Final pass

content/_index.md

@@ -11,24 +11,10 @@
 >
 > But me, friends? What will become of me?
 
-Coming August 1, the [Kickstarter campaign for *Idumea*](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/drabmakyo/idumea) will begin! Help fund a new novella in the Post-Self setting. Written by Madison Rye Progress with contributions from Samantha Yule Fireheart and Krzysztof "Tomash" Drewniak, the story explores the escape from samsara in a digital world, and the effects of trauma on the functionally immortal.
-
-## Stretch goals
-
-Should funding extend beyond the goal of $500, the scope of the project will be expanded!
-
-* $1,000 — A hardcover edition of *Idumea.*
-* $1,500 — Post-Self anthology of fairy tales and fables, with short stories written by members of the Post-Self community, with the authors being paid.
-* $2,000 — A separate, commissioned cover illustration for the hardcover edition.
-* $2,500 — Interior illustrations depicting some scenes in the style of old, serialized stories such as the original Pinocchio.
-
-[**Check it out!**](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/drabmakyo/idumea)
-
 ## Content notes
 
 This book touches on the plots of [The Post-Self Cycle](https://post-self.ink/cycle), as well as that of [*Marsh*](https://marsh.post-self.ink). It is still a standalone novel, but might benefit from having read those works first. These works and more may all be found [post-self.ink](https://post-self.ink) as paperbacks, ebooks, and free to read in the browser.
 
-
 This story contains themes of self-harm, suicide, and poor mental health.
 
 ## About the author
@@ -60,3 +46,12 @@ She, too, wonders if she is born to die. What, dear readers, will become of her?
 <span style="opacity: 0.02">What will become of her? </span>
 <span style="opacity: 0.01">What will become of her? </span>
 
+## Acknowledgments 
+
+Thanks is due first of all to Jacob Geller, who knows me not, for he created a video on the story of Pinocchio that touched me so deeply that I began this project in the first place. Thanks also to Tomash and Yule, who contributed so much to this story; it would not be what it is without them. To Isiat, adoration for his boundless support. To barnaby on the Apocrypals Discord for help with Sacred Harp hymns. To Mae and Taija and Andréa C. Mason for reminding me that my work is indeed read. Finally, I will forever sing the praises of my polycule and those within for their support and love, and for the privilege of loving them in turn.
+
+-----
+
+*Idumea* was funded by a Kickstarter campaign. These are those who brought it to fruition:
+
+***Krzysztof “Tomash” Drewniak, Andréa CERES Mason,** Alexandria Christina Leal, Nathan Merrifield, Taija, Fiona Adams, Stephen Moore, Xideron, Ashley Hale,* Amdusias, Fén Cupit, ramshackle heather, doctorlit, nova, Ash Holland, Michael Miele, Webster Leone, Clover Arizona, Aulden Stargazer, raine, Astra Jones, David Scoggins, Rachel Dillon.  Charles S. Petrov Neutrino, Chandler Hines, Royce Day, Isiat, Craig, ubuntor, Joel Kreissman, Sethvir, Barac Baker Wiley.

content/notes.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ How do I explain such a page of notes? How do I tell you, beloved readers, that,
 
 Here, then, are the references as I remember them. I will apologize no further.
 
-## Epigraph
+<hr id="epigraph"/>
 
 #### *But you are eternity and you are the mirror.*
 
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ Perhaps it was that, as the story filled out within the middle, it just did not
 
 No. Instead, I chose the words of Almustafa, the chosen and the beloved. The Woman was life and she was the veil. We are eternity and the System is the mirror.
 
-## Part 1
+<hr id="part-1"/>
 
 #### *Once upon a time there was--*
 
@@ -28,11 +28,11 @@ Cf. Carlo Collodi:
 >
 > "A king?" my little readers will immediately say.
 >
-> No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not fine wood, but a simple piece of wood from the wood yard, --- the kind we put in the stoves and fireplaces so as to make a fire and heat the rooms.
+> No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not fine wood, but a simple piece of wood from the wood yard, — the kind we put in the stoves and fireplaces so as to make a fire and heat the rooms.
 >
 > I do not know how it happened, but one beautiful day a certain old woodcutter found a piece of this kind of wood in his shop. The name of the old man was Antonio, but everybody called him Master Cherry on account of the point of his nose, which was always shiny and purplish, just like a ripe cherry...
 
-When first I began to write, back when some saner me put pen to paper, I had intended to write the story of Pinocchio in reverse. "Ah!" I thought. "Perhaps I can very heavy-handed with it, too. Should the main character be named Occhioni P.? Will they try turning themselves into a literal puppet? Will they design sims to include the big fish? Perhaps they will find their Geppetto --- G. from Oteppe, Belgium --- who unmakes them, and then a blue fairy, a sympathetic systech, kicks them into quitting. Will I tell it as a fairy tale?"
+When first I began to write, back when some saner me put pen to paper, I had intended to write the story of Pinocchio in reverse. "Ah!" I thought. "Perhaps I can very heavy-handed with it, too. Should the main character be named Occhioni P.? Will they try turning themselves into a literal puppet? Will they design sims to include the big fish? Perhaps they will find their Geppetto — G. from Oteppe, Belgium — who unmakes them, and then a blue fairy, a sympathetic systech, kicks them into quitting. Will I tell it as a fairy tale?"
 
 We see how well I have stuck to that plan, yes?
 
@@ -40,9 +40,9 @@ I spoke of this with writer friends, and one of them, the ever delightful Seras
 
 Now here I am, once more coming down from my overflow, once more feeling somewhat grounded, the world around once more made of things which are not yet more words, and I have to contend with the reality that this remains, for the most part, a funny little note, and that this story no longer quite reads as that real-boy-to-inanimate-tree pipeline, tired trope that I am sure it is.
 
-Instead, I must hope that The Woman has indeed escaped such a cycle, and I must hope that those along her way were in some roundabout way the bodhisattvas in her life.
+Instead, I must hope that The Woman has indeed escaped such a cycle, and I must hope that those along her way were in some roundabout way akin to the bodhisattvas in her life.
 
-## Part 2
+<hr id="part-2"/>
 
 #### \[...\] *am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?*
 
@@ -70,6 +70,8 @@ From Rainer Maria Rilke:
 > and I still don't know: am I a falcon,\
 > a storm, or a great song?
 
+-----
+
 #### [...] dance unblushing [...]
 
 Cf. Darius Halley:
@@ -83,7 +85,7 @@ Cf. Darius Halley:
 > Ray of light and\
 > Dance unblushing
 
-## Part 3
+<hr id="part-3"/>
 
 #### *Where is it that my joy has gone?*
 
@@ -95,7 +97,7 @@ Cf. Dan Simmons:
 
 The loss of the intangible stings the most.
 
-## Part 4
+<hr id="part-4"/>
 
 #### \[...\] *as the poet says, shared* \[...\]
 
@@ -135,6 +137,20 @@ Cf. Octavio Paz:
 > Saying nothing, nor kissing\
 > exchanging silence for silence.
 
+-----
+
+#### \[...\] *a subtle twisting, a stirring, a clockwise motion* \[...\]
+
+> They lay next to each other. The dead man's armor was cold against Kassad's left arm, her thigh warm against his right leg. The sunlight was a benediction. Hidden colors rose to the surface of things. Kassad turned his head and gazed at her as she rested her head on his shoulder. Her cheeks glowed with flush and autumn light and her hair lay like copper threads along the flesh of his arm. She curved her leg over his thigh and Kassad felt the clockwise stirring of renewed passion. The sun was warm on his face. He closed his eyes.
+
+The tone, here, is quite different, but it is notable that 'clockwise' would so catch my attention to lodge itself in my mind, when it comes to the topic of sexuality. Perhaps arousal is an unwinding, then, and orgasm the *ding!* when the timer hits zero, and that is why we say 'pent up'.
+
+Perhaps it is simply the nerves I feel about so blatantly describing a sexual act within a supposed fairy tale that leads to a twisting in my own stomach.
+
+I do not know, my friends.
+
+-----
+
 #### \[...\] *there was a spot between joy and fear, a place of too much meaning* \[...\]
 
 Cf. Slow Hours:
@@ -155,13 +171,68 @@ Cf. Slow Hours:
 > Is a place of too much meaning.\
 > Next to understanding, outside wisdom,\
 > It nonetheless expands.\
-> I'm so small beside it\
+> I am so small beside it\
 > and it is too big.\
 > Incomprehensible,\
 > Incontestible,\
 > Unmoving and always changing.
 
-## Part 5
+-----
+
+#### [...] *the orange and blue of love and anxiety* [...]
+
+When one writes of that which is alien in the context of morality, one might say that it escapes even the concepts of black, white, and gray, and instead lies on the axis of blue and orange. Blue-orange morality is that which is so far removed from our on conceptions of good and evil that one whose morals fall along such a spectrum may escape definition of 'good' or 'evil' at all, and so too do they evade 'order' and 'chaos'.
+
+Here, then, may well be your narrator's own complex engagement with romance and sensuality and sexuality peeking through. Here, then, may be a glimpse into the mind of someone who just does not quite get it. It is lovely. I know this. I *know* this, and yet anticipation and anxiety are not black and white to me, they are blue and orange.
+
+The writer, as ever, is a character in their own works, no matter the role they actually play.
+
+-----
+
+#### [...] and she knew that Her Lover would be by her side for some time to come if she let her — and she would let her — and that, too, was a joy.
+
+Cf. Echo:
+
+> My wileling is not the sort of woman you spend a diamond on —\
+> And I don't just mean to allude to her anti-capitalist streak —\
+> No, she is the sort you paint in gold and scarlet,\
+> The only colors befitting a minx such as she,\
+> A cat-eyed woman, the sort who speaks in tongues;\
+> That which men with pitchforks called the Devil's tongue\
+> As she burned at the stake.
+> 
+> Blood and electrum for my wileling;\
+> Only the best for her.\
+> She is to me a cherished thing,\
+> A queen to a throne, with the wit to reign regent.\
+> So, to say that she is mine is indeed a crime.\
+> But if she has asked me to so infringe —\
+> And she has asked me to so infringe —\
+> Then mine she shall be\
+> For she has me woven around her finger\
+> As she is all the way around mine.
+
+<hr id="part-5"/>
+
+#### \[...\] *and I do not believe she merged cross-tree with anyone except perhaps Ashes Denote That Fire Was, who is building in themself a gestalt of the clade as best they can.*
+
+From Dickinson:
+
+{{% verse %}}Ashes denote that Fire was —
+Revere the Grayest Pile
+For the Departed Creature's sake
+That hovered there awhile —
+
+Fire exists the first in light
+And then consolidates
+Only the Chemist can disclose
+Into what Carbonates.{{% /verse %}}
+
+We have always borne an obsession with Emily Dickinson. For years and years, and years and years and years she has lived within us, a remnant of some stage play we performed with our superlative friend, centuries back now.
+
+Is it so surprising, then, that after cross-tree merging had been introduced as an option for us, that the one who would seek to collect within themself the entirety of the Ode clade — those who remain, dear readers! — would take for a name a line of Dickinson? We will be ever ourselves.
+
+-----
 
 #### *It was a land of long, rolling hills and yet longer flat basins that always drank most thirstily from the seasonal storms that did their best to thrash the Earth below.*
 
@@ -176,11 +247,31 @@ I will admit, my friends, that I had considered penning in the rest of this poem
 
 And I am raw, far too raw, to tell it.
 
+-----
+
 #### On The Child's paintings
 
-I have written extensively on these hyper-black shapes that The Child paints and more about her besides in [*Motes Played*](https://motes-played.post-self.ink). A little book for little skunks, yes? For she deserves her story told --- and just so! Just like this! A tale written in a style befitting her --- as much as does The Woman.
+I have written extensively on these hyper-black shapes that The Child paints and more about her besides in [*Motes Played*](https://motes-played.post-self.ink). A little book for little skunks, yes? For she deserves her story told — and just so! Just like this! A tale written in a style befitting her — as much as does The Woman.
 
-#### It is _enjoyable,_ and often it is _loved,_ but it is not really _beloved._
+-----
+
+#### Miss Michelle Hadje, five foot four.
+
+Cf. John Keats:
+
+> I do think better of womankind than to suppose they care whether Mister John Keats five feet high likes them or not.
+
+-----
+
+#### On The Oneirotect's pronouns
+
+The Oneirotect uses for itself several pronouns — though the set you see here in this text are 'she', 'they', 'ey', and 'it' — which serves as a reflection both of its critter nature and the fluidity of eir engagement with gender– no, with the slipperiness of identity as a whole. This is the role of language with identity: to be a poor reflection through some imperfect mirror, a version of the self seen through some glass, darkly.
+
+You will note the same is also true of The Dog, who, yes, is prone to a critter nature, but who also sometimes views himself as 'he' and sometimes itself as 'it'. For better or worse the identity of animals, of 'low beasts', is entwined with that of *things,* and for some, that is a joy.
+
+-----
+
+#### *It is* enjoyable, *and often it is* loved, *but it is not really* beloved.
 
