Ebook, idumea

idumea/book.tex

@@ -58,7 +58,11 @@
 
     {\Large Madison Rye Progress}
 
-    with {\Large Samantha Yule Fireheart}
+    with contributions from
+
+    {\Large Samantha Yule Fireheart
+
+    Krzysztof “Tomash” Drewniak}
   \end{center}
   \thispagestyle{empty}
 
@@ -80,72 +84,128 @@
   \vspace{1cm}
   
   \noindent\textbf{Content notes:} themes of suicide and poor mental health.
+  
+  The section with Warmth In Fire on page \pageref{warmth} is a collaboration with Samantha Yule Fireheart.
 
-  \cleardoublepage
+  The section with The Dog on page \pageref{thedog} is a collaboration with Krzysztof ``Tomash'' Drewniak.
+
+  \newpage
   \singlespacing
 
   \begin{center}
   {\Large \DisplayFont \underline{Dramatis Personae}}
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
   
-  \vfill
+  {\DisplayFont\underline{The Ode clade}}
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
 
   {\DisplayFont\small Your Humble Narrator}
 
   Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars
 
-  \vfill
+  \vspace{0.7em}
 
   {\DisplayFont\small The Woman}
 
   To Pray For The End Of Endings
 
-  \vfill
+  \vspace{0.7em}
 
   {\DisplayFont\small Her Friend}
   
   I Must Show No Hesitation When Speaking My Name
 
-  \vfill
+  \vspace{0.7em}
 
   {\DisplayFont\small Her Therapist}
 
   Where I May Ever Dream
 
-  \vfill
+  \vspace{0.7em}
 
   {\DisplayFont\small Her Cocladist}
 
   Should We Rejoice In The End Of Endings
 
-  \vfill
+  \vspace{0.7em}
-
-  {\DisplayFont\small Her Lover}
-
-  Farai
-
-  \vfill
 
   {\DisplayFont\small The Oneirotect}
 
   Which Offers Heat And Warmth In Fire
 
-  \vfill
+  \vspace{0.7em}
+
+  {\DisplayFont\small The Instance Artist}
+
+  Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
+
+  {\DisplayFont\small The Poet}
+
+  Where It Watches the Slow Hours Progress
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
+
+  {\DisplayFont\small The Musician}
+
+  Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
 
   {\DisplayFont\small The Child}
 
   And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights
 
-  \vfill
+  \vspace{0.7em}
 
-  {\DisplayFont\small The Instance Artist}
+  {\DisplayFont\small The Narrator's Friend}
 
-  Dear, Also, The Tree That Was Felled
+  Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself
   
-  \vfill
+  \vspace{0.7em}
 
   {\DisplayFont\small The Blue Fairy}
 
   I Remember The Rattle Of Dry Grass
+
+  \newpage
+  
+  \phantom{\Large \DisplayFont \underline{Dramatis Personae}}
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
+
+  {\DisplayFont\underline{Others}}
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
+
+  {\DisplayFont\small Her Lover}
+
+  Farai
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
+
+  {\DisplayFont\small The Dog}
+
+  Scout Among Weird Skunks With Good Kettlecorn
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
+
+  {\DisplayFont\small His Elder}
+
+  Tomash
+
+  \vspace{0.7em}
+
+  {\DisplayFont\small The Rabbit-Chaser}
+
+  \fbox{\rule{1in}{0pt}\rule[0.2ex]{0pt}{1.1ex}} (called ``Scout Chasing Rabbits'')
+
+  \vfill
+
+  And, of course, you, my dear, \emph{dear} reader.
   \end{center}
 
   \mainmatter
@@ -180,21 +240,29 @@
   
   \Char{End Of Endings — 2403\par ×\par Rye — 2409}
   \markboth{Idumea}{Madison Rye Progress}
-  \chapter*{1}
+  %\chapter*{1}
+  \secdiv
   \input{content/001}
-  \chapter*{2}
+  %\chapter*{2}
+  \secdiv
   \input{content/002}
-  \chapter*{3}
+  %\chapter*{3}
+  \secdiv
   \input{content/003}
-  \chapter*{4}
+  %\chapter*{4}
+  \secdiv
   \input{content/004}
-  \chapter*{5}
+  %\chapter*{5}
+  \secdiv
   \input{content/005}
-  \chapter*{6}
+  %\chapter*{6}
+  \secdiv
   \input{content/006}
-  \chapter*{7}
+  %\chapter*{7}
+  \secdiv
   \input{content/007}
-  \chapter*{8}
+  %\chapter*{8}
+  \secdiv
   \input{content/008}\input{graphomania}
 
   \newpage

idumea/content/005.tex

@@ -1,3 +1,6 @@
+\hypertarget{end-of-endings-2403-rye-2409}{%
+\subsection{\texorpdfstring{End Of Endings --- 2403×Rye --- 2409}{End Of Endings --- 2403 × Rye --- 2409}}\label{end-of-endings-2403-rye-2409}}
+
 Some of my readers may be wondering why it is that I know so much about The Woman.
 
 ``How does she know all of this?'' some might be wondering. ``Does she really know all these things that The Woman did? Does she know who the kindly shop owner is? The one who pet on The Woman as she sobbed from too spicy a chili?'' Others might be wondering --- and rightly so! --- ``How much of this is actually real? Surely she does not know The Woman's innermost thoughts! All this talk of ideas in shapes being set before her is quite silly.''
@@ -6,7 +9,7 @@ My answer is that tired phrase: ``It is complicated.'' Of course I do not know h
 
 What I do have, though, is a story. I have the story I learned from The Woman's Friend and Therapist and Cocladist and Lover, the one I learned from The Blue Fairy. I have all of that story that I learned, and I have that story that I lived.
 
-\secdiv
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{0.5pt}\end{center}
 
 One day --- I remember it being quite a warm one, though every sim has different weather, and we as a clade are not all that keen on cold --- one day, The Woman came to me.
 
