The Woman rode the high of lovely friendship for days after that coffee date. For nearly a week, she reveled in the sense of camaraderie and coexistence. How lucky she was! How lucky that she had the chance to exist in the same universe as Her Friend! How lucky, how lucky.

Whenever The Woman felt this way, she would wander around the house and clean. She would take on extra cooking duties and make extra desserts for her cocladists and friends. She would stay in one form for far longer than was her usual, and remained now a panther. She would go for walks around the field, treating the house itself as a signpost at the center of widening circles. She would imagine that those circles might some day spread out across the entire world, never mind the varied infinities housed within the field itself. It was a thing to which she could give herself as she asked her high-minded questions: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?

These words of Rilke's would dance unblushing through her mind, linking arms on one side with the words of Dickinson which ever twined around those of her clade --- \emph{If I should die, And you should live, And time should gurgle on, And morn should beam, And noon should burn, As it has usual done\ldots{}} --- and on the other with the lingering lines of the Ode that made up the names of her clade. ``I remember the rattle of dry grass,'' she would explain to the bees as they buzzed in friendship around her ankles. ``I remember the names of all things and forget them only when I wake.''

And so she would cook her meals and walk in widening circles around this primordial tower that was her home, perhaps circling around God, though she did not care one way or the other if there was that of God in everything.

These were her joys to go along with the needs of ritual, of brushing her fingers along imagined \emph{mezuzot}. To walk was her ritual, to spiral outward from her home in the warmth of sunlight and the dance of bees and the tickling of dandelions against her ankles was to cast that ritual in the light of pleasure.

I have never been quite so fond of walking, myself, kind readers. There is meditation in it, I am told. I am told there is the simple pleasure of the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-ness of it. But friends, I am tired most of the time. I am old and I am tired and my pleasure lies in stillness and quiet. I love my mochas and I love sitting down before the page with pen in paw to put to paper, and I love bathing in story.

I say so often that stepping away from such a task is still writing. When I sit on the patio in front of our little bundle of townhouses and look out at the shared lawn, or when I step --- \emph{stepped,} for it is no longer here --- out to the shortgrass prairie of my cocladist, to sit beside a cairn of stones or share a meal, that is still writing! Your narrator has written these words, this story, a hundred, a thousand times within her head. That is my joy, and graphomania my compulsion.

When The Woman overflows, she becomes ever more herself. She is --- my attentive readers will remember this, of course --- she is already too much herself, too present, too whole, too present. This is the nature of overflowing, you see: we become so much ourselves that it begins to ache, to press at our chest from the inside. For your humble narrator, that graphomania strikes with such force that meaning falls away from my words only gibberish comes forth, or perhaps I will write the same phrase over and over and over, unable to sate my own compulsions.

My astute readers will surely have picked up by now that I am riding that edge here, in these words.

But, ah! This story is not about me. I am not quite overflowing yet, and The Woman most certainly is not. She is reveling in the warmth of sunlight and the dance of bees and the tickling of dandelions against her ankles and the purringly soft touch of friendship.

\secdiv

The turn away from joy was slow and, at first, unnoticeable.

The Woman did all that she could to hang onto joy whenever it slipped into her life. We all do, do we not? When I find a bakery that serves delectable treats, for instance, I will eat in the tiniest bites I can get away with --- nearly crumbs! --- just to let the joy of such a treat linger longer on my tongue. The woman did this with her own joy, you see: she would cook these lovely desserts for herself and her cocladists that she might store up joy in carefully sweetened and delicately decorated cupcakes or muffins or cookies or brownies. Joy, it seems, is stored in the chocolate, and so she doles that out to those who deserve joy --- and The Woman knows that even she deserves joy.

But even like me with my little tasty baked treats, The Woman's joy is parceled out bit by bit to herself and her cocladists and, just like my little plates of carrot cake --- I \emph{do} love a good carrot cake! --- there is never an infinite amount, much as she might wish, nor, it always seems, quite enough.

She hung onto joy and baked her goodies and went for her walks and awaited, with some trepidation, to the regularly scheduled therapy, because I think she knew that, being confronted with recounting emotions of the past or discussing emotions to come, her grasp on joy would be tested. Once every two weeks, unless she was overflowing, unless she was in pain, unless she simply could not bring herself to go, The Woman had an appointment for therapy, after all, and she knew there was good to be had in it, for it had proven its use time and again over the years, and yet it was a time for threshing, for harrowing. It was a time for throwing herself at the Work at one level of removing and watching the chaff fall away and the fruits of her labor lay exposed. It was a time for dragging the implements of tools dialectical and behaviors cognitive through the dirt of her to break up into clods her varied neuroses.