 Cf. David Rakoff:
 
@@ -190,6 +281,8 @@ The distinction between a thing that is *loved* and a thing that is *beloved* is
 
 One must never ask an author their desires on where their work ought lie on the loved-beloved scale.
 
+-----
+
 #### \[...\] *all the world's a horror.*
 
 Cf. William Shakespeare:
@@ -198,7 +291,9 @@ Cf. William Shakespeare:
 > And all the men and women merely players;\
 > They have their exits and their entrances \[...\]
 
-#### \[...\] *through a glass darkly.*
+-----
+
+#### \[...\] *through a glass, darkly.*
 
 Cf. 1 Cor 13:12-13 (KJV)
 
@@ -208,7 +303,7 @@ What a strange man Paul who was Saul of Tarsus was! We, the Ode clade, are Jews
 
 And it is not without beauty, yes? For this passage is beautiful, and so too is more of this chapter:
 
-> <sup>4</sup> Love *[as recent versions translate the 'charity' above. —Rye]* is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant <sup>5</sup> or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
+> <sup>4</sup> Love *[as recent versions translate the 'charity' above. —Rye]* is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant <sup>5</sup> or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. <sup>7</sup> It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
 >
 > <sup>8</sup> Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. <sup>9</sup> For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, <sup>10</sup> but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
 
@@ -218,6 +313,8 @@ Just as it is not without its terror, yes? For verse 11 was used against The Chi
 
 Such bitterness! Words as a weapon! I write below of how we loathe our connections, and here was a moment of that loathing, for I remember well the pain that we all felt at that cruelty, but this is not that story, and so I will linger on the ideas of glasses darkly.
 
+-----
+
 #### *The Sightwright suffered as I do, as The Oneirotect does, and perhaps even as The Woman did.*
 
 Cf. John Winthrop
@@ -228,7 +325,7 @@ Cf. John Winthrop
 >
 > All the parts of this body being thus united are made so contiguous in a special relation as they must needs partake of each other's strength and infirmity, joy and sorrow, weal and woe. (1 Cor. 12:26) If one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one be in honor, all rejoice with it.
 
-I have little care for sermons written by 17<sup>th</sup> century imperialist Christian politicians but for these occasional little quips. It is, perhaps, a thing belonging more to sermons than to the time or the people. Here, we see in Winthrop's words an idea that has wrapped around itself within my mind and formed itself into a new take on clades and family and life sys-side as a whole, these last eight years.
+I have little care for sermons written by 17<sup>th</sup> century imperialist Christian politicians but for these occasional little quips. It is, perhaps, a thing belonging more to sermons than it is to the time or the people. Here, we see in Winthrop's words an idea that has wrapped around itself within my mind and formed itself into a new take on clades and family and life sys-side as a whole, these last eight years.
 
 We are one body, the Ode clade. We are one body and we each of us Odists are members thereof. We do indeed rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, do we not? 
 
@@ -240,11 +337,13 @@ Imagine such on the scale of the System, though! All of us members of one body!
 
 I have gotten carried away. The Sightwright suffered as I do, as The Oneirotect does, and perhaps even as The Woman did, and so we all suffered with them, and the fallout of their loss is with us still.
 
+-----
+
 #### *With art comes fear.*
 
 I had originally intended referencing I book I used for a season when teaching, *Art & Fear* by David Bayles and Ted Orland, and even shaped the words I truly spoke that day to fit. On rereading, however, I came across the first sentence of chapter 2: "Those who would make art might well begin by reflecting on the fate of those who preceded them: most who began, quit." It was at this point that I had to stop reading and pace anxiously the fields behind our cluster of townhouses, watering with tears the thirsty grasses.
 
-## Part 6
+<hr id="part-6"/>
 
 #### *Why do birds, as the poet says, suddenly appear* \[...\]
 
@@ -255,6 +354,8 @@ Cf. The Carpenters:
 > Why do stars fall down from the sky, ev'ry time you walk by?\
 > Just like me, they long to be close to you
 
+-----
+
 #### \[...\] *that sweet field arrayed in living green* \[...\]
 
 Cf. Samuel Stennett:
@@ -273,6 +374,8 @@ And yet, considering the role the climate crisis played in making the System our
 
 But, ah–! I will doubtless speak more on the System as heaven to come...
 
+-----
+
 #### \[...\] *a Blakean energetic hell.*
 
 Cf. William Blake:
@@ -281,11 +384,81 @@ Cf. William Blake:
 >
 > From these contraries spring what the religious call Good and Evil. Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy.
 
+-----
+
+#### [...] *some scene, some dream within a dream within a dream* [...]
+
+Cf. Slow Hours:
+
+> **To — in the days after her death**
+> 
+> A dream within a dream within a dream\
+> and fell visions sidling up too close\
+> both woo me. Sweet caramel and soft cream\
+> sit cloying on their tongues, and I, Atropos\
+> to such dreams as these, find shears on golden thread.
+> 
+> I would not cut, nor even could, had I but wished\
+> to sever this golden thread — and every thread\
+> is golden — and end a friend and send to mist\
+> and sorrow ones so dear. Dead! Dead! She is dead\
+> and gone, for her own shears were sharper still.
+> 
+> And so she cut, and so they watched, and so I watched\
+> such love as this cease. I yearn to say that she returned\
+> to me, became a part of me, but a tally notched\
+> among the lost was all that stayed when life was spurned\
+> by the call of death — supposedly ended.
+> 
+> So, she is gone and now our lives are darker for it,\
+> and now this world is where the shadows lie,\
+> and all the light that still remains is forfeit,\
+> and so much green still stabs towards the sky,\
+> and yellowed teeth of lions still snap at the air.
+
+-----
+
+#### She passed, perhaps, the setting sun
+
+Cf. Emily Dickinson:
+
+> Because I could not stop for Death —\
+> He kindly stopped for me —\
+> The Carriage held but just Ourselves —\
+> And Immortality.
+> 
+> We slowly drove — He knew no haste\
+> And I had put away\
+> My labor and my leisure too,\
+> For His Civility —
+> 
+> We passed the School, where Children strove\
+> At Recess — in the Ring —\
+> We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain —\
+> We passed the Setting Sun —
+> 
+> Or rather — He passed Us —\
+> The Dews drew quivering and Chill —\
+> For only Gossamer, my Gown —\
+> My Tippet — only Tulle —
+> 
+> We paused before a House that seemed\
+> A Swelling of the Ground —\
+> The Roof was scarcely visible —\
+> The Cornice — in the Ground —
+> 
+> Since then — 'tis Centuries — and yet\
+> Feels shorter than the Day\
+> I first surmised the Horses' Heads\
+> Were toward Eternity —
+
+-----
+
 #### \[...\] *that has been my dream.*
 
 I have dreamed of turning into a tree for years and years and years and years and years, now.
 
-For instance, I have written here that Slow Hours set this dream into verse — on my request — and this is true, for here is a segment from a longer work:
+For instance, I have written here that I have set this dream into verse and this is true, for here is a segment from a longer work:
 
 > We'd long since stopped, there by the pond,\
 > and your smile was, yes, sad, but still fond\
@@ -355,7 +528,31 @@ And yet! And yet, when writing the final chapter, even through the heat of the m
 
 I strive still to stifle that puritanical worrywart within, even so many years on.
 
-## Part 7
+-----
+
+#### [...] *and so we live within a fractally cyclical tangle of time*
+
+Another perpetual theme that holds me in its claws. I wrote in an essay:
+
+> A year spirals up.
+> 
+> A day, a week, a month, they all spiral, for any one Sunday is like the previous and the next shall be much the same, but the you who experiences the differing Sundays is different. It is a spiral, proceeding steadfastly onward. A day is a spiral, with each morning much the same as the one before and the one after. A month, following the cycle of the moon.
+> 
+> But a year, in particular, spirals up. It carries embedded within it a certain combination of pattern, count, and duration that delineates our lives better than any other cyclical unit of time. Yes, a day is divided into night, day, and those liminal dusks and dawns, but there are so many of them. There are so many days in a life, and there are so many in a year that to see the spiral within them does not come as easily.
+> 
+> Our years are delineated by the seasons, though, and the count of them is so few, and the duration long enough that we can run up against that first scent of snow late in the autumn and immediately be kicked down one level of the spiral in our memories. What were we doing the last time we smelled that non-scent? What about the time before?
+> 
+> Or perhaps one thinks across the spiral. One, stuck in Winter, thinks back to Summer — ah, such warmth! — and tries to remember what it was one was doing then. "Only silhouettes show / in the billowing snow," Dwale writes. "Remembering months, now / gone when new blooms would grow."
+
+And I wrote in a story:
+
+> Lyut lives his life in prayer and devotion. It is a life that is lived ascending in a steady spiral of years, for time moves upward and yet is echoed below by the change of days, the change of weeks, the change of seasons. This year, this day, this soft spring is an echo of last soft spring beneath it. It is antipodal to the autumn that will come
+> 
+> Cycles within cycles, spirals within spirals. This morning, too, is an echo of the day beneath it, behind it, in the past. His days are defined by the cycle of incense, prayer, fishing, foraging, meditating. He knows that it is day when he wakes when he feels the warmth from the sun. He knows when it is night when he feels the warmth fade. He knows when it is morning because he hears the birds sing. He knows that it is night when the birdsong of the day settles into the chorus of insects.
+
+And on citing these, I am realizing just how much I am built up of obsessions, of rituals and ideas that cleave and cling and stick and meld.
+
+<hr id="part-7"/>
 
 #### \[...\] *perhaps columbines perhaps nasturtiums* \[...\]
 
@@ -363,6 +560,8 @@ The Musician shared with me a letter and My Friend several journal entries, but,
 
 I will say, however, that that letter surrounded nasturtiums and was written the night Muse quit, and those diary entries were written by My Friend, a recounting of Beckoning's memories, to comfort The Musician in her grief.
 
+-----
+
 #### (words of prayer quoted directly)
 
 From Psalm 13:2--4:
@@ -375,6 +574,8 @@ From Psalm 13:2--4:
 > Regard, answer me, *HaShem*, my God.\
 > Light up my eyes, lest I sleep death.
 
+-----
+
 #### (words from Qoheleth quoted directly)
 
 From Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) 1:17:
@@ -389,7 +590,7 @@ From Qohelet 3:20:
 
 > Everything was from the dust, and everything goes back to the dust.
 
-## Part 8
+-----
 
 #### *The blood of deer ripped to shreds by wolves!*
 
@@ -427,6 +628,8 @@ Cf. Czesław Miłosz:
 > Evil will disappear from the world\
 > once consciousness does
 
+<hr id="part-8"/>
+
 #### *Do you see now the connection?*
 
 Cf. Rilke:
@@ -445,50 +648,55 @@ And yet I had also in mind the cadence of Nabokov: "Give me now your full attent
 
 I am no poet, but I will not deny the utility in verse when it comes to scratching the itch of words: 
 
-> I can't tell you how\
-> I knew - but I did know that I had crossed\
-> The border. Everything I loved was lost\
-> But no aorta could report regret.\
-> A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;\
-> And blood-black nothingness began to spin\
-> A system of cells interlinked within\
-> Cells interlinked within cells interlinked\
-> Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct\
-> Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.
+{{% verse %}}I can't tell you how
+I knew - but I did know that I had crossed
+The border. Everything I loved was lost
+But no aorta could report regret.
+A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;
+And blood-black nothingness began to spin
+A system of cells interlinked within
+Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
+Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
+Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.{{% /verse %}}
 
 And here am I within a System of selves interlinked within selves interlinked within selves interlinked within one dream.
 
-## Part 9
+-----
 
-#### \[...\] *beyond providing an instance for Ashes Denote That Fire Was.*
+#### Not  yet, though. Not this year, I suspect not this decade, and I hope not even this century.
 
-From Emily Dickinson:
+I speak, of course, of functional immortality and the balm it provides against the fears artists of old faced. Keats has it:
 
-> Ashes denote that Fire was ---\
-> Revere the Grayest Pile\
-> For the Departed Creature's sake\
-> That hovered there awhile ---
->
-> Fire exists the first in light\
-> And then consolidates\
-> Only the Chemist can disclose\
-> Into what Carbonates.
+{{% verse %}}When I have fears that I may cease to be
+    Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
+Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
+    Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
+When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
+    Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
+And think that I may never live to trace
+    Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
+And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
+    That I shall never look upon thee more,
+Never have relish in the faery power
+    Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
+Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
+Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.{{% /verse %}}
 
-We have always borne an obsession with Emily Dickinson. For years and years, and years and years and years she has lived within us, a remnant of some stage play we performed with our superlative friend, centuries back now.
-
-Is it so surprising, then, that after cross-tree merging had been introduced as an option for us, that the one who would seek to collect within themself the entirety of the Ode clade --- those who remain, dear readers! --- would take for a name a line of Dickinson? We will be ever ourselves.
+<hr id="part-9"/>
 
 #### \[...\] *perhaps like those leaves that skitter within the city, that unreal city* \[...\]
 
 Cf. Charles Baudelaire via Eliot:
 
-> *Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,\
-> Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.*
->
-> -----
->
-> Unreal city, city full of dreams,\
-> Where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passsers-by.
+{{% verse %}}}*Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves,
+Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant.*
+
+-----
+
+Unreal city, city full of dreams,\
+Where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passsers-by.{{% /verse %}}
+
+-----
 
 #### *She, then, like so many leaves* \[...\]
 
@@ -497,6 +705,8 @@ Cf. Robert Graves:
 > She, then, like snow in a dark night\
 > Fell secretly.
 