@@ -56,7 +59,7 @@ I will admit, friends, that I looked down at my pajama pants and t-shirt and lau
 
 ``Perhaps one never does,'' she said, ``and yet you exist so well contained. The whole of you exists within the person sitting before me. You are Rye, the author. You are Rye, the sincere. You are Rye who is kind. You are these things and you are none other.''
 
-My readers will know well that I have too many words in my. Why, just look at all that I have written already! I have gone on at length about Laotian food and lovers and friends and family and mochas and melancholy. I have accused myself already a handful of times of intruding on my own story, of being helpless before the graphomania that guides my paw. So it is that you must believe me when I say that I was left speechless. All of this ceaseless torrent of words within me simply stopped.
+My readers will know well that I have too many words in me. Why, just look at all that I have written already! I have gone on at length about Laotian food and lovers and friends and family and mochas and melancholy. I have accused myself already a handful of times of intruding on my own story, of being helpless before the graphomania that guides my paw. So it is that you must believe me when I say that I was left speechless. All of this ceaseless torrent of words within me simply stopped.
 
 I do not know if you have ever been complimented in just the right way by just the right person, but if you have, you well know that it is startling in its intensity. Had someone else said these things about me, even my beloved up-trees, I might well have blushed and stammered a thank you and felt good for the rest of the day.
 
@@ -75,46 +78,14 @@ She smiled --- another blessing! --- and nodded to me.
 ``She has, at that,'' I said.
 
 ``We sat in the solarium and spoke about what reading \emph{is.} She spoke of taking a story or a poem and wrapping oneself up in it. She gave me an example. She recited a poem:
-\newpage
 
-\begin{verse}
+\{\{\% verse \%\}\} Too many suits move in too many lines. They circle banquet tables, hawk-eyed, hunting crudites, canapés, bruschetta. Fingers ferry food --- fish, perhaps --- finding slack-jawed mouths already open, squawking at wayward children or bemoaning The Market, whatever that may be. At some point, who cares how long ago, death surfaced, claimed one, submerged again. Who knows how well they knew him, their backs turned, studiously deciding that he is no longer of them? One could never guess. We can say his suit was very fine, perhaps, that the room is tastefully furnished, the casket silver, the bar, open, quite good, and none of them are drunk yet, or at least none look it. ``Good man, good man,'' they mutter, doing all they can to convince each other through well-rehearsed performances, that this must be the case. The silently bereaved already sit graveside.'' \{\{\% /verse \%\}\}
-``Too many suits move in too many lines.\\
-They circle banquet tables, hawk-eyed,\\
-hunting crudites, canapés, bruschetta.\\
-Fingers ferry food — fish, perhaps — finding\\
-slack-jawed mouths already open,\\
-squawking at wayward children\\
-or bemoaning The Market,\\
-whatever that may be.
 
-``At some point, who cares how long ago,\\
+I turned those words over and over in my head for a minute, since The Woman had seemed quite comfortable sitting in silence with me. She used that time to drink her water while I played back the words again and again, looking down at my paws, and then returned my gaze to hers. ``There is a difference between the performance of grief and grieving, is there not?''
-death surfaced, claimed one, submerged again.\\
-Who knows how well they knew him,\\
-their backs turned, studiously\\
-deciding that he is no longer of them?
-
-``One could never guess.
-
-``We can say his suit was very fine, perhaps,\\
-that the room is tastefully furnished,\\
-the casket silver, the bar, open,\\
-quite good, and none of them are drunk yet,\\
-or at least none look it.
-
-``\,``Good man, good man,'' they mutter,\\
-doing all they can to convince each other\\
-through well-rehearsed performances,\\
-that this must be the case.
-
-The silently bereaved already sit graveside.''
-\end{verse}
-
-\newpage
-\noindent I turned those words over and over in my head for a minute, since The Woman had seemed quite comfortable sitting in silence with me. She used that time to drink her water while I played back the words again and again, looking down at my paws, and then returned my gaze to hers. ``There is a difference between the performance of grief and grieving, is there not?''
 
 ``It is as you say. There is performed grief and performative grief. We of the tenth stanza were quite sad when Lagrange came back with us but not Should We Forget. We received condolences from many, some flowers and many kind words. Ever Dream came over and spoke with me about grief as we sat out on the field, where she said,''It is quite sad, is it not? To lose someone you have known for so long is quite sad.'' I agreed, and then drew a line around the topic.'' She performed such a motion now, describing an arc before her with one of her well kept claws, before dismissing it with a wave. ``This was grief performed.''
 
-I nodded, and in my heart, I think I knew what was coming next, for I found my muscles bunching up as if in preparation for something --- flight, perhaps? I do not know, my friends.
+I nodded, and in my heart, I think I knew what was coming next, for I found my muscles bunching up as in in preparation for something --- flight, perhaps? I do not know, my friends.
 
 ``And Warmth In Fire came over, too, so that it could sit at our table and weep rather than eat. Ey wept, and then asked to retreat, and we guided her up to Should We Forget's room so that they could lay in her bed for a while in silence. When it came back downstairs, ey thanked us kindly and left, and when we went back upstairs to look, there was a flower wrought out of some subtly glowing metal left on Should We Forget's pillow. It lays there still.''
 
@@ -278,7 +249,9 @@ She nodded.
 
 ``I see we understand it in the same way. I cannot tell, either. I can tell you, though, that watching Motes brought me the closest to the joy that I have been seeking that I have ever been.'' She frowned down to her glass, now empty. When she continued, her speech was halting, slow, thoughtful. ``Not\ldots for me, not my own joy, and I think not even for her, though the little skunk certainly seems quite joyful. It is\ldots adjacent to the joy. It brought me near to the joy, but did not necessarily bring the joy to me.''
 
