner set up the signs. "Please use condoms; no damage; Centerpiece will use buzzer to tap out" read one. "Cum count: In sex --- In muzzle --- In fur" read the other, the pen laid neatly at its base.
+
+"Maybe it'll trigger something in you," Aaron said. He picked up the remote control and gave its single button a quick press, the small box emitting a surprisingly loud buzzing noise, annoying by design. Slipping the buzzer into Erin's paw, he leaned in closer to continue, "Maybe your body will know him by his species. Maybe you'll know what it is that you're missing out by him using a condom with you, by being that close to having his kits."
+
+A more drawn-out whine this time, low and needy, as her owner sought out and tickled each and every one of her kinks in turn.
+
+She was gone. Totally lost in sub-space. And he was driving her deeper and deeper.
+
+"Press the button, toy."
+
+Shaking, Erin fumbled with the remote, getting the button aligned under her thumb before pressing it. She got a loud buzz in response.
+
+"Good. Don't forget that, toy." Aaron grinned and reached once more into the tote of gear. "I'll watch when I can, but I have my own fun planned tonight."
+
+With that, Erin watched as the cat stood, making as if to open the door for everyone, letting the play of the Centerpiece begin, still murmuring, "Maybe toy will find herself needing him, hmm? Craving that mink within her, fitting so nicely like only another mink can. Maybe some day you *will* wind up with his kits."
+
+The cat paused and turned back, looking as if he'd just remembered something. Erin noticed the blindfold left in his paw and squirmed against the bed, knowing that the sensory deprivation would only serve to drive her deeper into Useful Mink territory.
+
+Aaron knelt before her once more and lifted the blindfold, then set it to the side and instead lifted his other paw. In it was a safety pin, something from the emergency sewing kit in the gear tote. Holding his paws deliberately within her gaze, Aaron opened the safety pin, exposing the sharp point. With his free paw, he reached down to grab one of the wrapped condoms from the bowl.
+
+"And who knows," he said, grinning widely as he drove the point of the pin through the package, the condom inside, and clear through out the other side of the package. "Maybe he'll get this one."
+
+The condom dangled briefly from the safety pin directly before Erin's eyes. She watched, unable to speak even if she hadn't been gagged, as the cat slid the needle-thin pin from the condom and massaged it with his fingerpads, leaving it looking intact and unmolested. He then tossed it almost casually into the bowl of condoms, mixing them up lazily with his paw. Aaron closed the safety pin and dropped it back into the tote with a small rattle.
+
+Realizing that she had been holding her breath, Erin let out a gasp and a shaky moan before swallowing dryly, making a soft *glk* noise with the gag in the way. She could feel Aaron hesitating, watching her for any sign that she would need to back out.
+
+Her mind was reeling, her breath coming in ragged pants, her arousal out of control, her body coursing with what felt like electricity. But she gave a slight nod of consent.
+
+Her last sight was of Aaron grinning as he reached down to fasten the blindfold over her eyes, clipping that, too, to the collar so that it couldn't easily be removed. Sight gone, she could only rely on touch, scent, taste, sound.
+
+The rustle of Aaron standing, the feel of the mattress shifting beneath her.
+
+"Remember your buzzer, toy."
+
+Footsteps.
+
+The scent of her owner's arousal fading, the scent of her own taking over.
+
+The sound of the door.
+
+Traces of other scents, other people, other species, other arousals.
+
+Voices, soft applause.
+
+And Aaron's voice, "The Centerpiece is ready."