+-----
+
 #### *That unfalling ones are trapped within that last falling!*
 
 Cf. Richard Threadgall:
@@ -516,13 +726,15 @@ Cf. Richard Threadgall:
 > What stale rejoinders birds are unmoored with!\
 > The unsuffering sky exhales them in a breath.
 
+-----
+
 #### *"Oh! Oh, I do believe this is some plentiful enough for me."*
 
 Cf. Rilke:
 
 > Und plötzlich in diesem mühsamen Nirgends, plötzlich\
 > die unsägliche Stelle, wo sich das reine Zuwenig\
-> unbegreiflich verwandeldt---, umspringt\
+> unbegreiflich verwandeldt—, umspringt\
 > in jenes leere Zuviel.\
 > Wo die vielstellige Rechnung\
 > zahlenlos aufgeht.
@@ -531,12 +743,16 @@ Cf. Rilke:
 >
 > And suddenly in this toilsome nowhere, suddenly\
 > the unutterable place where the merely too little\
-> inscrutably mutates---, swings round\
+> inscrutably mutates—, swings round\
 > into that empty too much,\
 > where the calculation to many digits\
 > comes out number-less.
 
-One imagines that a 'plentiful enough' lies at some theoretical midpoint on this limitless scale from 'merely too little' to 'empty too much'. One imagines it a place just outside that 'toilsome nowhere'. I imagine it, my friends. I *have* to imagine it! I have to imagine that Lagrange, the System, our embedded world is plentifully enough, and not some empty too much, not after so much loss.
+One imagines that a 'plentiful enough' lies at some theoretical midpoint on this limitless scale from 'merely too little' to 'empty too much'. One imagines it a place just outside that 'toilsome nowhere': perhaps it sits just outside that scale, as, I fear, I hope, The Woman sits now outside the scale running from joy to suffering, having relinquished such dichotomies and embraced them — become them! — in equal measure.
+
+I imagine it, my friends. I *have* to imagine it! I have to imagine that Lagrange, the System, our embedded world is plentifully enough, and not some empty too much, not after so much loss, lest I engage too readily with the fleetingness of us, a perhaps futility, a spending of time in a toilsome nowhere. Thoughts spinning out into that nowhere, crammed into a too little, emptying with a burst into some too much...
+
+-----
 
 #### \[...\] *breathe in a million billion trillion years* \[...\]
 
@@ -546,6 +762,8 @@ Cf. E. E. Cummings:
 > and staggered banged with terror through\
 > a million billion trillion stars.
 
+-----
+
 #### \[...\] *unbitter sweetness* \[...\]
 
 Cf. Slow Hours:
@@ -565,6 +783,8 @@ Cf. Slow Hours:
 </svg>
 <p style="display: none" id="bees-desc">bees are those who give us sweet in exchange for the names of the dead  we whisper to their hives then wait a season for honey  licking it from sticky fingers when we steal a taste  is it any wonder then that honey can be so cloying  we may marvel at how unbitter distilled names can be  and still weep at parching-sweet memory</p>
 
+-----
+
 #### Idumea
 
 *Idumea* is named after a hymn by A. Davidson with words by Charles Wesley, published in *Sacred Tunes and Hymns: Containing a Special Collection of a Very High Order of Standard Sacred Tunes and Hymns Novel and Newly Arranged* by J. S. James in 1913. Idumea itself refers to Edom, a kingdom in the Ancient Near East. While this has little to do with the story told within — unless, perhaps, you are Blake and think that "Now is the dominion of Edom, and the return of Adam into Paradise" refers to us! — it does sound rather pleasing to the ear, does it not? And so does the hymn, at that. The hollowness of the song with all its open fifths, the raw, coarse beauty that comes with Sacred Harp singing, the beat of the tactus and the ache of the singers hollering out words that nearly yearn for death are what led to the title of this book.
@@ -573,6 +793,8 @@ Or, as a friend said upon learning of this project, ""Main character escaping su
 
 The hymn is reproduced here for reference. Despite being in short meter, the typo of it being in common meter (`C.M.') is retained from its original printing.
 
+-----
+
 #### ×
 
 I used for this work a multiplication sign (×) for the section dividers, and, my dear friends, I am still coming to terms with this decision.
@@ -583,11 +805,11 @@ Are we together, The Woman and I, multiplied? When she and I, when her story and
 
 Are we crossed? Do we as ideas lay across each other perpendicularly? The Woman fell into stillness and I fall still through eternal, jittery, restless movement. The woman set aside her agency, in the end, and I strive for any sense of control over myself, my language, my words and sentences and paragraphs and stories. We are diametrically opposed in so many ways. We cross each other, our paths cross each other's, we approached at a ninety degree angle, and, in the end, departed at such an angle.
 
-Are we set beside each other as some fictional love? Some two characters set within fan fiction who love each other in a way pure or unchaste in others' minds? Do I love her? Do I love The Woman? Did she love me?
+Are we set beside each other as some fictional love? Some two characters set within fan fiction who love each other in a way pure or unchaste in others' minds, star-crossed? Do I love her? Do I love The Woman? Did she love me?
 
 I do not know, my dear readers. I do not know these things and I do not know many more.
 
-Perhaps, though, perhaps the × stands for the decision that I made. It is the role I played in letting The Woman, that beautiful soul who bestowed a blessing with every smile, step away from the world, for removing those blessings from us, that beauty from us, that life, that veil.
+Perhaps, though, perhaps it stands for that final decision: × marks the point at which I made up my mind. It is the role I played in letting The Woman, that beautiful soul who bestowed a blessing with every smile, step away from the world, for removing those blessings from us, that beauty from us, that life, that veil.
 
 I am so, so incredibly sorry, and also rather proud of what I have done, of helping The Woman in so noble an endeavor, in equal measure.
 

content/prelim/001.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ Once upon a time there was–
 
 No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time, there was a woman. She was not a fine woman, not a prize to adorn your arm or to set beside you at the head of a grand table, but a simple woman — the kind we pass on the street and imagine some plain home life for. She has a house, one might think. There are floors and walls and windows, there are tables and chairs and sofas and beds. There is a shower and a claw-footed bathtub. There is a creaky step — the eighth — that she always swears she will fix.
 
-We must imagine such a woman happy. We must imagine that she has friends and that she goes and drinks okay wine or maybe strange cocktails with them at the most absurd bars. We must imagine that she comes home, wobbling slightly with each step, with some other simple woman on her arm. We must imagine sharing their kisses, being happy together.
+We must imagine such a woman happy. We must imagine that she has friends and that she goes and drinks okay wine or maybe strange cocktails with them at the most absurd bars. We must imagine that she comes home, wobbling slightly with each step, with some other simple woman on her arm. We must imagine them sharing their kisses, being happy together.
 
 We must imagine these things because they are not true.
 
@@ -16,15 +16,15 @@ But that was three hundred years ago.
 
 -----
 
-The Woman wanders the world some few times a month, stepping out into unknown nowheres and known somewheres to be seen, to be perceived as still existing. I do not know why, but it is important to her that someone witness her existing. It is a ritual she follows around like a little puppy: she will not know what will happen when she first does it properly, but she hopes it will be something wonderful.
+The Woman wanders the world some few times a month, stepping out into unknown nowheres and known somewheres to be seen, to be perceived as still existing. I do not know why, but it is important to her that someone witness her existing. It is a striving, an aiming for perfection, a ritual she follows around like a little puppy: she will not know what will happen when she first does it properly, but she hopes it will be something wonderful.
 
 The Woman has many rituals. 
 
-She has rituals for eating food, for feeding the vessel in which she makes her home. There is no order in which she properly consumes food, she may consume it in any order, but there is an order in which she must appreciate food. You must understand: she must do this for everything she takes into her body. She must look at it before she touches it, must touch it before she smells it, must smell it before she eats it, and before all of these she must say a prayer.
+She has rituals for eating food, for feeding the vessel in which she makes her home. There is no order in which she properly consumes food, she may consume it in any order, but there is an order in which she must appreciate food. You must understand: she has to do this for everything she takes into her body. She must look at it before she touches it, must touch it before she smells it, must smell it before she eats it, and before all of these she must say a prayer.
 
 She has rituals for getting dressed, for clothing the form with which the world sees her. She must choose a garment that fits her body and one that fits her mood. You must understand: every time she gets dressed, there is a moment of scrying into her deepest self and estimating how it is that she feels that day. And should her mood change, should those feelings shift, she will find her clothing itchy and uncomfortable, and if her form becomes not what it once was, her clothing will become uncomfortably tight or perhaps she will disappear down into the folds of fabric.
 
-She has rituals for entering a room, for passing through a door. She must touch the door frame beside her shoulder, must brush her fingers against the wood or stone or metal or some more abstract substance. You must understand: she has to do this for every door she walks through, and for this reason, there is a door in the house where she lives that was built by a friend of Her Friend that leads directly out into a city. She opens the closet door and steps out onto a concrete sidewalk lined with trees and passers by, where the sun shines bright and the air burns cold in her nostrils and the dry leaves skitter anxiously about her feet. As she steps out, she can brush her hand to the door jamb.
+She has rituals for entering a room, for passing through a door. She must touch the door frame beside her shoulder, must brush her fingers against the wood or stone or metal or some more abstract substance. You must understand: she has to do this for every door she walks through, and for this reason, there is a door in the house where she lives that was built by a friend of Her Friend that leads directly out into a city. She opens the closet door and steps out onto a concrete sidewalk lined with trees and passers-by, where the sun shines bright and the air burns cold in her nostrils and the dry leaves skitter anxiously about her feet. As she steps out, she can brush her hand to the door jamb.
 
 I do not know where these rituals come from, and perhaps some of my readers will immediately say, "OCD? Does The Woman have obsessive compulsive disorder?"
 
@@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ And after that, they would go to the rest of the party at the home of the tenth
 
 I think you would like to see these parties, friends. I think that they would not be quite as you would expect, of course. They are not the kinds of birthday parties that you or I might have. Where we might have cakes and singing and the blowing out of candles, they would gather together over simple foods — so many from the tenth stanza had such sensitive tastes, and it was so easy to make sure that everyone could eat everything! — and often they would simply sit silent. They would sit there, quiet, but present in each other's company.
 
-They would not seem to be parties like you and I have because this was not all that different from what might happen once or twice a month at the house in which the tenth stanza all lived. While each lived their own lives, occasionally, their schedules would coincide and they would all sit down together at the giant oak table together and eat, mostly in silence.
+They would not seem to be parties like you and I have perhaps because this was not all that different from what might happen once or twice a month at the house in which the tenth stanza all lived. While each lived their own lives, occasionally, their schedules would coincide and they would all sit down together at the giant oak table together and eat, mostly in silence.
 
 Some of them shared rooms, you see, but mostly, they kept to themselves. They lived together in that big Gothic house plopped right down in the middle of a prairie of green grass and yellow dandelions, out where the stoop stepped down directly into the field, but I say 'lived together' in a very mechanical sense. They never shared meals intentionally, nor even spoke all that often to each other. It is just that, sometimes, they would all find themselves at table at the same time!
 

content/prelim/002.md

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ The Woman decided to go walking one day. Perhaps she was driven by restlessness.
 
 Either way, she was feeling good and she was feeling stable and she was feeling feline, so she found herself a nice set of slacks to wear over her legs, ones that looped up over the base of her tail in such a way that the same would be just as possible with a skunk's tail, and yet which would not fall down for those moments when she did not have a tail. 
 
-She found herself a nice shirt that felt good on the fur and which would not look too weird if she poofed out into a skunk. It was not her favorite shirt, I am sure, otherwise maybe she would wear it every day, but it was good enough. It had the word 'fiend' scribbled across it in angular, glitchy graffiti, and The Woman is absolutely allowed to feel like a fiend some days.
+She found herself a nice shirt that felt good on the fur and which would not look too weird if she poofed out into a skunk. It was not her favorite shirt, I am sure, otherwise maybe she would wear it every day, but she liked it well enough. It had the word 'fiend' scribbled across it in angular, glitchy graffiti, and The Woman is absolutely allowed to feel like a fiend some days.
 