But as it goes, as it always goes, the morsels of joy meted gladly out soon began to run dry and the sense of happiness that she felt, those truly \emph{good} days began to fade once more into merely okay.

It was the day of her appointment that The Woman sat up in her bed, bleary-eyed, and looked around her, around her plain and simple room with her plain and simple sheets and plain and simple clothes folded neatly atop a plain and simple chair, ready for wear, and at last sighed, wondering, \emph{Where is it that my joy has gone? Where has it gone?}

Today was therapy, and her joy was gone.

There was no relief within her that. There were no thoughts of, ah, today is therapy! Today she would get to talk to Ever Dream! Today she would get to explore this idea of a joy meted out slowly until it was nothing.

In fact, I would say that there was perhaps even a sort of protectiveness. I think that she felt some sort of ownership of this concept. I think that she felt like this ending of joy was hers and hers alone. Something to keep to herself until perhaps, some day, she might share it and become still at last, or perhaps even beyond then. It was hers to set before herself and admire or loathe. It was hers to wrap up in pretty paper or hide away in the back of a drawer. I think she may have felt jealousy.

And so it was that The Woman, today a human, today, as ever, dressed plainly, made herself a peanut butter and banana sandwich with the crusts cut off and poured herself a glass of soy milk and walked out into the field outside her house. She had to balance her sandwich atop her drink in order to complete the ritual of passing through the front door, but she had done this countless times before.

The table and chairs sat nearly a mile out from the tenth stanza's house, sprouting senselessly from the grass as easy and carefree as yet more dandelions. A simple square table with two chairs set before adjacent sides so that she need not look her therapist in the eye, so that they might each stair out into some similar distance, so that they may feel companionship, though The Woman never could explain how that worked.

And so The Woman, today a human, walked the mile to the table and sat down her glass of soy milk and began to eat her sandwich. When, at last, there were only two bites left and the glass was half empty, she sent a delicate ping to Her Therapist, who appeared beside the table, paws folded and kind smile on her face. The visage of a skunk lasted no longer than a second before, with a rapid fork, a human stood before her --- for her therapist endeavored always to mirror her species lest she influence The Woman's own, though she leaned far harder into gender-play, and one would be hard pressed to not also see her as a young man --- and bowed, then pulled out the chair beside her and sat down.

``I will be finished in a moment, Ever Dream,'' The Woman said just as she did every session. ``Just a few bites left.''

``Of course, End Of Endings,'' Her Therapist echoed in the time-honored ritual. ``Please take your time.''

The Woman gave a hint of a bow and enjoyed the last two bites of her sandwich as well as she was able, following each with a sip of soy milk, all while Her Therapist made herself comfortable, sitting back in her chair and gazing out over the field of grass and dandelions, a half-smile on her face.

When at last she dusted her hands free of imagined crumbs, The Woman sat back in her chair, her drink held in both hands --- she, like me, enjoys that she can create a drink that stays at precisely the most delicious temperature --- Her Therapist smiled and nodded. ``Tell me, my dear, how are you feeling?''

``I am feeling alright. I have been cleaning and cooking. I have been going out on walks and stepping away from the sim. I spoke with my friend for several hours some days back, and that provided me with comfort and joy.''

``That is delightful to hear,'' Her Therapist said. ``Can you tell me of this joy? I love to hear what it is that makes you happy.''

The Woman thought long on this. I would like to imagine she was turning her thoughts on jealousy and protectiveness over and over within her head, investigating them like some bauble, searching for cracks or imperfections, or simply admiring how the mirror-like surfaces never picked up her fingerprints. I think perhaps she was trying to derive the formulae that describe their shapes so that she could better understand them. I think, also, that she had to do her best to suppress a wince.

``Was it a complex sort of joy, End Of Endings?''

She sipped her soy milk in an attempt to maintain control over herself, as sometimes all you need is a thing that you can do deliberately. ``It is, yes. It is a joy to see one's friends, is it not? To give energy and to receive in turn? We sat down at our favorite coffee shop and chatted about this and that. We talked of empty chairs at the table. We talked of moods and therapy. I believe-- yes?''