_posts/2017-05-08-the-fool.md

@@ -0,0 +1,356 @@
+---
+author: Madison Scott-Clary
+counts:
+    characters_real: 16414
+    characters_total: 20452
+    file: _posts/2017-05-08-the-fool.md
+    paragraphs: 168
+    type: jekyll
+    words: 3988
+description: A student and a motherly badger explore questions of identity through
+    a tarot reading.
+img: the-fool.png
+layout: post
+tags:
+- Sawtooth
+- Short Story
+- Furry
+- Rated G
+title: The Fool
+---
+
+The badger looms over a small table, the short sleeve of her smock tugged down toward the table by a glass candy thermometer. A deck of colorful cards rest neatly stacked on its surface.
+
+Contrary to expectations, the room is bright and spacious. No hint of incense or dark velour drapes, just a simple living room in a simple home, a simple badger and some simple cards. She can't be older than fifty, and she's of a more motherly bent than a mystical one.
+
+*More motherly than my mother, at least*, I think. *More earthy and far less mystical.*
+
+"Tell me about your day, Avery," she begins, and as I speak, she shuffles a worn deck of cards, nodding along with me. She draws cards yan tan tethera, and lays them face up on the table with a casual slowness that does little to distract from my words. Still, my language is stilted, and I find myself tracing the edges of the table with my gaze or watching her paws rather than making eye contact.
+
+"Now," she says when I trail off to an uneasy silence. The badger, the table and cards, a bright room with motes in afternoon sunbeams; an image more meaningful than I anticipated. And me --- dingy clothes draped over a broad frame I never wanted --- out of place. "Here are three cards. Look, and tell me the first thing you notice."
+
+"Notice?" I ask. I sound dubious even to myself.
+
+"Notice," she confirms. "What do you see? When you look at the cards, what jumps out at you? Colors, motions, angles and lines. What do you see?"
+
+I stare at the badger. She stares back, then lets out a kindly laugh and gestures down at the cards.
+
+Three cards, laid out in a line. I move my stare to those, more bewildered than anything, trying to pick out singular things. "From each of them? One at a time?"
+
+She shrugs, smiling not unkindly.
+
+*Odd,* I think. *How such a small task could feel overwhelming.*
+
+I puff out a breath of air, whiskers bristling, and tap at the first card. "Well, this one's upside down, for starters. The, uh...Page of Wands." Digging through memories, I try, "A page is like a squire or something, right? Someone who helps a knight?"
+
+"Yes, a young person, someone in training." She grins and nods down to the remaining stack of cards. "There are knights in the deck, too, but that's for another time."
+
+Whiskers still canted forward, I nod and hesitate for a moment. "So, what does it being upside down mean?"
+
+"You tell me."
+
+I roll my eyes. Still, she sounds kind rather than petulant or snide, so I think about upside-down cards. Upside-down figures, upside-down and tipped over, upset in the literal sense of the word. Upside-down meanings. Meanings inverted, reversed, turned over.
+
+"I think I see." I intend it as the beginning of a sentence, but seeing the badger's smile widen, I leave it at that. I shut out the other cards, focus on the Page. "In training, hmm? They looks like they're investigating or contemplating. The, uh...I guess the wand. The wand is the only thing growing, the only thing with green in the entire scene."
+
+"Learning about life. Investigating growth." The badger nods, but neither confirming nor sage. Simply agreeing. "But reversed."
+
+"Not learning?" At this, I sense her expression close down. It's not a visible thing; it's a sensation of her movement of thought being put on hold. "Not...not doing anything with learning, perhaps?"
+
+The badger nods. I can see the clip on her thermometer holding it to the over-washed fabric, see beads of sugar still clinging to glass, bobbing with her movements. "Wands are for beginnings, for doing. Or perhaps activating is better." She sets a paw next to the card. "This Page --- a bear, maybe? I've never figured that out --- is learning, but not moving, not beginning. There is knowledge, but no decision."
+
+"Activation energy!" I blurt, and, seeing questions in her eyes, continue. "Like in chemistry. It's dorky, but there has to be enough energy for an electron to jump from one sphere to the next; it just sits there otherwise. It needs the proper amount of activation energy to get going."
+
+Questions turn to understanding, but her gaze stays locked on mine, waiting.
+
+"I don't have the energy."
+
+"Perhaps not. Or perhaps you do, but you're --- you or something within you --- is not letting it reach the activation. The energy may be there, but blocked."
+
+I have to restrain myself from a snide smile. A reaction to my mom's mysticism, maybe. To crystals and blocked energy. In the badger, though, I sense only earnestness. "Energy as in will? Purpose?"
+
+She shrugs. My choice, apparently.
+
+"Everything's yellow in the card--"
+
+"Energetic color, yellow."
+
+"--yellow except for the black of the salamanders on their coat-thing."
+
+She nods, murmurs down to the card, "His creations, perhaps. How many full ones do you see?"
+
+I lean closer, nudging glasses further up my blunt snout. "Two, maybe three out of a dozen or so."
+
+"If the card were upright, those other ones would be creations yet to happen." Her voice carries knowledge, and more authority than she's shown yet. "Reversed, that becomes flipped around. It could be creations abandoned, or it could be things you're afraid to start.
+
+"These cards named after people or titles --- the page, the knight, the king, the queen --- they're sometimes about people. Maybe this card's about you. Or they all could be. Maybe--"
+
+I smirk, nod my head toward the second card. "So I'm the fool?"
+
+"Maybe they're just facets of yourself." She finishes, returning my smirk.
+
+Thus chastened, I look at the second card. "Okay, well, there's a dog, one of those breeds with short fur, though it doesn't look like any of the dogs I've met. He's--" I catch myself, seeing androgyny in the dog's features and tamping down the yearning for my own. "They're stepping toward the edge of a cliff, with a little spirit thing dancing at their feet. They have one of those sticks with a bag tied to the end, but their tunic thing is what has me thinking. It's all growing things." I lean in closer and add, "And little splashes of water. Green and blue with flowers on navy."
+
+We sit in silence for a moment while I think about the card more.
+
+"There's a good balance of colors, come to think of it. More than the Page, at least. Blue and green and red and yellow." I hesitate, staring at the lean canine muzzle: the balance continues there, masculine and feminine, hard and soft, focused and uncaring. I say nothing, and wonder why.
+
+The older woman nods slowly. "It's a fancy shirt, no denying. It'd look good on you."
+
+I laugh, to which she looks up, smiling. "Seriously. It's a good mix. You're a good mix, too. But you wear all drab colors. Why's that?"
+
+There's a sudden flush to my cheeks, at my appearance being so deliberately addressed. I lay my ears back. A blush along with the first hints of annoyance. These are soon replaced with simple embarrassment. "I don't want to-- I mean, I don't think I'd look good in bright colors or fancy clothes."
+
+"I think you would." She hastens to continue, speaking over my mounting disagreements, "I think you'd look good, if you dressed how you wanted. Don't you?"
+
+I frown at her. She continues, "You didn't say you don't want to dress in bright colors and fancy clothes. You started to say you didn't want to do something else."
+
+I held my breath. Anger is the wrong word for what I feel. Frustration? Humiliation, perhaps. Am I so transparent?
+
+"I don't want to," I begin in a rush of pent-up breath, feeling that struggle blown out with it. My shoulders sag, and I complete the statement more slowly. "I don't want to be seen like that."
+
+"The fool, here, they're everything. They're the beginning of all things, and they've already got all of the endings inside themselves. At the beginning of all journeys, there's the fool: taking that first step is a fool's gamble, after all." She pauses, looking at me earnestly, intently. "You caught yourself earlier, you said 'he' and then switched to 'they'."
+
+I hunch down into my slouched shoulders, muzzle dipping as I struggle for words. "They looked-- I mean, It's on my mind, I guess."
+
+"I'll come clean," she admits after a pause, dark paws fiddling with the remainder of the deck, straightening cards. "Your mom told me you were coming, so I know that much. Even if she hadn't, though, it's written on your face. I mean this in the best possible way, Avery, but you don't make a very good man."
+
+I close my eyes. I shut out the cards, the motherly badger. Motherly in the sense of speaking truths, in the sense of knowing children, in having seen them grow up. Motherly in lived experience. Experience lived in the moment, not in some dream world of crystals and chakras. *More motherly than my mom,* I think.
+
+When I open my eyes, her gaze has softened.
+
+"Why three cards?" I ask, deflecting.
+
+"Past, present, and future." She laughs.
+
+I nod, then sit up a little straighter, murmuring, "So it's more that past me that didn't have the activation energy?"
+
+"Or didn't want to use it, yes."
+
+"That makes more sense, then."
+
+"How so?"
+
+I shrug, continuing, "If I'm at the beginning of something now, it's because of how much time I spent fretting --- and not starting --- before."
+
+She nods. "And are you at the beginning of something now?"
+
+"I think so." I sound dubious, even to myself.
+
+"Why now?"
+
+"College," I say.
+
+"Away from home?"
+
+"Mmhm."
+
+She nods again. "It's a little freeing, isn't it? Being away from parents. So you, like the Page of Wands, have been investigating, leaving all that energy pent up inside. And now you're ready to...to what? Take that step?"
+
+I catch myself fiddling with the hem of my shirt. It's an olive color, faded further into drabness by countless washings, no fancy tunic; even her washed-out smock is brighter than my shirt. It doesn't go with my fur. Nor do the well-worn khakis. A darker animal dressed in those would look rough and tumble, ready for a hike. A mountain lion looks like a mess of dirty laundry.
+
+I look up from my dull self to the table once more, speaking to the cards. "I have an appointment to start talking about it --- talking about gender --- with a counselor."
+
+"Congratulations," the badger says, smiling. And I realize she doesn't need to say anymore. I realize *that's* what I needed from my mom. I realize that's probably why my mom sent me here. I realize that there's probably more to my mom than I gave her credit for.
+
+I realize I've stopped thinking of this --- the tarot card reading --- as something mystical.
+
+I speak up, "The third card, then."
+
+The badger returns her gaze to the table.
+
+"It feels impenetrable to me."
+
+She laughs and shakes her head. "It's not a book. You're not writing a report on its deeper meanings. You're picking up on some of those meanings, but you don't have to do it right away or all the time. Or at all, for that matter." Still grinning, guides my attention back down to the card with a gesture, badger and cougar looming over the table. "Just tell me what you see."
+
+Abashed, I return her smile as best I can. "Alright. It's a...well, I want to say a woman and a child being ferried across a lake or something, but the boat they're in has six swords in it. They're upright, like they've been stabbed through the bottom of the boat."
+
+"Stabbed? Like they're going through the wood?"
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"Is water coming up around them?"
+
+I look harder. The bottom of the boat is pitch dark. "I can't tell, but no one seems in a rush to get them out, anyway."
+
+This gets a chuckle. "No, no they don't. Maybe they're plugging the holes in the boat. Maybe it's best to leave them in."
+
+Nodding, I keep looking at the card. There are lines to draw the attention. The swords, the boat, the pole of the oarsman, the horizon, the water...the water. "The front of the boat, where the swords are, isn't sinking. The people still weigh something, though. Look, the back of the boat's low in the water."
+
+She nods, "Maybe they--"
+
+"Like they don't weigh anything," I add hastily, cutting her short.
+
+"--don't weigh anything, yes."
+
+I lay my ears back and grin, "Sorry, didn't mean to trample."
+
+She returns my grin, pats my tan paw in her black one. "You're excited. It's really nice to see."
+
+"So why swords?"
+
+"I don't know. What do swords do?"
+
+I laugh. "Cut and stab. Kill people. Stuff like that."
+
+"Fair enough," she chuckles. "Why would one do that?"
+
+Her words stop me short. "To...to kill," I begin. "But that's what I just said. Are you asking me why people kill each other?"
+
+She nods.
+
+"To get something," I murmur, fumbling for words. "To gain something. To get what one wants, or needs."
+
+"So, since this is the Tarot and there's bound to be a lot going on here, can we just say the swords are a tool?"
+
+"Well, I'm not about to hack and slash my way to get what I want."
+
+She leans in close to me, stage-whispering, "I'll let you in on a secret. None of the cards in the swords suit --- in any suits --- show blood. Death, yes. Change, definitely. But no blood. It's hardly hacking and slashing."
+
+"But they're still--"
+
+She holds up a paw, "They're still swords, but they're tools. Swords show work. Strife, sometimes, sure; striving toward a goal. But what they is show work. These swords aren't working right now, they're just standing there. So where is the striving?"
+
+"Behind them?" I ask. "They figures are all facing away from something."
+
+"Or toward something."
+
+"So," I say hesitantly. "I'm going to go on a journey?"
+
+She laughs, "Can you guess what my next question would be?"
+
+I shake my head.
+
+"My next question would be: are you? And then you sit and think about it for a moment."
+
+"I sit and think a moment, then say: no, of course not, it's about the work of going through something. The journey is the work." I hesitate, then nod and continue, more sure of myself. "Because I'm here at the beginning. I'm the fool, ready to take the step, and then I just have to take the next and keep going."
+
+She smiles and urges me on with a little gesture of her paw.
+
+"So if I was stalling by investigating every possibility, never starting," I say, nodding back to the first card, the Page of Wands. "Then I guess what I'm focused on is taking that first step, and after that, taking the next."
+
+"You're doing my job for me," the badger laughs.
+
+My smile falters. "Fair enough, but what do I do?"
+
+"That's advice, kid." That soft smile, again. She flips the cards over, one by one, and continues, "Advice comes from people, not from cards. And if I'm going to give you advice, you're going to need to tell me what's actually going on."
+
+She leans forward, folding her arms on the table, and looks past the cards and to me.
+
+So I tell her. I tell her all that stuff from childhood, all those stupid things --- the dress-up, the questions, the uncomfortable guidance, the frustration at forced roles. I tell her all those things that meant nothing, may still mean nothing, and yet add up to a picture of a different me than who I am now. A different shape, a different body, different face and voice and name.
+
+I speak more freely than at the beginning of the session.
+
+I tell her about my mom, about telling her bits and pieces of my feelings, and her insistence at first that it was just a blockage of energies, and then her reluctant acceptance. I tell her about my dad, and how terrified I am of him and his iron grip on masculinity. I tell her about leaving for school and deciding that becoming my own self mattered more than their financial assistance and what belongingness they could offer.
+
+"Your mom sent you to me," she states again, after a comfortable silence. "Did you tell her any of this?"
+
+I shake my head. "She knows just that I'm, er--"
+
+"That you're transgender?" she finishes for me. "Would that be fair to say?"
+
+"I...yes, that's fair."
+
+"But you don't want to say it?" she asks, kind eyes on my own. "You don't have to, can just say yes or no."
+
+"No. I mean, I don't want to say it, but I should. Maybe that's part of the first step." I hesitate for a second, ears flat and eyes averted, before murmuring, "She just knows that I'm trans."
+
+The badger nods, unclipping the thermometer from her smock and turning it over in her fingers. "Alright. And she sent you to me for advice? She told me to talk to you, mentioned vague facts."
+
+"Yeah, she told me to go to you to work on things." I give a wry smile and add, "Her words, not mine."
+
+She laughs and sits back in her chair, slouching and twirling that thermometer. "Your mom is nuts," she says. "I mean that in the kindest way, of course: I love her dearly. Have since school. I suspect she wishes the world worked differently for her. And for you, for that matter."
+
+The unabashed laugh and words of affection are contagious and have me grinning. "Yeah, she's nuts," I echo. "Still, can't say I'm upset with what I got out of this."
+
+"The cards, you mean?"
+
+"Yeah. I was expecting fortunes, I got--"
+
+"You got what you had when you came in the door," she asserts. "And a chance to talk it through. Now, you want my advice?"
+
+"Yeah. I want to know what you think I should do next."
+
+"About which bit?"
+
+"Coming out, I suppose." I scuff at the back of my neck, paw feeling clumsy. "Maybe starting transition."
+
+"Well, it sounds like you're on your way to both, right?" She clips the thermometer back to her smock and straightens the remainder of the tarot deck in deft paws. "You've told your mom, and you have that appointment, right?"
+
+I nod, brushing fingertips over the overturned cards left on the table. It felt like we were both acknowledging their presence in our own ways. "But I still haven't told dad, and I'm still freaked out what the counselor will say."
+
+"Anxiety, then?" she offers, waving a paw above the cards. "A bit of the Page of Wands still left over?"
+
+I nod again, silent.
+
+"Do you want to dig at that?"
+
+"Mmhm. Do you have any thoughts on how to get past that?" She shuffles the cards and opens her mouth to speak, but I interrupt, "Wait, don't tell me. Now you'll ask if *I* have any thoughts on how to get past that."
+
+Her laugh is kind and her fingers sure as she slips another card from the top of the deck, laying it flat on top of the first three.
+
+The image shocks me enough to get me to sit up straight, as if by gaining some distance from the card itself I could escape it. "What the hell?"
+
+"The ten of swords," she says, voice level, conversational.
+
+I count the swords sticking out of the anonymous figure's back. Ten. A feline laid flat on his front, a dark sky, a calm shore, and ten swords buried in his back, each as high as the cat himself.
+
+I clear my throat and manage, "I thought you said there wasn't any bloodshed in the swords."
+
+"Do you see blood?"
+
+Despite everything urging me not to do so, I lean in close and inspect the figure. "No," I admit. "Though his cloak is red."
+
+"The color of passion. And yellow, the color of action."
+
+"The dawn's yellow, too," I offer. I sound dubious, even to myself.
+
+"Dawn, then?" The older woman looks down at the card curiously. "Dawn or sunset?"
+
+I frown and shake my head. "Dawn, I think. It always feels like dawn chases the night, but sunset gives in to it."
+
+"Poetic," she says, and her smile is earnest.
+
+I count the swords again. "One in his ear, one in his neck. Three or four in his back." I stifle a giggle and murmur, "That's a lot of swords."
+
+Her eyes brighten. "Isn't it? Overkill, in the truest sense of the word. Like an overreaction."
+
+A thought occurs to me, and I lean in over the table. "Staring at the dawn, killed ten times over. Look, the water's even clear, like the--" I lift the last card up to peek, and continue, "Like the six. Like me staring at coming out and poking a billion holes in the idea without ever taking the step."
+
+Her eyes stay bright. "Maybe it's an alternative to the six, then. Too much emotion, not enough action. Passion and action pinned down, rather than the work of the six. You could keep taking those steps, or you could keep killing yourself with indecision."
+
+I nod eagerly and ask on a whim, "What's it like reversed?"
+
+She gives a little shrug and turns the card over for me to see. "The swords fall out --- that's a relief --- but he's still dead, isn't he? Resigned to his place on the shore."
+
+"Sure enough," I laugh. "Wait, 'he'?"
+
+"You said it first," she says playfully. "Seriously, though, most of the figures are ambiguous. Or androgynous, I think. What you read into them can mean something if you let it."
+
+"It could be nothing," I mumble. "Or it could be the old me. The 'he'."
+
+She shrugs. My choice, apparently.
+
+A chime interrupts us, me staring at the card and her smiling at me. A clock tolling slow hours. I check my watch to confirm it. Five.
+
+"Oh jeez, I'm sorry. It's way later than I thought."
+
+She laughs, "Conversations go where they will. There's no rush. I can pull together dinner for two if you want to stay." She taps at the thermometer with a grin, "I even made marshmallows, though they'll be sticky still."
+
+"No, it's alright. Thank you. I'm getting pretty tired, as it is." I shrug, realizing just how true that statement is. "This took a lot out of me."
+
+"It does that. It's a wonder we need exercise at all, when just thinking about things wears us out."
+
+I laugh with her, nodding.
+
+"Still," she continues. "You're in town, now. Don't be afraid to stop by, say hi. There's lots more we can talk about, cards or no. Don't wait for your mom to push you my way."
+
+I lever myself up from the chair, swishing ropy tail once or twice to make sure it hasn't fallen asleep, and offer my paw to the badger. "I won't. I know she thinks we'll work on things, but I just want to talk. This was more than I expected. I didn't know I needed--"
+
+She bypasses my offered hand and gives me a firm hug around the middle. Startled, I hold still. She smells of sweets. Sweets and baking.
+
+I feel unfortunately tall. A rectangle. A lummox. A big, dumb cat.
+
+I also feel understood, appreciated. Welcomed. I return the hug carefully. Then, with her farewell in my ears, take that first step out into the evening air.
+
+And then the next.

