Edits

content/draft/008.md

@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ When she was next able to speak, she began a sensorium message to A Finger Point
 
 *"I know,"* her partner interrupted. *"I am here."*
 
-Quelling her shame, she straightened herself up as best she could, deciding not to fork away the mussed up fur or tear-stains on her cheeks, letting some of that trauma show for reasons she could not explain, and stepped back out of her studio to find A Finger Pointing pacing back and forth in the living room.
+Quelling her shame, she straightened herself up as best she could, deciding not to fork away the mussed up fur or tear-stains on her cheeks, letting some of that trauma show for reasons she could not explain — validation, perhaps? — and stepped back out of her studio to find A Finger Pointing pacing back and forth in the living room.
 
 "I came as soon as– oh, Beholden..." Her cocladist's shoulders slumped as she trailed off, putting a halt to her pacing so that she could wrap the skunk up in a hug. "Are you okay, my dear?"
 
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ Smiling humorlessly, A Finger Pointing nodded toward the paper in her paws. "I a
 
 "Took her down?" Beholden cried, then quickly tamped down the flare of anger, returning the letter to her partner. "She was covered in blood when I checked on her. Someone must have hit her hard enough to give her a bloody nose. She was all scraped up."
 
-A Finger Pointing blanched, stiffened for a long few seconds, then nodded. "Did you get her cleaned up?"
+A Finger Pointing froze, face drained of color, then nodded slowly. "Did you get her cleaned up?"
 
 "Yeah, I brought her to enough to get her to fork into her PJs, but she is out hard right now in bed."
 
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ Beholden nodded. "What do we do?"
 
 "Protect our own," came the immediate answer. "Protect ourselves. Protect our Dot."
 
-And so they did. They made their calls. They brought Dry Grass into the fold as officially as they saw fit, providing her with a house. They set up a gentle watch on Motes, set up alerts throughout the house for when her door opened from the inside, for when the bar or kitchen were entered by her. They sought out Slow Hours for a meeting seeking her premonitions, such as they were. They sought out Sasha for a meeting to confirm that there were no existential threats. They sought out Waking World for a meeting to get a better sense of Hammered Silver's intentions.
+And so they did. They made their calls. They brought Dry Grass into the fold as officially as they saw fit, providing her with a house. They set up a gentle watch on Motes, set up alerts throughout the house for when her door opened from the inside, for when the bar or kitchen were entered by her. They sought out Slow Hours for a meeting asking for her premonitions, such as they were. They sought out Sasha for a meeting to confirm that there were no existential threats. They sought out Waking World for a meeting to get a better sense of Hammered Silver's intentions.
 
 All the while, Beholden did her best to remain calm, or to at least push down expressions of overwhelming emotions. There were walks. Many walks. Many excuses to step away to the auditorium or to get fresh air or stretch her legs.
 
@@ -80,7 +80,7 @@ The answer was a long time coming. "I feel vindicated," Dry Grass said at last.
 
 Beholden snorted. "Wrong in the correct direction."
 
-She smiled, nodding as her gaze drifted out into the neighborhood, over at the playground in the central area. "And yes because I am finding out in a very real way that there are still people on my side, that I still have friends. I still get to spend time with you and A Finger Pointing, and I still get to spend time with Motes. I just feel bad that she wound up at the center of this."
+She nodded, smiling as her gaze drifted out into the neighborhood, over at the playground in the central area. "And yes because I am finding out in a very real way that there are still people on my side, that I still have friends. I still get to spend time with you and A Finger Pointing, and I still get to spend time with Motes. I just feel bad that she wound up at the center of this."
 
 "I do too," the skunk mumbled. "I love that kid. I say it as often as I can, but I always worry that I am not as good at showing it as I could be."
 
@@ -132,7 +132,7 @@ They both settled into swinging in silence once more, just a gentle rocking back
 
 "Can you tell me something good?" Dry Grass sighed, gaze drifting out over nothing in particular. "Just a good memory about Motes or the fifth stanza or whatever. Something to make this all feel a bit more worthwhile."
 