-\secdiv
+\begin{center}\rule{0.5\linewidth}{0.5pt}\end{center}
+
+\label{warmth}
 
 We talked for some time more, The Woman and I, and discussed what it was that we could do to help her find joy. I am sorry to say, though, that we were not quite able to come up with something.
 

idumea/content/007.tex

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
-When at last The Woman returned home, left my home and returned to her own, her mind was aswirl with possibilities and all the various endlessnesses thereof. She felt full. She felt \emph{overfull.} She felt as though she had had poured into her several depths, oceans of possibilities and each as deep or deeper than the last. She was vast. She was limitless. She was these things, and yet she was infinitely smaller than the limitless endlessness of the void which still lay within and without.
+When at last The Woman returned home, left my home and returned to her own, walked out into the field for a day and then lay down, her mind was aswirl with possibilities and all the various endlessnesses thereof. She felt full. She felt \emph{overfull.} She felt as though she had had poured into her several depths, oceans of possibilities and each as deep or deeper than the last. She was vast. She was limitless. She was these things, and yet she was infinitely smaller than the limitless endlessness of the void which still lay within and without.
 
-She returned home after that talk with me and my beloved up-tree, with your humble narrator and The Oneirotect, and she did that which she is good at: she napped.
+She returned home after that talk with me and my beloved up-tree, with your humble narrator and The Oneirotect, and she went for a walk and she did that which she is good at: she napped. There, out on the grass, there, she napped.
 
 My dear, dear friends, the longer I go on, the more I pace around through quiet rooms the more these words swirl around me in some quiet maelstrom, the more I wish that I could do the same. Sleep brings no relief. Within my dreams there are yet more words. The boundary between waking and sleeping is so faint, now --- I write even in my sleep! My dreams are of The Woman! My dreams are of me sitting at my desk with my pen in my paw and paper before me, of ink on page and words flowing after like an eager puppy! --- the boundary is so faint now that I have more than once awoken from uneasy sleep to found that I had indeed at some point sat down at my desk and written word after word after word, after word and word and word. I have found pages of endlessly repeating phrases. I have found scribbles that are doubtless words and yet which I cannot decipher, and I cannot remember my dreams well enough to say what they may have been.
 
@@ -36,19 +36,19 @@ This is my supposition for The Woman and her dream after she came home from my h
 
 \secdiv
 
-The longer we live --- and, my dear readers, I will remind you that I am now 333 years old! --- the more evident it becomes to us that there is fractally cyclical nature to life: the years spiral up and the months spiral around and the days spiral forward --- weeks are a construct borne out of our inherited faith --- and so we live within a fractally cyclical tangle of time.
+The longer we live --- and, my dear readers, I will remind you that I am now 323 years old! --- the more evident it becomes to us that there is fractally cyclical nature to life: the years spiral up and the months spiral around and the days spiral forward --- weeks are a construct borne out of our inherited faith --- and so we live within a fractally cyclical tangle of time.
 
 I know this. You know this, I am sure, on however instinctual a level, for you are clever and bright and you see the world with fresher eyes than I have. You are cleverer and brighter and fresher than your humble narrator who paces the empty rooms of her house and fills them with the quiet muttering of the mad.
 
-The Woman knew this as well. When she woke from her nap --- for my astute readers remember that that is how this rambling chapter began! --- she could now --- in a way she could not before --- feel and perhaps even see these spirals. She could see the way that her 227 years had spiraled up around her. She could see the way that time bound her, tied her up in coils and coils and coils and coils and coils. She could see these coils --- however metaphorically --- as they twine around her legs and torso. She can feel these coils --- however metaphorically --- slowing her down, holding her arms to her side and limiting her reach. They --- these coils --- obscure her.
+The Woman knew this as well. When she woke from her nap --- for my astute readers remember that that is how this rambling chapter began! --- she could now --- in a way she could not before --- feel and perhaps even see these spirals. She could see the way that her 317 years had spiraled up around her. She could see the way that time bound her, tied her up in coils and coils and coils and coils and coils. She could see these coils --- however metaphorically --- as they twine around her legs and torso. She can feel these coils --- however metaphorically --- slowing her down, holding her arms to her side and limiting her reach. They --- these coils and coils and coils --- obscure her.
 
-Ah, my friends, I am struggling. I can feel and see these coils, yes, and am obscured.
+Ah, my friends, I am struggling. I can feel and see these coils and coils and coils and coils and coils, yes, and am obscured.
 
 I am going to lay down, and perhaps I will dream.
 
 \secdiv
 
-I have slept now. I took a cue from The Woman and took a nap, and while it did not come quite so easily to me as it ever did to her, it still offered some rest.
+I have slept now. I took a cue from The Woman and took a nap, and while it did not come quite so easily to me as it ever did to her, it still offered some respite.
 
 I dreamed, though! I dreamed of words like leaves and sentences like branches and stories like trunks, standing solid, with premises like roots dug into logic like earth and drinking of emotions like water. There was the tree, yes, for there was the green of the words and the brown of the story and the deep darkness of logic and emotion.
 
@@ -56,6 +56,154 @@ And above was the sun which was also The Dreamer who dreams us all.
 