_posts/2017-09-03-overclassification.md

@@ -5,12 +5,12 @@ categories:
 - Short Story
 - Rated R
 counts:
-    characters_real: 58318
-    characters_total: 72227
+    characters_real: 59986
+    characters_total: 74277
     file: _posts/2017-09-03-overclassification.md
-    paragraphs: 507
+    paragraphs: 513
     type: jekyll
-    words: 13794
+    words: 14160
 description: A chronically neat otter's life is thrown into disarray when she takes
     a homeless ringtail in from the cold.
 img: overclassification.jpg
@@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ tags:
 - Furry
 - Romance
 - Sexuality
-- Mental Health
+- Mental health
 title: Overclassification
 ---
 
@@ -29,31 +29,31 @@ How damning was it to have such boring dreams?
 
 Dani would write this one down on a fresh page in the morning, as she always did. The entry would be noted in the book's index. It would be given a series of tags. "School", "Haswell", "NNND" --- that boring category of "neither nightmare nor desire" --- and probably "work". Should she put "work"? Was the dream even worth it?
 
-Perhaps, one of these days, she would build her own folkloristic taxonomy of dreams. *Tonight, I'll dream 002.010.001 (work, current job, nonspecific), 004.011.001 (school, past, nonspecific), and 035.103.002 (person, school professor (own), important but no overt pressure),* she would think, and that would be it.
+Perhaps, one of these days, she would build her own folkloristic taxonomy of dreams. *Tonight,* she would think, *I'll dream 002.010.001 (work, current job, nonspecific), 004.011.001 (school, past, nonspecific), and 035.103.002 (person, school professor (own), important but no overt pressure),* and that would be it.
 
-Maybe if she reduced her dreams to a simple list, she could skip the actual process of dreaming them and wake up well-rested. An otter, sleek by design in all possible ways.
+Maybe if she reduced her dreams to a simple list, she could skip the actual process of dreaming them and wake up well-rested. An otter, sleek by design, efficient in all possible ways.
 
-By the time she had actually woken up, written her dream journal entry, and stretched her way out of bed, she was left with only the grumpiness. Coffee was the first order of business, and then grooming. Neither of those were dreams, both could be easily taken care of.
+By the time she had actually woken up, written her dream journal entry, and stretched her way out of bed, she was left with only the grumpiness. Coffee was the first order of business, and then grooming. Neither of those were dreams, both could be easily taken care of without over-thinking.
 
-The otter's apartment was small and, surprising no one, quite orderly. It wasn't neat, per se. It wasn't pretty or aesthetically pleasing, but there was some unnatural level of order to it that was immediately noticeable. Where many homes would slowly settle into a comfortable sort of entropy, into that "I know it's messy, but I know where everything is"-ness, Dani's seemed resistant to that particular form of entropy, in some intangible way.
+The otter's apartment was small and, surprising no one, quite orderly. It wasn't neat, per se. It wasn't pretty or aesthetically pleasing, but there was some unnatural level of order to it that was immediately noticeable. Where many homes would slowly settle into a comfortable sort of messiness, into that "I know it's messy, but I know where everything is"-ness, Dani's seemed resistant to that particular form of entropy, in some intangible way. It was occupied, but, as a space, gave no sense of being lived in.
 
-The kitchen was tight, and the plates stacked as one might stack plates, but in such a way as to not permit bowls in their proximity. The DVDs stacked on the shelf were of all sorts of genres, but one would be hard pressed to return one out of alphabetical order. Something about the vanity in the bathroom disinvited one from placing anything on its surface.
+The kitchen was tight, and the plates stacked as anyone might stack plates, but in such a way as to not permit bowls in their proximity. The DVDs stacked on the shelf were of all sorts of genres, but one would be hard pressed to return one out of alphabetical order. Something about the vanity in the bathroom disinvited one from placing anything on its surface.
 
 It wasn't the apartment, of course, it was Dani. Even that was obvious: one could no more place that blame on the apartment than one could place a dirty dish on the counter rather than in the sink.
 
-It wasn't OCD, her therapist had explained --- and she had explained to an ex-girlfriend --- so much as an aspect of personality.
+It wasn't OCD, her therapist had explained --- and she had explained in turn to an ex-girlfriend --- so much as an aspect of personality.
 
-This was back in her undergrad, and she'd initially been hesitant to accept that. Surely an ICD10 code would help. A bold *F42 --- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder*. If only she could stack all her problems up into a banker's box and scrawl *F42* across the top in permanent marker. This felt like an indictment that she wasn't fixable, just weird.
+This was back in her undergrad, and she'd initially been hesitant to accept that. Surely an ICD10 code would help. A bold *F42 --- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder*. If only she could stack all her problems up into a banker's box and scrawl *F42* across the top in permanent marker. That she couldn't felt like an indictment that she wasn't fixable, just weird.
 
-In grad school, she had met a vixen with OCD in one of the classes she TA'd, and she'd immediately dropped an pretenses of *F42*-dom for herself. She lacked the raw, primal anxiety that went along with such a thing.
+In grad school, she had met a vixen with OCD in one of the classes she TA'd, and she'd immediately dropped any pretenses of *F42*-dom for herself. She lacked the raw, primal anxiety that went along with such a thing.
 
 She was just weird.
 
-"Maybe not," her ex had said, at her explanation. "But that doesn't make you any less crazy."
+"Maybe it's not OCD," her ex had said, at her explanation. "But that doesn't make you any less crazy."
 
 Ah well, 'ex' was just another shelf onto which one could put a relationship.
 
-By the time she was coffeed and groomed, all dressed in the usual natty slacks-and-shirt-and-bowtie-and-peacoat, the otter was quite thoroughly sick of this glum mood. There was no reason to expect that work would change that, nor that Friday would bring any relief. None of the others had.
+By the time she was coffeed and groomed, all dressed in the usual natty slacks-and-shirt-and-bowtie-and-peacoat, the otter was quite thoroughly sick of this glum mood. There was no reason to expect that work would change that, nor that Friday would bring any relief. None of the countless others had.
 
 -----
 
@@ -69,15 +69,15 @@ The incident had been forgotten for years until a nineteen year old Dani announc
 
 The discovery of the utility of categorizing, sorting, and cataloging things --- an act which previously had felt so pointless --- had been validating in a way she could never explain to her mother. There were boxes. Things were put into them. Sometimes you had to work out which box to use, or if there were actually *two* boxes the thing went into.
 
-Her degree had turned into one focused on folkloristics, a field she desperately loved, but, unless she went hunting, dominated by the tireless Doctor Haswell. She'd declared a master's degree to be *Enough* and moved, full circle, to working in the campus library's archive department.
+Her degree had turned into one focused on folkloristics, a field she desperately loved, but, unless she went hunting out of state, one dominated by the tireless Doctor Haswell. She'd declared a master's degree to be quite enough and moved, full circle, to working in the campus library's archive department.
 
 It was fulfilling work, but, as predicted, did little to lift her mood. It was fulfilling without being good. Comfortable without being pleasant.
 
 She made it through the day, categorizing high-resolution scans of glass-plate negatives, and drove home to another night of plain dinner and a movie she'd seen dozens of times already.
 
-Her movie habit had started out of necessity for her degree, classifying the stories that she saw and how they were presented. Many of the movies that had wound up on her shelf had done so not out of enjoyment, so much as part of one assignment or another.
+Her movie habit had started out of necessity for her degree, classifying the stories that she saw and how they were presented. Many of the movies that had wound up on her shelf had done so not out of enjoyment, so much as for part of one assignment or another.
 
-She would be hard pressed to tell why she kept watching them, though. She'd park herself on her beanbag, rudder canted off to one side while she poked her way through a plate of pasta. The DVD would be set to play and she would...well, she didn't watch the movies.
+She would be hard pressed to tell why she kept watching them, though. She'd park herself on her beanbag, rudder canted off to one side while she poked her way through a plate of pasta. The DVD would be set to play and she would...well, she didn't really watch the movies.
 
 She didn't watch the movies, she didn't taste the food, she didn't think about whether or not she was comfortable. It was something more than a habit, but less than participation.
 
@@ -89,9 +89,9 @@ No amount of sound could drown out that sheer lack of feeling. No voices could a
 
 The otter washed her paws, and stood at the sink a while longer, toying with the stream of cold water, brushing it up along her forearms, and watching the way it beaded atop her fur.
 
-Her mother used to get her soap in the shape of crayons when she was only a kit. It give her a bright-red way to scrawl across the bathroom that was easy to wash off, and which --- theoretically --- got her clean in the process.
+She thought of how her mother used to get her soap in the shape of crayons when she was only a kit. It gave her a bright-red way to scrawl across the bathroom that was easy to wash off, and which --- theoretically --- got her clean in the process.
 
-Her mother had been furious when all Dani had done was draw that point of soap along the lines of grout between the tiles in the bathroom. It had turned the walls (and part of the floor) into a pleasing red grid. When pressed, her mom had grumbled about the grout being more difficult to clean than the tile itself.
+Her mother had been furious when all Dani had done was draw that point of soap crayon along the lines of grout between the tiles in the bathroom. It had turned the walls (and part of the floor) into a pleasing red grid. When pressed, her mom had grumbled about the grout being more difficult to clean than the tile itself.
 
 Dani had always wondered at that. Sometimes, she would stand in the shower, water beading along far more of her than just her forearms, and draw along the grout with a bar of soap she bought for such purposes. She never used the stuff, hated the very texture of it in her paws, but she did spend shower after shower seeing how well it rinsed out of the grout.
 
