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 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.

Did The Woman dream, we may wonder? Did she lay down and sleep after that conversation and look up to the constellations in the texture of the ceiling, close her eyes, and then let play within her head some scene, some dream within a dream within a dream within a dream, some stream of meaning that the subconscious mind as dreamed by the dreamer of the world?

I do not know.

Let us suppose she had, though! Let us take a look at what has made up The Woman so far and extrapolate some perhaps dream.

When first we began, when first some saner me set pen to paper or claws to keyboard, The Woman was set within her ways. She was set, as with her cocladists within her stanza, as one of those who suffers. She had hopes for moving forward with her life, yes, and dreams, but there was some part of her that fell in alignment with Her Cocladist's assessment that it was her lot in life as a member of the tenth stanza to provide a client for the seventh, those therapists among us. That was the moment when I began this story, telling of who she was, of expressing her as she might express herself, as did Carlo Collodi with Pinocchio: once upon a time there was not-a-king.

For she is our Pinocchio, is she not? She is our Pinocchio in reverse. She is the one who was born into this world too real and yet yearned for some of the stillness of so-called-inanimate wood.

The Woman then had her inciting incident, did she not? She had that moment when she met with Her Friend and felt after some form of joy that she could not quite put into words, and with that joy, against that joy, she felt the loss of joy over time, the way it was secreted within the treats that she delivered quietly to her cocladists and the way it seemed to trickle out of her life. And the second part of this incitation was the way that this fading of joy was cast against the stasis of her stanza, the suffering supposedly bestowed upon them. It showed to her plainly the impermanence of such joys, and thus, by omission, the possibility of a permanent pleasure.

She is and we are of a neurodivergent type, and so her approach to hunting for such joy as she imagined was of such a type as that: thorough and curious, methodical and whimsical. She set before herself by rule of fives five investigations: food, sex, entertainment, creation, and spirituality. The first four of these brought joy, and even superlative joy, but not the joy she sought, and before her lay the prospect of spirituality, and yet such a prospect was exhausting before she had even begun.

And so now we may only guess at the dreams of one such as her, one who lives within our consensual dream, one who is dreamed by the dreamer who was at one point our superlative friend.

Here is my supposition:

The Woman went walking. In her dream, she went walking, though it was not out on her field, the one we have seen so often. No, instead she went walking out her bedroom and through her secret door, out through the door and onto the street of the city that had become so familiar to her over the years, that city with the brick pavers and the fallen leaves which skittered so anxiously around her feet. She went walking in her dream and made her way through the unnervingly empty city streets, walking and walking and walking. She passed the trolley stops. She passed the coffee shops. She passed, perhaps, the setting sun.

And at some final point—final!—she came across a square set within the cement of the sidewalk perhaps two meters on a side where the concrete gave way to a metal grate in the form of a sunburst, and in the middle there was a circle of soil, good and clean.

There, within her dream within a dream within a dream, she smiled. She smiled and she sank slowly to her knees in that ritual circle described in steel and 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.

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

This is my supposition because this is my dream. This is a world I have seen and a world I have dreamed and it is a world that I have found a way still to love, even after it turned in on itself and ate so many of its own, even as The Dreamer who dreams us all stumbled skinned eir palms and elbows on the brick pavers of this land. Since I have become myself, since your humble narrator was first called Dear The Wheat And Rye Under The Stars, that has been my dream. I have dreamed hundreds of times over the centuries that I have lived that I, too, fell to my knees and dug my fingers into the soil and became, in some pleasure-bound process, something still and sky-reaching, something earth-eating and water-drinking.

This is my supposition for The Woman and her dream after she came home from my house, because I think within her all along was that stillness, that sky-reachingness and earth-eatingness and water-drinkingness.

\secdiv

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 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 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 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.

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.

Instead, she sat down near the end of it, across the room from Her Cocladist, for both beds had at their feet matching beanbags—when you have a tail that flickers into being at moments not under your control, you are limited in your seating, you see, to the types of seats that can accommodate such caudal majesty that skunks sport—where once Her Cocladist and Should We Forget would sit at times and talk and share in kindnesses such as touch when their forms permitted.

There, The Woman remained still.