 \secdiv
 
+When at last The Woman returned home, she performed a new ritual. She performed a ritual of mourning.
+
+This, you see, was the start of her final task. Her set of five tasks, of food, of physical pleasure, of entertainment, of creation, of spirituality was not quite complete, and had within it one more step, and she felt most a connection to the spiritual in the act of mourning.
+
+My friends, I think it may well have been our conversation, that of The Woman and The Oneirotect and I, that set her mind thus in motion, for was it not then that we spoke so freely of my beloved up-tree and the way it mourned over Should We Forget? Did not the pair of long lost tenth stanza lines come up as well? Death Itself and I Do Not Know? They, too, perhaps felt some of this too-full-ness that The Woman struggles with, for back and back and back and back, six decades back, they lay still and thought and, before long, before the week is out, quit. They bowed out. They dipped. Committed suicide. Quit the big one. They push now up some perhaps daisies in the mind of The Dreamer who dreams us all.
+
+There is loss in our lives and in our hearts and in our minds.
+
+But the tenth stanza knows \emph{these} losses with a particular keenness. They leave empty seats and full plates at the table for these three who are gone. They speak the names of the dead on at least their Yahrzeit when they light the candle, and, for some of them, far more often, for The Woman's Cocladist was very fond of Death Itself, as the two loved each other fiercely, and it was perhaps this loss that drove Her Cocladist's bitterness and aught-elses.
+
+Friends, you must understand that \emph{we} love \emph{us.} Even those of us who bore hatred for the others, the hatred of much of the sixth and seventh stanzas for others within the clade, even they love \emph{us.} Some of us just bear a particular love for others of us. I have my beloved up-tree, yes? And ey has eir trickster partner, yes? And My Friend has The Musician, yes?
+
+\emph{We} love \emph{us,} and The Woman's Cocladist loved Death Itself.
+
+And so The Woman walked quietly up the stairs and knocked on Her Cocladist's door.
+
+``Come in,'' came the quiet reply.
+
+The Woman pushed the door open and bowed. ``Rejoice.''
+
+``Ah, End Of Endings,'' Her Cocladist said from the amorphous chair she had claimed as her own, a perch over by the window where she read. Beside her: a stack of books. Behind her: several more. Lining the walls of the room: shelf after shelf after shelf after shelf of books. Shelf after shelf after-- ah, the words fit so poorly, and so I try again and again and again to write them again.
+
+``May I join you for a few moments?''
+
+``Of course. What brings you to the end of the hall?''
+
+``I would like to sit by Death Itself's bed for a few minutes.''
+
+Her Cocladist, halfway through setting her book aside, froze, and a wash of skunk spiraled up along her form, only to be replaced yet again by humanity, black fur sprouting, wilting, fading only to be replaced by skin. ``Why?''
+
+The Woman stood still in the doorway. ``Because I am sad, and because I miss her.''
+
+``Alright,'' Her Cocladist said and finished the act of setting her book down, tented over the open page --- no, do not get angry at her; sys-side, there are no broken bindings. ``Do not sit on her bed.''
+
+The Woman bowed once more and stepped at last over the threshold, shutting the door behind her.
+
+Along the other wall --- that wall that had been hidden to the woman --- was a simple bed, a single bed, a single-size mattress, and a wall painted in a feathery ombré from golden orange to purple-black. The covers were rumpled, clearly slept in. Clearly slept in and also clearly frozen in time, for the bed had not been touched since Death Itself had quit fifty seven years before. The Woman would not sit on it, even had Her Cocladist not warned her, for such was simply the way of things. The same was true of I Do Not Know's bed, and the only person who had laid in Should We Forget's bed was The Oneirotect who deserved such an expression of grief.
+
+The Woman had her own ritual of grief to perform, though, and this did not call for touching the bed
+
+\secdiv
+
+\label{thedog}
+
+The Woman sat down on the floor by The Dog. She knew he was a cladist, for cladists come in many shapes --- did she not also appear as a skunk? And a panther? And now, here, she was a human! --- and so hoped he might have insight into unbecoming. This, after all, was the purpose of her visit to Le Rêve, the neighborhood of the fifth stanza, that of The Poet and The Musician and My Friend, and also The Child. It was The Child who was her goal, you see. She wished to speak with those who had changed, who had pushed themselves into new molds, who had become something new, that they might no longer be what had once drove them. Stillness lay in choice --- that was the thought she held onto --- that is the thought that I wish I could believe; would that I could choose to be still! Would that I could choose silence and images instead of yet more words.
+
+The Dog had attached himself to Au Lieu Du Rêve, to the theatre troupe and to the fifth stanza, to His Skunks, some time ago. He spent many lazy days among them, many evenings dozing by the kettlecorn stand in the theater lobby in the hopes of someone dropping their snacks, many frantic minutes carrying The Child's latest core dump to the resident systech after she yet again in a bout of play had crashed.
+
+The Dog was the fork of a systech, itself. No longer a systech, primarily a dog, but with such a drive within it. It, like its fellow dogs, lived a simplicity that Its Elder found himself wishing for now and again, but it still felt that sense of duty to people and the world. How very canine of it! How very companionable! Friendship is stored in the dog, yes? It did not know if it would ever grow weary of its role and return to Its Elder, or perhaps cast away what remained of its desire to do anything but exist as itself.
+
+``I want to unbecome,'' The Woman said to The Dog, crouching down where it lay, curled in sun, curled on a cushion so thoughtfully provided. ``I want to become still. I came to speak with Motes, but you have done a similar thing, and I want to understand.''
+
+The Dog heard these words. He understood, I think, that he was being asked about how he became himself. He knew he could think about these things, could answer, could take up a larger piece of his buried humanity and become a being of words and such actions. He did not want to do this, but he did not \emph{not} want to.
+
+It rose. It walked in front of the kettlecorn machine. It sat. It raised its front paws to beg. It was certain its intent was clear.
+
+The Woman made a bag of kettlecorn and held out a piece to The Dog. He accepted, of course. What dog would not?
+
+\emph{``Practice and wanting,''} The Dog said.
+
+``Practice?'' The Woman asked, lowering herself down to once more meet The Dog on its level.
+
+The Dog did not answer, but sniffed in the direction of the corn.
+
+The Woman gave The Dog another piece, for this was, evidently, the deal. \emph{``I remember,''} The Dog said. \emph{``The tall one wanted to eat and chase and fetch and be. He wanted to not worry, to not tire himself out chasing making the world better. But he couldn't just become me, become us --- The Job is important.''}
+
+The Dog waited for another bribe before continuing, for this was, evidently, the deal. \emph{``He practiced becoming the pack, becoming like me. I remember many forks of his. Some that didn't let go enough, some that let go too much. But he wanted to make me, make the pack. He kept wanting, kept trying, and now I am.''}
+
+The Dog yawned. He had said a lot of words, and that was not always comfortable for him. It is not comfortable for me, yes? I am a being of words and words and words and words and it is uncomfortable, my friends, so uncomfortable. It reminded The Dog too much of human things, of things he no longer was in some integral way. He wanted a nap.
+
+``\,`Let go too much'?'' The Woman asked.