@@ -100,7 +100,7 @@ The dishes were finished, her paws were plenty clean, and still she stood, tryin
 > Life within a comfortable grid.  
 > Parallel lines  
 >     Interrupting narrowing circles  
->     of birds in flight.
+>     Of birds in flight.
 
 A snippet of poetry tugged at memory, some bit of drivel she'd written in her undergrad. Something to try and put into words just how her life was organized, how she made sense out of chaos.
 
@@ -109,7 +109,7 @@ A snippet of poetry tugged at memory, some bit of drivel she'd written in her un
 > Trace the roof of your mouth  
 >     With wet tongue.
 
-She did that now, finding comfort in the ridges of her palate, each describing a successive concentric arc.
+She did that now, finding comfort in the ridges of her palate, each describing a successive concentric arc radiating from her throat.
 
 She turned the TV off and wafted into her bedroom, driven by some part of her she couldn't quite access for all that static. *002.010.001* she thought. *I'll dream of (work, current job, nonspecific).* A small mantra, or maybe a supplication to the Oneiroi: *may I dream less and rest more.*
 
@@ -123,33 +123,35 @@ Some days, it would give one a scant hour to prepare for the oncoming weather. A
 
 Dani had read that the scent of snow was actually the lack of scent, of an air too cold and dry for the nose to pick out anything in particular. The opposite of petrichor. She wasn't sure that she'd believed it. That study had all been canines, and had focused specifically on temperature.
 
-Today, there was none of the expectancy that came with the scent of snow. It was just a lingering miasma around town, that non-scent that spread on the breeze. There would be no snow, at least not yet. There would just be cold.
+Today, there was none of the expectancy that came with the scent. It was just a lingering miasma around town, that non-scent that spread on the breeze. There would be no snow, at least not yet. There would just be cold.
 
-Dani bundled up to take her usual walk. As otters went, she was bog standard. Lithe enough, a bit soft without being fat, with short, oily fur. None of that did anything to protect against the cold.
+Dani bundled up to take her usual walk. As otters went, she was bog standard. Lithe enough, a bit soft without being fat, with short, oily fur. None of which did anything to protect against the cold.
 
 A walk was a walk, though.
 
 She lived two blocks or so from the 13th street plaza, and every weekend, at least twice, she'd take a walk down to the plaza and, at the very least, walk it's length. Some days, she'd grab a coffee from the bookstore-cum-coffeehouse that anchored the far end of it.
 
-It was only three blocks long, with a fountain set, just outside the courthouse, in the middle of the middle block. Not really an arduous hike, but it was enough to get out of the apartment for a bit and stretch her legs, disengage from the monotony of a screen held at a fixed distance in front of her. In summer, she'd dangle her bare paws in the fountain, watching the streamers of water as she sat facing it.
+It was only three blocks long, with a fountain set in the middle of the middle block, just outside the courthouse. Not really an arduous hike, but it was enough to get out of the apartment for a bit and stretch her legs, disengage from the monotony of a screen held at a fixed distance in front of her. In summer, she'd dangle her bare paws in the fountain, watching the streamers of water as she sat facing it.
 
 The fountain was off now, of course. Nigh on February, and it was too cold to be running water through pipes outside.
 
+The plaza was empty, silent.
+
 Sawtooth liked to talk about its homelessness statistics. It was a strange thing to be proud of, these folks living without a place to call their own, but here the council was saying that only about a hundred and fifty were homeless out of sixty thousand.
 
-In the winter, this maxed out the homeless shelters in town and taxed the soup kitchens. Those who made it in were provided the barest of necessities, doubled up in the Open Door Mission and offered approximately fifteen hundred calories per day.
+In the winter, this maxed out the homeless shelters in town and taxed the soup kitchens. Those who made it in were provided the barest of necessities, doubled up in the Open Door Mission, and offered approximately fifteen hundred calories per day from Mercy Kitchens.
 
 In the summer, it seemed as though all hundred and fifty were out in front of the courthouse, making the benches their own, using the fountain for covert sponge baths.
 
 Dani talked with them. She readily admitted that she worked at a campus library and made less than she probably needed herself, so she had little to give, but she would talk.
 
-It was strange, when she thought about it, how few of them she knew. She'd talk, even wind up spending an hour or so talking with one person, and then seemingly never meet them again.
+It was strange, when she thought about it, how few of them she wound up knowing. She'd talk, sometimes spending an hour or so talking with one person, and then never meet them again.
 
 "You folks always go away," one had said, when she brought it up. "Talk's all well and good, but we can't ever expect to see you again. Y'all are, pardon, full of shit."
 
 Still, she kept at it. Or, perhaps, that was the wrong way to word it. She kept coming back. There was no conversion to be made, no minds to change, just a tacit agreement that it was best for both parties to talk to someone. No strings attached, just engagement.
 
-The scent of the oncoming snow had chased everyone indoors. Dani clutched at a mediocre coffee and wandered back to the beginning of the plaza, thinking of non-scents. Her eyes tracing the herringbone pattern of the walkway, she marveled at the dryness of it all. Maybe that's what the scientists had thought. The scent was the recognition of just how cold and dry the world was, not of anything so grand as snow.
+The scent of the oncoming snow had chased everyone indoors. Dani clutched at a mediocre coffee from The Book and the Bean and wandered back to the beginning of the plaza, thinking of non-scents. Her eyes tracing the herringbone pattern of the walkway, she marveled at the dryness of it all. Maybe that's what the scientists had thought. The scent was the recognition of just how cold and dry the world was, not of anything so concrete as snow.
 
 She made her way through a few cluttered shops, browsing the windows of the mod parlor and thinking of a movie she might pick up at the Discount Video at the corner near her apartment building.
 
@@ -159,7 +161,7 @@ She was sick of documentaries. She needed something false.
 
 Sunday was cold. Way cold.
 
-The weather had turned into a full-on cold snap. It was too dry for frost to form, but one didn't need to see that fine latticework on the windows to know that it was nearly thirty below outside. It was cold enough that one could walk past a window and pass into a brightly-lit shadow in the warmth of a room.
+The weather had turned into a full-on cold snap. It was too dry for frost to form, but one didn't need to see that fine latticework on the windows to know that it was nearly thirty below outside. It was cold enough that one could walk past a window and pass into a brightly-lit cold-shadow in the warmth of a room.
 
 Dani spent the day holed up within her apartment, curled on the couch with a movie playing. To keep herself from getting too bored, she set one running in a language other than her own, meaning her eyes had to track the subtitles. It kept her from wallowing into nothingness with the voices registering on some subconscious level.
 
@@ -167,7 +169,7 @@ The glum adherence to ridged lines had lessened, at least. She found herself wis
 
 All the same, a movie alone wasn't enough to keep her satisfied. There was no way that she knew to achieve such a feat.
 
-Still, once the movie started to bore her, the otter had stood up in a huff, donning her jacket and gloves --- gotta keep the webs warm, they vent so much heat --- so that she could head out on a walk.
+Once the movie started to bore her, the otter stood up in a huff, donning her jacket and gloves --- gotta keep the webs warm, they vent so much heat --- so that she could head out on a walk.
 
 *No sense languishing at home,* she thought. *Well, no sense in anything, but at least I'll be moving.*
 
@@ -191,13 +193,13 @@ The bundle un-bundled itself enough to become recognizable. There was a small...
 
 "Y-y-you're te-telling me." A snout poked out from beneath the hood of the coat, pointy and tan and masked. "Ch-change for c-coffee?"
 
-Dani shook her head vigorously. "Screw change, come on. I'll buy you a coffee." She pinned her ears back and added, murmuring, "And another layer of clothes."
+Dani shook her head vigorously. "Screw change, come on. I'll buy you five coffees." She pinned her ears back and added, murmuring, "And another layer of clothes."
 
 The laugh from within the coat was pained, desperate. "N-normally, I'd tell you to f-fuck off, but alright. I th-think I need it."
 
-The stammering speech seemed to be getting worse, and the shape shook awkwardly as it stretched out. The frame of the 'pack' under the form's anorak was a bundled up sleeping pad, a simple school backpack beneath that.
+The stammering speech seemed to be getting worse, and the shape shook awkwardly as it stretched out. The frame of the 'pack' under the form's anorak was a bundled up sleeping pad atop a simple school backpack beneath that.
 
-The young woman stood up, shaking violently. A banded tail bristled out from beneath the coat, curling as best as it could around tattered-jeans-covered legs.
+The young woman stood up, tottering and shaking. A banded tail bristled out from beneath the coat, curling as best as it could around tattered-jeans-covered legs.
 
 Dani reached out to help, then rushed in at the sight of the shaking. She wrapped her arms around the ringtail, rubbing her gloved paws briskly over the form's sides, unsure if that was actually helping. "Come on," she tutted. "Coffeeshop's only a block, then we can figure things out from there."
 
@@ -259,7 +261,7 @@ Neither Anne nor Malina seemed overly happy with this, but neither brought up an
 
 The walk --- or perhaps stumble --- back to Dani's apartment had been a rushed and urgent affair. After the coffeehouse and the spicy-sour-sweet tea, neither had wanted to go back out into the cold.
 
-Still, they'd made it, and while both were freezing by the time the otter had latched the door behind her, neither were frozen.
+Still, they'd made it, and while both were shivering by the time the otter had latched the door behind her, neither were frozen.
 
 Anne stood just inside the door, looking shy. Dani shrugged out of her peacoat and helped the ringtail out of her own to hang them both together by the door.
 
@@ -273,33 +275,31 @@ Anne tilted her head to the side and grinned, "Your place is kind of the opposit
 
 "I sometimes get extra organized," the otter demurred. "Make yourself comfortable, though."
 
-Anne nodded.
+Anne nodded. They stood for another few moments.
 
 The silence grew weird.
 
 "I, uh," Dani straightened her shirt. "I don't have anyone over all that much. Can I get you anything?"
 
-Anne moved cautiously to sit on the couch, perched at the edge of the seat. "If you have any...I mean, I don't want to trouble--" She shook her head and gave Dani a bashful smile. "Do you have any food I could have? I can work to pay you back."
+Anne moved cautiously to sit on the couch, perched at the edge of the seat. "If you have any...I mean, I don't want to trouble--" She shook her head and gave Dani a bashful smile. "Do you have anything to eat? I can work to pay you back."
 
 The otter straightened up and grinned, "Oh! Yes, sorry, and don't worry about paying me back."
 
-Dani cooked in silence. It was well past dinnertime by now, so she didn't feel too bad doing so. She usually cooked three portions anyway, and just wound up making one of her regular meals.
+Dani cooked in silence. It was well past dinnertime by now, it needed to be done. She usually cooked three portions anyway, so she just wound up making one of her regular meals.
 
 There was no getting around the strained tension in the apartment. Dani's place was small and neat, and obviously built for one and organized tightly to that one's specifications. She couldn't afford much, loans being what they were, and yet she felt obnoxiously wealthy, with a homeless girl sitting on her couch.
 
