Ah, my dear readers, my dear friends, my lovely little ones who sit cross-legged on carpet squares and the great big ones who wear their hearts on their sleeves, I am unable to do aught else but wax rhapsodic about so lovely a heart as that of The Woman, and while it may sound like I harbor some secret feelings, some hidden affection for her, and while that may indeed be true, for everyone wishes to be blessed by the kindest of smiles, I also feel that I do not have much longer to tell you this story, to finish what I have written from beginning to end, to get to the ending that doubtless you know now is coming, for I am now more words than I am person, I am more sentences than your narrator, and I am more story than I am alive.

I do not have much longer in which I may be able to tell you this story before the ceaseless tangle of words drags me under. I will try. I will try. I will try and try and try, and try and try.

I am very nearly there, too, to the end that you doubtless know is coming. There is only one new face to introduce, one new gently obscured name, and through her, I hope to draw strength, for you have seen already that relying on remembered dialogue makes it easier for me to pin myself to coherency.

\secdiv

We are women, much of the clade. There are some men, yes, and many who have exited such limitations as gender offers, but many of us remain women. Woman who are skunks, perhaps, or women who are cats, or women who are shaped some other thing—for is not there also joy in the furry identity with which we fell in love so many centuries ago?—but we are women still. We are so many of us still the short and fat and white and Jewish and dramatic and at-times-ebullient and at-times-depressed women that once Michelle who was Sasha embodied.

I can still look like this! I think we all can. You know as well as I do, dear friends, that our memory is untainted by time, that years and years, and years and years and years may pass, and yet we remember so much with such clarity that it makes me wonder, sometimes, and it makes me tremble. How clearly I remember the day! How clearly I remember the day that, having made it at last to the north north north and west of Yakutsk, my friend Debarre and I sat in a waiting room--

My friends, those of you who uploaded more recently, who uploaded even around the time of Secession must understand just how \emph{complicated} everything was. We uploaded, Debarre and I uploaded as soon as we could afford to. It was so expensive, those days! It was so expensive and I scrimped and saved for almost two years as soon as the procedure was announced and Debarre wiped all his savings and his retirement account and liquidated his stock and even then—\emph{even then!}—we still had to borrow money from\ldots ah, but I am wandering.

Our memory is as perfect and untainted by time as ever it has been since that first day that we uploaded--

My friend Debarre and I gathered every penny, and even then we still had to borrow some few thousand dollars to make the final trip from the central corridor of North America to the very first location of the System, up north north north and west of Yakutsk, where we stayed two nights in a hotel room or perhaps repurposed apartment yellowed to sepia by age, where the kettle was white enameled with a faint floral print around the lid, and yet the bottom of it had been so carbonized over time that it was blacker than black, and may well be the inspiration for The Child's paintings, and there we spent a night and a day and part of a night talking and talking, and talking and talking and talking, asking each other over and over and over who would go first, for the last thing we were told after we were shown to our door, after we were told that we would be locked in for security's sake, after we were told to simply lift the receiver on the ancient telephone if we needed anything beyond water, was that our procedures would not be taking place on the same day, that one of us would have to wait one more day, that one of us would have to sit, aching, locked in the apartment for twenty-four hours longer than the other, that one of us would not hear whether or not the other's procedure was successful and yet would still be committed either way to their own, that we would not know of success or failure until after all was said and done, and could we please simply lift the receiver on the ancient telephone to tell them by midnight\ldots ah, but I am wandering.

What I mean to say is that our memory is perfect, that I can still look like that scared, scared woman—a woman who was sometimes a skunk, yes, and who remembered being at times a panther, but still a woman—who first uploaded within a day of her friend Debarre--

And so we were locked into that room together, that hotel room or perhaps repurposed apartment yellowed to sepia by age, drinking tea after tea after tea because we were too nervous to sleep and not allowed to eat any food until just before the procedure, when we would be offered a hearty breakfast so that we would not upload feeling hungry, to that world that did not yet have food, or at least not satiation. We sat and we drank tea and we held hands and we talked quietly with each other trying to decide who would sit and ache, locked in a hotel room or apartment, and who would sit and ache, locked in some new world of uploaded minds. We sat and we drank tea and we begged and pleaded first for one and then the other, and then we lay down on the two single beds in the dark, facing each other, that first night, and begged and pleaded yet more until, finally, we pulled out the nightstand that sat between them and pushed the beds together so that we could once more hold hands in silence, wondering to ourselves who it was who would be the first, and then, at ten 'til midnight, we lifted the receiver on the ancient telephone\ldots ah, but I am wandering.

