Edits

content/draft/007.md

@@ -106,7 +106,7 @@ Sasha laughed.
 
 Her two cocladists tensed. Neither wished to contend with the thought that Hammered Silver might have it in her to kill anyone in the only way the System knew how, some object loaded up with a contraproprioceptive virus to pierce their very being and crash them entire. However, though neither wished to, they both had to, and so they both nodded.
 
-Sasha smiled reassuringly. "I do not believe you need worry about *that.* Making your name anathema would taint her own reputation, would it not? She is mad, yes, and perhaps feeling betrayed, but she is not feeling murderous. She does not have that within her, I do not think. Would you like me to check all the same?"
+Sasha smiled reassuringly. "I do not believe you need worry about *that.* Making your name anathema would taint her own reputation, would it not? And she does seem rather more concerned about that than anything. She is mad, yes, and perhaps feeling betrayed, but she is not feeling murderous. She does not have that within her, I do not think. Would you like me to check all the same?"
 
 Dry Grass nodded.
 
@@ -158,7 +158,7 @@ At some point, though they disagreed on when — was it five years later? Ten? E
 
 There was sense of aromancy in A Finger Pointing that grew after she forked. She never could say where from; perhaps it was simply that she would rather have been friends with everyone than foster a particular friendship with one person. And yet there was something about Beholden. Something fulfilling, perhaps, or complementary, or a self-love that rose above all others.
 
-And so they fell in love, each in their own way. They fell in love and, for the most part, reveled. Yes, they had their spats. Yes, they had their flings besides, and the occasional relationship, all negotiated and cherished and bound up in compersion. But always they had each other.
+And so they fell in love, each in their own way. They fell in love and, for the most part, reveled. Yes, they had their spats, their breaks from each other. Yes, they had their flings besides, and the occasional relationship, all negotiated and cherished and bound up in compersion. But always they had each other.
 
 There was, of course, the social implications to consider, the taboo around intraclade relationships, the implications of narcissism and other, far more crass terms. Suggestions were made from on high, such as it were, from across the clade.
 
@@ -246,7 +246,7 @@ He shrugged helplessly.
 
 They sat in silence for nearly a minute while Waking World thought. A Finger Pointing gave Beholden's paw a squeeze before retrieving her hand once more. Her sensorium felt like it was lit up with fairy lights and arc lamps, a gently twirling Christmas tree of a self. She could hear the rushing of water, and much of what she was seeing was beginning to blur, but she forced herself to remain as present as she was able, turning her senses down as much as she could get away with in the moment.
 
-"Hammered Silver is having a tantrum," he said at last. "She does not want to argue with you. She will not be convinced because she does not really care if anything changes. She does not *want* anything to change, really. She does not want to win. She just wants to be angry and she just wants you to hurt."
+"Hammered Silver is having a tantrum," he said at last. "She does not want to argue with you. She will not be convinced because she does not really care if anything changes. She does not *want* anything to change, I think. She does not want to win. She just wants to be angry and she just wants you to hurt."
 
 "For as much as she apparently hates Motes, she sure is being a fucking child about this," Beholden mumbled.
 
@@ -268,7 +268,7 @@ Letter after letter, topic after topic. They became rote. They became routine. T
 
 And it was not just her, after all, was it?
 
-For better or worse, she was the representative of her stanza. She was a synecdoche for it: she *was* the fifth stanza. Anything that the stanza did, whether as a whole or individually, she would hear about through those tetchy letters, those little missives Hammered Silver saw fit to send her. 
+For better or worse, she was the representative of her stanza. She was a synecdoche: she *was* the fifth stanza. Anything that the stanza did, whether as a whole or individually, she would hear about through those tetchy letters, those little missives Hammered Silver saw fit to send her. 
 
 A note here: *Surely The Only Constant can find some less dramatic way to depict death on stage; has ey no thought for how that might reflect on the rest of us as so public a clade?*
 
@@ -465,7 +465,7 @@ Motes had existed. She had tested the limits and found them flexible. She had fo
 
 All of these were unacceptable. All of these had led to letters and notes of their own. All were rehashed through paragraph after paragraph of spiny invective.
 