-She also felt obnoxiously awkward. It had been easy enough for her to help Anne out from the fountain to The Book and the Bean, and from there to her place, but now it was obvious that she really *didn't* have anyone over all that much. Or ever.
+She also felt obnoxiously awkward. It had been easy enough for her to help Anne from the fountain to The Book and the Bean, and from there to her place, but now it was obvious that she really *didn't* have anyone over all that much. Or at all.
 
-She suspected that neither her nor Anne were all that good at engaging with others, and each had led to its own outcome. Dani had buried herself in school and work as an attempt to cope with a disordered mind that wanted everything else to be in order, one that didn't really want others around. She was pretty sure that Anne wasn't all that keen on being around folks either, though she couldn't guess why.
+She suspected that neither she nor Anne were all that good at engaging with others, and each had led to its own outcome. Dani had buried herself in school and work as an attempt to cope with a disordered mind that wanted everything else to be in order, one that didn't really cope well with others around. She was pretty sure that Anne wasn't all that keen on being around folks either, though she couldn't guess why.
 
 Dani brought two plates piled high with pasta over to the couch where Anne had parked herself. "It's not much, but it'll be filling. Let me know if you need more, too. There's a whole other serving still on the stove."
 
 "Thank you," the ringtail said, whiskers and tail both bristled out at the opportunity for food. She seemed to be watching Dani for cues, but when the otter took a bite, she dug in. No prayers for either.
 
-It was easy to tell that Anne was doing her best to keep from just wolfing the food down. She looked like she was focusing on forking up reasonable amounts of pasta and chewing thoroughly, but her hunger showed in her movements.
+It was easy to tell that Anne was doing her best to keep from just wolfing the food down. She looked like she was focusing on forking up reasonable amounts of pasta and chewing thoroughly, but her hunger showed in her movements. And as predicted, she cleaned her plate.
 
-As predicted, she cleaned her plate.
-
-"Thanks again," she said, paws clutching at plate and fork. "For everything, I mean. I was colder than I thought out there. Fucking freezing."
+"Thanks again," she said, paws clutching at plate and fork tightly. "For everything, I mean. I was colder than I thought out there. Fucking freezing."
 
 Dani set her plate down on her lap and nodded, "I thought you were a backpack at first, all bundled up like that."
 
@@ -327,7 +327,7 @@ Anne frowned at her plate.
 
 Dani laughed. "Fair enough. Never been out of state myself."
 
-Anne nodded, "I seen a few, but mostly saw a lot of brown. I wanna go west, see all that green they have there."
+Anne nodded, "I seen a few, but mostly saw a lot of brown grass and pine trees. I wanna go west, see all that green they have there."
 
 "You, ah--" Dani hesitated, trying to think of the best way to ask. "Bussing? Hitching rides?"
 
@@ -337,9 +337,9 @@ Anne was loosening up with the food and warmth. Her speech coming more fluidly,
 
 "So you landed here." Dani stood and took Anne's plate as the ringtail held it out to her. "Pretty cold time for hitching out west."
 
-"Yeah, it's crazy out. Been through cold snaps before, but not stuck out like that."
+"Yeah, it's crazy out. Been through cold snaps before, but not stuck out in one like that."
 
-Dani stacked the plates in the sink, right where they belonged, and thought of Anne. Here was this sudden ringtail-shaped kink in her life. She felt confused and anxious and tense. She'd have work tomorrow, and this wasn't how she'd picture'd her Sunday would go.
+Dani stacked the plates in the sink, right where they belonged, and thought of Anne. Here was this sudden ringtail-shaped kink in her life. She felt confused and anxious and tense. She'd have work tomorrow, and this wasn't how she'd pictured her Sunday would go.
 
 "Listen, I--"
 
@@ -359,7 +359,7 @@ Dani laughed and nodded.
 
 "Do you have any blankets for me? I'll tell you while you look."
 
-Dani nodded and padded to the hallway by the bathroom, opening the cabinet there to hunt around. Sometimes, she'd fall asleep on the beanbag rather than her bed. She'd always wake up with a weird kink in her tail or with memories of strange dreams, so she'd been trying to avoid it, recently. Still, she had some blankets of various thickness that had cycled through there.
+Dani nodded and padded to the hallway by the bathroom, opening the cabinet there to hunt around. Sometimes, she'd fall asleep on the beanbag rather than her bed. She'd always wake up with a weird kink in her tail or with memories of strange dreams, so she'd been trying to avoid it, recently. Still, she had some blankets of various thickness that she cycled through.
 
 Anne continued her story as she followed along, trying to help where she could. "She was neat, like I said. She and her husband. Her husband would make things a little messy, but she'd put them in order. It was weird. Their place wasn't super clean, they had a lot of stuff, it was just all organized"
 
@@ -367,7 +367,7 @@ Dani poked through the blankets, before giving up and just grabbing them all. It
 
 "Anyway, they were super nice. But the guy, her husband, he got sick. Cancer or something. He passed away. Killed us all, you know? We all loved the guy. Mostly, though, it killed us to watch her. Her tail got all droopy and her fur would get matted and dirty, like she couldn't be bothered to organize again."
 
-Dani wasn't sure where the story was going. It didn't sound like a flattering comparison to herself. Still, the ringtail seemed to be having a good time of it. She wasn't so bristled out anymore, was loosening up. "Did she wind up getting organized again?" Dani asked.
+Dani wasn't sure where the story was going. It didn't sound like a flattering comparison to herself. Still, the ringtail seemed to be having a good time telling it. She wasn't so bristled out anymore, and was loosening up. "Did she wind up getting organized again?" Dani asked.
 
 "Oh, definitely! You know, you get sad and stuff, and then things slowly get...I dunno, not easier. They get more comfortable. You can live with them better, you know?"
 
@@ -387,13 +387,13 @@ There was a bit of a pause as Anne decided on the beanbag over the couch. It loo
 
 Dani laughed and nodded. "Uh huh. Sixty five."
 
-Anne stopped fussing with the blankets and stared at Dani. "What? Sixty five?"
+Anne stopped fussing with the blankets and stared at her. "What? Sixty five?"
 
-Dani nodded again and, with the cabinet door shut, moved to help Anne set up her bed. "Yeah. Number sixty five. The suitors. A woman proves her loyalty by only dating those who look like her dead husband."
+Dani nodded again and, with the cabinet door shut, moved to help Anne set up her bed. "Yeah. Number sixty five. The suitors: woman proves her loyalty by only dating those who look like her dead husband."
 
 The ringtail plopped down on the edge of the beanbag. Dani sat on the other side. "What kinda craziness is that?"
 
-"You can organize stories. Take folktales and boil them down to their essences. The core to *that* story is number sixty five on the list of, er...folktale essences. A story which proves a wife's faithfulness by how she remembers her husband in every new guy she dates." Dani realized she'd been rambling and gave an apologetic grin, "Sorry, I studied this in school."
+"You can organize stories. Take folktales and boil them down to their essences. The core to *that* story is number sixty five on the list of, er...folktale essences. A story which proves a wife's faithfulness by how she remembers her husband in every new guy she dates." Dani realized she'd been rambling and smiled apologetically. "Sorry, I studied this in school."
 
 "Putting numbers to stories?" Anne laughed.
 
@@ -415,7 +415,7 @@ Alex grinned, "It'll do you good. And yeah, we tell stories a lot on the road. T
 
 "How do you figure?"
 
-"You didn't laugh until I told that one, did you?"
+"You didn't laugh or anything until I told that one, did you?"
 
 Dani thought for a moment, then shrugged. "You got me there."
 
@@ -425,7 +425,7 @@ Anne-- Alex grinned and nodded, "See? It works. Your turn, though."
 
 "Yeah, tell me a story."
 
-Dani froze. She knew stories. She knew tons of them. Each was stacked on a shelf, each had strings running from it to a list of motifs, each thoroughly cataloged.
+Dani froze. She knew stories. She knew tons of them. Each was stacked on a shelf of its own category, each had strings running from it to a list of motifs, each thoroughly cataloged.
 
 And all of them suddenly inaccessible.
 
@@ -435,7 +435,7 @@ Alex shook her head and laughed. "It's tough, don't worry. I'm good at this. Got
 
 Dani uncrossed her legs to get comfortable on the beanbag, leaning back against the couch where it was nearest, hips canted over to keep from resting solely on her tail. "About me? Hmm."
 
-Alex took her cue from the otter and stretched out on the beanbag. Dani felt strange emotions tugging at her. Here was someone she'd --- literally --- brought in from the cold, and now it felt like they were in the middle of a middle school sleepover.
+Alex took her cue from the otter and stretched out on the beanbag. Dani felt strange emotions tugging at her. Here was someone she'd --- literally --- brought in from the cold, and now it felt like they were in the middle of a high school sleepover.
 
 "Doesn't have to be you, I guess." Alex stretched out, then sat up and took her hoodie off, as though that were a serious barrier between her and comfort. Her shirt said 'Ladies is gender neutral'. "Mine wasn't about me. Just it's usually easier to talk about yourself."
 
@@ -445,7 +445,7 @@ Alex looked on thoughtfully, then nodded. "Clearly a three twenty eight."
 
 Dani snorted. "The treasures of a giant?"
 
-"Well, okay, I made that up. It's not wrong, is it?" Alex laughed. "You stole things from Miss Weaver."
+"Well, okay, I made that up." Alex laughed. "It's not wrong, though, is it? You stole things from Miss Weaver."
 
 "Usually it's something more important. Something you go out of your way to steal. Treasure and such."
 
@@ -459,7 +459,7 @@ Dani laughed and urged Alex on with a gesture.
 
 It was Alex's turn to laugh. "Alright. And so then you did it. You reached for your goal, and you took it in your hand. You were caught! Poor Dani, at the whim of a giant! Little did the giant know, you'd learn to master all of her organizational powers and unseat her!"
 
-Dani made as if to buff her claws, "And I did. Though Miss Weaver is still on the Library board here. I see her whenever we do archival work for them."
+Dani made as if to buff her claws, "And I did. Though Miss Weaver is still on the Sawtooth Library board here. I see her whenever we do archival work for them."
 
 "You grew up here?"
 
@@ -467,7 +467,7 @@ Dani made as if to buff her claws, "And I did. Though Miss Weaver is still on th
 
 Alex looked around the apartment, "You went to grad school and you live like this?"
 
-Dani rolled her eyes. "I owe more in student loans than this building is worth, I think."
+Dani rolled her eyes. "I probably owe more in student loans than this building is worth."
 
 "Yeowch."
 
@@ -479,7 +479,7 @@ This was a surprising feeling, this talking the hours away. She had gone into th
 
 And now here she was, chatting away like a kid again with, of all people, a homeless girl she'd rescued from the cold snap.
 
-There were problems to be sorted, of course. Dani basically trusted Anne/Alex. There was nothing for the ringtail to steal. She could take the TV, which would suck. She could take the DVDs and would probably be doing Dani a favor. This was no *Les Miserables*. Or maybe it was to a fault. If Alex was going to steal anything, Dani would forgive her. What use had she for the things she kept?
+There were problems to be sorted, of course. Dani was pretty sure she trusted Anne/Alex. There was nothing for the ringtail to steal. She could take the TV, which would suck. She could take the DVDs and would probably be doing Dani a favor. This was no *Les Miserables*. Or maybe it was to a fault. If Alex was going to steal anything, Dani would forgive her. What use had she for the things she kept? She would reorganize her life around the loss.
 
