Beholden never quite understood play.

She \emph{played,} that was for sure. She played with her music, her sound design. She played with people's voices, recording them for later and slicing them up into bits and bites, rebuilding them into some work of eerie or jittery or calming beauty. She played with the sounds around her house, her studio, the whole of the world. She played with acoustics. She played with spaces. She played with echoes and reverberations and dead-zones and cones of silence. The played with soundscapes and world-soundtracks.

She hummed and sang. She played the piano, the drums, the guitar. She played the clarinet badly and the flute worse. She played with A Finger Pointing, their own little jazz trio, their own little big band. She played with her friends, jam session after jam session after jam session. She played her own sets, forking countless times over to play at however many clubs or venues. She played at The Party—several instances thereof!—running now for the last century and a half, a party that never ceased, attendees sleeping wherever, in beds or where they had fallen, with each other, alone. Beholden To The Flow Of The Crowds existed for a reason, yes?

She played as she danced. She played with others, dragging them home for a one-night stand, a few-nights fling, a relationship that lasted a month or two, but so rarely any longer.

And she played with Motes, too. She really did! She played with her little Dot, tickling her until she said she was going to be sick, or pretending to pick her up by the ears as the skunklet clutched at her forearms. She played dead for Motes when she grew too exhausted to keep up. She lay there, on the floor, eyes closed, breathing turned off, while her charge scampered around, leaping over her, triumphant, hollering about victories, or wept over her unalive-yet-souled body at the tragedy—oh, woe! Such tragedy!—of a fallen comrade. Less mother than cool stepdad, she played with her kid.

But she did not understand it. She did not really get it. She rarely thought about it, but when she did, it was more baffling than it was natural.

Beholden was not stupid. She was not an idiot. She could conceptualize things around her, and in all the many ways the rest of the clade was, she was wickedly intelligent in her own area of hyperfixation, hyperspecialization. When it came to emotions, though, when it came to instincts and base responses, she could not quite understand. It was not her fixation, her specialization.

She did not really know why she played, because she did not really \emph{care} to know why.

She did not know why she loved, why she loved A Finger Pointing or Motes. She did not know why she loved so few others. She did not know why she felt such devotion to her boss—``not your boss'' the common refrain—and her Dot in a way that she could not muster for anyone else. She never bothered to question why.

She did not know why she rose so quickly to anger. She did not know why she and Motes fought at times. She did not know why she got so mad when she saw Motes die on stage. She did not know why, when she and Slow Hours fought, usually about Motes's various deaths, it hurt so much. She shied away from ever trying to figure out why.

She just knew that she played, that she loved, she got stuck in her big feelings.

And so when she found Motes huddled in the middle of her studio, all but curled into a ball as she crouched on the floor, when she found her bloodied beat up, Beholden panicked. She kept it together long enough to help the little skunk to her room, to fork, to bed. She held herself in one piece as she told Motes time and again that she loved her. She held the panic at bay until she made her way to her studio, locked the completely soundproof door, and crumpled to the ground, screaming and wailing and sobbing. She tore holes in the couch cushions with her claws. She ripped acoustic foam from the walls. She threw the table hard enough to shatter it.

And then, when sobs settled into simple tears and not great, heaving things, she waved her paw to unwind the tantrum. She brought into being a glass of water to set on the once more intact table, sat down on the un-torn couch, and moaned through her tears, letting the replaced acoustic foam absorb the sounds.

When she was next able to speak, she began a sensorium message to A Finger Pointing. \emph{``Dot is overflowing, love. She--''}

\emph{``I know,''} her partner interrupted. \emph{``I am here.''}

Quelling her shame, she straightened herself up as best she could, deciding not to fork away the mussed up fur or tear-stains on her cheeks, letting some of that trauma show for reasons she could not explain, and stepped back out of her studio to find A Finger Pointing pacing back and forth in the living room.

``I came as soon as-- oh, Beholden\ldots{}'' Her cocladist's shoulder slumped as she trailed off, putting a halt to her pacing so that she could wrap the skunk up in a hug. ``Are you okay, my dear?''

Despite the stinging of new tears in her eyes, she nodded. ``Not particularly, but I am here. How did you know that Motes was overflowing?''

A Finger Pointing hesitated, frowned, and pulled a letter from her pocket, handing it over to the skunk. ``This. I did not \emph{know} that Dot was overflowing until I got here and saw her door shut tight. I was not at all surprised when you told me.''

As Beholden read through the letter, her lips curled up into a snarl, and she could feel a low growl build in her chest. ``\,`I expect better'!'' she muttered darkly, stamping her foot. ``Jesus \emph{fucking} Christ. `Grounded in reality' indeed.''

Smiling humorlessly, she nodded toward the letter. ``I am assuming that this mention of a letter is what took Motes down.''

``Took her down?'' Beholden cried, then quickly tamped down the flare of anger, returning the letter to her partner. ``She was covered in blood when I checked on her. Someone must have hit her hard enough to give her a bloody nose. She was all scraped up.''

A Finger Pointing blanched stiffened for a long few seconds, then nodded. ``Did you get her cleaned up?''

``Yeah, I brought her to enough to get her to fork into her PJs, but she is out hard right now in bed.''

She sighed, shoulders slumping. ``Thank you, my love. I had assumed the last bit, at least, and have left her be. I did not wish to add to her stress at the moment.''

Beholden nodded. ``What do we do?''

``Protect our own,'' came the immediate answer. ``Protect ourselves. Protect our Dot.''

And so they did. They circled around each other, brought Dry Grass into the fold as officially as they saw fit, providing her with a house. They set up a gentle watch on Motes, set up alerts throughout the house for when her door opened from the inside, for when the bar or kitchen were entered by her. They sought out Slow Hours for a meeting seeking her premonitions, such as they were. They sought out Sasha for a meeting to confirm that there were no existential threats. They sought out Waking World for a meeting to get a better sense of Hammered Silver's intentions.

All the while, Beholden did her best to remain calm, or to at least tamp down expressions of overwhelming emotions. There were walks. Many walks. Many excuses to step away to the auditorium or to get fresh air or stretch her legs.

She went always alone on her walks, pacing out along the deer trails or walking the loop of the neighborhood time and again, poking her way among the seats and catwalks of the auditorium.

Or tried to go alone, as always there was someone willing to go with her, asking gently if she needed company, even if that company was silent, or if she needed instead to talk. Slow Hours volunteered. Unbidden volunteered. A Finger Pointing, having spent so many years, so many decades with her, did not volunteer, but did look after her with a mix of worry and understanding in her face.

The only time she accepted the company was when Dry Grass did not so much volunteer as, wiping freshly-shed tears from her face, ask Beholden if they could go for a walk together so that she could talk. That Beholden had already slipped on her hoodie, had already drank a glass of water, was already heading towards the door suggested that this was a form of volunteering, but Dry Grass did certainly deserve the chance to talk through the position she had found herself in.

(( A walk with Dry Grass to calm down the next morning after their meeting ))

(( Confusion and coming to terms with Motes in the family ))

(( Caring for A Finger Pointing ))\\
(((( Pointillist sighs wistfully. ``She has recorded me doing all sorts of things in my day-to-day as well. There is a recording of my heartfelt laughter turning to dire sobbing after a really rough day. She chopped it into little slivers of half-recognizable samples and haunted an entire album with it like the world's longest''Chihuahua or Muffin'' slideshow.'' ))))

(( The origin of struggling with emotions, tamping down grief in order to work with sound, ever AwDae's thing ))