-But a full half of the letter was devoted to a particular combination of particular topics that had apparently struck Hammered Silver as particularly worthy of ire: Motes had started calling A Finger Pointing 'Ma' and A Finger Pointing had started calling Motes 'Dot'. Two syllables worthy of an essay-length diatribe.
+But a full half of the letter was devoted to a particular combination of particular topics that had apparently struck Hammered Silver as particularly worthy of ire: Motes had started calling A Finger Pointing 'Ma' and A Finger Pointing had started calling Motes 'Dot'. Two syllables worthy of an essay-length diatribe, for if A Finger Pointing and Beholden had bought into the taboo in their own way, accepted it as the way of the world for so long, Hammered Silver had wrapped herself up in it most securely.
 
 How dare she, Hammered Silver cried — and with such a loss as that of Sasha/Michelle, she truly sobbed. How dare she test the clade's position in this most precarious life time and again by doing this awful, awful thing. On and on and on.
 
@@ -479,6 +479,12 @@ That was the time their friendship died, the moment A Finger Pointing received t
 
 -----
 
+The dissociation had before long defined her life, her existence.
+
+It had dampened her hedonism. It had put a stopper on so much of her wild enthusiasm and had instead led her to softer comforts — sun-bathing on a rock by a quiet creek a lovely pastime — at best, to so often asking Beholden to take her home when she had so often before outlasted the skunk on their outings at worst. Whereas before she had dwelt in even the excesses of hedonism until she overflowed and locked herself away from it, a self-harm by omission, she now dwelt in the quietudes of hedonism until she overflowed and threw herself with abandon into wildnesses, a self-harm by overindulgence.
+
+The dissociation, derealization, depersonalization had defined her in her play and, perhaps more painfully, in her care. Here she was, sat on the couch and staring unseeing toward the kitchen, having had to step away from a meeting of care, unable to engage. Here she was, unable to help — never mind that there may not be anything she *could* do to help right now — until her sense of self recohered, until she could return to that care.
+
 Once she had had her water, and then a simple drink mixed by Beholden, and spent an hour resting once the wave of dissociation had started to roll back out, A Finger Pointing stood and walked to the back patio, out where the concrete ended in a sharp seam and the wild grass of the field threatened to tickle at her ankles, were it not for socks and slacks.
 
 She forked, and her new instance moved to stand facing her. When she nodded, the instance opened a simplex sensorium message to Hammered Silver. It was essentially a recording of whatever the instance saw and heard that would be sent when she was finished.
@@ -513,11 +519,11 @@ And then, with a small ping of a notification, an envelope blipped into being at
 > 
 > Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver
 
-She read the letter through twice and then committed it to an exocortex and destroyed the original.
+She read the letter through twice and then committed it to her long-running exocortex and destroyed the original.
 
 "What a fucking bitch," she muttered to herself as she turned to return inside.
 
-At least it had fucking worked.
+At least it had worked.
 
 A simple dinner. A few glasses of wine. A quiet evening saying nothing as she lounged with her head on Beholden's lap while the skunk worked.
 
@@ -529,7 +535,7 @@ Or...not sleep, but withdraw from the waking world.
 
 Better to show what she could. She stepped quietly into the room and climbed up onto Motes's bed with her, curling behind her and draping an arm across the little skunk.
 
-"I love you, Dot," she mumbled, burying her face against the back of the skunk's neck. "I am sorry."
+"I love you, Dot," she mumbled, burying her face against the back of her neck. "I am sorry."
 
 There was more she could say — so much more — but for some reason, words failed her after that. Words and will both failed her, and so she simply lay there with Motes, replying to Beholden's gentle, inquiring ping with a soothing one of her own. She had told Motes that she loved her, as she never tired of doing so, and that was enough.