Warmth updates

content/prelim/005.md

@@ -352,13 +352,17 @@ The Woman shrugged, the barest hint of her shoulders to go with an expression th
 
 The Oneirotect nodded. "Okay. I am glad to hear that you are still living your life," she said with a grin, a brief, rhythmic sway of her tail providing accompaniment for the mood. "What is it you wanted to talk about?"
 
-The Woman looked to me, and I took up the lead. I asked my beloved up-tree, "Perhaps you could speak to what it is that you actually do my dear. What is it that you enjoy? We have been talking about such things."
+The Woman looked to me, so I took up the lead. I asked my beloved up-tree, "Perhaps you could speak to what it is that you actually do my dear. What is it that you enjoy? We have been talking about such things."
 
-"I have focused on oneirotecture," it answered. "A construct artist, if you must be such a bore. I think of myself most of all as an aficionado of nostalgia."
+"Well, I think of myself most of all as an aficionado of association, an oneirotect — a construct artist, if you must be such a bore," it answered. "One must bring into being a careful synthesis of memories both sensory and emotive, yes? For that is the substance of significance, yes?"
 
-The Woman tilted her head in that way so familiar to us. "Nostalgia? Is there a draw to that for you, or is that something you find others hungering for?"
+The Woman tilted her head in that way so familiar to us. "Nostalgia, then?"
 
-The Oneirotect, clearly delighted by so simple a question, brought its paws together over the table, folded neat and prim. "Yes!" It let the humor of that comment stew for a moment before offering something more worthy of the title 'answer'. "In the first decades of the System, it was necessary to create the stuff that makes up our consensual dream, yes? We desired to eat, but none had yet dreamt of food; we wished to surround ourselves with cherished things, but even the platonic form of such did not yet exist.
+"Yes!"
+
+"Is there a draw to that for you? Or is that something you find others hungering for?"
+
+The Oneirotect, clearly delighted by so simple a question, brought its paws together over the table, folded neat and prim. "Yes, and also yes!" It let the humor of that comment stew for a moment before offering something more worthy of the title 'answer'. "In the first decades of the System, it was necessary to create the stuff that makes up our consensual dream, yes? We desired to eat, but none had yet dreamt of food; we wished to surround ourselves with cherished things, but even the platonic form of such did not yet exist.
 
 "I find joy in creating these constructs — these *things*, this *stuff*, all that we interact with here — but most of all I enjoy the research that goes into that."
 
@@ -368,7 +372,7 @@ The Oneirotect, clearly delighted by so simple a question, brought its paws toge
 
 I chuckled, shrugged.
 
-"Very well. I favor culinary constructs now, but that has only become the case since I met Codrin. That said, I did begin with fruits! I wanted to recreate some of what was lost to the climate disaster. Most of the heavy lifting had already been done by the time I began exploring oneirotecture, but there remained gaps in what was available. That experience was most formative, but it was Codrin's cooking that sent me down this path."
+"Very well. I favor culinary constructs now, but that has only become the case since I met Codrin. That said, I did begin with fruits we never got to try growing up in the Central Corridor. Most of the heavy lifting with staples had already been done by the time I began exploring oneirotecture, but there remained gaps in what was available. That experience was most formative, but it was Codrin's cooking that sent me down this path."
 
 "Not █████? Not Codrin and Dear's partner?" The Woman asked. She asked, of course, after one remembered fondly, and one whose name is not yours to know, dear readers, or perhaps you know it intimately, but with a wink and a nudge like a joke kept between us. "Are they not the chef?"