 Thus gussied, The Woman stood for a while in front of the mirror and admired herself. She felt good. She felt good, reader! It was not often that she felt more than just okay. Because even with all that I wrote about before, her life was not bad. It was an okay life. She liked this life in her own way. Her thoughts on unbecoming were not thoughts on suicide, I do not think.
 
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ She stood before the mirror and primped for a moment, adjusting the way her shir
 
 The trip to the city was as it ever was. She said to herself a little prayer and opened the door to her closet. Taking a deep breath, she stepped through, and as she did so, she brushed her fingertips against the jamb as ever, against some imagined *mezuzah,* and today it felt right enough that she stepped lively out onto the city streets, out where the leaves skittered anxiously around her footpaws in the faint February breeze.
 
-Stuffing her paws into her pockets, she made her way down the street where her entrance was located to the main drag. The city was on the small end — more large town than full on city — and so it was still the type of place to have a main drag, a street built for cars that it does not actually have, with wide sidewalks paved in brick and a trolley that ran down the middle.
+Stuffing her paws into her pockets, she made her way down the street on which her entrance was located to the main drag. The city was on the small end — more large town than full on city — and so it was still the type of place to have a main drag, a street built for cars that it does not actually have, with wide sidewalks paved in brick and a trolley that ran down the middle.
 
 The Woman waited for the next trolley car to come and stepped aboard, tucking her tail down and around her leg as she held onto one of the railings — she never sat, and never could tell you why — to ride it for three stops. This was part of the ritual. Even when the car was busy and she was not feeling so good, there was a part of her that was happy that she got to stand on this trolley and hold onto this railing and feel this rattle-buzz of the wheels rolling along the track through her feet or paws. It was not even particularly pleasant for her, I think, but it *was* fulfilling.
 
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ The Woman loved a good mocha — even I love a good mocha! — and so she was pl
 
 That day, The Woman was here because Her Friend had asked to meet up.
 
-This was not how this usually went, you understand. Usually, The Woman was upset and asked for Her Friend to visit her, or perhaps she was out anyway and simply desired company on this errand or that, a friend for dinner or coffee or a walk along the shops to peruse the latest trends in fashion or oneirotecture or sensework. It had ever been the case that The Woman contacted Her Friend, and not the other way around.
+This was not how this usually went, you understand. Usually, The Woman was upset and asked for Her Friend to visit her, or perhaps she was out anyway and simply desired company on this errand or that, a friend for dinner or coffee or a walk along the shops to peruse the latest trends in fashion or oneirotecture or sensework. It was so often the case that The Woman contacted Her Friend, and not the other way around.
 
 Her Friend was always so stable, always so ready to speak and so ready to listen. Ey was the one who had long ago gotten in touch with her, with the whole of the tenth stanza, and started to talk to them and listen to what they had to say. Not the only one, no, but it was important to The Woman that Her Friend had sought her out, had cared enough to seek her out.
 
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ Her Friend leaned forward, resting eir arms on the edge of the table. "Well, I w
 
 She laughed. "Of course, my dear. You are my best."
 
-Her Friend's smile grew more earnest. "Thank you. That feels better to hear than I expected."
+Her Friend's smile grew yet ore earnest. "Thank you. That feels better to hear than I expected."
 
 "So, tell me of your moods, then. Tell me why you were uncomfortable and felt the need to speak quietly."
 
@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ Her Friend hesitated. "Yes," ey said carefully. "I said something to In Dreams,
 
 The Woman's breath caught in her throat.
 
-When I tell you that breath is important even sys-side, you must understand all of the different roles that it plays. We are built to breathe, you and I, and so is everyone else. We can turn that off, sure, but the vast majority of cladists find such uncomfortable. Not Breathing still feels like holding one's breath, yes? Even without the rising CO<sub>2</sub> levels in our blood — blood that we must only imagine that we have — it is uncomfortable to feel like one is holding one's breath for too long.
+When I tell you that breath is important even sys-side, you must understand all of the different roles that it plays. We are built to breathe, you and I, and so is everyone else. We can turn that off, sure, but the vast majority of cladists find such uncomfortable. Not breathing still feels like holding one's breath, yes? Even without the rising CO<sub>2</sub> levels in our blood — blood that we must only imagine that we have — it is uncomfortable to feel like one is holding one's breath for too long.
 
 We use breath for speaking, and even though I am not speaking to you right now, I am still breathing. I still feel the warmth of my breath against my paw as it brushes across the page with each line of text. We use breath for gasping, for sighing, for even snoring!
 
@@ -112,11 +112,11 @@ The Woman let her breath out most carefully, not letting it shake, not letting h
 
 She bowed. "I would appreciate that, yes."
 
-"Of course, my dear," Her Friend said, smiling, nodding eir acknowledgement. "The fallout of this conversation with In Dreams was that she told me that perhaps I ought to schedule a session, either with her or In Memory, or, failing that, someone outside the clade."
+"Of course," Her Friend said, smiling, nodding eir acknowledgement. "The fallout of this conversation with In Dreams was that she told me that perhaps I ought to schedule a session, either with her or In Memory, or, failing that, someone outside the clade."
 
 "Is that what you wound up doing?"
 
-Ey shook eir head. "I did not need that, my dear. I did not need to be told to go to therapy. I did not want to schedule an appointment." Ey finally took a sip of eir mocha, but this seemed to be less about the coffee than an opportunity to gather eir wits. "I just wanted a friend, honestly. I just wanted a hug — no, I understand, perhaps not your thing, but I must be earnest, yes? Instead, I got told to find a way to *fix* this. Fix grief. Fix a very real pain."
+Ey shook eir head. "I did not need that, my dear. I did not need to be told to go to therapy. I did not want to schedule an appointment." Ey finally took a sip of eir mocha, but this seemed to be less about the coffee than an opportunity to gather eir thoughts. "I just wanted a friend, honestly. I just wanted a hug — no, I understand, perhaps not your thing, but I must be earnest, yes? Instead, I got told to find a way to *fix* this. Fix grief. Fix a very real pain."
 
 The Woman's features softened and, steeling herself for the touch, she reached across the table to pat the back of Her Friend's paw. "I understand, No Hesitation. Would that I could offer more. I am happy to be a friend, though; I have no interest in telling you to go to therapy."
 
@@ -140,7 +140,7 @@ The Woman shrugged.
 
 "I see," she said, buying herself a moment to think by sipping her mocha. Ah, but she was a cat, yes? A panther? Perhaps you can imagine this with lapping tongue, the way a cat's tongue curls back and scoops up drink, drawing it up into their mouth. Or perhaps she is the type who has leaned into another aesthetic, the type who can chew with her mouth closed. Idle distractions, even for your humble narrator. "Then yes, there is joy in it. There is joy in those memories, is there not? One takes a moment of stillness..."
 
-After a long few seconds, Her Friend tilted eir head. "Yes?"
+After a long few seconds of silenceaaaaaaaa, Her Friend tilted eir head. "Yes?"
 
 "Ah, a fleeting thought. One takes a moment of stillness and parks in that quiet joy, even if it is one of separation."
 
@@ -168,7 +168,7 @@ And so she would cook her meals and walk in widening circles around this primord
 
 These were her joys to go along with the needs of ritual, of brushing her fingers along imagined *mezuzot*. To walk was her ritual, to spiral outward from her home in the warmth of sunlight and the dance of bees and the tickling of dandelions against her ankles was to cast that ritual in the light of pleasure.
 
-I have never been quite so fond of walking, myself, kind readers. There is meditation in it, I am told. I am told there is the simple pleasure of the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-ness of it. But friends, I am tired most of the time. I am old and I am tired and my pleasure lies in stillness and quiet. I love my mochas and I love sitting down before the page with pen in paw to put to paper, and I love bathing in story.
+I have never been quite so fond of walking, myself, kind readers. There is meditation in it, I am told. I am told there is the simple pleasure of the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-ness of it. But friends, I am tired most of the time. I am old and I am tired and my pleasure lies in stillness and quiet. I love my mochas and I love sitting down before the page with pen in paw to put to paper and I love bathing in story.
 
 I say so often that stepping away from such a task is still writing. When I sit on the patio in front of our little bundle of townhouses and look out at the shared lawn, or when I step — *stepped,* for it is no longer here — out to the shortgrass prairie of my cocladist, to sit beside a cairn of stones or share a meal, that is still writing! Your narrator has written these words, this story, a hundred, a thousand times within her head. That is my joy, and graphomania my compulsion.
 
@@ -176,7 +176,7 @@ When The Woman overflows, she becomes ever more herself. She is — my attentive
 
 My astute readers will surely have picked up by now that I am riding that edge here, in these words.
 
-But, ah! This story is not about me. I am not quite overflowing yet, and The Woman most certainly is not. She is reveling in the warmth of sunlight and the dance of bees and the tickling of dandelions against her ankles and the purringly soft touch of friendship.
+But, ah–! This story is not about me. I am not quite overflowing yet, and The Woman most certainly is not. She is reveling in the warmth of sunlight and the dance of bees and the tickling of dandelions against her ankles and the purringly soft touch of friendship.
 
 -----
 

content/prelim/003.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ The Woman did all that she could to hang onto joy whenever it slipped into her l
 
 But even like me with my little tasty baked treats, The Woman's joy is parceled out bit by bit to herself and her cocladists and, just like my little plates of carrot cake — I *do* love a good carrot cake! — there is never an infinite amount, much as she might wish, nor, it always seems, quite enough.
 
-She hung onto joy and baked her goodies and went for her walks and awaited, with some trepidation, the regularly scheduled therapy, because I think she knew that, being confronted with recounting emotions of the past or discussing emotions to come, her grasp on joy would be tested. Once every two weeks, unless she was overflowing, unless she was in pain, unless she simply could not bring herself to go, The Woman had an appointment for therapy, and she knew there was good to be had in it, for it had proven its use time and again over the years, and yet it was a time for threshing, for harrowing. It was a time for throwing herself at the Work at one level of remove and watching the chaff fall away and the fruits of her labor lay exposed. It was a time for dragging the implements of tools dialectical and behaviors cognitive through the dirt of her to break up into clods her varied neuroses. 
+She hung onto joy and baked her goodies and went for her walks and awaited, with some trepidation, her regularly scheduled therapy, because I think she knew that, being confronted with recounting emotions of the past or discussing emotions to come, her grasp on joy would be tested. Once every two weeks, unless she was overflowing, unless she was in pain, unless she simply could not bring herself to go, The Woman had an appointment for therapy, and she knew there was good to be had in it, for it had proven its use time and again over the years, and yet it was a time for threshing, for harrowing. It was a time for throwing herself at the Work at one level of remove and watching the chaff fall away and the fruits of her labor lay exposed. It was a time for dragging the implements of tools dialectical and behaviors cognitive through the dirt of her to break up into clods her varied neuroses. 
 
 But as it goes, as it always goes, the morsels of joy meted gladly out soon began to run dry and the sense of happiness that she felt waned, and those truly *good* days began to fade once more into merely okay. 
 
@@ -20,13 +20,13 @@ In fact, I would say that there was perhaps even a sort of protectiveness. I thi
 
 And so it was that The Woman, today a human, today, as ever, dressed comfortably, made herself a peanut butter and banana sandwich with the crusts cut off and poured herself a glass of soy milk and walked out into the field outside her house. She had to balance her sandwich atop her drink in order to complete the ritual of passing through the front door, but she had done this countless times before.
 
-The table and chairs sat nearly a mile out from the tenth stanza's house, sprouting senselessly from the grass as easy and carefree as yet more dandelions. A simple square table with two chairs set before adjacent sides so that she need not look Her Therapist in the eye, so that they might each stare out into some similar distance, so that they may feel companionship, though The Woman never could explain how that worked.
+The table and chairs sat nearly a mile out from the tenth stanza's house, sprouting senselessly from the grass as easy and carefree as yet more dandelions. A simple square table with two chairs set before adjacent sides so that she need not look Her Therapist in the eye if she did not want to, so that they might each stare out into some similar distance, so that they may feel companionship, though The Woman never could explain how that worked.
 
-And so The Woman, today a human, walked the mile to the table and sat down her glass of soy milk and began to eat her sandwich. When, at last, there were only two bites left and the glass was half empty, she sent a delicate ping to Her Therapist, who appeared beside the table, paws folded and kind smile on her face. The visage of a skunk lasted no longer than a second before, with a rapid fork, a human stood before her — for Her Therapist endeavored always to mirror her species lest she influence The Woman's own, though she leaned far harder into gender-play, and one would be hard pressed to not also see her as a young man — and bowed, then pulled out the chair beside her and sat down. 
+And so The Woman, today a human, walked the mile to the table and sat down with her glass of soy milk and began to eat her sandwich. When, at last, there were only two bites left and the glass was half empty, she sent a delicate ping to Her Therapist, who appeared beside the table, paws folded and kind smile on her face. The visage of a skunk lasted no longer than a second before, with a rapid fork, a human stood before her — for Her Therapist endeavored always to mirror her species lest she influence The Woman's own, though she leaned far harder into gender-play, and one would be hard pressed to not also see her as a young man — and bowed, then pulled out the chair beside her and sat down. 
 