 Either way, they ought to find Alex something a little more permanent. Dani could certainly help with warmer clothing, as she had offered, and she certainly had no qualms in hosting the poor girl longer, if it left her feeling this good by the end of the night. Would it even be okay to ask her to stay?
 
@@ -513,7 +513,7 @@ Dani furrowed her brow and skipped to the second message.
 
 "--all employees and students. There will be an inclement weather closure on Monday the 30th of January. This closure affects all employees and students. There will be an inclement weather closure on--"
 
-The furrowed brow turned into an outright frown. Still standing in the middle of her cold room, she pulled up the university website on her phone. Right at the top of the page in bold, red text, an announcement.
+Her furrowed brow turned into an outright frown. Still standing in the middle of her cold room, she pulled up the university website on her phone. Right at the top of the page in bold, red text, an announcement.
 
 > **Inclement weather closure**  
 > Monday, January 30, 2017
@@ -531,7 +531,7 @@ She set about making the quietest cup of tea she could manage, waddling around t
 
 Alex grumbled from beneath the covers at the sound of the water boiling in the electric kettle, but, as far as Dani could tell, kept on sleeping.
 
-The otter spent the next few hours holed up in her bedroom, sipping her way through a mug of tea as she poked through news and stories on her phone, before pulling down the book of folklore classifications.
+The otter spent the next few hours holed up in her bedroom, sipping her way through a mug of tea. She poked through news and stories on her phone, before pulling down the book of folklore classifications.
 
 Her life was in disarray, she knew. Alex had thrown a wrench into things, into her neat little life and her neat little apartment. It brushed up against all sorts of weird desires to keep both life and home organized.
 
@@ -575,7 +575,7 @@ Alex shook her head, sipped gratefully at the bitter coffee.
 
 Alex laughed as Dani pulled her own shot. "Oh yeah? And which number is that?"
 
-Dani leaned back against the counter, wincing at the strain in her tail and clutching her little demitasse in her paws. "You got me. One hundred fourteen."
+Dani leaned back against the counter and laughed, wincing at the strain in her tail and clutching her little demitasse in her paws. "You got me. One hundred fourteen."
 
 The ringtail held onto her empty cup with one hand and leaned back onto the other, grinning up to the otter. "I'll give your delivery an eight out of ten, but the story needs work. Did you rehearse it?"
 
@@ -585,7 +585,7 @@ The ringtail held onto her empty cup with one hand and leaned back onto the othe
 
 "What about mine didn't work?"
 
-The ringtail shrugged and leaned forward to hand over her cup when the otter held out her paw.  "Your truth-to-lie ratio was good. Lemme guess," she said, tilting her head. "You got up with your dad, but don't have any siblings."
+The ringtail shrugged and leaned forward to pass over her cup when the otter held out her paw.  "Your truth-to-lie ratio was good. Lemme guess," she said, tilting her head. "You got up with your dad, but don't have any siblings."
 
 Dani laughed. "Yeah, that's it. How'd you guess?"
 
@@ -619,7 +619,7 @@ Alex nodded and kept quiet. She looked as though she were preparing to be kicked
 
 Dani hastened to clarify, "I don't even want to go out to the car. Plus, my tail hurts too bad to do much more than sit around. You alright just staying in until things warm up this afternoon? I can get you to Open Door or another place if you don't want to."
 
-The relief was writ plain on the ringtail's face. She nodded. "Yeah, that'd be good. I don't want to go out either. Really don't want to go to Open Door. Can I, uh...can I help out any? I don't have much to pay with, but I can do work or whatever."
+The relief was writ plain on the ringtail's face. She nodded. "Yeah, that'd be good. I don't want to go out either. Really don't want to go back to Open Door. Can I, uh...can I help out any? I don't have much to pay with, but I can do work or whatever."
 
 "There's not really much to be done, I don't think." Her expression softened. "You're just welcome to say until things warm up, Alex."
 
@@ -627,7 +627,7 @@ The relief was writ plain on the ringtail's face. She nodded. "Yeah, that'd be g
 
 Dani blinked.
 
-"You can call me Amy today," the ringtail grinned.
+"You can call me Amy today." The ringtail grinned.
 
 "First Anne, then Alex, now Amy?" Dani laughed.
 
@@ -665,7 +665,7 @@ The ringtail stared in disbelief, then motioned for her to continue.
 
 "I could tell."
 
-Dani smirked, then continued. "--and I like the way things can be categorized while still retaining the things that make them unique. Like, the five hundred from earlier? That's a vague classification that can be applied to many stories, which are all different from each other."
+Dani smirked, then continued. "--and I like the way things can be categorized while still retaining everything that makes them unique. Like, the five hundred from earlier? That's a vague classification that can be applied to many stories, which are all different from each other."
 
 "Sorta like putting things in a box, then?"
 
@@ -689,19 +689,19 @@ Dani shifted over onto her side enough to look at Amy more directly, trying to l
 
 "But, like...look at you. Everything about you is based around order, around the need for things to be in their place, all classified."
 
-"Well, sure," Dani demurred. "But OCD requires anxiety that I don't have. You have to feel anxiety about things that you obsess over, and you have to have the compulsion required to fix them. I don't have those. I just classify things. That's just what I do."
+"Well, sure," Dani demurred. "But OCD requires anxiety that I don't have. You have to feel anxiety about things that you obsess over, and you have to have the compulsion to fix them at all costs. I don't have those. I just classify things. That's just what I do."
 
-Amy looked thoroughly sorry for having brought the topic up. All the same, she persevered. "Okay, well, maybe not OCD, but my ma, she told me that there's all these disorders around anxiety, and each has a personality disorder to go with it." Her voice was fast, as thought she were rushing to fill a hole she were digging herself into. "Maybe you have that? Obsessive-Compulsive, uh...personality disorder?"
+Amy looked thoroughly sorry for having brought the topic up. All the same, she persevered. "Okay, well, maybe not OCD, but my ma, she told me that there's all these disorders around anxiety, and each has a personality disorder to go with it." Her voice was fast, as though she were rushing to fill a hole she was digging herself into. "Maybe you have that? Obsessive-Compulsive, uh...personality disorder?"
 
-Dani reached out a paw to rest on Amy's. None of this was too terribly surprising, it was all stuff that made sense. Still, Amy looked as though she had talked herself into a tizzy. The ringtail looked absolutely panicked. "Maybe," she allowed. "What does this version entail?"
+Dani reached out a paw to rest on Amy's. None of this was too terribly surprising, it was all stuff that made sense. Still, Amy had talked herself into a tizzy. The ringtail looked absolutely panicked. "Maybe," Dani allowed. "What does this version entail?"
 
-Amy took the hint from Dani's paw on her own. She smiled bashfully and made a show of calming down. "They, well," she straightened up, organizing her thoughts. "They are like the regular dis--er, they're like the regular ones, but without the anxiety. The life is as ordered, order is the obsession, but without, uh...without the anxiety."
+Amy took the hint from Dani's paw on her own. She smiled bashfully and made a show of calming down. "They, well," she straightened up, organizing her thoughts. "They are like the regular dis--er, they're like the regular ones, but without the anxiety. The life is ordered, order is the obsession, but without, uh...without the pain."
 
 The otter thought it over, spending a few seconds grooming her whiskers back. "I guess that makes sense. It's something that isn't eating me alive, but it's still a big part of me."
 
 Amy nodded, turning her paw up to let Dani's paw slip into her own, resting the her free paw on top of it. "I really do mean that in the best way."
 
-Dani laughed and rolled onto her side, letting her aching tail rest against the side of the beanbag, taking some of the weight off. "No, I get that. It really does make sense. I saw someone about it years ago, on an old girlfriend's suggestion."
+Dani laughed and rolled the rest of the way onto her side, letting her aching tail rest against the side of the beanbag, taking some of the weight off. "No, I get that. It really does make sense. I saw someone about it years ago, on an old girlfriend's suggestion."
 
 Amy tilted her head, though whether at the 'girlfriend' part or the 'seeing someone about chronic neatness' part, she couldn't tell.
 
@@ -725,13 +725,13 @@ The otter started counting mentally, then perked up. "In the bedroom, there's a
 
 "Uh, me?"
 
-"Yeah, you." Dani laughed, "My tail hurts too much. I'm laying down and you're sitting. I'm older than you. Just because."
+"Yeah, you." Dani laughed, "My tail hurts too much. I'm laying down and you're sitting. I'm older than you, probably. Just because."
 
 -----
 
 "Okay. Fourteen seventy five."
 
-Dani had found a few comfortable spots on the beanbag, alternating between stretching out on her front and laying out on her back with her tail resting between the folds of the cushion. "Right, hm. Back when I was a kid, my dad used to take all of us to church. The preacher was a kind old guy, but one day, he got it into his head that it was best to keep it in the town.
+Dani had found a few comfortable spots on the beanbag, alternating between stretching out on her front and laying out on her back with her tail resting between the folds of the cushion. "Right, hmm. Back when I was a kid, my dad used to take all of us to church. The preacher was a kind old guy, but one day, he got it into his head that it was best to keep it in the town.
 
 "He saw us girls sitting in the front row and asked us all to come up on the stage. It was so embarrassing. He made us promise to God and the congregation that we weren't to be married to girls in other parishes.
 
@@ -739,13 +739,13 @@ Dani had found a few comfortable spots on the beanbag, alternating between stret
 
 Amy laughed and slapped her paws down on the page. "No, you're good! You came up with that better than I thought you would'a. You just got all stiff at the end, is all."
 
-Dani grinned. "Makes sense, I guess. I kinda get the rhythm, but it's hard for me to just pull it out of nothing. I get part way through and start thinking about my story too much, about what other categories it fills. I start thinking, *oh, that's four eighty, the kind and unkind girls* and then I'm totally lost."
+Dani grinned. "Makes sense, I guess. I kind of get the rhythm, but it's hard for me to just pull it out of nothing. I get part way through and start thinking about my story too much, about what other categories it fills. I start thinking, *oh, that's four eighty, the kind and unkind girls* and then I'm totally lost."
 
 "Yeah. I can tell. You get this look on your face when you get to let go. You get all confident lookin' and then you fall apart, and I can almost see the filing cabinets in your eyes."
 
 They laughed together.
 
-Contrary to expectations, the outside thermometer had pegged itself at thirty below for a few hours and then, around noon, started to drop even lower. They had eaten a late lunch. Amy asked if she could wash her clothes while she was here, and Dani had found her a shirt and pair of loose pants that would fit meanwhile. The temperature stayed cold through the afternoon.
+Contrary to expectations, the outside thermometer had pegged itself at thirty below for a few hours and then, around noon, started to drop even lower. They had eaten a late lunch. Amy asked if she could wash her clothes while she was here, and Dani had found her a shirt and pair of pants that would fit meanwhile. The temperature stayed cold through the afternoon.
 