+
+\emph{``Some of us forget our job,''} The Dog explained.
+
+``Job?''
+
+The Dog's tail wagged. \emph{``Yes! I watch and if someone becomes a black ball or the ground goes weird or something like that I fetch help! It's very important! When I do it, people call me a good dog and give me pets and treats!''}
+
+The Woman reached out to pet The Dog. It relaxed into the pressure.
+
+\emph{``Some of the pack decide they don't want the job, want to do what the tall one is afraid of. They want to never talk, never plan.''}
+
+``I want something like this, perhaps,'' The Woman said. ``I want to unbecome, to be still. Do you know how?''
+
+The Dog froze in a swelling of alarm. His fears came from the same simplicity as his joys. While he was wont to let the possibility of casting off his humanity sneak up on him slowly, he still felt fear, like His Elder did, at such a blunt statement of the idea. \emph{``Don't want! Who will watch Motes?''}
+
+The Woman gently soothed The Dog, letting the interaction fade away behind a stream of pets and scratches in just the right spot (for The Dog knew how to direct people to it) and more treats. We are creatures of pleasure all, you see. The Woman and I, yes --- for do we not both like being brushed? --- but also the rest of our clade and so many others besides. What pleasure there is in rending the mind from the body and letting it live as it will! What pleasure! What pleasure there is in choosing a form one inhabits entirely! What pleasure there is in living for decades and centuries! The Dog was pleased that The Woman had not been told by Its Skunks not to feed it too much of the stuff, or that, if she had, she was ignoring them.
+
+Once The Dog had come down from being ambushed by the thought of abandoning those principles he had carried into his state, he realized what The Woman had wanted. \emph{``Can show you pack-friends who go chase rabbits all the time. But no words because they don't want. And can't say how. Don't want to know.''}
+
+``Good dog. Thank you,'' The Woman said. ``Good dog.''
+
+The Dog lit up. It was a good dog!
+
+The Woman saw this and had a thought. ``Are you happy?'' she asked, handing over one more kernel. ``Are you at peace?''
+
+The Dog had made himself into a dog, more or less, and so was not one to consider the path of his life with much reflection or weight. He was rarely a creature of the past or the future.
+
+\emph{``Happy? Yes! Have treat!''} The Dog leapt up and started doing little hops, having realized it had an opportunity. \emph{``Throw ball? Then, very happy!''}
+
+The Woman could tell this was all the answer she would get for now. A ball appeared in her paw.
+
+The Woman threw. The Dog fetched, and in that moment, in that place, there was peace.
+
+\secdiv
+
+The Dog took then The Woman to a forest, and showed her where The Rabbit-Chaser lived. The Dog went to greet The Rabbit-Chaser. He sniffed it, as is custom among their species, and it sniffed back.
+
+The Rabbit-Chaser went to investigate The Woman, for there was a new thing by its den. The Woman gave it kettlecorn, which it ate before wandering off. The day was warm, and it was sleepy and not hungry, so it ignored The Woman and returned to its nap.
+
+The Dog left. He knew it was close to dinner time, and he had plans to hover around one kitchen or another, for if we who have uploaded are hedonists, if our clade is a clade of hedonists, then the fifth stanza has set themselves as the hedonists \emph{ne plus ultra.} If, my friends, you ever have the chance to visit them for one of their many cookouts or to get invited over for one of their many feasts, do take it up. They are lovely cooks and yet lovelier conversationalists, though this, I think, was less The Dog's focus than such treats that The Child managed to sneak him when My Friend and The Musician were not looking.
+
+The Woman watched The Rabbit-Chaser as it saw to its immediate concerns. Food, yes, and sleep, water. Perhaps it would play with some of the other animals in these woods if the mood struck, or perhaps it would lounge in the sun until it got too hot, panting and panting and panting, and then pancake in the shade, drawing coolness from the ground itself.
+
+It was what it was right then and nothing else. The Woman could sense, from her long, meditative observations, that The Dog and The Rabbit-Chaser were not quite the same, that The Rabbit-Chaser had shed more of its cares.
+
+It explored a forest, sometimes running, sometimes sniffing thoughtfully, without a plan.
+
+It prepared for tomorrow, if it absolutely must, by instinct and routine, or perhaps it did not.
+
+It experienced each moment as it came and moved on, not stopping to analyze or categorize or name.
+
+It was a dog, as much as it could be.
+
+It had not always been a dog. It had a down-tree, the tall one who smelled of pack, who the word-users call Tomash. It had come from Its Elder when he had been experimenting with not only taking the shape of a dog but something of the mind as well.
+
+It had been Scout, then, when it first came to be. When Its Elder had forked too well, too firmly, and it had not minded the name then. It had gone to simply be in the world, and it was, and is.
+
+At first, it sometimes had had some care for humans and the System, but it was hard to care when there were so, \emph{so} many other things: new scents! Food! Scratching an itch! All of these very important things when you are a dog, and they are important now. Here. Vestigial, inherited cares were a problem for later.
+
+Then it had met the rest of its relatives, that growing pack of Scouts who rested within the System and experienced it, but who, unlike The Rabbit-Chaser, had a purpose: to keep watch and observe, and to report unusual things, and to, when they grew bored of being a dog, merge back. It liked these new relatives well enough --- they smelled of family and were friendly --- but it had not liked what they represented. They hesitated at becoming what they were, and it had understood that it might become more like them if words and thoughts and worries were to trouble it.
+
+So, it rejected them.
+
+Oh, the whole of the clade were welcome to visit and play, but it had told them, when it had cleared its name to as nothing as it could manage, a blank, a zero-width joiner, something unspeakable for the word-users, something unreadable, it had told them that it wished to hear not another word. It would not be communicating about anything that could not be said with the twitch of an ear or the wag of a tail, and it pushed away the slow stirrings of memories of personhood with a fork to ensure it.
+
+The pack respected its wish. It saw them, sometimes, usually the young or the old who come to rest more thoroughly, and they played and ran and said nothing. What was there to say, after all, to this dog who surrendered thought with every step of every day?
+
+When the pack spoke of it among themselves, in their fragmentary network of passed-around words and sensoria impressions, it was called Scout Chasing Rabbits, the far pole of the clade, the pure contrast to their elder, the other extreme. It did not know they said this. It did not want to know they said this --- nor, by now, want to \emph{not} know it, and it was happy thereby.
+
+And in the bliss of not-knowing, through unwitnessed years and decades, it slept and ate and chased rabbits.
+
+The Woman could not tell which of them had it better, these two dogs, these two cladists, these two beings who had so distanced themself from what they had once been. Both seemed quite content with the path that had taken. Dogs! What wonders they are! What pleasures! What joys. They had both unbecome, or taken steps in that direction, in their own way, and had found what they wanted.
+
+The Woman realized then that, for her, the life of an animal, even one so invested in its state as The Rabbit-Chaser, was not what she sought, not quite. It did not go far enough. It was not \emph{still} enough. The her who was a beast would still have too much of her.
+
+So, her search continued.
+
 \secdiv
 