She had within her an idea that there was mourning to be had in proximity.

She had within her an idea that there was stillness to be had in mourning.

She had within her an idea that there was joy to be had in stillness.

The Woman wondered whether or not there was stillness in prayer. While Michelle who was Sasha inherited the faith of her parents and grandparents before them of Judaism, she herself did not inherit much of such from Michelle who was Sasha—this was the realm of the third stanza, of Oh But To Whom and Rav From Whence and What Right Have I—and yet the kernel of such lives within us all for such is the nature of an inherited faith.

And yet regardless of her faith, there are, I am told, four kinds of prayer: words of thanksgiving, words of supplication, words of wonder, and the silence of meditation. I think, though, and perhaps you may think as well, that there are words of woe, of distress, of pain and fear and of the yearning for something—\emph{anything}—when our \emph{HaShem} does not feel near.

I think The Woman, as she sat across from Her Cocladist and watched how she looked now out the window, unseeing, silent tears coursing down her cheeks and leaving tracks on cheeks or marks in fur, leaned hardest on the last. One might think that she would in her seeking of stillness lean harder on the silence of meditation but I also think that it hurts too much to witness some pains. The Woman was kind. She was empathetic. She could sit there in pain with Her Cocladist and pray: how long, \emph{Adonai,} will You forget me always? How long hide Your face from me? How long shall I cast about for counsel, sorrow in my heart all day? Regard, answer me, \emph{HaShem,} my God. Light up my eyes, lest I sleep with death. My heart exults in Your rescue my heart exults in You my heart exults in You my heart exults in You my heart exults in You my heart.

Perhaps this is how she prayed, perhaps this is how I pray. Perhaps I cast about for something—\emph{anything}—to anchor me to \emph{this} world, to \emph{this} reality, to \emph{this} life and call out: why am I forgotten? Perhaps I do my best to trust. Perhaps I do my best to cause my heart to exult in some god in whom I am not sure I believe that I may be regarded, that I may be answered.

Perhaps that is not how she prayed. Perhaps she rested her cheek on her fist and looked as well out the window and cried, or perhaps not, but still she sat in silence. Perhaps she leaned not on psalms of anguish but on the silence of meditation

Perhaps she did not pray at all. I do not rightly know, and can only surmise.

Perhaps she, like me, like Job, struggles with maintaining a faith disinterested in reward or punishment or relief from sorrow. Perhaps she, like me, wishes she could in the hope that such disinterested faith might still provide a soothing balm against pain. Perhaps she, like me, struggles not to fall into the cynicism of Qohelet, the gather of the assembled who mused aloud: I set my heart to know wisdom and to know revelry and folly, for this, too, is herding the wind. Who mused aloud: what gain is there for man in all his toil that he toils under the sun? Who mused aloud: everything was from the dust, and everything goes back to the dust.

Perhaps she spoke to The Dreamer who dreams us all, perhaps not, but either way, she did not find joy in the keenness of sorrow, nor spirituality in the stillness of mourning, nor aught else but pain the stasis of Her Cocladist, looking now out the window, unseeing, silent tears coursing down her cheeks and leaving tracks on cheeks or marks in fur.

\secdiv

The Woman wanted to unbecome.

We know this, you and I. We know this because that is the story that I have been telling this whole time, is it not? I have written thousands of words, now, about how she was seeking joy. I wrote of her eating wonderful things, of having sex with her lover and holding hands with her friend, of reading and listening to music, of the conversation she had about creation with me and my beloved up-tree, The Oneirotect, of the mournful prayer she shared with Her Cocladist. I wrote about all of her successes and how each was tainted by an incompleteness, a failure to find the joy she sought, but I have made it so tenuous as to why these two ideas of joy and unbecoming are connected.

The Woman was too much herself, and becoming ever more so. With each day, each hour, each minute and second, she was becoming ever more herself. She did not just become older—though, dear ones, you remember, of course, that we are \emph{very} old—though she also became that—but she became yet more The Woman than she had been before. My clever readers will remember when I said: I think she would say that she was \emph{too} full, too much, too alive. Those readers will remember when I said: she is too much herself, too human, too embodied within her vessel as it spirals out of control, too stuck in her mind as it twists in on itself. And, yes, those same readers will remember when I said: It is hard to experience peace, hard to experience joy when one is too much oneself, is it not?