Ah, my dear, \emph{dear} readers, you know that I am struggling, I will not apologize any further than I have already. I will focus, and I will tell you about shapes.

What I have meant to tell you, what I have been trying to tell you and failing as waves of words wash over me, is that I remember what it was like to be that shape. I, \emph{too,} can look like Michelle who was Sasha did. I do not choose to do so often—I have not lived so in some decades—but I know that I still can, for I just now tried forking into such a shape. The Woman looked like that perhaps one third of the time, yes?

Many of those within our clade still look like her, to some extent or another, and one of those, one who came to visit me not a week after I met with The Woman, was The Blue Fairy.

The Blue Fairy did not look \emph{precisely} as Michelle who was Sasha did, of course, and very few of us do, except perhaps some of those in the tenth stanza. For, you see, the sixth stanza, the one from which The Blue Fairy originates, found itself focused keenly on feelings of motherhood. This is not, you must understand, restricted to those feelings of giving birth—though perhaps some linger in that sense—nor of having or raising children—though The Blue Fairy is called `Ma 2.0' by The Child—but it is a general sense, a broad definition that encompasses the feelings of love that dwell within us and how they apply to the whole of the world.

For The Blue Fairy, these feelings of motherhood and motherliness and the love of feeling like a mother were directed towards the System itself, the System as a whole, the System as a marvel of a world into which we are dreamed. She is the System's mother, and it is her baby.

When the System coiled around and began to eat its own tail, when it was attacked, when it was destroyed and reborn, when the fury of a few grew too strong and they wished the lives of all to be ceased, when the Century Attack hit us and so, so many were lost, The Blue Fairy said: ``I feel like my baby has stumbled. The System stumbled and fell, knocked its head, forgotten some of what it knew. I feel like our existence stumbled, as some group or another got so frustrated as to trip it up. When I dump my energy into all of this work, I am doing my best to nurse it back to health.''

Do you see, now? Lagrange is her child, and she is its mother.

For some years, for some handful of decades, for nearly a century, she worked as a systech, as one of those who work in service of our world, finding those who have crashed and unwinding their core dumps, finding those who are struggling and helping to bring them to safety to comfort to happiness to the present moment. She stepped from sim to sim, wonder at the world filling her eyes and her mind, and she found the ways in which it could be better, could be so much better, and she brought those to the attention of those outside our world, those phys-side techs working jobs so similar to her own.

One day, however many years ago, definitely more than one hundred but certainly less than two, she grew weary of this last aspect, for when it comes to any relationship between two countries—and do not forget, dear readers, we \emph{long} ago seceded! Seceded from the Sino-Russian Bloc and the Western Federation and the rest of the physical world—there was more bureaucracy than there was forward movement, and The Blue Fairy's baby was wrapped up in tape red and yellow.

And so, she forked. She forked into a new fairy, no longer quite so blue, and together they were all but twins. She promised herself a two-week vacation while her twin took her place, time off to wander sims and drink mochas and fall in love with the world again. Two weeks simply became years, is all, definitely more than one hundred but certainly less than two, and her twin—now with a name of her own—continued on in her stead, and they loved each other for what each had done—The Blue Fairy loved her twin for carrying on in the work, and her twin loved The Blue Fairy for finding ways to love the world.

I do not know why she thought aught else would happen, for Michelle who was Sasha said the same thing, did she not? She said to herself, ``Ah, I am so tired, and I feel so broken, and so I will fork the first ten instances of my clade and take a fucking vacation'', and she never did return, did she? The Blue Fairy said, ``Ah, I am so tired, and so I will fork a new me and take a fucking vacation'', and this was the origin of her beloved twin, her beloved twin who carried on in the work, her beloved twin who loved her in turn for finding ways to love the world.

They loved each other, and then, as has been the theme throughout this winding story, the world coiled around and ate itself and a score and a handful of billions of our two-and-change trillion souls did not return, and among them was The Blue Fairy's twin. They loved each other right up until the end, and then The Blue Fairy loved her lost twin alone.