 "I will be finished in a moment, Ever Dream," The Woman said just as she did every session. "Just a few bites left."
 
-"Of course, End Of Endings," Her Therapist echoed in the time-honored ritual. "Please take your time."
+"Of course, End Of Endings," Her Therapist echoed in the time-honored ritual. "Please, take your time."
 
 The Woman gave a hint of a bow and enjoyed the last two bites of her sandwich as well as she was able, following each with a sip of soy milk, all while Her Therapist made herself comfortable, sitting back in her chair and gazing out over the field of grass and dandelions, a half-smile on her face.
 
@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@ After therapy, after Her Therapist had left and the chairs had been set beneath
 
 There was a sense of falling-short within her, a sense of not meeting expectations. Perhaps it was a sense of shame that she had been so keen to hide this idea that she had happened upon, to keep the idea of the end of joy to herself. Perhaps it was because she had so easily let herself be talked out of sharing earnestly that which she would most liked to have discussed. Perhaps it was because — and here I am using words she herself would use — it was because she was a coward. Perhaps, when confronted with something that she believed to be worth talking about, to have such stopped before she could do so took the wind out of her sails, and she was too cowardly to do anything but let that happen. So many perhapses.
 
-It was with these thoughts and these feelings filling her mind to overfull that The Woman walked back to the house, back up the stairs to the porch, back through the door with a brush of the fingers, back up the staircase, back to her room where she stripped and climbed back into bed.
+It was with these thoughts and these feelings filling her mind to overfull that The Woman walked back to the house, back up the stairs to the porch, back through the door with a brush of fingers on jamb, back up the staircase, back to her room where she stripped and climbed back into bed.
 
 There she slept, and perhaps there she dreamed.
 

content/prelim/004.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ What *was* her lot in life? What was *a* lot in life? Was she limited only to on
 
 She knew where they came from. 
 
-Her lot in life had at one point been to teach, to revel in the joy of acting and directing and sets and props and lights and sound and audience and her lovely, loving students who ached for nothing more than to be seen, to receive some perhaps hug from this person who they trusted and yet who could not give them such for fear of pandemic and regulation in equal measure, to receive some perhaps affection from their cohort and yet which their beloved teacher stopped them for fear of pandemic and regulation in unequal measure. 
+Her lot in life had at one point been to teach, to revel in the joy of acting and directing and sets and props and lights and sound and audience and her lovely, loving students who ached for nothing more than to be seen, to receive some perhaps hug from this person who they trusted and yet who could not give them such for fear of pandemic and regulation in equal measure, to receive some perhaps affection from their cohort and yet which their beloved teacher stopped them — was required to stop them — for fear of pandemic and regulation in unequal measure. 
 
 She knew the helplessness of having her agency ripped from her. She knew the feeling of being seen by something larger than mere personhood, a thing which saw her and said, "this here is a wretched and despicable thing," and then took her from the world. And then her lot in life was to campaign, for though she still taught on occasion, still directed, she found she could not act as she wished, and still she had to refrain from hugging for fear of the discomfort of touch.
 
@@ -60,9 +60,9 @@ The Woman furrowed her brow. "Perhaps, yes. I was thinking about it during the l
 
 "Can you tell me about that?" Ey smiled, adding, "Sorry. I try to stay away from therapeutic language in our discussions, but habits are habits. I really do just want to hear."
 
-"I trust you, No Hesitation." The Woman brushed the longer fur of her mane out her eyes as she pieced together her words. "It felt like a thing to bear within me. I...well, I had considered sharing it, as well, but then Ever Dream requested that I stop. I told her of our meeting and the joy and was going to mention this sharing of joy, but I mentioned our conversation and she requested that I stop. She said that she would like to hear about it from you herself rather than from me."
+"I trust you, No Hesitation." The Woman brushed the longer fur of her mane out her eyes as she pieced together her words. "It felt like a thing to bear within me. I...well, I had considered sharing it, as well, but then Ever Dream requested that I stop. I told her of our meeting and the joy and was going to mention this sharing of joy, but I mentioned our conversation and she stopped me. She said that she would like to hear about it from you herself rather than from me."
 
-Her Friend sighed. "She did not need to. I understand why, but she did not need to. I believe that I am your friend before I am her cocladist, but I do not think that she would agree with that."
+Her Friend sighed. "She did not need to maintain confidentiality. I understand why, but she did not need to. I believe that I am your friend before I am her cocladist, but I do not think that she would agree with that."
 
 The Woman sat back in her seat, mocha clutched in her paws. "Alright. I believe you on that, too."
 
@@ -82,11 +82,11 @@ The Woman and Her Friend set to work, then, discussing what she could do, what s
 
 -----
 
-The Woman and Her Friend decided that her path forward would be one of intent and deliberate action. After all, that is how our System works, yes? We intend to be wearing a piece of clothing we like and we are. We intend to step from this sim to that, and we do. We intend to fork and, lo! There beside us stands another instance of ourself! They are a whole new us! They can live their own life, going their own separate way and making their own choices, or perhaps they can go out to do some task or another or visit some friend for coffee and then quit, merging themself back down into us.
+The Woman and Her Friend decided that her path forward would be one of intent and deliberate action. After all, that is how our System works, yes? We intend to be wearing a piece of clothing we like and we are. We intend to step from this sim to that, and we do. We intend to fork and, lo! There beside us stands another instance of ourself! They are a whole new us! They can live their own life, going their own separate way and making their own choices, or perhaps they can go out to do some task or another or visit some friend for coffee and then quit, merging themself — along with all their memories — back down into us.
 
 They decided on a list of five things that she should try.
 
-Why five, you ask? Well, I honestly do not know! Perhaps because of the five fingers we have on each paw. Perhaps it is because we have two arms, two legs, and a head protruding from our trunk. Or perhaps it has to do with the stars. Starfish? Little wandering doodles to replace the tittles above our 'i's and jots above our 'j's? Each an iota, a mote, a symbol to our future selves, a note for later. Asterisms and asterisks.
+Why five, you ask? Well, I honestly do not know! Perhaps because of the five fingers we have on each paw. Perhaps it is because we have two arms, two legs, and a head protruding from our trunk. Or perhaps it has to do with the stars. Starfish? Little wandering doodles to replace the tittles above our 'i's and jots above our 'j's? Each an iota, a mote, a symbol to our future selves, a note for later. Asterisms and asterisks. Footnotes of self
 
 Ah, but I digress. The Woman and her friend chose a list of five things that she would try — *would,* yes, for *should,* you see, is a value judgment — in order to seek joy in small ways or in small places. The Woman knew that it would be hard. She knew that she would have to bundle up all of her energy and all of her patience with herself and all of her drive and use that to let her last through these explorations of joy.
 
@@ -142,7 +142,7 @@ The Woman tamped down the burgeoning sense of overstimulation and bowed. "Yes. E
 
 "Lovely lovely lovely. Please, please come in and lay down. I do so love grooming you and yours."
 
-And so The Woman went inside and lay down and let The Aesthetician work through her mane and over her tail and through all the little nooks and crannies around her neck and limbs. All the while, they chatted quietly — for an aesthetician such as this reads their clients well and knew how to modulate their attitude that they not overwhelm someone such as The Woman. The brushing was calm and peaceful and felt lovely and delightful in all those ways that she appreciated when she was able to do it herself, and yet it came with a sense of companionship and camaraderie that left her feeling fulfilled and, yes, joyful. Joyful! The Woman and The Aesthetician talked and talked, and The Woman spoke more freely to her than she ever did to Her Therapist and, without being able to explain just how, she knew that the words she spoke would be kept in just as close a confidence.
+And so The Woman went inside and lay down and let The Aesthetician work through her mane and over her tail and through all the little nooks and crannies around her neck and limbs. All the while, they chatted quietly — for an aesthetician such as this reads their clients well and knew how to modulate their attitude that they not overwhelm someone such as The Woman. The brushing was calm and peaceful and felt lovely and delightful in all those ways that she appreciated when she was able to do it herself, and yet it came with a sense of companionship and camaraderie that left her feeling fulfilled and, yes, joyful. Joyful! The Woman and The Aesthetician talked and talked, and The Woman spoke more freely to her than ever she did to Her Therapist and, without being able to explain just how, she knew that the words she spoke would be kept in just as close a confidence.
 
 The Woman left refreshed, renewed, reinvigorated, and with this eye she set to looking into the escalation that she promised Her Friend.
 
@@ -150,7 +150,7 @@ We have seen such success already, have we not? We have seen the ways in which T
 
 Ah, but my words are wandering. This touch, even the grooming, is a sometimes food for The Woman, and yet she had held herself at a distance from such for who knows what reason. I do not think she knew, herself, my friends, for she is as we all are: she is a woman who craves touch and deserves touch and does not, on an intellectual level, wish that she were *not* touched. It is emotional, perhaps, or psychic, or spiritual, or on some level other than the intellectual that the desire to touch and be touched, or the physical need for fulfillment, is difficult for her.
 
-And thus The Woman began her slow climb up the ladder of escalation. She met once more with Her Friend and asked, kindly, perhaps a bit nervously, for a hug and for the chance to hold hands and paws — for she was a human that day, and Her Friend a skunk as ever — and it took something of a force of will to let such touch linger, it was a pleasant sensation and a pleasant conversation that followed, an exploration — between friends, for Her Friend was always careful to specifically *not* be The Woman's therapist — of meanings and boundaries.
+And thus The Woman began her slow climb up the ladder of escalation. She met once more with Her Friend and asked, kindly, perhaps a bit nervously, for a hug and for the chance to hold hands and paws — for she was a human that day, and Her Friend a skunk as ever — and it took something of a force of will to let such touch linger. It was a pleasant sensation and a pleasant conversation that followed, an exploration — between friends, for Her Friend was always careful to specifically *not* be The Woman's therapist — of meanings and boundaries.
 
 And so it was that The Woman sought out those who she knew, those who might have some affection for her beyond simple conversational friendship, those who had been sensual of old, partners and almost-partners from centuries ago who remained still on the System. She thought back through the years and years and years, and Her Lover was the one who leapt most readily to mind.
 
@@ -162,11 +162,11 @@ The response was immediate. *"End Of Endings! Oh my god! You have no idea how ha
 
 There was a long moment silence on the other end of the connection, though the sense of it lingering remained. *"I am sorry, love,"* Her Lover said at last. *"I haven't forgotten you, though, or my fondness, so yeah, I'd love to reconnect."*
 
-If my more recently uploaded friends feel some sense of curiosity about how it is that someone with whom one has let contact language for decades might still feel fondness after so long, or how one might not forget, you must remember that those who live sys-side remain functionally immortal. If one leans into such a fact, then decades spent away may as well be a blink of an eye, yes? If one leans into the everlasting memory with which we are blessed or cursed or which is simply bestowed upon us without further thought, then a past lover away from whom one has simply drifted amicably is just as easily recalled.
+If my more recently uploaded friends feel some sense of curiosity about how it is that someone with whom one has let contact languish for decades might still feel fondness after so long, or how one might not forget, you must remember that those who live sys-side remain functionally immortal. If one leans into such a fact, then decades spent away may as well be a blink of an eye, yes? If one leans into the everlasting memory with which we are blessed or cursed or which is simply bestowed upon us without further thought, then a past lover away from whom one has simply drifted amicably is just as easily recalled.
 
-We are very old, you see. Why, at this point, I am 323 years old! And The Woman is of the same clade, so the same is naturally true of her — if she lives still, that is. To us, we remember being mortal as only some distant thing from so long ago. We have our identity as those who may live life slowly. Things may still come at us quickly, yes, but we can deal with them in parallel, can we not? I could get a note from my dear up-tree stating that it is lonely or bored or simply hungry and wants someone to eat with, and so I may continue writing while joining em in this simple pleasure. I did that just earlier today, when she mentioned wanting to eat something good, some comforting food she learned from eir own friend, so that good memories may also be cherished. When I did join it for a simple meal of *ciorbă de praz* and *ardei umpluți* — for you see, its friend is Romanian and taught em so many of the dishes that she now loves — I sat and listened and remembered and talked and ate and perhaps also fretted over stepping away from work, but I allowed myself to take some slowness, too. Even I am allowed such things, yes? Even the terminally busy may let one self stay busy while the other comforts and is comforted by those they are close to.
+We are very old, you see. Why, at this point, I am 323 years old! And The Woman is of the same clade, so the same is naturally true of her — if she lives still, that is. To us, we remember being mortal as only some distant thing from so long ago. We have our identity as those who may live life slowly. Things may still come at us quickly, yes, but we can deal with them in parallel, can we not? I could get a note from my beloved up-tree stating that it is lonely or bored or simply hungry and wants someone to eat with, and so I may continue writing while joining em in this simple pleasure. I did that just earlier today, when she mentioned wanting to eat something good, some comforting food she learned from eir own friend, so that good memories may also be cherished. When I did join it for a simple meal of *ciorbă de praz* and *ardei umpluți* — for you see, its friend is Romanian and taught em so many of the dishes that she now loves — I sat and listened and remembered and talked and ate and perhaps also fretted over stepping away from work, but I allowed myself to take some slowness, too. Even I am allowed such things, yes? Even the terminally busy may let one self stay busy while the other comforts and is comforted by those they are close to.
 