Do you see now the connection?

If you sense within The Woman's words and actions a haste to find some joy, some way to unbecome, before some unknown future calamity, I do not think you would be wrong, but neither do I think you would be wholly correct. I think there is a haste within all of us to do what we will before death. Even for those of us who live with what we had assumed was functional immortality have found that there is calamity in our lives, for we have now lived through death. No one who uploads even this very day does not remember the calamity that was the Century Attack, the way that a virus had been loosed within Lagrange, within the System in which we dwell, and crashed every single instance. No one who uploads even this very day does not know what terrors we have lived through, the grief of losing one percent of a society 2.3 trillion strong.

I write this in systime 285, in 2409 common era, in 6169 of the Hebrew calendar. If one were to upload as soon as they could, as soon as they turned eighteen, then they would have been nine during the Century Attack, during that one year, one month, and ten days that Lagrange remained offline, all of us functionally immortal rendered functionally dead.

All of us, even those who are uploading today, know that there is haste to do what one will before death.

Oh, it is not so bad as it was at first. Even now, I am finding that I am no longer racing quite so much to spend as much time with my stanza, to get every hug that I can from my beloved up-tree, to eat every good food I can or visit all of the lovely sims out there. I still spend time with my stanza and hug my beloved up-tree and eat good foods and see lovely places, and my beautiful, beautiful readers will certainly recognize the urgency in me writing down all the words I have to say, but it no longer comes with the knife-edge at my throat.

Well.

There is a burning within me, and perhaps it is the burning edge of a knife held to my throat, in order to put all of these words somewhere. Their flow has been unstoppered, and I am helpless before it. They rush at me and all I can do is turn away from the wind and let this flow rush down my arm and out my paw and onto the page—though, my friends, I have now injured my paw too much for this to be literal; there is blood in my fur and under my claws and there are holes in my pads where I punctured them and I still have not had the focus to fork such away and so I write now solely within my head as I pace the quiet rooms of my home.

There is a burning, and there is helplessness, but there is no longer \emph{haste,} I mean to say, and I do not think The Woman felt haste. She, like me, felt \emph{compulsion.}

She was compelled to seek a way to unbecome and make room for joy.

\secdiv

\label{thedog1}

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 kettlecorn, 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, and pet the dog some more. ``Good dog. Good dog.''

The Dog lit up. It \emph{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 Woman wanted to unbecome.

I am doing my best to tell you, dear readers, this story from front to back like any good fairy tale. I am, of course, failing at times to do so like any good author must. Our lives are full of doublings-back and loop-the-loops even when we are bound by time's oh-so-strict arrow, yes? For our lives are circuitous and the progression of the world, as we know, spirals and coils around us.

And so it is that I must once more step back from my notes—and here you must imagine me the type to have notes—and trace my finger up along the timeline of what I have so far told you so that we may sit together and consider why it is that stillness, for The Woman, has so much to do with unbecoming.

We must first of all unlearn the idea that unbecoming is an active process. There may be agency involved—in fact, I think The Woman would insist that there \emph{must} be agency involved, though I think she might hesitate if you were to ask whose agency—but that does not mean that this is a process of undoing-of-self. It is not, as The Woman stated so explicitly, dying, of course, but neither is it coming apart.

The agency, then, comes mostly in the act of choice. I mentioned above or perhaps some pages back that The Woman held onto the thought that stillness lay in choice. I said this because we are so beholden to what we were and what we have become and what we fear we may yet be that we so often lack choice. Perhaps this is an issue faced by all of humanity, but for me and for The Woman and for my beloved up-tree and for all of our clade, it is of the utmost importance, for we are so often and in so many subtle ways unable to make choices ourselves. Oh, I can choose what to wear, perhaps, or what pen to pick up, or when to schedule one of those lovely picnic lunches that the ninth stanza so enjoys, with Praise's music and Warmth's food and Praiseworthy's inscrutable expressions and all of the varied ways in which we love each other.