And so here she was, no longer just a cocladist of mine, just a woman who wandered sims and drank mochas and loved the world, but once more a systech, once more a fairy. She was once more The Blue Fairy.

And so here she was, \emph{here,} Standing before my door, my second visitor in a week, bowing to me and greeting me with such kindness as I have ever seen from her, whenever we have had cause to meet—not infrequently, for she was also fond of my beloved up-tree.

``Tell me, Dry Grass, how you have been,'' I said once we were settled around the table in my house, that dining table which so easily expanded to fit all who would join and yet now was small and intimate.

``Oh, well enough, I suppose. I think I am starting to find my way out of that phase where everything feels new about systech stuff. It was easy enough for me to jump right in at first, but so much has changed in the intervening years.''

``I can imagine, yes.''

``It is not all on me, at least. We are learning the ins and outs of the new tech they have given us while bringing Lagrange back up from the Century Attack. So many crashes after long-diverged forks merged cross-tree out of fun, so many instances of people accidentally messing up their new ACLs and locking themselves out of their own rooms.'' She laughed, sipped her mocha, and added, ``The world feels strange and new.''

``It does, at that,'' I said, smiling. ``I do not think I am at risk of either of those, at least. I have little interest in cross-tree merging, beyond providing an instance for Ashes Denote That Fire Was.''\label{ashes}

``Same, on both counts. I believe they have picked up nearly twenty Odists now. They look\ldots well, they certainly have plenty going on, yes?''

I laughed. ``Twenty of us, even if we had never forked, would be, what, six thousand years of memory? And we are not exactly known for never forking, yes? I would say that is plenty.''

The Blue Fairy nodded and looked out the window for some time, simply resting her cheek on her fist and her elbow on the table, watching the way the leaves flittered and flickered in the gentle breeze of the day. There is a comfortably jittery quality to such flitting and flickering that reminds me that no one thing in the world is still, and certainly not trees.

Eventually, she replied: ``That is actually part of why I came here, Rye.''

``Oh?''

``I came to speak with you about End Of Endings.''

I sat up straighter. My friends, you will surely understand when I say that The Woman had been on my mind much in the intervening days, in that week between when I last saw her and this lovely afternoon with The Blue Fairy. Her loveliness shined bright in my thoughts, and I still felt blessed—still \emph{feel} blessed!—by each and every one of her smiles and quiet laughs. ``Yes, I have spoken with her recently. Warmth and I both have, I mean.''

``Yes, she mentioned such to me. She mentioned you two, Motes, Slow Hours, Beholden, No Hesitation, Ever Dream, Rejoice, Farai—a woman with whom she has at times dated—and a few incidental friends she has made in the last month or so. I have been meeting up with each of them to get a better sense of what is happening. You are the last on my list.''

I thought this through—and even thinking through it now, I wonder at it. I wonder and I tremble. The Blue Fairy gave me her reason—``I am asking you last of all because I think your experience with stories may help me make better sense of everything,'' she said when I asked \emph{why me}—and yet even now I linger on this thought that The Woman wove between us all—between all of those that The Blue Fairy mentioned—a gossamer web of connections. She was the strands—perhaps she still remains those strands!—and along those spider-silk-thin lines flow connections built on the blessings she bestowed upon us all. We do not feel stuck, I do not think. We are not bugs in someone absent spider's web. But what are we? Are we the nodes? Are we the sticky radial lines capturing ideas of her, or are we the unsticky spiral that allows us to pick apart our understanding? I tremble. I wonder.

I spoke then at length with The Blue Fairy, hearing all that she had to say, all that I have told you, dear readers, already, and so much more. So, \emph{so} much more! For The Woman had sat with The Blue Fairy for nearly ten hours, expressing all of this and slowly making for her an argument.

Her argument was thus: The Woman knew that there was suffering in her as she was. She knew that she was, in some integral way, defined by her un-joy. She knew that this suffering was bound up in her ongoing process of becoming, of this ever-increasing entropy of the self as time wrought its cruel machinations on her soul.

If, then, her suffering was bound up in increasing entropy, in increasing movement, then perhaps there was joy in stillness. Perhaps that is where her un-suffering lay.

Her argument was to set all movement aside and to follow a dream I have already mentioned. Her dream. My dream. Her argument was that she should become an entity that was still that she may dwell within un-suffering, and that she should spend an eternity thus formed.