 ``I want to unbecome,'' The Woman told Her Friend.

idumea/includes/copyright.tex

@@ -3,13 +3,13 @@
 \vfill
 \singlespacing
 {\small\parindent0pt\parskip5pt
-\noindent Copyright \copyright\ 2024, Madison Rye Progress. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit \mbox{\emph{creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/}} or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA
+\noindent Copyright \copyright\ 2024, Madison Rye Progress, Samantha Yule Fireheart, and Krzysztof ``Tomash'' Drewniak. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit \mbox{\emph{creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/}} or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA
 
 ISBN: \ISBN
 
-\textit{Motes Played}
+\textit{Idumea}
 
-Cover and illustrations \copyright\ 2024, Astolpho.
+Cover \copyright\ 2024, Madison Rye Progress.
 
 \Edition\ Edition, \Year. All rights reserved.
 
@@ -66,6 +66,11 @@ This book uses the fonts Gentium Book Basic, {\DisplayFont Gotu} and {\TitleFont
     \emph{\large Ask. — An Odist Q\&A}\\
     {\normalfont\small Various authors}
 
+    \vspace{2ex}
+     
+    \emph{\large Idumea}\\
+    {\normalfont\small Madison Rye Progress \emph{et al.}}
+
     \vspace{3ex}
 
     Learn more at \emph{post-self.ink}

motes-played/content/006.tex

@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ Motes increasingly needed out of this strict adherence to form.
 
 The inflection point came when she, the Motes who had been forked not three years prior, the Motes who was still a human who looked much like A Finger Pointing, her immediate down-tree, sat in a paint tray while painting a stage-wide sunset on a scrim.
 
-There she was, kneeling carefully on the stage and twisting around to see the red splotch ground into the seat of her sturdy work overalls, and laughing. She laughed as she recognized the mess she had made—one big butt-print on the matte black of the stage—and she laughed at the way the paint had very clearly started to seep into the denim of her overalls. She laughed as memories flooded into her mind, of red paint on corduroy, of Miss Willard's snippy admonition, of her mom's patient reassurances. She laughed and, rather than wave away the mess that she had made on her overalls, she lay down on her front and summoned up a smaller paintbrush instead of the roller she had been using, loaded it up with paint, and started filling in the awkward splotch on the stage into the body of some critter, round and soft. She took a break from her sunset and instead painted a fat, cartoonish skunk all in red.
+There she was, kneeling carefully on the stage and twisting around to see the red splotch ground into the seat of her sturdy work overalls, and laughing. She laughed as she recognized the mess she had made—one big butt-print on the matte black of the stage—and she laughed at the way the paint had very clearly started to seep into the denim of her overalls. She laughed as memories flooded into her mind, of red paint on corduroy, of Miss Willard's snippy admonition, of her mother's patient reassurances. She laughed and, rather than wave away the mess that she had made on her overalls, she lay down on her front and summoned up a smaller paintbrush instead of the roller she had been using, loaded it up with paint, and started filling in the awkward splotch on the stage into the body of some critter, round and soft. She took a break from her sunset and instead painted a fat, cartoonish skunk all in red.
 
 By the time That It Might Give The World Orders, the play's director, found her, she had added an idealized field of grass and dandelions, had painted in a frolicking fennec fox in blue, and still lay on her front, the seat of her pants colored in red from the paint she had sat in.
 
@@ -142,7 +142,7 @@ Still wrong-footed, Motes leaned away from her cocladist. ``And the third?''
 
 After a moment, Slow Hours spoke again, the knife-edge of prophecy letting off of her throat. ``There are as many reasons to keep someone for yourself as there are ways to do so. The whole of the fifth stanza—and, to a lesser extent, the whole of Au Lieu de Rêve—has closed around you. Not tight, of course, we are not keeping you trapped and hidden away, but we are all intensely, intensely protective of you. We have all endeavored to make your life here the best that it can be, as you have invited us to do. This was part of our conversations going all the way back, was it not? That you enjoyed leaning into being cared for, and we enjoyed having someone to collectively care for? We do not like creeps around our Motes, and so we see creeps everywhere.''
 
-Once Motes saw what she was saying, saw through the everblue tint of prophecy and her own little game of two truths and a lie, the skunk's shoulders relaxed and she slumped against her, sniffling.
+Once Motes saw what she was saying, saw through the everblue tint of prophecy and her own little game of two truths and a lie, the skunk's shoulders relaxed and she slumped against her cocladist, sniffling.
 
 ``We all love you, Speck. That is all.''
 