There is agency, yes, and there is choice and there is a movement toward, but there is also passivity, a moving into passivity, an acceptance of passivity. The Woman, this beautiful woman whose smiles are blessings and whose life is a story—this story! Dear readers, this story!—wished to be still. She wanted her unbecoming to be a stillness of her form, perhaps, and her thoughts, to be sure, but also of her very self. She wanted a self locked in joy. She wanted to be as Michelle was in that moment, that final moment, that moment when she looked up to the sun, looked up to our \emph{HaShem}, looked up to The Dreamer, and became a fount of joy, of memory, of thousands of collective years of existence compressed into one self, and she wanted to be in that moment: laid bare and elongated and eternal and forever and unceasing and forever entwined.

She wanted to be defined by joy, not suffering.

\secdiv

\label{thedog2}

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.

The joys and tragedies of its home drifted past its mind and into its too-perfect memory. Loves! Pleasures! Sorrows! Lives! Deaths! The laments of starving wolves outmaneuvered by deer! The blood of deer ripped to shreds by wolves! It did not determine what of what its eyes, ears, nose, tongue, paws took in was good, was evil, was just, was improper---it beheld what was, not what ought be, and there was a peace in that.

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 had had some occasional 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 its 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. She needed a change more integral, more whole, more entire—not a reshaping of the body, but a reshaping of the existence.

So, her search continued.

She met then with The Child after this diversion—for such was her errand, yes? Her original reason for visiting the neighborhood, and she saw no reason not to continue along this path. She returned to the lobby of the theatre which served also as a community center for Au Lieu Du Rêve, the troupe in which the fifth stanza had embedded itself, long familiar despite her having never seen it, for, you see, Michelle who was Sasha was a theatrician before uploading, a teacher, a director, an actress. Theatre lobbies smell like theatre lobbies and theatre carpet underfoot feels like theatre carpet underfoot and the sound echoed precisely as she had always remembered it.

Outside shone the sun. Outside grew the grass. Outside was the dusty gray of the asphalt street that wound around the center of this neighborhood—a street, for occasionally The Child and her friends wanted to rollerblade on a road, wanted to play kickball or catch, wanted to holler out ``car!'' as The Musician or someone with similar interests would drive through.

Outside played The Child.

Most people have a singular thing that defines them. You may say to me, ``But Rye! I have several things that define me! Why, I love to write and I love to paint and I love to cook delicious food,'' but I might say in return, ``My friend, you love to create! You are defined by your creativity.''

The Child defined herself by play. She did not merely paint, whether the pictures of which I have already written or the props and backgrounds that adorned the stage, but she played with paint. She was a being of play who, leaning into this identity, had formed as well the vessel with which she navigated the world into that of a child. She was a skunk of five years, or perhaps seven, perhaps ten, and this formation of herself was a means by which she lived wholeheartedly into her identity.

This is the glory of cladistics: that we may become more wholly ourselves. This is what makes us dispersionistas: that we may find joy in this. These simplified dissolution strategies that we have found have less to do with how often we fork, how crowded we may make a room with ourselves, and more to do with how much we love love love the feeling of becoming ourselves while some other us becomes someone else. The Child, The Woman, and I are all of Michelle who was Sasha, we are all some three centuries old, and yet The Child is The Child and The Woman is The Woman and your humble narrator is struggling.

And so The Woman stepped outside where The Child played, turning slow pirouettes, making a clumsy dance along the sidewalk—clumsy in that endearingly childlike way, mind! For that is her role, yes—and at her feet blossomed colored lines in pink orange yellow green blue white chalk, describing the shape of flowering vines, leaves and flowers showing wherever her paws touched the ground. By some trickery of the sim, some trickery wrought by The Oneirotect, her beloved friend and my beloved up-tree, wherever The Child stepped, there blossomed these vines in chalk.

``Hello, Motes,'' said The Woman.

``Hi,'' The Child said back. She did not stop in her slow dance, though now, whenever her movements led her to face The Woman, her smile shone bright.

``What are you doing?''

``Just playing. Want to play with me?''

The Woman tilted her head, taking a moment to consider this. ``I can try.''

``It can be a slower play, if that helps. We do not need to run races or play tag.''