-Ah, dear readers, I am sorry that I cannot keep my thoughts from wandering an letting my pen trail after them like an eager puppy — yes, just like The Woman's rituals — and that such interrupts the story I am trying to tell!
+Ah, dear readers, I am sorry that I cannot keep my thoughts from wandering and letting my pen trail after them like an eager puppy — yes, just like The Woman's rituals — and that such interrupts the story I am trying to tell!
 
 All of this to say that The Woman and Her Lover spent some years together back in the first century of the System, back after secession but before she had fallen into her gentle stasis, before the goal of processing trauma was subsumed by the trauma itself. They had met — and you will not believe this, friends! — they had met at the very same cafe where The Woman and Her Friend met only days before. They had stumbled across each other in the most romantic way possible: by ordering the same coffees at the counter. They both asked for the same mocha with extra whipped cream, gave each other a strange look, and then fell into laughter.
 
@@ -181,7 +181,7 @@ My gentle readers, I would love to tell you that they met up at that selfsame ca
 
 A train! There are many things on Lagrange, this shared dream in which we live, and many things which have been perfected all the way down to their imperfections. When you collect so many minds all in one place and tell them to live their best and to live it forever, why, they will perfect precisely the things they love most and, my friends, I am sure I do not need to tell you that some people *love* trains.
 
-As was their wont in decades passed, The Woman met Her Lover onboard rather than on the platform. It was their habit for Her Lover to step aboard the train one stop after The Woman did, and for them to both hunt for a seat — no matter how empty the train was; for even if it was totally empty, the *perfect* seat is of the utmost importance — and to meet in the aisle. You see, when your relationship has its beginning in a chance meeting, sometimes it feels nice to seek out those chance meetings again, yes? What better way to do so than on so linear a structure as a train? It certainly reduces the possibilities of near misses!
+As was their wont in decades past, The Woman met Her Lover onboard rather than on the platform. It was their habit for Her Lover to step aboard the train one stop after The Woman did, and for them to both hunt for a seat — no matter how empty the train was; for even if it was totally empty, the *perfect* seat is of the utmost importance — and to meet in the aisle. You see, when your relationship has its beginning in a chance meeting, sometimes it feels nice to seek out those chance meetings again, yes? What better way to do so than on so linear a structure as a train? It certainly reduces the possibilities of near misses!
 
 Somewhere near the front of the train, they met, and here they felt that welcome surprise. The "chance meeting" may have been deliberately constructed, and yet it was not without a sense of newness. The Woman was a familiar panther that day and Her Lover a human as always, but The Woman, who had been so focused on her stasis until now, realized at once that she *had* changed over the years. Slowly, to be sure, and perhaps not in the ways that she wished, but she had changed. Today, she wore a silver-gray wrap of a shirt, all shot through with purple threads, and a gray-silver wrap of Thai fisherman's pants, all shot through with threads of blue. Her fur may have been the same black, short and glossy, and she may have lingered in suffering as the tenth stanza had in her own way, but she was hardly the type to fully languish, nor wear the same thing for years or decades at a time!
 
@@ -227,9 +227,9 @@ With that, she leaned over to give The Woman another kiss to the cheek, and then
 
 They laughed together at their touches and their brazenness and their shared joy. They shared their nuzzles and their giggles and they, as the poet says, shared their oranges and gave their kisses like waves exchanging foam.
 
-My lovely readers, there is more that happened — and I am going to tell you! I really will, because it is important to the story, of course, and because it is important to our life sys-side and to us as a clade and it was important to The Woman and Her Lover — but, dear ones, if you would like to skip ahead, to cover your eyes and curate your experience or to simply let them have their moment together, know that our life sys-side and our clade are complicated and that The Woman and Her Lover were complicated, too, and so was the joy they found. Know that they also, as the poet says, shared their limes and gave their kisses like clouds exchanging foam.
+My lovely readers, there is more that happened — and I am going to tell you! I really will, because it is important to the story, of course, and because it is important to our lives sys-side and to us as a clade and it was important to The Woman and Her Lover — but, dear ones, if you would like to skip ahead, to cover your eyes and curate your experience or to simply let them have their moment together, know that our lives sys-side and our clade are complicated and that The Woman and Her Lover were complicated, too, and so was the joy they found. Know that they also, as the poet says, shared their limes and gave their kisses like clouds exchanging foam.
 
-They leaned on each other as they stepped lightly from the train to the station, and, although the station was a loveliness in its own right, their conversation had spurred within them both a desire to explore and gladly, rather than their feet hitting the cement of the platform, they landed instead on the cool, hardwood floor of Her Lover's home where The Woman brushed her fingertips featherlight against the still-familiar jamb.
+They leaned on each other as they stepped lightly from the train to the platform, and, although the station was a loveliness in its own right, their conversation had spurred within them both a desire to explore and gladly, rather than their feet hitting the cement of the platform, they landed instead on the cool, hardwood floor of Her Lover's home where The Woman brushed her fingertips featherlight against the still-familiar jamb.
 
 There was no rush to their movements, for both The Woman and Her Lover had always been methodical in their sensuality. Perhaps it fit the mold of one of The Woman's rituals — she must touch here, first, and then she would kiss there, and only then would she brush her fingers there, across the cheek — and perhaps not — a logical progression remains a logical progression without the hint of ritual.
 
@@ -239,7 +239,7 @@ Here was another thing for The Woman to set before herself where she might obser
 
 But, ah! Here, too, was Her Lover. Here was a soul she treasured. Here was a body she cherished. Here was this spot — just beneath the chin — which, when kissed, elicited a shiver, and this spot — at the hollow of the throat — which, when brushed with a fingerpad, elicited something both gasp and giggle. Here was arousal and excitement and anticipation in equal measure. Here was a thing for her to focus on that was not the cool blue of anxiety that warred with love remembered in unequal measure.
 
-There was no rush to their movements, though, and arousal and excitement and anticipation in equal measure are a joy in their own, and so with some unspoken negotiation, The Woman leaned back and Her Lover leaned forward rather than the other way around. There was some careful tail maneuvering to accomplish this, but, my friends, we are used to it. There is *always* a careful maneuvering of our tails. Skunk tails, you see, are quite sizeable, and feline tails are less flexible at the base. It is a part of our lives, you see? There is still joy in having a tail, though, and with her tail out of the way, The Woman was once more able to relax, this time laid flat on her back, and Her Lover was once more able to provide that meteor shower of kisses down over the side of her neck, then over across her décolletage, and it was here where, as promised, here is where the complications arose, for it was at that moment, at the moment where Her Lover's kisses landed upon that lovely spot at the hollow of her throat that there was a bright flash amidst the blue of The Woman's anxiety and she was no longer The Woman who was a panther, but instead The Woman who was human.
+There was no rush to their movements, though, and arousal and excitement and anticipation in equal measure are a joy in their own, and so with some unspoken negotiation, The Woman leaned back and Her Lover leaned forward rather than the other way around. There was some careful tail maneuvering to accomplish this, but, my friends, we are used to it. There is *always* a careful maneuvering of our tails. Skunk tails, you must understand, are quite sizeable, and feline tails are less flexible at the base. It is a part of our lives, you see? There is still joy in having a tail, though, and with her tail out of the way, The Woman was once more able to relax, this time laid flat on her back, and Her Lover was once more able to provide that meteor shower of kisses down over the side of her neck, then over across her décolletage, and it was here where, as promised, the complications arose, for it was at that moment, at the moment where Her Lover's kisses landed upon that lovely spot at the hollow of her throat that there was a bright flash amidst the blue of The Woman's anxiety and she was no longer The Woman who was a panther, but instead The Woman who was human.
 
 Both The Woman and Her Lover let out a startled exclamation and both froze where they were. The Woman froze because suddenly her clothes fit different and her field of view no longer included the bridge of a wide muzzle and her ears were positioned differently and there was no longer any fur mediating touch. Her Lover froze because...well, I do not rightly know, friends. We can guess, yes? We can guess that there was the shock of a new form, yes, but they knew each other well, did they not? We can guess that there was a shift on the couch beneath her with a different shape, different size, different weight of lover, but they knew each other well, did they not? They knew each other well, and so we may guess that Her Lover knew that such a shift was not always a pleasantness for The Woman, not always a joy.
 
@@ -267,7 +267,7 @@ The Woman shifted forms several times more. There were, they found, certain mile
 
 Throughout it all, all those kisses — whether or not The Woman was able to return them, for giving kisses with a muzzle is not a thing she was able to do — and those squeezes and strokes and the gentle way Her Lover cupped her palm over The Woman's mons, throughout all those shifts, The Woman kept before her that ineffable point. Throughout all of the warmth of love and those stinging-cold flashes of anxiety and they way they swirled clockwise, she peered closer that she might scry some meaning out of this kernel of what was most certainly not joy. Even as the warm wave of climax pushed through her, rushing out from that spot low in her belly, even as she clutched at Her Lover's shoulders, fingertips and clawtips both tugging at skin, even as her cries smoothed out into whine-tinged breaths, she tried to name the unnamable.
 
-They lay together for hours after, talking and touching. They moved to the bed and The Woman who was a skunk or a human or a panther brought such pleasure as she had been given to Her Lover, and at last they slept, and the undefinable remained undefined. There was joy in that touch, in that remembered love, and she knew that Her Lover would be by her side for some time to come if she let her — and she would let her — and that, too was a joy. And still, there between joy and fear...
+They lay together for hours after, talking and touching. They moved to the bed and The Woman who was a skunk or a human or a panther brought such pleasure as she had been given to Her Lover, and at last they slept, and the undefinable remained undefined. There was joy in that touch, in that remembered love, and she knew that Her Lover would be by her side for some time to come if she let her — and she would let her — and that, too, was a joy. And still, there between joy and fear...
 
 There was joy, yes, but it was not a complete joy. Her hedonism with touch and sensuality and sexuality was a lovely hedonism and she cherished it, but it was not the hedonism she needed for this task.
 

content/prelim/005.md

@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ And now here she was, standing in the little courtyard created by the set of tow
 
 My place is clean and minimal. It is not clean because I am necessarily a clean person, nor is it minimal because I have any particular attachments to minimalism or its trappings. Friends, you have surely gathered by now that I am quite a bit more focused on writing than I am on most anything else. My home contains a simple kitchen and a simple dining table. There is a den in which there is a couch and a coffee table. There are two bedrooms, one of which contains a bed and the other of which is empty. The only room that is of any interest is perhaps my office, but even that is probably too minimal for most people's tastes! I have a desk. I have paper and pens and a keyboard on which I can type when that is the mood. 
 
-That is not to say that it is a boring place — at least, I do not think so! I have some paintings on the wall, some landscapes interrupted by hyper-black squares painted by The Child. There are several little decorations scattered around, as well; little objects that The Oneirotect has made in its explorations in oneirotecture and oneiro-impressionism. The most meaningful of these sits on my writing desk, and takes the form of a wireframe polyhedral fox about the size of my paw. While it is silver in color, it does not cast any shadows on itself and has constant luminosity, and so it looks like a two-dimensional shape that changes as your perspective does. 
+That is not to say that it is a boring place — at least, I do not think so! I have some paintings on the wall, some landscapes interrupted by hyper-black squares painted by The Child. There are several little decorations scattered around, as well: little objects that The Oneirotect has made in its explorations in oneirotecture and oneiro-impressionism. The most meaningful of these sits on my writing desk, and takes the form of a wireframe polyhedral fox about the size of my paw. While it is silver in color, it does not cast any shadows on itself and has constant luminosity, and so it looks like a two-dimensional shape that changes as your perspective does. 
 
 Ah, I am digressing again. My thoughts and words wander.
 
@@ -64,7 +64,7 @@ I do not know if you have ever been complimented in just the right way by just t
 
 The Woman, this skunk who sat before me with a glass of water held in her paws and her very chic outfit, the one who had smiled to me with such earnestness as to be a blessing, this woman who was too much herself, had just perceived me with such force as to leave me feeling bowled over. Even today, even these many years later, I remember that compliment and find breath catching in my throat, and we have already spoken on that, have we not?
 