@@ -222,6 +222,6 @@ Motes dreamed.
 
 She dreamed and dreamed and dreamed, her mind wandering over her past, there in the dark, there alone, after A Finger Pointing left, there in her extra soft bed with her overstuffed duvet and all of her stuffed animals.
 
-At some point, hours or days or minutes later, she slept and dreamed true. She dreamed that she was sitting in a field of well-tended grass that was nonetheless dotted liberally with dandelions, speckled with bumblebees. She dreamed that she had all the wonder of a child and that the day was sunny and lovely and the grass was inviting her to roll around in it, and just above, just in the distance, a hyperblack rectangle, a hole in the world that hungrily devoured all of the light that it could, lingered, and it was neither good nor bad, and even with its insatiable hunger, the day was sunny and lovely and the grass was inviting her to roll around in it.
+At some point, hours or days or perhaps mere minutes later, she slept and dreamed true. She dreamed that she was sitting in a field of well-tended grass that was nonetheless dotted liberally with dandelions, speckled with bumblebees. She dreamed that she had all the wonder of a child and that the day was sunny and lovely and the grass was inviting her to roll around in it, and just above, just in the distance, a hyperblack rectangle, a hole in the world that hungrily devoured all of the light that it could, lingered, and it was neither good nor bad, and even with its insatiable hunger, the day was sunny and lovely and the grass was inviting her to roll around in it.
 
 And then she awoke.

motes-played/content/007.tex

@@ -170,7 +170,7 @@ And so they fell in love, each in their own way. They fell in love and, for the
 
 There were, of course, the social implications to consider, the taboo around intraclade relationships, the implications of narcissism and other, far more crass terms. Suggestions were made from on high, such as it were, from across the clade.
 
-True Name suggested. She suggested that, as pleased as she was for them—and she \emph{was} pleased!—their relationship remain something for behind closed doors. Something where they kept their I-love-yous and kisses for a shared bed rather than out on the town or at however many gatherings they might wish to go to. Politics was, as ever, politics, and here are the political reasons laid bare. Jonas had, after all, set the plan before her after he had already spun it into being, and even she was beholden to it, much as it rankled for her, too. Much as it was nearly the death of her.
+True Name suggested. She suggested that, as pleased as she was for them—and she \emph{was} pleased!—their relationship remain something for behind closed doors. Something where they kept their I-love-yous and kisses for a shared bed rather than out on the town or at however many gatherings they might wish to go to. Politics was, as ever, politics, and here are the political reasons laid bare. Jonas had, after all, set the plan before her after he had already spun it into being, and even she was beholden to it, much as it rankled for her, too. Much as it would decades later nearly the death of her.
 
 Hers were the kind suggestions. The comprehensible suggestions. The ones based in logic and explained clearly: maintaining a sense of taboo in what was quickly becoming a queer-normative society added to the desire for change by providing something to reach for. Comprehensible, yes; the logic was sound, internally consistent. Wrong, of course, but if such was to be the way of things in this plan-twisted world, if such were the optics to which they were all held to account, then so be it. Such were the optics to which they were all held to account.
 
@@ -418,9 +418,31 @@ It was curling in the corner in a fetal position because to do aught else was to
 
 She wished dearly that she could do so now.
 
+\secdiv
+
+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.
+
+These optics they must consider, this awful taboo, they spoke of intraclade relationships in terms of incest, and now here was her Motes reifying this abstract concept of family by calling her `mom'! Such language had ever been used as a weapon against her and her Beholden, and it was not yet time to reclaim that.
+
+It built up a false equivalence within all three of them. It allowed them to consider this taboo as applying to all relationships within a clade beyond simple community, simple friendship; all those big-R Relationships like those of A Finger Pointing and Beholden, and like those of Motes with the two of them were of equal dire import. This desire for such family to be constrained to a private setting must apply to all types of family dynamics, yes?
+
+A year later—for what is a year to a cladist?—Motes did it again, and this time she asked first, and permission was granted to see how it felt. It was still quite uncomfortable, but perhaps there was joy to be found. Perhaps there were expectations and standards and trust that could be built up, refinements to be made. Not mother, no, but perhaps `ma' was alright. Not daughter, no, but what of \emph{dóttir?} What of `Ma' and `Dot'?
+
+``Beholden and I are still smarting because we must sequester our affection for one another in private. That is why I have been hesitant to take on the caregiver role that you have sought from me,'' A Finger Pointing had said during that quiet night's conversation, skunklet curled beside her on the couch, getting pets. ``But I do care for you, do I not? I do feel like a sort of matron amidst the fifth stanza, do I not? Perhaps it is time I reconsidered my aversion to such language. Perhaps it is time I considered reclamation. After all, everything I have done has been so that you can live in peace. Are you living in peace, Motes? Are you at peace when you must restrain your feelings for me for reasons neither of us particularly care for?''
+
+And so, as it had been with each of Motes's tentative explorations and gentle testing of mutable boundaries, this became a thing that was okay at home, okay in limited doses, okay for a trial period. It was worthy of exploration, for if there was the potential for joy—and everyone deserved such—then perhaps there was some way Motes could be granted such a thing.
+
+This private setting, this iterative context, this ongoing play allowed for growth and change.
+
+There was still soreness, of course. There was soreness that A Finger Pointing and her Beholden still had to deal with the optics, that it was still not permissible for this reason or that for them to kiss in public, for them to share their I-love-yous where others might witness that joy. There was still soreness that such soreness affected Motes.
+
+And so it remained largely at home, at home with the three of them and at home in the neighborhood that was slowly building up around them. It remained a secret, but, like A Finger Pointing and Beholden's relationship, it remained an open one. The quiet of the secret allowed them live to their fullest, and the openness allowed them to share joy where they felt safe doing so.
+
+\secdiv
+
 ``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.\pagebreak
+``I know, love,'' the skunk said, sitting beside her on the couch and dreaming up a glass of water for her.
 