She smiled. ``I would appreciate that, yes.''

``Have you ever seen a five-leaf clover?''

The Woman shook her head.

``Can you imagine one?''

The Woman did so. It was not so hard, she found. She thought of all of the three-leaf clovers that she had seen over the years and decades and centuries—for some of these grew in her very field, and perhaps they flowered, there, as well, those little globes of white—and then added a leaf until she had a four-leaf clover in her mind, and then once more added a leaf.

``Okay, I am imagining it,'' she said, watching the way The Child moved, the way that she dragged her toes in exaggerated arcs, the way that the vines followed, the way she turned in circles, the way that the vines were tied in knots. ``Have you ever seen one?''

The Child shook her head and giggled. ``No, I do not think so. That is just the switch.''

``The switch?''

``Walk a little bit.''

The Woman did so, and was startled to find that her feet, too, described lines in chalk. She laughed. She laughed! My dear, wonderful friends, The Woman laughed! When I spoke with The Child about this day, about the day that The Woman came over to speak with her, The Child agreed with my assessment: seeing The Woman smile, hearing her laugh, they were blessings.

``Come on,'' The Child said, and The Woman realized she had been fixated on the ground for several seconds and The Child had wandered down the road. ``If you walk behind me, I bet we can make them look like a braid.''

And so The Woman did, wandering along a few paces behind The Child. They played together in this way, talking quietly as they went. They found that if they walked in a lazy, wavering line, it looked like someone had braided a rope out of vines of chalk. They found that if The Child orbited the Woman as she walked, the loops that she created were pleasing to behold. They found that, when The Child walked beside The Woman, when they held paws and walked and talked, a pair of parallel railroad tracks followed them, leaves scattered more sparsely on the two that trailed along after The Woman than those that followed The Child.

The Woman knew that The Child did not have the answer that she sought, not really, but that was not to say that there was not joy to be found. There was joy in the walk they took. There was joy in the way that sat on the swings and swayed back and forth. There was joy in watching The Child make little bets with herself and the world—``I bet I can make it to the top of the jungle gym in five seconds!'' or ``I bet I can go down the slide backwards and not die!''—even when she lost those bets—though she did not die that day.

There was, last of all, joy when a piercing whistle broke the quiet of the late afternoon and Motes immediately hopped down from a balance beam and ran up to The Woman. ``That was Ma!'' This, you see, is what she called My Friend, her down-tree instance who had taken a role not dissimilar from a mother for her. ``Dinner is ready. I think Bee--'' This, you see, is what she called The Musician, her other guardian and My Friend's partner. ``--made meatloaf. Can I give you a hug?''

The Woman smiled, nodded, and sank to a knee so that she could give The Child a hug. ``Thank you, Motes. Enjoy your dinner. Thank you more than you know.''

This day, you see, this day was also not without forward movement, for The Child said something while climbing a tree that caught The Woman unawares, like the surprise of finding a shiny rock on the ground or perhaps seeing a shape in the clouds. The Child, climbing up a tree with great skill, mentioned in a stream of ceaseless chatter, ``One time, Serene turned herself into a tree! She said that she wanted to see what it was like to truly live within one of her sims, you know? She made a bunch of this sim, too! She said she wanted to see what it was like to be a part of something she made. So out there, out on the field out back of the houses, she made herself into this \emph{huge} maple tree! She made it a whole six months like that, then turned back into a fox again. She said it was really boring being so still. She said coming back was like being born, though. That is neat, is it not?''

\secdiv

``I want to unbecome,'' The Woman told Her Friend.

These two, these two skunks who were women who were both, at their very core, Michelle Hadje who was Sasha, these two sat around a small table not at the coffee shop but out on the field outside of the house where The Woman lived. My readers, most perceptive, will remember that this is where, once every two weeks, unless she was overflowing, unless she was in pain, unless she simply could not bring herself to go, she had an appointment for therapy.

The Woman had requested such, this time, and while it was far from the only time she had done so, the streak of good days, of those days when she felt up to stepping out of the house, out of the sim, out into the city so that they might meet up at a long-familiar coffee shop had been a long one. Her Friend had agreed readily, as ever ey did, but there was within that sensorium message the sense of an eyebrow raised, of a question unasked. And yet, ey said yes, and some ten minutes later arrived, standing out on the grass before the stoop with a mocha in each paw.