``So, what do you think?'' The Blue Fairy asked when she presented this argument to me. ``I have my own thoughts, but before I share them, I would like to hear from you.''

``It sounds\ldots well, it sounds a little fragile, in its conception. She says that she is not interested in meditating, but she speaks of an essential emptiness, yes?''

The Blue Fairy nodded. ``She is not interested in meditating, no.''

``Yes. She says that she is uninterested in exploring more paths of greater action. She is not interested in hedonism, and yet her search is one of a pure joy that overrides everything else, yes?''

She nodded once more. ``Right.''

My friends, I will not lie, there was much frustration in me at the moment. I could feel my tail bristling out and I could feel my hackles raise and I could feel the way my ears were pinning back almost against my will. I think you may well understand, why, too, for this is what I said next: ``Okay, and she says that she has no desire to die in her, and yet she is talking about all but disappearing to the world around her, yes? That is what she is saying here! She is saying that she wants to stop being what she is and to become a tree!''

The Blue Fairy only smiled tiredly to me and replied, ``It is as you say.''

It took me a few seconds, yes, but I was able to draw calm from her and to settle my nerves. ``You think she should go through with this, do you not? Turn into a tree? Die, for all intents and purposes, to the world around her?''

``Yes.''

``Unequivocally?''

She shook her head, chuckling. ``Oh, not at all. I am quite back-and-forth on this whole thing. At first, I did not agree. She asked me if I would turn her into a tree with little else in the way of explanation and I simply referred her to some groups interested in such things.''

``I have heard of those, yes. I have visited Nanbrethil.''

``Of course you have,'' she said, smirking. ``But no, she said that she had already read up on some such groups and did not think that this is what she was after. She was after specifically `unbecoming', and this, she believed, was not the same as the thing that these groups were after. She said,''They are after an experience, and I do not fault them for that, but I am after an existence. They wish to do, I wish to be.'' When I suggested that perhaps there might be others who are interested in that, she cut me off—very politely, of course!—and said that that may well be, but that she came to me specifically because of our connection.''

``Connection?''

``I lost In The Wind, she lost Should We Forget.'' The Blue Fairy averted her gaze. ``I changed because of that loss. I got back into being a systech, yes?''

I sat back in my chair, holding my mug in both paws to draw from the warmth. ``Do you think, then, that she is seeking this change because of the loss from the Century Attack? That of Should We Forget?''

``That is what I came to ask you about, actually. I have visited with all of these people, heard all of what they have had to tell me about End Of Endings's last few weeks, and now I want to hear how you would write the end of this story, and how you imagine she would justify it.''

Now \emph{this} was a thought, dear readers. This was a thought that danced up along my nape and left a tingle in my scalp, it is a thought that danced down along my arms and gave an inch in my paws that invited the picking up of a pen. It is a thought that has circled around my head like a halo, lighting all that I see, for some years now, for nearly six years! I thought to write this story then, and I thought to write this story after, and I thought to write this story in the intervening years, but something was not quite right, not quite right, not quite right about the time or about myself or about the world around me, and so I did not. I did not write the story perhaps because I was still living in that haste to experience all that I could before our world risked once more coiling around and eating some more billions of us and our lives were turned off like a simple light switch. I did not write the story because I was writing only the small things, that I might spend the rest of my time loving those around me, hugging my beloved up-tree, eating picnics out on the lawn with my stanza, simply \emph{living.} Ah, I am trying to--

Some of you, perhaps some of my newer uploads, or my littler readers, or maybe some of those who have lived for centuries, might wonder at this. They might wonder: ``Rye, it seems to me like The Woman is asking to be absolved of all those except the barest responsibilities of living.'' They might wonder: ``Rye, it seems to me like The Woman is abdicating on life in a way that she can deny is suicide.'' Perhaps they might wonder: ``Rye, The Woman has chosen for herself a next step, a beautiful exploration.'' And all of them might wonder: ``Rye, why is it that you are being asked this in particular? Why is Dry Grass not asking for your opinion on whether The Woman should or should not do this thing?''