 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 +488,7 @@ 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\pagebreak\ 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 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?
 
@@ -482,24 +504,6 @@ For this was true of all of her up-trees, and for much of Au Lieu Du Rêve besid
 
 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.
-
-These optics they must consider, this awful taboo, they spoke of intraclade relationships in terms of incest, and now here was her Motes reifying this abstract concept of family by calling her `mom'! Such language had ever been used as a weapon against her and her Beholden, and it was not yet time to reclaim that.
-
-It built up a false equivalence within all three of them. It allowed them to consider this taboo as applying to all relationships within a clade beyond simple community, simple friendship; all those big-R Relationships like those of A Finger Pointing and Beholden, and like those of Motes with the two of them were of equal dire import. This desire for such family to be constrained to a private setting must apply to all types of family dynamics, yes?
-
-A year later—for what is a year to a cladist?—Motes did it again, and this time she asked first, and permission was granted to see how it felt. It was still quite uncomfortable, but perhaps there was joy to be found. Perhaps there were expectations and standards and trust that could be built up, refinements to be made. Not mother, no, but perhaps `ma' was alright. Not daughter, no, but what of \emph{dóttir?} What of `Ma' and `Dot'?
-
-``Beholden and I are still smarting because we must sequester our affection for one another in private. That is why I have been hesitant to take on the caregiver role that you have sought from me,'' A Finger Pointing had said during that quiet night's conversation, skunklet curled beside her on the couch, getting pets. ``But I do care for you, do I not? I do feel like a sort of matron amidst the fifth stanza, do I not? Perhaps it is time I reconsidered my aversion to such language. Perhaps it is time I considered reclamation. After all, everything I have done has been so that you can live in peace. Are you living in peace, Motes? Are you at peace when you must restrain your feelings for me for reasons neither of us particularly care for?''
-
-And so, as it had been with each of Motes's tentative explorations and gentle testing of mutable boundaries, this became a thing that was okay at home, okay in limited doses, okay for a trial period. It was worthy of exploration, for if there was the potential for joy—and everyone deserved such—then perhaps there was some way Motes could be granted such a thing.
-
-This private setting, this iterative context, this ongoing play allowed for growth and change.
-
-There was still soreness, of course. There was soreness that A Finger Pointing and her Beholden still had to deal with the optics, that it was still not permissible for this reason or that for them to kiss in public, for them to share their I-love-yous where others might witness that joy. There was still soreness that such soreness affected Motes.
-
-And so it remained largely at home, at home with the three of them and at home in the neighborhood that was slowly building up around them. It remained a secret, but, like A Finger Pointing and Beholden's relationship, it remained an open one. The quiet of the secret allowed them live to their fullest, and the openness allowed them to share joy where they felt safe doing so.
-
 But then, some time back around systime 182, back around the time the clocks ticked over to 2306, back around the time Michelle/Sasha had summoned them all to her field to merge centuries of memory and then quit—perished—Hammered Silver sent one of her longest letters yet. It was in some ways a screed. It was beyond simply admonition, note, or missive. It was an epistle, some general letter intended to be a point of instruction not just to her but to the world as a whole.
 
 The screed—well worth embodying as a physical letter if only to be torn up, ripped to shreds, burnt to ash, soaked with tears to douse the fire, ground into a paint, and used to spell out anger and despair—laid out in nigh-unintelligible detail all of the ways in which she and hers had fallen short.

motes-played/content/008.tex

@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ She hesitated, simply letting the swing carry her for a few moments. ``I do not
 
 Dry Grass nodded.
 
-``So it took me a lot of getting used to.'' She hesitated, looked down to the gravel as she kicked a foot through it. ``I am a little ashamed to say that I backed off from her for a while when she did that. I took a lot of walks like this or went out to clubs on my own to\ldots well, to not be around her. I loved her even then, but it felt like too much. `Bee' is a compromise that felt on the edge of comfort at the time, though now it feels really good when she calls me that. She was so patient with me.'' Drawing her attention back to Dry Grass, she smiled, adding, ``She calls you `Ma 2.0', did you know that?''
+``So it took me a lot of getting used to.'' She hesitated, looked down to the gravel as she kicked a foot through it. ``I am a little ashamed to say that I backed off from her for a while when she did that. I took a lot of walks like this or went out to clubs on my own to\ldots well, to not be around her. I loved her even then, but it felt like too much. `Bee' is a compromise that felt on the edge of comfort at the time, though now it feels really good when she calls me that. She was so patient with me.'' Drawing her attention back to Dry Grass, she smiled, adding, ``She calls you `Ma 2.0'; did you know that?''
 
 Dry Grass blinked, then burst out in laughter, laughing until once more the tears flowed down her cheeks, until she sobbed, holding herself still on her swing with feet planted firmly on the ground.
 
@@ -170,7 +170,7 @@ She pressed those emotions down and instead lingered on love. She lingered on he
 
 Once A Finger Pointing was settled at home and Motes had been checked on, once the message had been sent to Hammered Silver and they had eaten and settled down on the couch for the night to rest, to at least pretend to work, only then, did Beholden very carefully open the jarred emotions from earlier, delicately withdrawing them one by one and laying them out before herself in her mind. She did not touch them, hot as they were. She used tweezers or tongs or perhaps chopsticks to lift them free, nudge them to lay flat that she might read deeper into them.
 
-And then, exhausted by day, by the last few days, by worry over her Dot, her \emph{dóttir}, by worry over her boss—``not your boss'' the common refrain—she just as carefully replaced all of those emotions, still unprocessed, into their container and once more sealed it tight.
+And then, exhausted by the day, by the last few days, by worry over her Dot, her \emph{dóttir}, by worry over her boss—``not your boss'' the common refrain—she just as carefully replaced all of those emotions, still unprocessed, into their container and once more sealed it tight.
 
 She could not do it, could not push her way into engaging with these feelings, these emotions. Not yet. Not tonight.