Waiting on the first step up from the grass, The Woman bowed and stepped down to greet her friend, and from there, they walked to the table in silence. They lifted down the chairs in silence. They sat down in silence, and sat in silence for some minutes after, until The Woman said, ``I want to unbecome.''

``So you have mentioned, my dear.''

The Woman nodded.

``Have you grown any closer to finding out just what that entails?''

``I have, yes.''

Her Friend smiled, raising her paper cup in a toast and tapping it gently to The Woman's own cup. ``Congratulations, End Of Endings. I am pleased to hear that. Is there more that you can tell me?''

``Of course, No Hesitation,'' The Woman said, sitting up straighter, as though by having her body more in order, her thoughts might be as well—would that this worked, my dear friends! Would that I could be so still and keep my thoughts like ducks: all in a row. Would that my emotions all faced the same direction. Ah, but The Woman continued, ``If becoming was the act of going from stillness to movement, then unbecoming might well be the act of going from movement to stillness.''

These words apparently caught Her Friend off guard, as ey, too, sat up straighter, furrowing eir brow. I am sure that you can see just how startling such an answer may be! We knew from the start, of course, that talk of unbecoming would be littered with little landmines labeled with such things as `suicide' or `self harm' or simply `the void', of course, but The Woman's words spoke of something more complicated.

``What, then does that stillness look like, to you?'' Her Friend asked carefully.

``There are some specifics I have yet to work out, but I can say now that it takes three forms.'' The Woman held up a paw with three of her fingers raised, and she ticked off each item as she went. ``The first form is a spiritual stillness. The second form is a mental stillness. The third form is a physical stillness.''

``This sounds a little like meditation.''

``There are meditative aspects about it, I would say, but I would not say that it \emph{is} meditation, for it lacks the intent.''

``How does it differ, then?''

``Each is an inversion of turmoil. Where there is spiritual unrest, there will be only rest. I do not pray, could not pray, and so this will be an act of becoming okay with that. I can feel RJ in the world, but in that I do not sense any sort of spiritual connection, and so I will become okay with that.

``Where my mind is unsettled, it will be settled. Rather than worrying about my day or about some routine not coming to fruition, I will settle into calm. Instead of thinking myself in circles, I will become a singular point: still and without direction.''

``And physically?'' Her Friend asked, brow still furrowed. ``Will you no longer shift forms?''

The Woman smiled, giving a slight bow. ``Yes, No Hesitation. All three of these must work together, yes? If there is turmoil in my thoughts, there will be turmoil in my spirit and I will shift form. If there is turmoil in my spirit, I will think and think and think and shift form. If I become but one form, my mind and my spirit will automatically become that much calmer.''

Her Friend sighed, and in that sigh was a recognition of unknowing, of ignorance. Ey knew, I think—I think because ey has told me—that ey did not truly understand what it was that The Woman was aiming at. And yet, to ask--! How to ask questions such as what ey wished? There are words and words, and words and words and words that all feel so loaded, yes? They are overburdened with meaning and meaning and meaning. They are too hot, my beloved friends, they are much too hot, and so we must pick them up with tongs and wear thick gloves and perhaps dark glasses over our eyes as the coals glow ruddy-- cherry-- orange-- white-- no, blue hot.

And so there was nothing for it. ``End Of Endings,'' she said most delicately. ``I ask this as your friend, but are you safe?''

The Woman, sat in silence for some time, then. They both sat in silence, yes, frozen into a comic panel, those words hanging in the air between them in some invisible speech bubble.

``Yes,'' she said at last. ``Yes, I think I am. There is no death in me. I stand by my words that I do not wish to die, nor do I wish to break apart. I have an idea of what this will look like, and I have an idea of how to approach it, and now all I need is a path from here to there.''

Her Friend bowed. ``I trust you, my dear. I have no other choice, of course, but I really do trust you. I love you dearly and wish nothing but the best for you.''

The Woman smiled and, yes, it was a blessing.