And I think that, to these musings, I might reply: ``My friends, my lovely friends, a beautiful consequence of cladistics is that this is simply not my role. Yes, I had feelings on the thought of The Woman existing within perpetual stillness—of course I did! How then would I be blessed once more by her smile?—and I did indeed tell those to The Blue Fairy, as you shall see, but that is the easy part. The hard part and the valuable thing that I might have to offer is that aspect that I have focused my life around, which is the telling of stories. There are others who might offer predictions for the future, those such as The Poet who live their life in prophecies, but it is my life to write the stories of the now, of the present, of the lives we are living and breathing pinned at the forefront of time's inevitable arrow. The Blue Fairy came to me with all of this research that I might have done myself when it comes to writing a story and asked me to build up a sense of The Woman's life that we may better understand.''

And so, I agreed, and The Blue Fairy and I decided that I would sleep on it for one night, and then talked of other things for a few minutes longer before she quit to merge back down, while I bathed in this research already done, and told within myself a story.

``There are two ways that I see this ending,'' I said when we met the next morning. ``The first is that you and her work together to help her accomplish her goal. She becomes still in the form of a tree parked in a field--''

``She has requested that she be\ldots uh, planted, I guess, in the sidewalk in front of her favorite coffee shop.'' She smiled, sheepish, and said, ``Sorry, I did not mean to interrupt.''

``No, no, that is quite alright. It is sweet, actually, that she found something meaningful like that. But yes, one ending is that she does as she says and that she finds her happiness there, but we are all left with complicated feelings. We will all have lost her, in a way, yes? For, though she has said that she is not aiming to \emph{die,} she will have \emph{effectively} died to us, yes? We will have to process her loss.

``The other ending is that we help her try to find happiness that does not involve another loss within our clade. In this she may find herself confronted with frustration, not just at the denial of her request, but at the fact that, if there does remain some joy that is not stillness, she may encounter more pain in the process of getting there.''

She frowned, lingering in silence, and then nodded. ``And I worry that that, too, will be uncomfortable for us. We will see her still among us, but will we see her happy? If she is miserable, I do not think I would like that, either.''

``Yes. When we spoke yesterday, I was quite against the idea. I know that, if she does continue living, if she does not quit, she can always come back to us, but it still came with a sense of wanting to do everything I could to prevent that.'' I sighed—I remember that well, I sighed as though I was breathing out my complicated feelings in a way that speaking them would not quite do justice—and continued. ``And yet now, having done as you suggested. I feel perhaps more the opposite. If she is, as she has suggested via her various conversations, as Rejoice has suggested, suffering, then who are we to suggest she linger there? Even if it is a kind of suffering that we do not understand, it would be rather cruel of us, would it not? And yet is life not hard? And yet decisions ought to be respected, yes?'' I laughed and waggled my paw back and forth. ``This is difficult, and that, in and of itself, is a good story.''

The Blue Fairy groaned and covered her face in her hands. ``Fuck. Rye, why is this so hard? Why did she ask me?''

``Because you are a good person. She respects you, yes? And you are a cocladist. You \emph{are} her, in a way,'' I said, squeezing her upper arm kindly. ``She is looking to someone she respects and someone she \emph{is} to either give her blessings by helping, or to talk her out of it. The decision is not whether or not she should, but whether or not we should. It is not a judgment on her, if it is a judgment at all, but it is a judgment on us.''

I, dear readers, dear, \emph{dear} friends, I am trying to believe this. I am trying to live into this. I am trying to feel that I have been judged for making that decision, the decision that I did, the decision to let go—for I am sure that you see now just where this is going; have I not written so much in the past tense?—and been judged worthy. I hope that, if God exists, that They will smile and brush my mane out of my eyes and rest their paw—for am I not made in their image? Am I not \emph{b'tzelem Elohim?}—and say to me, ``It is okay, Rye. To let go is difficult, but it is okay. Sometimes one must let go.''

But here is the point where my mind was made up, and I will admit to being somewhat ashamed that it was something so simple as this, but I am a simple skunk. One might call me a one-dimensional person and not be wrong. It makes me wonder and it makes me tremble, but this is the point in the story where I made that decision.

``I do not think we would ever know, is all. You are right in that she has said that this is not a death, but we would never know. The reason she came to me is not necessarily to help her turn into a tree—though I will also help her with that—but to modify her record in the perisystem clade listing to be grayed out.''

I sat up straighter, hearing this! How intriguing! ``As in when one has locked down their visibility?''

``Yes. She requested an exception that, whether or not she quits, her entry remain in some in-between state so that we will never know.''

``Has she said why?''