-Beholden let her swinging come to a stop as she thought back across the years, hunting for something that might fit. Finally, she said, "One year, boss got Motes this harness that was kind of stretchy. It was sort of a strong elastic that wrapped all the way around her torso and around her thighs like a climbing harness or something. It let us carry her around like a briefcase."
+Beholden let her swinging come to a stop as she thought back across the years, hunting for something that might fit. Finally, she said, "One year, boss got Motes this harness that wrapped all the way around her torso and around her thighs like a climbing harness or something. It let us carry her around like a briefcase."
 
 Dry Grass laughed. "Oh god, I cannot imagine."
 
@@ -144,7 +144,7 @@ Beholden laughed. "To her? Or as yourself?"
 
 "Oh, to her!" she said, smirking. "Though who knows, maybe I would give the slide version a go, myself."
 
-The conversation of good things continued — Motes designing the playground with it's slide that led to a hidden world of ghostly forests if you believed it would, Warmth In Fire designing the chalk lines that followed the two of them as they ran around, A Finger Pointing and Beholden sitting on the stoop of their home to watch the sun set while little ones played in the grass — until they grew weary of the swings digging into their backsides and hunger started tugging them back toward home and what joys they had built began to fade in the face of the immediate past.
+The conversation of good things continued — Motes designing the playground; the slide Warmth In Fire, Serene, and In The Wind designed that led to a hidden world of ghostly forests if you believed it would; Warmth In Fire designing the chalk lines that followed the two of them as they ran around; A Finger Pointing and Beholden sitting on the stoop of their home to watch the sun set while little ones played in the grass — until they grew weary of the swings digging into their backsides and hunger started tugging them back toward home and what joys they had built began to fade in the face of the immediate past.
 
 With each step, a bit of color once more seeped from the world and a bit more worry once more gnawed at Beholden's gut.
 
@@ -154,23 +154,23 @@ Still, she managed to clean her plate, managed to straighten herself up for the
 
 She tamped down her emotions throughout, press-fit them into place within her so that they would not spill over into the world around her, bottled them up, wrote a label on the jar, and set it on a shelf high in her mind to deal with later, right next to all of the other jars about which she had promised the same.
 
-She had to, at least for now, at least for the time being. She would need to reckon with the person that she had built herself up into. She would need to deal with all of the compromises that she had made in order to be Beholden. She was Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps! Sound and music director for the troupe! She was lead sound tech! This was the cost of engaging so closely with what had once been her dearest friend's specialty. Michelle acted, and later taught. AwDae was the sound engineer. This was the price she paid for being Au Lieu Du Rêve's very own AwDae. While the others within the stanza, within the clade, may dance with em as they moved through the System, she, of all them, was perhaps one of the most entangled with em. It was Beholden who was with AwDae on her quiet walks, Beholden who was with AwDae, drunk under the stars, Beholden who was with AwDae when she was working. Or playing. Or crying. Or laughing. Or indulging. She could never escape em, try as she might, and so, from time to time, a woman needed a break from grief.
+She had to, at least for now, at least for the time being. She would someday need to reckon with the person that she had built herself up into. She would need to deal with all of the compromises that she had made in order to be Beholden. She was Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps! Sound and music director for the troupe! She was lead sound tech! This was the cost of engaging so closely with what had once been her dearest friend's specialty. Michelle acted, and later taught. AwDae was the sound engineer. This was the price she paid for being Au Lieu Du Rêve's very own AwDae. While the others within the stanza, within the clade, may dance with em as they moved through the System, she, of all them, was perhaps one of the most entangled with em. It was Beholden who was with AwDae on her quiet walks, Beholden who was with AwDae, drunk under the stars, Beholden who was with AwDae when she was working. Or playing. Or crying. Or laughing. Or indulging. She could never escape em, try as she might, and so, from time to time, a woman needed a break from grief.
 