-We sat in silence, then, while I processed this. My friends, you may perhaps have picked up the sense that The Woman is in some fundamental way broken and perhaps unable to interact well with others. After all, she sits for so long in her room and in her home and on her field, and she sees Her Friend only with some small frequency, and had only just recently gotten in touch with Her Lover, yes? And that is in many ways true, that she is broken. But it is not *wholly* true. She was too much herself, yes, and she would have said even then that she had lived for too long and that she was in some fundamental way broken, but she was also so much more! I have shown you all that she was through her own perception, but from the outside...ah, she was hard not to love, my friends.
+We sat in silence, then, while I processed this. My friends, you may perhaps have picked up the sense that The Woman is in some fundamental way broken and perhaps unable to interact well with others. After all, she sits for so long in her room and in her home and on her field, and she sees Her Friend only with some small frequency, and had only just recently gotten in touch with Her Lover, yes? And that is in many ways true, that she is broken. But it is not *wholly* true. She was too much herself, yes, and she would have said even then that she had lived for too long and that she would probably say that she was in some fundamental way broken, but she was also so much more! I have shown you all that she was through her own perception, but from the outside...ah, she was hard not to love, my friends.
 
 "Thank you, my dear," I said at last, bowing.
 
@@ -246,7 +246,7 @@ Readers, you must understand that, when I say perfectly black, I do mean it! The
 
 This square is not *Eigengrau.* It is beyond that. It is beyond even black! It is an impossible black. It is deeper than *Eigengrau,* yes, but it is also a very thirsty black. If the ground of The Instance Artist's prairie drinks thirstily of the sky, so too does this black drink thirstily of all the light in the world. It draws light from the room, and when you look at the painting, the world seems dimmer. It is a hole in the world.
 
-I am used to it, my friends, for it sits happily enough upon my wall, but I am told that it is unnerving to see.
+I am used to it, my friends, for it sits happily enough upon my wall, but I am told by some that it is unnerving to see.
 
 "Her paintings have always struck me as bearing a sort of serenity that I have not actually seen in the world," I said after we had appreciated house and plain and sky and hole in the world. "It is more than just some moment of movement captured and frozen in time. It is like she records things that had never been anything but still to begin with."
 
@@ -276,12 +276,10 @@ She nodded.
 
 "I go back and forth. Sometimes, I feel that it is right in front of me and the house is in the distance, and that it is painted to scale so that it is quite small. Sometimes, I feel like it must be behind the house, or way out beyond the sky, and it is larger than the moon."
 
-"I see we understand it in the same way. I cannot tell, either. I can tell you, though, that watching Motes brought me the closest to the joy that I have been seeking that I have ever been." She frowned down to her glass, now empty. When she continued, her speech was halting, slow, thoughtful. "Not...for me, not my own joy, and I think not even for her, though the little skunk certainly seems quite joyful. It is...adjacent to the joy. It brought me near to the joy, but did not necessarily bring the joy to me."
+"I see we understand it in the same way. I cannot tell, either. I can tell you, though, that watching Motes brought me the closest to the joy that I have been seeking than I have ever been." She frowned down to her glass, now empty. When she continued, her speech was halting, slow, thoughtful. "Not...for me, not my own joy, and I think not even for her, though the little skunk certainly seems quite joyful. It is...adjacent to the joy. It brought me near to the joy, but did not necessarily bring the joy to me."
 
 -----
 
-\label{warmth}
-
 We talked for some time more, The Woman and I, and discussed what it was that we could do to help her find joy. I am sorry to say, though, that we were not able to come up with something. 
 
 We circled for some time around meditative acts and how that might work with writing. Automatic writing, perhaps? Should The Woman set up with a note book and a pen and look into some deeper self and begin to write? Should she bid my demon of graphomania visit her, grab her by the wrist, drag her pen across the page that words may flow after it like eager puppies?
@@ -298,7 +296,7 @@ So it was that The Woman returned home with the promise to come back the next da
 
 "For whom do you write, Rye?"
 
-I had an answer ready for this, dear Readers, for this is something that I think about with some frequency. "I write for those who need to read."
+I had an answer ready for this, dear readers, for this is something that I think about with some frequency. "I write for those who need to read."
 
 The Woman tilted her head — she was back to being a skunk, yes, but this is a habit that all of us share within the Ode clade, no matter our shape. "I have heard it said so often that one should write for oneself and wait for an audience to come."
 
@@ -308,7 +306,7 @@ She furrowed her brow. "I will admit that I spent last night thinking much on th
 
 I laughed, reached into a pocket, and withdrew my current favorite pen. It is, you may be surprised to hear, quite plain. It is round and it is long. It has a cap that posts on the back. The nib is nothing special. It is a demonstrator — that is, it has a clear body so that one can see the ink within — but so are many of my pens. No, there is little special about it overall, other than the fact that it simply fits well within my paw, and that, dear friends, is what is most important in a pen.
 
-I handed the pen over to The Woman and she drew a notepad out of the air, write a few short sentences on it with the pen, nodded appreciatively, and handed it back. "It is a joy to write with, my dear. But to my point, I suspect there is goodness in the act of writing, but not the fulfillment I am seeking."
+I handed the pen over to The Woman and she drew a notepad out of the air, wrote a few short sentences on it with the pen, nodded appreciatively, and handed it back. "It is a joy to write with, my dear. But to my point, I suspect there is goodness in the act of writing, but not the fulfillment I am seeking."
 
 I nodded. "I would agree with that, yes. You speak of a way of being. You speak of not just creating, but of being a creative."
 
@@ -322,15 +320,15 @@ The Woman smiled and nodded. "By all means, please do."
 
 We are the most of us not tall women, just as Michelle who was Sasha was not tall: just a little over a meter and a half or, as our literature professor described her in class after she read some saccharine ode by John Keats, "Miss Michelle Hadje, five foot four."
 
-That *most* that I have written just now is doing much work, however. Several of us are taller. Why, I remain just an few centimeters taller than Michelle who was Sasha stood, but I might just as easily be mistaken for her when she appeared as a skunk, so similar are we. Oh! And The Oneirotect's sometimes-partner, Hold My Name Beneath Your Tongue And Know, towers over me by a head.
+That *'most'* that I have written just now is doing much work, however. Several of us are taller. Why, I remain just an few centimeters taller than Michelle who was Sasha stood, but I might just as easily be mistaken for her when she appeared as a skunk, so similar are we. Oh! And The Oneirotect's sometimes-partner, Hold My Name Beneath Your Tongue And Know, towers over me by a head.
 
 Several of us are shorter. The Child, as you will see, is understandably shorter. My little readers who sit cross-legged on carpet squares, perhaps you can picture her, for she is precisely as I have named her: a child.
 
-The Oneirotect, my beloved up-tree, is not a child, and yet she is small. I think she is small enough that some would perhaps confuse her for one in the same way that The Child is a child, and I think that this may indeed be a little bit of transgression in which ey revels. She is tiny, perhaps even smaller than The Child, perhaps only one meter high!
+The Oneirotect, my beloved up-tree, is not quite a child, and yet she is small. I think she is small enough that some would perhaps confuse her for one in the same way that The Child is a child, and I think that this may indeed be a little bit of transgression in which ey revels. She is tiny, perhaps even smaller than The Child, perhaps just over one meter high!
 
-It also has within it a level of energy that may well contribute to this childlike nature. It zips and zooms and careens off walls as easily as does The Child — easier, perhaps, for even if she is only a few centimeters shorter, she is far more slender, far more lithe, borderline wiry, and she embodies the jitteriness that one might assume were I to call her 'critter'.
+It also has within it a level of energy that may well contribute to this childlike nature. It zips and zooms and careens off walls as easily as does The Child — easier, perhaps, for even if she is only a few centimeters shorter, she is far more slender, far more lithe, borderline wiry, and she embodies the jitteriness that one might assume were I to call it 'critter'.
 
-But no, ey is not a child. The Child owns that identity for herself. She leaned into the youngest sister of the fifth stanza, she owned *youngest* as meaning childhood, as was her choice. The Oneirotect, however, is simply the most recently claimed line, and is thus the youngest of all Odists with a snippet our superlative friend's words to call its own. Ey lack the being-a-kid-ness and dwell instead in eir own transgressiveness: their fur is mussed and seemingly perpetually stained with the colors of grass and dandelions, her personality is as untameable as the unruly mane atop her head, and its care is as boundless as its emotions.
+But no, ey is not a child. The Child owns that identity for herself. She leaned into the youngest sister of the fifth stanza, she owned *youngest* as meaning childhood, as was her choice. The Oneirotect, however, is simply the most recently claimed line, and is thus the youngest of all Odists with a snippet of our superlative friend's words to call its own. Ey lack the being-a-kid-ness and dwell instead in eir own transgressiveness: their fur is mussed and seemingly perpetually stained with the colors of grass and dandelions, her personality is as untameable as the unruly mane atop her head, and its care is as boundless as its emotions.
 
 They are *all* of our youngest sibling and she is my beloved up-tree.
 
@@ -340,7 +338,7 @@ They are *all* of our youngest sibling and she is my beloved up-tree.
 
 *"If you have the bandwidth, yes."*
 
-Rather than reply to my message directly, ey simply blinked into being in the entryway of my little townhouse. Had I some other guest over, perhaps it would have skitter-scattered and bounced around as it at times did, but you will remember, dear readers, that The Oneirotect was well acquainted with the tenth stanza, and knew well that they dwelt comfortably in calm and quiet, and so she simply stepped lightly toward us, forking as ey went to pad up to both of us and give each us both hug. I leaned down to give a kiss between the skunklet's ears, ruffled up its already quite tousled mane, and smiled as she quit.
+Rather than reply to my message directly, ey simply blinked into being in the entryway of my little townhouse. Had I some other guest over, perhaps it would have skitter-scattered and bounced around as it at times did, but you will remember, dear readers, that The Oneirotect was well-acquainted with the tenth stanza, and knew well that they dwelt comfortably in calm and quiet, and so she simply stepped lightly toward us, forking as ey went to pad up to both of us and give us each hug. I leaned down to give a kiss between the skunklet's ears, ruffled up its already quite tousled mane, and smiled as she quit.
 
 "Hi, End Of Endings," they said, smiling up to The Woman.
 
@@ -380,7 +378,9 @@ The Oneirotect smiled wryly. "Well, sure, but my interest lies more in the food
 
 "I suppose this is where the nostalgia comes in, then, yes? Reaching back for the things that others loved, rather than simply ate out of necessity?"
 
-The Oneirotect tilted its head, unruly mane falling over its eyes. Out of instinct, I reached over to brush it back into some semblance of order and got a rather wet lick to my wrist for my trouble. My friends, my beloved up-tree is quite weird. "It is not as if none before me had dreamt of food just like grandma used to make, but what I offered was particularly attuned to that, yes."
+The Oneirotect tilted its head, unruly mane falling over its eyes. Out of instinct, I reached over to brush it back into some semblance of order and got a rather wet lick to my wrist for my trouble. My friends, my beloved up-tree is quite weird. 
+
+"It is not as if none before me had dreamt of food just like grandma used to make, but what I offered was particularly attuned to that, yes."
 
 "You speak of research and gaps in selections and beloved meals," I said. "It sounds like you speak most of all of making things for others, or for all, rather than for yourself."
 
@@ -394,7 +394,7 @@ There was such a pang within me that I had not felt in ages, for The Oneirotect
 
 They — that other Warmth In Fire — was lost to us. They were gone from us. Their art took them from us, it killed them. Such is the danger of art, dear readers: it takes as easily — more easily! — than it gives. It was some centuries back, but– ah! Centuries change only the flavor of the loss when one cannot forget it. It is a loss that still stings to this very day.
 
-"Ah," The Woman said, her expression falling subtly — nearly too subtly to notice but by this point, I was quite focused on everything about her. "Right. I remember hearing of a death within the clade early on. Systime 54, was it? I was rather disconnected from the clade at the time, I am sorry to say, and was unable to focus enough to learn of just who."
+"Ah," The Woman said, her expression falling subtly — nearly too subtly to notice, but by this point, I was quite focused on everything about her. "Right. I remember hearing of a death within the clade early on. Systime 54, was it? I was rather disconnected from the clade at the time, I am sorry to say, and was unable to focus enough to learn of just who."
 
 I nodded. "But by then, Dear — or, rather the instance who would become Dear — had been forked, and so Warmth filled that vacancy. Ey took on the name Which Offers Heat And Warmth In Fire when Dear became what it is."
 
@@ -402,7 +402,7 @@ Warmth struggled to speak at first, caught up in emotion. It had been Dear at th
 
 Now, perhaps my younger uploads or those who have not stuck their noses deep into cladistics, snuffling about for interesting thises or surprising thats, may not quite understand the import here, and so I will tell you a story, much as it was told to me by The Instance Artist:
 
-Many years ago, it forked and went out for a walk along the street. It put the Name of our superlative friend, of The Dreamer who dreams us all, int an exocortex and then began to change. It forked and forked and forked as it walked that endless city that it called home at the time. It changed its shape, from stocky to slight. It changed its species. It changed its sense of smell, its sense of sight. It changed its hearing — and you must understand, as a fennec, its ears are enormous; when it gives a shake of its head, its tall ears bow under the momentum. It changed the way it thought about our history. It changed the way it thought about forking. It changed the way it engaged with everything around it.
+Many years ago, it forked and went out for a walk along the street. It put the Name of our superlative friend, of The Dreamer who dreams us all, into an exocortex and then began to change. It forked and forked and forked as it walked that endless city that it called home at the time. It changed its shape, from stocky to slight. It changed its species. It changed its sense of smell, its sense of sight. It changed its hearing — and you must understand, as a fennec, its ears are enormous; when it gives a shake of its head, its tall ears bow under the momentum. It changed the way it thought about our history. It changed the way it thought about forking. It changed the way it engaged with everything around it.
 