Her therapist lowered her hand from where she had raised it. ``I do not know No Hesitation as well as I might, for which I feel some regret, but In Dreams confided with In Memory, and my down-tree confided in me that she had some fears that she had offended em. Given the structure of our stanza, I think it perhaps unwise that I know too much of that particular conversation until No Hesitation speaks to me emself.''

The Woman lingered again in silence, and her mind was aswirl with undefined thoughts that she could no longer pin down, and where once she felt alright, she began to feel something far more tentative, and where once there was a bauble of thoughts on joy, there was now some rectilinear ember, sharp-edged, that she no longer wished to behold, which she quickly dropped and stepped away from in fear and in pain.

``Yes, Ever Dream. Of course. I will speak of other things.''

And so they did. It was not an unproductive therapy session, and perhaps Her Therapist was even right. The seventh stanza was as they were, yes? They were the types to go for runs together, to eat together, to live as neighbors. The Woman did not know whether Her Therapist lived among them, but at this point, she supposed that she must, should such a prohibition be worried.

And so they did! They talked of other things, and The Woman did wind up sharing more about her joy, but only in the small ways. She discussed the feeling of making treats for those around her, of storing a little bit of her joy in each --- though I believe she left out her feelings on that meting of joy being a depleting --- and the ways in which a service such as that which she provided for her own household is a goodness in its own right, is an active participation in joy.

But all throughout, laying at her feet was an ember smoldering, a little cube with edges that could cut as quickly as they could burn, and though she was able to remain present for the remainder of her appointment, was able to remain human, was able to smile and bow to Her Therapist, The Woman was never wholly there, as all throughout, her gaze kept dropping to where at her feet lay an ember smoldering.

After therapy, after Her Therapist had left and the chairs had been set beneath the table once more, after a long moment spent standing in the grass with her head hung low, The Woman waved away her empty glass and trudged back to the house.

There was a sense of falling-short within her, a sense of not meeting expectations. Perhaps it was a sense of shame that she had been so keen to hide this idea that she had happened upon, to keep the idea of the end of joy to herself. Perhaps it was because she had so easily let herself be talked out of sharing earnestly that which she would most liked to have discussed. Perhaps it was because --- and here I am using words she herself would use --- it was because she was a coward. Perhaps, when confronted with something that she believed to be worth talking about, to have such stopped before she could do so took the wind out of her sails, and she was too cowardly to do anything but let that happen. So many perhapses.

It was with these thoughts and these feelings filling her mind to overfull that The Woman walked back to the house, back up the stairs to the porch, back through the door with a brush of the fingers, back up the staircase, back to her room where she stripped and climbed back into bed.

Perhaps she slept, perhaps she dreamed.

\secdiv

The Woman is a professional in napping in a way that I am not. Perhaps it is the felinity in her, or perhaps it is that she is not so easily claimed by such compulsions as I have --- graphomania! Hah! --- which lead to such fervent activity. Were I a smarter skunk, I might say to myself: ``Rye, my dear, perhaps you can write your novels when you are caught in such throes, and spend the months between practicing the fine art of napping!'' But I am not a smart skunk. I am a simple beast who is single minded. I am an animal who does one thing and perhaps does it well. I do not know! I am perhaps too simple to disambiguate being doing a thing well and doing a lot of a thing.

Ah, but perhaps this is why I interpret The Woman at being a professional napper.

Either way, when she returned home and lay down, she immediately fell into a deep, deep slumber. It was a sleep of no dreams, nor perhaps even rest, but served well as a way to disconnect from contexts innumerable, to step away from the world unpleasant. She slept and slept and slept --- and yet, she slept for only twenty minutes. Twenty minutes later, she opened her eyes and looked up to the ceiling, and spent another ten minutes picking out familiar patterns in the drywall texture beneath the paint. They were her familiar constellations. There! The fennec. There! The open hand. There! There! There! The swan and the cat and the light-footed opossum dancing around the maypole.

And then, at last, she stood up, and as her feet touched the ground she was, yes, whisked away into felinity, and so it was The Woman who was a cat who padded back downstairs, dressed now in billowy slacks and a flowing blouse. She dressed this way because she felt unstable, and knew that chances were better than not that she would wind up a skunk by that evening.