-It was her fragility, and the only way she knew to reinforce herself was through setting such emotions aside. She would need to confront that, but not just yet, not with so much before her.
+It was her fragility, and the only way she knew to reinforce herself was through setting such emotions aside. She would need to confront that — that and so many other things — but not just yet, not with so much before her.
 
 And so, when A Finger Pointing stood, wobbled, and requested that she take her home, Beholden had been immediately ready to stand up and gently guide her from the library and back to the neighborhood. She let her partner hold onto her to the extent that she was comfortable, rather than the other way around, trusting that she would take only what touch she needed lest she get yet more overwhelmed.
 
 She knew well by now the ways in which A Finger Pointing had changed over the years, about how the crash had affected her. 
 
-She knew well because she had seen the exhaustion or fear or slackness in her partner's face when the dissociation would crawl over her, insidious, had heard how she would turn down her sensorium almost all the way just to survive. 
+She knew well because she had seen the exhaustion or fear or slackness in her partner's face when the dissociation would crawl over her, insidious, had heard how she would turn down her sensorium almost all the way just to survive those moments. 
 
-She knew well because she had heard A Finger Pointing fall as the world ceased to make sense to her, had heard the shout of surprise as she tumbled from a catwalk where she had been placing lights, had heard the thud-crunch of her hitting the stage twenty feet below and the note of dreamy confusion in her voice when she realized, "Oh, I am *quite* broken," the tired frustration as she forked herself whole.
+She knew well because she had heard A Finger Pointing fall as the world ceased to make sense to her and vertigo rose like bile, had heard the shout of surprise as she tumbled from a catwalk where she had been placing lights, had heard the thud-crunch of her hitting the stage twenty feet below and the note of dreamy confusion in her voice when she realized, "Oh, I am *quite* broken," the tired frustration as she forked herself whole.
 
-So she set her mind to caring for her love. It was as she had always done. It was as she must do.
+So she set her mind to caring for her love. It was as she had always done. It was as she must do. If the crash had shaped the way that A Finger Pointing moved through the world, the way she danced with those around her, so too had it shaped Beholden and her path forward. Even if she did not know it at first, even if her partner had only explained it after the fall, it had shaped the both of their lives and the life of their *dóttir,* brought them insensibly closer together over the years to where they were now: a family true.
 
-She pressed those emotions down and instead lingered on love. She lingered on her devotion to A Finger Pointing, on her protectiveness of her charge. She lingered on those good memories as best she could to keep the very air from tasting desiccating, to push away the feeling of sand gritting between her teeth.
+She pressed those emotions down and instead lingered on love. She lingered on her devotion to A Finger Pointing, on her protectiveness of her charge, her Dot. She lingered on those good memories as best she could to keep the very air from tasting astringent, to push away the feeling of desiccating sand gritting between her teeth.
 
-Once A Finger Pointing was settled at home and Motes had been checked on, once the message had been sent to Hammered Silver and they had eaten and settled down on the couch for the night to rest, to pretend to work, only then, did Beholden very carefully open the jarred emotions from earlier, carefully withdrawing them one by one and laying them out before herself in her mind. She did not touch them, hot as they were. She used tweezers or tongs or perhaps chopsticks to lift them free, nudge them to lay flat that she might read deeper into them.
+Once A Finger Pointing was settled at home and Motes had been checked on, once the message had been sent to Hammered Silver and they had eaten and settled down on the couch for the night to rest, to at least pretend to work, only then, did Beholden very carefully open the jarred emotions from earlier, delicately withdrawing them one by one and laying them out before herself in her mind. She did not touch them, hot as they were. She used tweezers or tongs or perhaps chopsticks to lift them free, nudge them to lay flat that she might read deeper into them.
 
 And then, exhausted by day, by the last few days, by worry over her Dot, her *dóttir*, by worry over her boss — "not your boss" the common refrain — she just as carefully replaced all of those emotions, still  unprocessed, into their container and once more sealed it tight.