 Its goal was to change its sensorium enough that it would not be able to access the Name of our beloved Dreamer again.
 

content/prelim/006.md

@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ The Woman and her superlative friend moved together as one. They were the same p
 
 The Woman and her superlative friend, when next they clicked their implants into place and delved into the familiar second home that was the 'net, they were shunted away into dreams and left there to wilt, to languish, to desiccate and wither and be blown away by who cared what wind. They were knocked a meter to the right and back in some metaphorical way, their immersive tech refusing to relinquish its grip on their reality so that, from the outside, they only slept, and yet within, they dreamed along the filaments of those implants, trapped within that hardware, for the nature of getting lost was a coma mediated by integrated technology. They were both torn asunder in some ineffable way. For Michelle who was Sasha, those two identities were carved apart — though only halfway — and, when her superlative friend, her beloved RJ, gave of emself to create the world that was Lagrange, a System for those minds who chose to upload, she dove after em in as soon as she could afford.
 
-The Woman and her superlative friend were ever bound up in each other, for they were the same person twice over, and since this world was in some ineffable way made *of* em, Michelle who was Sasha and The Woman who was Michelle felt she had no other choice, even if the unique trauma of getting lost meant that she ever felt that split, that inextricable Sasha-ness and Michelle-ness that someone, some bureaucrat that wanted her lost, inadvertently tried to reify, and it was not until the ability to fork was added to the System that she was able to alleviate herself of such. Or, if not herself, at least she could ensure that those new copies of herself, the Ode clade, would be without such pain.
+The Woman and her superlative friend were ever bound up in each other, for they were the same person twice over, and since this world was in some ineffable way made *of* em, Michelle who was Sasha and The Woman who was Michelle felt she had no other choice, even if the unique trauma of getting lost meant that she ever felt that split, that inextricable Sasha-ness and Michelle-ness that someone, some bureaucrat that wanted her lost, inadvertently tried to reify, and it was not until the ability to fork — to copy oneself and multiply, to let instances merge back down or to continue on and become their own people — was added to the System that she was able to alleviate herself of such. Or, if not herself, at least she could ensure that those new copies of herself, the Ode clade, would be without such pain.
 
 The Woman and her clade were never wholly without, for such is the way of trauma, yes?
 
@@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ But The Woman who was Michelle who was Sasha would not let that happen. She *cou
 
 And then, one day, her superlative friend disappeared. Days went by, and weeks, and then before the month was out, she received a letter detailing the ways in which ey hoped to move forward, how ey would likely die, but at least ey would die in the act of creation, of making a new world of utter freedom, where dreaming together was the warp of the world, and intent the weft, and ey both succeeded and failed, for now the world in which we live is one woven from dreams and intent, but ey is absent. It was in that letter that ey had written the ode that became the source of our names, and so we live out our lives embodying these fragments of em, but even still, ey failed because ey is absent. Ey became the weaver.
 
-And still, ey succeeded. Ey succeeded because ey became the loom. Ey became the fabric. Ey became the shuttle and the pirn and the batten and the comb and the heddle, and the world is the lathe and we are the treadles working and working and working and we feel em beneath our fingertips as they trace along the weave, but ey is not here.
+And still, ey succeeded. Ey succeeded because ey became the loom while we became the fabric. Ey became the shuttle and the pirn and the batten and the comb and the heddle, and the world is the lathe and we are the treadles working and working and working and we feel em beneath our fingertips as they trace along the weave, but ey is not here.
 
 But I digress.
 
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ What is one to do when faced with the enormity of love? What subtle powers does
 
 The Woman and I and all of our kin have not always had the best of luck with love, nor with standing up for ourselves. When I say that we have more traumas than simply getting lost, our unluck in love accounts for some sizeable portion of this.
 
-We struggled with the role that our bodies played, yes? For Michelle who was Sasha was short — as we are — and she was fat — as many of us remain — and she was so-called blessed with breasts to match. So-called by those who wished to in some way claim ownership of them. When she pursued a reduction, her back thanked her and those who bestowed such praise wondered why why why she would withhold that goodness from them.
+We struggled with the role that our bodies played, yes? For Michelle who was Sasha was short — as we are — and she was fat — as many of us remain — and she was so-called blessed with breasts to match; so called by those who wished to in some way claim ownership of them. When she pursued a reduction, her back thanked her and those who bestowed such praise wondered why why why she would withhold that goodness from them.
 
 And yet even that did not stop such attention, for we were, it seems, worth a certain set of things to others — to those beyond our friends and our superlative friend with whom we remain in love — and so why would they hunt for aught else?
 
@@ -130,7 +130,7 @@ For she is our Pinocchio, is she not? She is our Pinocchio in reverse. She is th
 
 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 change. The first four of these brought joy, and even superlative joy, but not the joy she sought, and before her lay the prospect of change, and yet such a prospect was exhausting before she had even begun.
+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 change. The first four of these brought joy, and even superlative joy, but not the joy she sought, not the stillness she sought, and before her lay the prospect of change, 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.
 

content/prelim/007.md

@@ -1,12 +1,10 @@
 ## End Of Endings — 2403<br>×<br>Rye — 2409
 
-<!-- Maybe this is just an interlude as she comes down from overflowing and not actually part of the tasks. That way it can keep its place. -->
+When at last The Woman returned home from her walk of hours and hours and a day, she performed a new ritual. She performed a ritual of mourning.
 
-When at last The Woman returned home, she performed a new ritual. She performed a ritual of mourning.
+This, you see, was the first pawings at her final task. Her set of five tasks, of food, of physical pleasure, of entertainment, of creation, of change 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 and hoped in that to seek change.
 
-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 change 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 and hoped in that to seek change.
-
-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 and back and back, six decades back, they lay still in thought and, before long, before the week was up, quit. They bowed out. They dipped. Committed suicide. Quit the big one. They push now up some perhaps daisies perhaps columbines perhaps nasturtiums in the mind of The Dreamer who dreams us all.
+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 and back and back, six decades back, they lay still in thought and, before long, before the week was up, quit. They bowed out. They dipped. Committed suicide. Quit the big one. They push now up some perhaps daisies perhaps dandelions perhaps columbines perhaps nasturtiums in the mind of The Dreamer who dreams us all.
 
 There is loss in our lives and in our hearts and in our minds.
 
@@ -30,7 +28,7 @@ The Woman pushed the door open and bowed. "Rejoice."
 
 "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?"
+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, leaving only skin. "Why?"
 
 The Woman stood still in the doorway. "Because I am sad, and because I miss her."
 
@@ -42,7 +40,7 @@ Along the other wall — that wall that had been hidden to the woman — was a s
 
 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.
+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 Death Itself would sit at times and talk and share in kindnesses such as touch when their forms permitted.
 
 There, The Woman remained still.
 
@@ -72,9 +70,7 @@ Perhaps she spoke to The Dreamer who dreams us all, perhaps not, but either way,
 
 -----
 
-\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 Woman sat down on the floor by The Dog some days later, a week later. She knew it 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.
 
@@ -112,7 +108,7 @@ The Woman reached out to pet The Dog. It relaxed into the pressure.
 
 *"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?"
+"I want something like this, perhaps," The Woman said. "I want to be still, to unbecome. 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. *"Don't want! Who will watch Motes?"*
 
@@ -176,7 +172,7 @@ And in the bliss of not-knowing, through unwitnessed years and decades, it slept
 
 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.
 
-This was close, dear readers! This was so close to what she sought. This worrying not of *knowing* was so close, but the Woman realized even 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, not exactly. It did not go far enough. It was not *still* enough. The her who was a beast would still have too much of her. The her who was a skunk or a panther was still an active entity, an agent of her own future. In the end, the she who was these things was still an actor. She needed a change more integral, more whole, more entire — not a reshaping of the body, nor even the mind, but a reshaping of the existence.
+This was close, dear readers! This was so close to what she sought. This worrying not of *knowing* was so close, but the Woman realized even 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, not exactly. It did not go far enough. It was not *still* enough. The her who was a beast would still have too much of her, too many cares and worries and too much of herself. The her who was a skunk or a panther was still an active entity, an agent of her own future. In the end, the she who was these things was still an actor. She needed a change more integral, more whole, more entire — not a reshaping of the body, nor even the mind, but a reshaping of the existence.
 
 So, her search continued.
 

content/prelim/008.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ We know this, you and I. We know this because that is the story that I have been
 
 The Woman was too much herself, and becoming ever more so always. With each day, each hour, each minute and second, she was becoming ever more herself. She did not just become older — and, dear ones, you remember, of course, that we are *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 *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? <!-- God, what the fuck is this line from... -->
+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 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 will 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 will not know what terrors we have lived through, the grief of losing one percent of a society 2.3 trillion strong.
 
@@ -76,7 +76,7 @@ The Woman nodded.
 
 "I have, yes."
 
-Her Friend smiled, raising eir 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?"
+Her Friend smiled, raising eir paper cup in a toast and tapping it gently to The Woman's own. "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."
 

content/prelim/009.md

@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ Ah, my dear, *dear* readers, you know that I am struggling, I will not apologize
 
 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, *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.
+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 month after I met with The Woman, was The Blue Fairy.
 
 The Blue Fairy did not look *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.
 
@@ -48,15 +48,15 @@ They loved each other, and then, as has been the theme throughout this winding s
 
 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, *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.
+And so here she was, *here,* Standing before my door, my second visitor in a month, 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."
+"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 back 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 eir mocha, and added, "The world feels strange and new."
+"It is not all on me, at least. We are all 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 eir 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."
 
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ Eventually, she replied: "That is actually part of why I came here, Rye."
 
 "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 *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."
+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 month 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 *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 she has 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."
 
@@ -96,7 +96,7 @@ The Blue Fairy nodded. "She is not interested in meditating, no."
 
 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!"
+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. A tree!"
 
 The Blue Fairy only smiled tiredly to me and replied, "It is as you say."
 
@@ -118,11 +118,11 @@ She shook her head, chuckling. "Oh, not at all. I am quite back-and-forth on thi
 
 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."
+"That is what I came to ask you about. 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. How *we* might justify it."
 
-Now *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 itch 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 *living.* Ah, I am trying to–
+Now *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 itch 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 billions more 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 *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?"
+Some of you, perhaps some of my newer uploads, or my littler readers who sit cross-legged on carpet squares, 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 The Blue Fairy 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."
 
@@ -142,7 +142,7 @@ She frowned, lingering in silence, and then nodded. "And I worry that that, too,
 
 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 *are* her, in a way," I said, squeezing her upper arm kindly. "She is looking to someone she respects and someone she *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."
+"Because you are a good person. She respects you, yes? And you are a cocladist. You *are* her, in a way," I said, squeezing her upper arm kindly. "She is looking to someone she respects and someone she *is* to either give her blessing 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, *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 *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."
 
@@ -150,7 +150,7 @@ But here is the point where my mind was made up, and I will admit to being somew
 
 "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?"
+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."
 
@@ -184,7 +184,7 @@ At last, The Blue Fairy smiled to me. "Alright. I will do as she has asked. It k
 
 -----
 
-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–
+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 struggling and I am crying 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:
 
@@ -230,25 +230,25 @@ We may never more be blessed.
 
 *Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha'olam dayan ha'emet* we may never more be blessed. 
 
-I may never more melt beneath her smile. What will become of me?
+I may never more melt beneath her smile, may never again cry before her. 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?
+Her Cocladist will never wonder whether there is aught else in life but suffering while The Woman sits nearby. What will become of her?
 
-The Oneirotect may never more call her kitty and share stories of Should We Forget. What will become of em?
+The Oneirotect may never more call her kitty and share stories of Should We Forget, nor bring her small gifts, small treats. What will become of it?
 
 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? 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?
+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 *all* 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 the souls of the lost in broad daylight cling to passers-by.
 
-Oh! And oh! The wonder of it all! She, then, like 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! That unfalling ones are trapped within that last falling! 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–
+Oh! And oh! The wonder of it all! She, then, like 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! That unfalling ones are trapped within that last falling! 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"?
 
@@ -266,7 +266,7 @@ When, as now, I am blinded by ink that flows down my cheeks and stains my fur an
 
 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?
+Friends, I do not know, I do not know. Most beloved, 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, *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?
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