The living room was empty, but sitting on a stool in a kitchen with a thoughtful expression on her face was Her Cocladist. Her Cocladist, for reasons too complicated for me to pick apart in a fairytale, struggled with her form more even than The Woman did. The Woman would occasionally blip from human to feline or from feline to skunk or from skunk to human, but, in ways that neither I nor The Woman remembered without fondness, Her cocladist lived in a constant superposition of forms. As she sat there on her stool, cheek resting in her palm while a pot bubbled lazily away on the stove, she wisped steadily between skunk and human. Skunk. Human. Skunk. Human. Her pale white skin, which had ever been so soft to the touch and borne such overwhelmingly kind smiles, would give way to black fur. Her hair, curly and dark that framed her face so well, would ghost into a tousled white mane. Behind her a luxurious tail would swish into being and then out again without a second thought.

I do mean that, friends. There is no thought behind this constant changing. When I experienced that, so many years ago, nearly three centuries ago, it was never a thing I could control, not well. I could swallow down a form for a while. I could gulp dryly and linger for a while in humanity, only for a cough or hiccup to come along and send little cookie ears to sprouting, send a white-striped-black muzzle stretching in front of my face.

And always when this happened, the slightest touch would lead to bile rising in my throat. It would feel like sunburn. It would feel like some awful beast letting its bulk settle against me, reminding me of its presence --- a threat --- with slow breaths.

I do not know if you have ever touched a skunk, dear readers, but they are not silky soft. Their fur is \emph{soft}, yes, but in the plush, cushy way that a dog's might be, or perhaps a short-haired cat. We are truly lovely to pet, I can assure you of that! Why, I will pet my tail for hours as I sit and think and write in my head. In fact, I am doing that right this very minute!

Skunks, I mean to say, are still lovely to pet. We can push our snouts up into your hands and tilt our heads to ensure you scratch in just the right spot behind one ear or another. More, we deserve that. All creatures deserve that which they cherish, and we cherish touch.

We all cherish touch, and in those moments when we were ghosting back and forth, when touch led to vertigo, that which we cherish was taken from us, and for some of us, for The Woman's cocladist, this was still true. It was not perhaps always true --- perhaps there were stretches when she was able to settle into one form and exist in comfort and get gentle, doting pets from The Woman or some other cocladist or some perhaps lover, and perhaps she may yet still.

But for so much of her life, this lovely touch, this cherished thing, was out of reach for Her Cocladist, and so she sat on the stool before the stove while a pot bubbled lazily away.

``Rejoice,'' The Woman said quietly from the entrance to the kitchen, bowing to Her Cocladist.

Tired eyes swung around to meet her, and an equally tired smile graced both human face and skunk muzzle. ``Ah, End Of Endings, my dear, my dear,'' Her cocladist said twice over. ``Have you been well? Have you had a good nap? Did you have a productive therapy session?''

The Woman smiled as well --- though her smile was not quite so tired, you understand; she just had her nap --- and willed a stool into being some few feet away from Her Cocladist. ``I have been well, yes, and my nap was as lovely as always. As for therapy, well\ldots{}'' She trailed off, shrugged.

Her Cocladist nodded. ``I understand. I ought to perhaps consider picking such things back up once more. There are many therapists, yes? Not just within our own clade, yes? Perhaps I will seek one of them out some day when I am not so tired.''

The Woman nodded. She knew what was coming next, but we all have our rituals, yes?

``But when will that be? Who knows. I am always tired, yes?'' A dry chuckle, and then, ``Such is our lot in life.''

``Perhaps, Rejoice. I would like to think that there is something else. I have been thinking again on the process of unbecoming.''

Her Cocladist sat up straighter. ``Ah, yes, your dream.''

The Woman nodded.

``You will have to tell me when you figure out what that is,'' Her Cocladist said, then returned to watching the pot. ``That is, I think, something that I would be interested in, yes?'' She waved a paw that was now a hand that was now a paw again demonstratively.

``Of course, my dear.''

Once more, Her Cocladist rested her cheek carefully on her hand or paw or perhaps both. ``If there is aught else aside from our lot in life, I would desperately like to know. I am not sure I believe that there is. If the seventh stanza exists to provide us with therapy, then we exist to give them clients. If they need suffering to fix, then we must suffer.''

The Woman sat in silence along with Her Cocladist after that, and the house was as as silent as it ever was, and the only noise in the kitchen was the lazy bubbling of a pot on the stove wafting the scent of some mild curry throughout the kitchen, and The Woman wrapped herself up in that scent and took what comfort she could from it as she thought on Her Friend's words some days ago, all but confirming Her Cocladist's sentiment about the seventh stanza, and what it meant that such might also be true for her stanza, the tenth, and her thoughts bubbled as lazily as the pot on the stove and The Woman sat in that silence with Her Cocladist, and the house was as silent as it ever was.
