MP edits

motes-played/content/007.tex

@@ -404,7 +404,7 @@ And so, A Finger Pointing accepted her up-tree's merge just as blithely.
 
 The effects were both subtle and dramatic.
 
-They were subtle because there was was no sudden incapacitation, no torturous existence that left her craving non-existence. They were subtle because they left her with a life so much like the one she had, but for the fact that her sensorium and sense of self had been severed, separated. \emph{That} was the drama.
+They were subtle because there was was no sudden incapacitation, no torturous existence that left her craving non-existence. They were subtle because they left her with a life so much like the one she had, but for the fact that her\pagebreak\ sensorium and sense of self had been severed, separated. \emph{That} was the drama.
 
 This was the dissociation. This was the derealization. This was the world around her ceasing to make sense, as though in a dream. As though in a dream because she \emph{did} live in a dream, did she not? She lived in the consensual dream that was the System, yes? It was hyper-dreaming, then, it was understanding a dream within a dream.
 
@@ -420,7 +420,7 @@ She wished dearly that she could do so now.
 
 ``I am tired, Beholden.''
 
-``I know, love,'' the skunk said, sitting beside her on the couch and dreaming up a glass of water for her.
+``I know, love,'' the skunk said, sitting beside her on the couch and dreaming up a glass of water for her.\pagebreak
 
 She could still comprehend, at least, and could still see Beholden there beside her, a look of tired concern painted on her face.
 
@@ -466,7 +466,7 @@ And thus it was an expectation one might fall short of. It was a standard one mi
 
 At some point in the past—there were so many admonitions against joy that she could choose from!—A Finger Pointing's friendship with Hammered Silver came to an end. The most visible of these was perhaps when Sasha joined Au Lieu Du Rêve as stage manager in systime 231, five years after she had become Sasha. That was when Hammered Silver had moved beyond cutting off Sasha herself and the entirety of the eighth stanza for their politicking, the first for their spying, and part of the ninth for their mere association, and had included the entirety of the fifth stanza.
 
-For the rest of the fifth stanza also bore this expectation, this standard, this trust that there was within all people something worth friendship, some kernel of joy, and none of them shunned Sasha, either.
+For the rest of the fifth stanza also bore this expectation, this standard, this trust that there was within all people something\pagebreak\ worth friendship, some kernel of joy, and none of them shunned Sasha, either.
 
 Cutting contact is one hell of a way to end a friendship, yes?
 
@@ -480,7 +480,7 @@ And at some point back in the mid 2200s, Motes had begun exploring the concept o
 
 For this was true of all of her up-trees, and for much of Au Lieu Du Rêve besides. Going years back, back even to the late 2100s, this reveling in play that Motes brought to the fifth stanza had built in A Finger Pointing a sense of her place in the order: her role was a maternal one. A reveling in care, in the type of friendship that flowered in a particular dynamic.
 
-She was their matron, in a way. She was their protector. She shielded them as best she could from the politics that so much of their cocladists were engaging in throughout the rest of the System. ``But that is my job,'' she reasoned aloud when she became more open about this protection. ``That is why we have an administrator for Au Lieu Du Rêve, yes? Someone has to deal with the politics of running a theatre, yes?''
+She was their matron, in a way. She was their protector. She shielded them as best she could from the politics that so much of their cocladists were engaging in throughout the rest of the System. ``But that is my job,'' she reasoned aloud when she became\pagebreak\ more open about this protection. ``That is why we have an administrator for Au Lieu Du Rêve, yes? Someone has to deal with the politics of running a theatre, yes?''
 
 The first time Motes called A Finger Pointing `mom', there had been a conversation, full of various confusions and hurts, inquiries and boundaries, tears and tears and tears. Both came to an agreement that this was not comfortable. Not now. Not yet.
 
@@ -520,8 +520,12 @@ There was no more love between them. The trust had been broken. They met to keep
 
 That was the time their friendship died, the moment A Finger Pointing received that letter, the one that she tore up and burned to ash, cried over and then, determined, used the paint of which to spell out renewed love for those who remained in her life.
 
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 The dissociation had before long defined her life, her existence.
 
 It had dampened her hedonism. It had put a stopper on so much of her wild enthusiasm and had led her to so often asking Beholden to take her home when she had so often before outlasted the skunk on their outings. Whereas before she had dwelt in even the excesses of hedonism until she overflowed and locked herself away from it, a self-harm by omission, she now dwelt in the quietudes of hedonism until she overflowed and threw herself with abandon into wildnesses, a self-harm by overindulgence.