Final pass on motes, Marsh anthology

motes-played/content/010.tex

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ Motes played.
 
 She played in the dark. She played crawling on hands and knees. She played hide and seek. She played stealth missions. She played silently, muffling the sound of her passage and keeping her breathing quiet; it was against the rules to turn it off. She played base commander, repelling invisible foes, hollering out orders to her friends. She played noisily, her voice echoing off the rocky walls with laughter and shouts bouncing around seemingly endlessly.
 
-She played in Rock Park, a hulking mound of salmon, pink, gold, and buff flagstone that had been stacked in such a way as to create a series of twisty, narrow tunnels throughout. The tunnels turned sharply, or required her to climb up vague suggestions of ladders made by protruding slabs of rock, or dumped her down into a central cavern, the ground covered in a layer of velvety soft mulch to cushion any falls. The cavern that opened out on one end into a broader playground, all of the equipment themed to be related to a quarry: dump trucks and bucket hoists and front end loaders and excavators.
+She played in Rock Park, a hulking mound of salmon, pink, gold, and buff flagstone that had been stacked in such a way as to create a series of twisty, narrow tunnels throughout. The tunnels turned sharply, or required her to climb up vague suggestions of ladders made by protruding slabs of rock, or dumped her down into a central cavern, the ground covered in a layer of velvety soft mulch to cushion any falls. The cavern opened out on one end into a broader playground, all of the equipment themed to be related to a quarry: dump trucks and bucket hoists and front end loaders and excavators.
 
 She played throughout the rest of the park, hauling that mulch or digging into it with the equipment or her paws, putting those digger claws of hers to use. She played in the grass, played in the little stands of pine trees that dotted the field beyond, the two whitewashed gazebos. Sometimes there were roller-blades or bikes or skateboards. Sometimes there were self-propelled levitation boots that let you putter along at a few miles per hour a hand's breadth above the ground and which would do all they could to keep you from falling over.
 
@@ -96,7 +96,7 @@ She laughed. ``Some of us. Some of us drifted apart, but some of us stick togeth
 
 Motes sighed. ``Sort of, yeah. That is why it hurt and why I had to spend a lot of time thinking about it.''
 
-He reached out and gave her tail a gentle tug—not something she usually tolerated, but the conversation had been so gentle, it had no scent of meanness to it—and smiled up to her. ``Well, \emph{I} think you're better than she is, so clearly she isn't you. Tell her to get stuffed!''
+He reached out and gave her tail a light tug—not something she usually tolerated, but the conversation had been so gentle that it had no scent of meanness to it—and smiled up to her. ``Well, \emph{I} think you're better than she is, so clearly she isn't you. Tell her to get stuffed!''
 
 She laughed, reaching out to bat at his hand. ``I guess I pretty much did, because here I am\textasciitilde{}''
 
@@ -142,13 +142,13 @@ She shrugged. ``But then, maybe I started by whining at you about it. It is nobo
 
 Dry Grass's expression softened and she brushed some of the skunk's mane out of her face. ``I suppose there is that,'' she said quietly. ``We could go back and forth placing blame as much as we would like--''
 
-``And she would always be the wrong one,'' Motes interrupted. ``Frick her. She is the one holding grudges, we are the ones doing what we want. She is the one hurting people, we are the ones just having fun and playing.''
+``And she would always be the wrong one,'' Motes interrupted. ``Frick her. She is the one holding grudges, we are the ones doing what we want. She is the one hurting people, we are the ones just having fun and playing. She is just a bully.  ''
 
 There was another moment of silence, of Dry Grass furrowing her brow and thinking, and then at last she lay back on the beanbag and tugged Motes back up to lay on her front. ``Yes,'' she murmured as the skunk got comfortable. ``Yes, I guess both of those are true.''
 
 They stayed like that for the rest of the film, Dry Grass petting Motes and Motes telling Dry Grass stories about the day, little nothings that showed that fun, that lack of pain.
 
-And then, when the movie was over and many of those in the community center had started to doze on their beanbags and couches, when her ma and Bee put kisses on her snout and left arm in arm, when Dry Grass fell asleep one too many times and begged off to walk back home—not without yet another tight hug from Motes and a promise to be back soon—when Motes herself started to get sleepy, she disentangled herself from the rest of that dozy comfort and slipped out into the cool of the night.
+And then, when the movie was over and many of those in the community center had started to doze on their beanbags and couches, when her ma and Bee put kisses on her snout and left arm in arm, when Dry Grass fell asleep one too many times and begged off to walk back home—not without yet another tight hug from Motes and a promise to be back soon—when Motes caught herself nodding off, she disentangled herself from the rest of that dozy comfort and slipped out into the cool of the night.
 
 Rather than turning left, off toward home, she turned right to the other arm of the `U' that made up the neighborhood and started wandering through the grass until she hit sidewalk. There, vines in chalk blossomed lazily behind her footsteps, and in the night, in the light of the stars and the moon and the streetlamps, they seemed to glow in pale oranges and whites and blues. She played with them by taking wobbling, drunken steps, crossing one leg in front of the other, pirouetting clumsily to make them tie themselves into knots.
 
@@ -156,7 +156,9 @@ Even so, she continued down around the slow curve of the neighborhood's main str
 
 It was a rightness of form—of species, of size, of appearance.
 
-It was a rightness of mindset—of play, of childlike wonder, of a recognition of who she was and who she had been and who she could become.
+It was a rightness of mindset—of play, of childlike wonder.
+
+It was a recognition of who she was and who she had been and who she could become.
 
 She made it halfway around the bend, down to the very base of the `U', and, following some whim, some spark of desire, darted back into the grass to race up the ladder of the jungle gym and launch herself down the slide with a shout. She tumbled off the end and into the gravel in an undignified, giggling heap.