 Neither were keen to go outside and see just how cold, so they'd parked themselves on the beanbag with the catalog of folktale types.
 
@@ -761,9 +761,9 @@ Amy grinned and launched right into the story. She would always win, so long as
 
 "Yeah, that's the one! Daddy would always say hi to this guy as he walked his property. He used to walk the perimeter of his property and make sure all was okay, but it got him to talking with all his neighbors.
 
-"Anyway, one day, one of his neighbors takes a shine to his tail, says, *Dang, you know, I wish I had that tail. My wife left me some years ago, you know, and I bet the gals would be all over me, I had a tail like that.*  Dad would laugh, we'd all laugh at that. Poor old Mister Lincoln, he looked like a shadow in every picture, like someone had cut out someone, wherever he went.
+"Anyway, one day, one of his neighbors takes a shine to his tail, says, *Dang, you know, I wish I had that tail. My wife left me some years ago, you see, and I bet the gals would be all over me, I had a tail like that.*  Dad would laugh, we'd all laugh at that. Poor old Mister Lincoln, he looked like a shadow in every picture, like someone had cut out someone, wherever he went.
 
-"Now dad, he can sense Mister Lincoln starting to get more insistent about things, and one day, on a hunch, he grabs a handful of soot from the fireplace --- we hardly ran the thing these days, but the soot was still there --- and rubbed it into his tail."
+"Now dad, he can sense Mister Lincoln starting to get more insistent about things, and one day, on a hunch, he grabs a handful of soot from the fireplace --- we hardly ran the thing those days, but the soot was still there --- and rubbed it into his tail."
 
 Dani laughed, picturing Amy rubbing soot into her tail, turning the stripes all black.
 
@@ -781,7 +781,7 @@ Amy grinned. "So dad, he's got this all-black tail. It was nearing night, so it
 
 Dani clapped her paws gleefully at the story. "Wonderful! You've got the entire thing set up, right there. I feel like I get close so often, but I just don't quite get it to stick the whole way through."
 
-The two were as two girls at a sleepover, stretched out on their fronts on a beanbag, a book propped up before them both.
+They were as two girls at a sleepover, stretched out on their fronts on a beanbag, a book propped up before them both.
 
 It was Amy's turn to laugh. "You do get close, yeah. You're just missing mechanics. Like, y'gotta start telling little side stories, no more than a sentence long, to buy yourself some time. We don't care what Mister Lincoln does with the stripes, but we make something up to give us time to, uh...stick our landing, I guess."
 
@@ -795,7 +795,7 @@ Amy shut down at this outburst, her expression going blank and her paws going sl
 
 The otter persisted. "You said, *It's so wonderful out now, I must be all set for the next year.*
 
-"But you were with someone, weren't you? Someone at Open Door? He had a home, something he could offer, he could..." Dani trailed off. "Shit, I'm sorry. I went way too far, there."
+"But you were with someone, weren't you? Someone at Open Door? He had a home, or money, something he could offer, he could..." Dani trailed off. "Shit, I'm sorry. I went way too far, there."
 
 The otter tried to tug her paws back to herself, to withdraw. Drunk on storytelling was a new sensation for her. She hadn't expected it would lead to such an overreach. She hadn't expected it to drop her barriers around classification.
 
@@ -807,9 +807,9 @@ The ringtail's grip tightened around Dani's paws.
 
 There was nothing the otter could say to continue.
 
-"So he pulls me aside, he says *we just need to keep ourselves warm.*" Amy's voice is quiet, hoarse. "And that sounds good to me. But I have to do something in return, so I think to myself, *Aha, I've got a plan.*"
+"So he pulls me aside, he says *we just need to keep ourselves warm.*" Amy's voice was quiet, hoarse. "And that sounds good to me. But I have to do something in return. Something for him. So I think to myself, *Aha, I've got a plan.*"
 
-Dani returned the squeeze of paws. Amy wasn't looking at her any longer, staring toward the blank wall with a smile that's more rictus than jolly.
+Dani returned the squeeze of paws. Amy wasn't looking at her any longer, staring toward the blank wall with a smile that's more rictus than the jolly grin her story would imply.
 
 "*Don't worry. I'll hold up the roof,* I tell him. So I hide myself away up in the attic, tell him I'm doing something useful, when all the while, I'm making sure I can get away without giving him everything he asks."
 
@@ -827,7 +827,9 @@ Dani stayed silent through the movie. Amy had chosen a thriller, something with
 
 The ringtail had shrunk in size, Dani noticed, all her confidence drained away. The jokey story-telling exercise really had gone too far, and although she stood by her assessment, she realized she probably should have been a bit more careful of providing it.
 
-All of that openness she had grown over the past few hours, all of that was slowly unwound. She had built up this stanchion of confidence, only to find she'd planned the bridge in the wrong spot. She hadn't had a goal in this sleepover storytime, but even so, she'd fucked it up.
+All of that openness that had grown over the past few hours, all of that was slowly unwound. She had built up this stanchion of confidence, only to find she'd planned the bridge in the wrong spot. She'd hoped to understand Amy.
+
+She hadn't had a goal in this sleepover storytime, but even so, she'd fucked it up.
 
 She spent her time pretending to leaf through the book of motifs and tropes. Amy sat where she had been, watching the TV over Dani as the otter poked through her book. She didn't have quite what it took to look Amy in the eyes.
 
@@ -837,7 +839,7 @@ And yet they stayed there. Amy watched her movie, and Dani's eyes traced lines o
 
 Dani perked up enough to watch the climax of the movie, canting her ears back enough so that the movie isn't all she heard. She'd seen it dozens of times already. She was more interested in Amy's thoughts than in the movie itself.
 
-The denouement of the film was swift. A proper thriller, she decided long ago, should leave several threads hanging. Explain too much, and you get a detective story. Explain too little and you get...well, a mess. You get her life. Too many things independently explained which do nothing to provide a sense of the whole.
+The denouement of the film was swift. A proper thriller, she decided long ago, should leave several threads hanging. Explain too much, and you get a detective story. Explain too little and you get...well, a mess. You get her life. Too many things independently explained which do nothing to provide a sense of the whole, nothing that adds up to a plot.
 
 Amy seemed to melt beside her, slouching first toward one side, then stretching her legs out, and finally slipping down onto the beanbag. It was more of a collapse than a deliberate movement, but at least it was something.
 
@@ -845,9 +847,9 @@ Amy seemed to melt beside her, slouching first toward one side, then stretching
 
 Nothing but the sounds of the ringtail settling into the beanbag bed. It was her bed, even. Dani's was around the corner in the bedroom.
 
-The otter carefully squirmed onto her side, doing all she can not to tweak her tail more than she already has. She'll need to get up to use the bathroom a some point, but for now, she considered herself stuck.
+The otter carefully squirmed onto her side, doing all she could not to tweak her tail more than she already had. She would need to get up to use the bathroom a some point, but for now, she considered herself stuck.
 
-*Might as well fix this, while we're at it.*
+*Might as well fix this, while we're here.*
 
 "You okay, Amy?"
 
@@ -857,13 +859,13 @@ Dani hesitated for a moment before murmuring, "Is that your name now?"
 
 "No, that's my name. Just Amber."
 
-The ringtail's voice was flat, her eyes downcast and even then focusing on nothing. It hurt to listen to.
+The ringtail's voice was flat, her eyes downcast, and even then focusing on nothing. It hurt to listen to.
 
-"Did I go to far?"
+"Did I go too far?"
 
 "No, you're fine."
 
-Dani watched the way Amber's eyes went in and out of focus. They never shifted the direction in which they were looking, but it was still plain enough to see the focus shifting.
+Dani watched the way Amber's eyes went in and out of focus. They never shifted the direction in which they were looking, but it was still plain enough to see her thoughts shifting instead.
 
 "You want to know something?" Dani asked.
 
@@ -873,13 +875,13 @@ The ringtail lifted her gaze enough to look at Dani properly. "Mm."
 
 Amy--Amber's ears tilted back. Short, sharp condemnations.
 
-Dani pressed on all the same. "You're the one who sees something on the far bank that she wants. You have a goal, something you could really desire. Not just a passing fancy."
+Dani pressed on all the same. She tried to pick up on the smooth confidence of Amber when she had told stories, tried to slip into the same casual language. "You're the one who sees something on the far bank that she wants. You have a goal, something you could really desire. Not just a passing fancy."
 
 Amber's expression softened.
 
 "So you think, *Ah, there we go! Just what I was after.* But it's on the far bank, right? So you look around and you see the crocodile. He's a good kid, you know. The type of person who would try to do right by you, even if he doesn't get the whole story.
 
-"Well now, you've got a means, and you've got a goal, but you don't have the influence to make it happen. So you sit down by the crocodile and you say, *Great day out here, really nice.* And he says, *Yup.* And it's not great and all, but you know it's gonna take a while to sway the crocodile's interests to align with yours.
+"Well now, you've got a means, and you've got a goal, but you don't have the influence to make it happen. So you sit down by the crocodile and you say, *Great day out here, really nice.* And he says, *Yup.* And it's not a great start and all, but you know it's gonna take a while to sway the crocodile's interests to align with yours.
 
 "*I always find myself thinking of the far bank, of what that would bring me, what I could gain by being there.* The croc frowns. Each bank is the same to him. The river is as valid as land, when it comes to crossing.
 
@@ -887,7 +889,7 @@ Amber's expression softened.
 
 Amber was grinning outright, though she stayed quiet to let Dani finish her telling.
 
-"And that crocodile, well, you know he was kinda of an asshole. All he was thinking about was what he'd get out of the deal. Sometimes that's good and all, like you want to get to the other side too, right?
+"And that crocodile, well, you know he was kind of an asshole. All he was thinking about was what he'd get out of the deal. Sometimes that's good and all, like you want to get to the other side too, right?
 
 "Still, you've got goals other than just *Hey, just looking for a lay.*"
 
@@ -899,7 +901,7 @@ Amber's grin gets tight, a bit mean, but no less earnest.
 
 "The croc laughs, and comes back at you with. *Why don't you just send her my way, then?*
 
-"*Well, it's not that easy, duh. I don't know the girl, I just know my guy, he says he knows all sorts of these girls.* You give this big, exasperated sigh. *Look, just get me over there, and I'll get this all sorted out. We both want that, right?*"
+"*Well, it's not that easy, duh, or I would'a. I don't know the girl, I just know my guy, he says he knows all sorts of these girls.* You give this big, exasperated sigh. *Look, just get me over there, and I'll get this all sorted out with my buddy. We both want that, right?*"
 
 The ringtail was fully engaged now, laughing and rolling her eyes and nodding along with Dani.
 
@@ -913,7 +915,7 @@ The ringtail was fully engaged now, laughing and rolling her eyes and nodding al
 
 Amber laughed outright at that last bit, and Dani grinned happily in response.
 
-"I'll give you an nine out of ten on delivery on that one," the ringtail said. "You sold me at the end there, but at the beginning, it sounded like an apology."
+"I'll give you a nine out of ten on delivery on that one," the ringtail said. "You sold me at the end there, but at the beginning, it sounded like an apology."
 