She snorted, raising her face from her hands. ``She said that each of us will have to make up our own reason. It was all very Odist.''

``It really is,'' I said, chuckling. Readers, it is so much easier to write like this, to tell of concrete things. I am trying not to rush, as I do not have much time left, I think but--- ah, I am interrupting myself. I chuckled and said, ``It really is. Did you mention this to the others?''

``I did. Reactions were mixed. Farai cried quite hard. No Hesitation was left in a whirlwind of doubts. Slow Hours agreed immediately that we grant her this change.''

``That is very Slow Hours of her.''

The Blue Fairy laughed. ``I suppose it is.''

I struggled for a minute, and it was not for want of words, for I knew the words I needed, but it was for want of courage. I did not know how to say this to her without sounding cruel, perhaps, or uncaring, or self-centered, but I could not be anything other than honest in that moment, not for something so important as this.

``I want that, too,'' I said.

``Pardon?''

``I want that for her. I want that she be able tell this story for herself. That is my decision.''

Her shoulders slumped, and she looked at me with tired eyes, searching eyes. ``What is your reason for her request of an exception, then?''

``She is keeping her last bit of agency for herself,'' I said—slowly, for I was not so rehearsed with these words, and I have a habit of rehearsing much of what I say. ``She is saying,''This final decision is mine. You may decide whether or not to help me, but if you do, I will make the final decision.'' She tells the end of her story alone, and we will have to tell ours for ourselves.''

We spent some minutes then in silence—a comfortable silence, friends; I did not feel like we were waiting for the other to speak—simply drinking our mochas and looking out the window together.

At last, The Blue Fairy smiled to me. ``Alright. I will do as she has asked. It kills me, Rye. It hurts, but I will do as she has asked.''

\secdiv

I am struggling and I am crying and I am pacing around my empty house and I am trembling and I am struggling and I am crying and my paws are bleeding from where my claws have pierced my pads and I am having a hard time holding myself down to one set of thoughts to one set of words to one language to the present moment to the living world and I am looking up and within and without and around and hunting for our superlative friend who is The Dreamer who dreams us all and I am doing my best not to step away to that sim to that coffeeshop to that tree where I may throw myself at its roots and wrap my arms around its trunk and press my cheek against its coarse bark and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and weep and--

My friends, my beautiful beloved readers, I am lost. I am all but lost. I have enough in me to tell you of what happened, but only just, and then I will no longer be able to continue, for that was the last conversation we had. That is the last concrete thing that I have to write. There are no other words that I can tell you except for these:

\emph{``It is done.''}

The Blue Fairy met The Woman at the foot of the steps of the house, that Gothic house on the field of grass and dandelions and perhaps clover. She stood, this wonderful and sad and amazing fairy at the base of the steps of the house and looked up to the door as The Woman stepped forth. With each step, The Woman changed. Every time her foot or paw hit the ground, she became a new thing. She was now The Woman who was The Human and she was now The Woman who was The Panther and she was now The Woman who was The Skunk, and always—\emph{always} always always in all ways always—she was smiling and her smile was a blessing upon the whole of the world. Upon the house, upon the field of grass and dandelions and perhaps clover, upon The Blue Fairy upon, when she turned around, the remainder of her stanza who all stepped out onto the porch to watch her go.

There, The Blue Fairy bowed. She bowed and held out her hand and let The Woman rest her hand her paw her paw her hand her paw her paw her hand within it to let herself be guided down to the field like some princess greeted by some royal courtier or perhaps a prince from a far away kingdom. There, The Blue Fairy basked in this blessing of a smile from The Woman, her cocladist from far, far across the clade, and led her gently from the field and to the city.

My friends, my dear, \emph{dear} friends, there was no door for her to brush her fingers against, no imagined \emph{mezuzah} that she might touch for some final blessing, and—at last at last for once at last—neither was there a sense of ritual nipping at her heels, following along like some eager puppy. There was no ritual, for she knew now that she created her \emph{own} blessings she created her \emph{own} peace she created her \emph{own} future.

There was no door.

There was no door.

There was no door.

