Edits, finished majority of Idumea

idumea/content/001.tex

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ Once upon a time there was--
 
 ``A king?'' my little readers will immediately say.
 
-No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time, there was a woman. She was not a fine woman, not a prize to adorn your arm or to set beside you at the head of a grand table, but a simple woman --- the kind we pass on the street and imagine some plain home life for. She has a house, one might think. There are floors and walls and windows, there are tables and chairs and sofas and beds. There is a shower and a claw-footed bathtub. There is a creaky step --- the eighth --- that she always swears she will fix.
+No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time, there was a woman. She was not a fine woman, not a prize to adorn your arm or to set beside you at the head of a grand table, but a simple woman—the kind we pass on the street and imagine some plain home life for. She has a house, one might think. There are floors and walls and windows, there are tables and chairs and sofas and beds. There is a shower and a claw-footed bathtub. There is a creaky step—the eighth—that she always swears she will fix.
 
 We must imagine such a woman happy. We must imagine that she has friends and that she goes and drinks okay wine or maybe strange cocktails with them at the most absurd bars. We must imagine that she comes home, wobbling slightly with each step, with some other simple woman on her arm. We must imagine sharing their kisses, being happy together.
 
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ She campaigned for herself and for the others as damaged as her, but I think thi
 
 She campaigned after uploading for individual rights for uploaded minds, before they were even cladists, before forking and sensorium messages and all of the other benefits that the System has to offer.
 
-She was whole because she maintained --- even while overflowing, I think! --- so many deeply held convictions that those around her need not suffer, even if she herself did. Especially, she would say, because she herself did.
+She was whole because she maintained—even while overflowing, I think!—so many deeply held convictions that those around her need not suffer, even if she herself did. Especially, she would say, because she herself did.
 
 I think that she would say, however, that she was \emph{too} whole. I think she would say that she was \emph{too} full, too much, too alive. I think she would say that almost three hundred years of a life that was lived as hers was, with her mind turned in on itself, was too much life. I think she would laugh that hoarse, dry laugh that always sounded like tears were on the way, and say that thirty years was probably too much for her.
 
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ Her Friend was a good person who always treated The Woman well. Ey knew just how
 
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-Every few years, there would be a gathering on her birthday --- their birthday, for Her Friend was also of the Ode clade, also of Michelle Hadje/Sasha --- and they would sit somewhere, whether it was out on the porch of the home The Woman shared with the rest of the tenth stanza, or out on the dandelion-speckled lawn, or, once the door had been built into the house, on rickety chairs outside a cafe over identical coffees.
+Every few years, there would be a gathering on her birthday—their birthday, for Her Friend was also of the Ode clade, also of Michelle Hadje/Sasha—and they would sit somewhere, whether it was out on the porch of the home The Woman shared with the rest of the tenth stanza, or out on the dandelion-speckled lawn, or, once the door had been built into the house, on rickety chairs outside a cafe over identical coffees.
 
 Every time they would meet up thus, The Woman and Her Friend would take a few minutes to themselves to have the same conversation:
 
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ And then Her Friend would ask The Woman if ey could hug her, and she would usual
 
 And after that, they would go to the rest of the party.
 
-I think you would like to see these parties, friends. I think that they would not be quite as you would expect, of course. They are not the kinds of birthday parties that you or I might have. Where we might have cakes and singing and the blowing out of candles, they would gather together over simple foods --- so many from the tenth stanza had such sensitive tastes, and it was so easy to make sure that everyone could eat everything! --- and often they would simply sit silent. They would sit there, quiet, but present in each other's company.
+I think you would like to see these parties, friends. I think that they would not be quite as you would expect, of course. They are not the kinds of birthday parties that you or I might have. Where we might have cakes and singing and the blowing out of candles, they would gather together over simple foods—so many from the tenth stanza had such sensitive tastes, and it was so easy to make sure that everyone could eat everything!—and often they would simply sit silent. They would sit there, quiet, but present in each other's company.
 
 They would not seem to be parties like you and I have because this was not all that different from what might happen once or twice a month at the house in which the tenth stanza all lived. While each lived their own lives, occasionally, their schedules would coincide and they would all sit down together at the giant oak table together and eat, mostly in silence.
 
@@ -100,7 +100,7 @@ But Should We Forget was no longer alive, not since the world had turned in on i
 
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-When Michelle/Sasha had quit, there on a field so similar to the one that she lived on, The Woman breathed out a sigh of relief, because she knew --- though I do not think she know how --- that Michelle/Sasha had found her own relief in those last moments. She had looked up to the sky, up to the Poet, up to the Dreamer who dreamed the world in which they lived, and in those moments she knew relief. She knew relief and she knew joy and she knew so, so much peace.
+When Michelle/Sasha had quit, there on a field so similar to the one that she lived on, The Woman breathed out a sigh of relief, because she knew—though I do not think she know how—that Michelle/Sasha had found her own relief in those last moments. She had looked up to the sky, up to the Poet, up to the Dreamer who dreamed the world in which they lived, and in those moments she knew relief. She knew relief and she knew joy and she knew so, so much peace.
 
 Peace! That was one of the things that The Woman craved. She wanted nothing more than to know a little bit of peace.