 "Yeah." Dani grinned sheepishly. "I'm sorry, Amber."
 
@@ -929,15 +931,15 @@ Dani laughed. "Oh yeah?"
 
 The otter went quiet at that, tilting her head. "How do you mean?"
 
-Amber shrugged. "I got here. I made it across the rockies, and I have a few more, uh...rivers to cross, but I got here with a bunch of help."
+Amber shrugged. "I got here. I made it across the Rockies, and I have a few more, uh...rivers to cross, but I got here with a bunch of help, like that dick back at the shelter."
 
 Dani nodded, waited.
 
 "It cost a lot. More than I want to say. But I can move on from that."
 
-The otter gathered up the ringtail's paws in her own and gave them a squeeze. "You sure you're okay?"
+The otter gathered up the ringtail's paws in her own and gave them a squeeze. "You sure you're okay? You safe from that guy?"
 
-"I think so, yeah." Amber nodded. "He's too interested in experiences, rather than people. He can go off and get more of those, while I get what I want."
+"I think so, yeah." Amber nodded. "He's too 'interested in experiences, rather than people.' He can go off and get more of those, while I get what I want."
 
 Dani nodded, and let the silence linger on. Finally, she screwed up the courage to add, "You can stay here, too, you know. Long as you need."
 
@@ -945,13 +947,13 @@ Amber laughed easily. "Thank you. You've done so much for me."
 
 "Does that make me your crocodile?" Dani shot back, grinning.
 
-The ringtail didn't respond verbally, but leaned in and give Dani a kiss.
+The ringtail didn't respond verbally, but rather leaned in and give Dani a kiss.
 
-The otter froze. It was completely out of the blue, though perhaps some part of Dani suspected it was coming. The tension had been a thing, of course, but had always been on her end. She hadn't expected a homeless girl to be giving her a kiss, no matter the stories that surrounded it.
+Dani froze. It was completely out of the blue, though perhaps some part of her suspected it was coming. The tension had been a thing, of course, but had always been on her end. She hadn't expected a homeless girl to be giving her a kiss, no matter the stories that surrounded it.
 
 All the same, the otter relented, shifting more onto her side and ignoring the twinge in her tail. When presented with a kiss, there was no further categorization to be done. They were kissing, and that was that.
 
-The moment shifted and so did Amber, leaning back away from Dani. The otter plastered her whiskers back against her muzzle. She couldn't hide just how much the kiss had affected her, but she could at least distract from the fact.
+The moment shifted, and Amber leaning back away from Dani. The otter plastered her whiskers back against her muzzle with a little 'huff'. She couldn't hide just how much the kiss had affected her, but she could at least distract from the fact.
 
 "Tell me your name."
 
@@ -961,13 +963,13 @@ Amber smiled. It was a soft and kind smile, open and honest. "Amber."
 
 "Would you like to?"
 
-Dani laughed. "Probably not. If your goal was to subvert me organizing everything too much, you did it. This, though--" and she leaned forward to give Amber another kiss. "I'd like to hold onto this."
+Dani laughed. "Probably not. If your goal was to subvert me organizing everything too much, you did it. This, though--" and she leaned forward to give Amber another quick kiss. "I'd like to hold onto this."
 
-The ringtail smiled, looking happier than before with nose nearly pressed in against Dani's. "'Amber's real. That's my true name."
+The ringtail smiled, looking happier than before, with nose nearly pressed in against Dani's. "'Amber's real, don't worry. That's my true name."
 
 Her whiskers bristling from the close contact, Dani smiled. "What power does that grant me, knowing that?"
 
-"What power would you like?" Amber grinned.
+"What power would you like?"
 
 "Flight?"
 
@@ -993,37 +995,39 @@ And so Dani did.
 
 The otter would ever be herself, and she owned that. It was her place in life to classify the things around her, and so she took up the reins and did as she was built to do.
 
-Amber, her fur was soft. It wasn't pillowy or silky, but it did fall into the category of soft, similar to the way silt was soft.
+Amber, her fur was soft under Dani's paws. It wasn't pillowy or silky, but it fell into the category of dry-soft, similar to the way silt was soft.
 
-*F.S03 --- fur, soft, dry and smooth*.
-{: class="text-right"}
+> *F:S.03 --- fur, soft, dry and smooth*.
 
-The ringtail was small --- she barely fit in Dani's clothes, and the otter wasn't large by any stretch of the imagination. But one can wear oversized clothing in a number of ways. Amber didn't seem young, like a girl wearing her father's clothes. She didn't seem like someone wearing ill-fitted clothing. She was just comfortably two sizes smaller than Dani, and was wearing that clothing while her clothing was being dried off. That had to be a trope of its own.
+Dani began her categorization with touch, as the two leaned in closer to each other. There had been the softness of Amber's paws in her own when they'd touched earlier, but now that they were leaning into more of an embrace, Dani's paws slipped up along the ringtail's arms, ruffling through clean fur, and then from arms to sides.
 
-*C.Sm.03 --- clothing, small, by necessity (cute)*.
-{: class="text-right"}
+The ringtail was small --- she barely fit in Dani's clothes, and the otter wasn't large by any stretch of the imagination. But one can wear oversized clothing in a number of ways. Amber didn't seem young, like a girl wearing her father's clothes. She didn't seem like someone trying ill-fitted clothing. She was just comfortably two sizes smaller than Dani, and was wearing that clothing while her clothing was being dried off. That had to be a trope of its own.
+
+> *S:Sm.03 --- size: small, by necessity (cute)*.
+
+Neither otters nor ringtails were burdened by long snouts like some of Dani's friends. All the same, when the kiss broke --- as kisses do --- Dani tucked her muzzle alongside Amber's, nosing her way through fur from cheek to neck. The scent of the ringtail's fur filled her nostrils.
 
 Sometimes, one comes out of the shower smelling not just clean, but bearing the Scent of Clean, patented and trademarked. Amber had just come out of the shower earlier in the day, but she smelled...not clean, but of herself, with nothing standing in the way of that.
 
-*Os.C.10 --- odor (self), clean, pleasant (not perfumed)*.
-{: class="text-right"}
+> *O:C.10 --- odor: clean, pleasant (not perfumed)*.
 
-She was responsive to Dani's touches. She didn't arch or buck her hips or do anything so silly, but neither was she totally passive. Dani felt that she could drag her paws down along the ringtail's sides and front, and trust that she would continue to feel that confidence. Not eager, but willing. Not slack, but still. Not passive, but soft. Available and open to Dani as the otter moved against her.
+Amber shifted up enough to let Dani settle onto her back. The otter slipped her arms around the ringtail's compact form. With clothing bunching up, her webbed fingers explored through soft fur, exploring the contours of Amber's back, lithe and strong.
 
-*R.5.05 --- responsiveness, consensual, familiar*.
-{: class="text-right"}
+She was responsive to Dani's touches. She didn't arch or wiggle or do anything so silly, but neither was she totally passive. Dani felt that she could drag her paws down along the ringtail's sides and front, and trust that she would continue to feel that confidence. Not eager, but willing. Not slack, but still. Not passive, but soft. Available and open to Dani as the otter moved against her.
+
+> *R:5.05 --- responsiveness: consensual, familiar*.
 
 Nose twitched, ears perked, paws touched. Dani explored and investigated, gleefully categorizing as she went. Amber was middling ticklish, more quiet than not, and prone to stretching when touched. When they interacted, they were neither verbose nor silent, neither shy nor bold; just a comfortable commingling that was sensual enough to be labeled as such without being lewd.
 
-Dani ignored the twinges of pain in her tail as she moved. It was more important to find the ways in which they fit together than to hold her tail still. There are things, she knew, that she would regret the next day: stretches, actions, words. Each of those was duly labeled and set aside.
+Dani ignored the twinges of pain in her tail as she moved. It was more important that she find the ways in which they fit together than to hold her tail still. There are things, she knew, that she would regret the next day: stretches, actions, words. Each of those was duly labeled and set aside.
 
-The otter focused instead on the things that made them both feel fulfilled. They were both all-in on this, they were both moving together, and that left her path clear: there were a limited set of choices she could make, and she made them.
+The otter focused instead on the things that made them both feel fulfilled. They were both all-in on this, they were both intent on one another, and that left her mind clear. There were a limited set of choices she could make --- to touch here and kiss there, to taste, to stroke, to clutch --- and she made them.
 
 By the time the two of them settled down together once more, panting and laughing, Dani knew that her classification of Amber had been wrong from start to finish. The act, the moment, the motions --- those had all been tagged and labeled, described and delineated.
 
 The ringtail: not at all.
 
-Amber had come into her life through both of their actions, as well as circumstances outside their control. Along each step of their journey, each had made choices and taken actions that wound up here, with each tangled in their own clothes, and both tangled with one another, sharing pleasure and breath.
+Amber had come into her life through both of their actions, as well as circumstances outside their control. Along each step of their journey, each had made choices and taken actions that wound up here, with each tangled in their own clothes and both tangled with one another, sharing pleasure and breath.
 
 Every step of the way had been noted and slotted into its own comfortable box.
 
@@ -1031,11 +1035,11 @@ Dani, as a person, was easily classified, but Amber...she was wholly uncategoriz
 
 -----
 
-When Dani awoke early the next morning --- very early, far before her alarms --- she was alone. Amber was gone.
+When Dani awoke early the next morning --- very early, far before even her alarms --- she was alone. Amber was gone.
 
-When she thought of the last few days, she wasn't totally surprised. The parable from the night before had been accurate enough: Amber had gotten to the other side of the cold snap. Dani would be left grappling with the Amber-that-was, the Amy and the Alex and the Anne, for a while yet.
+When she thought of the last few days, she wasn't totally surprised. The parable from the night before had been accurate enough: Amber had gotten to the other side of the cold snap. Dani would be left grappling with the Amber-that-was, the Amy and the Alex and the Anne, for a while yet, but Amber was on her way.
 
-Not surprised, but not happy. She had set aside that hindbrain need to categorize and order her life for someone, and now they were gone. Maybe that was good, though. Maybe she needed a bit less order in her life.
+Not surprised, but not happy. She had set aside that overarching need to categorize and order her life for someone, and now they were gone. It hadn't been a one-night stand, hadn't been a fling. It wasn't a relationship, though Dani would have welcomed that. It had been a closeness borne of cold and necessity.
 
 She clumsily paced her apartment for a few hours, that Tuesday. The university was still closed for the remainder of the cold snap, though the temperature was now well above zero. She suspected it was more of an issue about the boiler than the temperature. Either way, she was still all wobbly from the strain in her tail.
 
@@ -1049,4 +1053,8 @@ She put a movie to playing.
 
 She cleaned the kitchen and picked up all the blankets on the beanbag.
 
-She slowly reorganized her life around this Amber-shaped hole, and the only thing left missing was her catalog of folktales.
+She checked the clothes dryer, but it was empty, with the clothes she'd lent Amber piled beneath, so she did a load of laundry
+
+She slowly reorganized her life around this Amber-shaped hole, patching together feelings into a new whole.
+
+And the only thing missing was her catalog of folktales.