There was no door, no imagined \emph{mezuzah,} as they stepped through to the city and landed in the alleyway in which The Woman usually arrived. They, then, were briefly alone. They were alone in the cool shade of the buildings and the crispness of the air and the staticky sound of the fallen leaves skittering around their feet and feet and paws and paws and feet and paws and feet and paws and paws and--

They walked lightly and in silence as they stepped along the sidewalk and boarded the trolley to ride three stops, three stops, three stops to the coffee shop that The Woman and Her Friend always loved, and there was no one there—not a request but a felicity a chance a happenstance that befell them, that they stand there at the entrance to the coffee shop that The Woman and Her Friend always loved alone and surrounded by the quiet sounds of the breeze that wafted between the buildings and past doors and against skin against fur against fur against skin against skin against skin against fur against skin against--

The Woman and The Blue Fairy stood before the coffeeshop on the sidewalk where there was a new thing, where there was a square cut into the paving stones on the sidewalk two meters on a side and a grate of steel or iron set into it with a sunburst pattern and, in the center, a circle of good, clean soil.

There, The Woman turned a slow circle and smiled one final blessing on the world and faced at last The Blue Fairy, who would be the last person to be so blessed, and The Blue Fairy guided The Woman The Skunk The Panther The Woman The Woman The Woman The Woman down to her knees and knelt with her and reached up and brushed her hair her mane her forehead her hair her mane her forehead, and leaned in to place a gentle kiss atop her head, and then The Woman nodded, and then The Blue Fairy stood and, crying, signaled to the System The Dreamer our superlative friend our personal \emph{HaShem} that all was as it should be and that all should proceed as it ought and then, there, at last, finally, without further action, she watched.

The Woman, as she dreamed, as I have always dreamed since and dreamed before and perhaps all of us dream at some point or another, dug her fingers down into the soil. Down and down and down she pushed, and as she did, she felt her fingers lengthen, stretching and twisting, seeking nutrients and water, seeking final—final!—purchase. They twisted and stretched down as roots and spiraling up her arms was a texture like bark and the bones of her neck and back elongated and her eyes sought \emph{HaShem} or The Dreamer or some greater void and her hair greened to that of leaves and drank thirstily of the sunlight.

She 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.

And above was the sun which was also The Dreamer who dreams us all.

Finally—finally!—with one orgasmic flush of joy, The Woman became The Tree, and there was a joy everlasting in such stillness.

There, The Blue Fairy stood for for an hour or more, simply crying, now standing before the tree, now sitting at its base, now pacing a long circle around it, and always she cried, and she watered the thirsty roots of The Tree which once was The Woman with her tears and the passers-by looked on with curiosity or studiously ignored her or perhaps offered words of condolences, but all—all all all all \emph{all}—looked on with wonder at this brand new thing, this new occurrence, this new beauty of a tree, a catalpa that would one day bloom white flowers and leave behind forgotten pods of seeds that rattled joyously against the ground.

And then, when her tears were gone and the roots of The Tree had slaked their thirst, The Blue Fairy sent us all a simple message, three simple words, one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one she told us:

\emph{``It is done.''}

We may never more be blessed.

We may never more be blessed.

We may never more be blessed.

I may never more melt beneath her smile. What will become of me?

The Child may never more play with her, wandering around the streets with lines of chalk following their feet, making little bets with themselves. What will become of her?

Her Cocladist will never wonder whether their is aught else in life but suffering while The Woman sits nearby. What will become of her?

The Oneirotect may never more share stories of Should We Forget. What will become of em?

Where before The Woman and Her Lover, as the poet says, shared their oranges and limes, where they gave their kisses, where they lay on the grass and beach, now the woman lays underground and they share nothing, giving silence for silence. What will become of her?

What of Her Friend? What of that beautiful soul? What of em? What of the one who goes now to the coffee shop every day and drinks her mocha by the base of The Tree, eir tail curled over eir paws, and speaks aloud to one who is lost to em? What will become of em?

The Poet! The Musician! The aesthetician and that kindly restaurateur who petted her head while she sobbed at the remembered pain of spice and the Dreamer above! What will become of them?

And all of this makes me wonder and makes me tremble.

It makes me tremble and it makes my fur stand on end and my paws shake and my pen skitter anxiously across the page like those leaves that danced before the feet of The Woman I told you about so, so long ago, perhaps like those leaves that skitter within the city, that unreal city, that city full of dreams, where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passers-by.\label{baudelaire}

Oh! And oh! The wonder of it all! She, then, like\label{graves} so many leaves and the white petals of flowers and the dry brown pods of seeds fell secretly! She fell and fell and fell and we fell and fell and fell and fell and fell until falling was all we knew and within that fall we found some new kernel of truth but how hot that kernel was! It burned within our palm as we held it to our chest and for each of us it burned so, so hot and so, so differently that there she was, too much herself and here I am, too much myself, and the words come so fast and so thick that I am blinded! Ink in my eyes, scrabbling for any known thing! I press upon this and that with shaking fingertips to try and find something that is not yet more words, but that is all there is, because this is it, my friends, the kernel of truth that we found. The truth we now know is that we are falling still! We fell into overflow and never really ever came back. We may slow down, we may catch a branch of The Tree and be able to hold there for a little while, panting, struggling to catch our breath, until fire burns through our shoulders and we cannot hold any longer and we are forced to let go once more and fall and fall and fall just like I am falling and falling and falling and falling and falling and--

And The Woman? This is what makes me wonder and makes me tremble: what of her? Is she alive still? Or did she quit and are we left not with The Tree that is her but simply a tree? Simply that which drinks thirstily from this dream of a ground. Is that her or is it a dream of dumb matter? If she is still there, if she is still alive, if she is still The Tree, then is she still at last? Is she merely herself at last? Has she landed at last upon the ground and sat up, dazed, and looked about her new life and said, ``Oh! Oh, I do believe this is some plentiful enough for me''?

Because if that is so, what of us? My little readers may be rubbing the tears from their eyes or tilting their heads in confusion as I wonder at them: what of us? If that really \emph{is} her, if she really \emph{is} The Tree, and if she really \emph{is} finally—finally!—still, then what does that mean for me, who cries ink down into her fur—a skunk! Is it really any wonder that black fur suits me so? What does that mean for my clade? For Her Friend, who struggles and strives to reclaim that which has failed and turn it into some bijou and yet who, when ey falls, feels that all the work ey has done is not just for naught, but has hurt those who ey sought to help?

My own Friend, who will most certainly read this and reach out to me to see if I am okay, she has said that she wonders at times whether we are all doomed to die. She was with me—with all of us there on the field—as I watched my root instance look up to the sky, breathe in a million billion trillion\label{cummings-mbt} years and then quit, and so now she wonders at times whether we are all doomed to do as she did, to look up to the sky, breathe in every year of our lives and the lives of all of our instances, and quit. If that is all that lays before us, what does that mean for us? If all that lies before every Odist and every hidden, forbidden self that we have spun out into the world is some forever death, then what does that mean for this time-bound now?

Is death within us? Perhaps. Is suicide within us? Perhaps.

Was this death? Was what The Woman did in seeking and finding her eternal stillness suicide? Perhaps! Perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps my friends perhaps--

My little readers who are rubbing the tears from their eyes, do not fret! Do not fret. Do not fret. Do not fret. These are the questions that are part of life. Do not fret that you, too, may someday ask yourself this: is death within me? Am I born to die? Perhaps you will lose a friend to despair, as did so many after the world's heart skipped a beat and billions fell into oblivion. Perhaps you, yourself will despair and then come back up to feel the sun on your cheeks in some prosaic sim and wonder: am I born to die?

When, as now, I am blinded by ink that flows down my cheeks and stains my fur and my clothes and my paws and my paper and my pen and my desk or when, as now, I overflow and graphomania catches me up by the throat and bids me with unbitter sweetness to set the nib of my pen in the ink well, then touch it to the page, and then simply dance, that is when I am forced to wonder, when I am pressed up against that overhot kernel of truth: is death within me? Is suicide within me? And am I born to die?

What will become of me?

Friends, I do not know, I do not know. Friends, all I can do is lock the door and make sure my mug of mocha will not empty and pick up my pen and put it to the paper and brush my cheek fondly against my graphomania's wrist and listen to its cloying words and simply dance. Do I need help? Should I seek out No Hesitation? Should I ask My Friend? Should I ask you, gentle readers? What will happen if I do? What will happen if I do not? What will become of me?

I am full of wonder and I am full of terror and I am trembling and I am asking myself you The Woman Her Friend My Friend my graphomania my pen my paper my dear, \emph{dear} readers: what will become of me, and am I born to die? And am I born to die? And am I born to die? What will become of me? And am I born to die? What will become of me? What will become of me? What will become of me? What will become of me? And am I born to die? And am I born to die? What will become of me?
