Edits

content/draft/004.md

@@ -48,7 +48,9 @@ Motes cried. She hung limply and cried before that long-dead version of herself.
 
 This was not supposed to happen.
 
-Michelle/Sasha sneered through that omnipresent exhaustion. "Some mote who styles herself Motes. Some grasper-after-fame. Some fetishist who wishes only to taint the Ode with lurid visions of youth." 
+Michelle/Sasha sneered through that omnipresent exhaustion. "Some mote who styles herself Motes. Some grasper-after-fame. Some fetishist who wishes only to taint the Ode with lurid visions of youth."
+
+Motes cried. She could do nothing but hang from Sasha's paw/Michelle's hand and cry, could do nothing but dangle in the grasp of this person who had always been so, so fond of her and cry.
 
 In her free hand/paw, this ghost brought into being a dagger, silver-bladed, wood-hilted, ruby-pommeled. She reached out and slowly, almost tenderly, pressed it into Motes's paw. Holding her wrist, she brought that paw up so that the tip of the blade was pressed against the skunk's neck, pricking at the skin over her carotid. When she let go, Motes found her paw remained there, immobile, unresponsive to her efforts to pull it away.
 
@@ -62,7 +64,7 @@ Michelle/Sasha straightened up and said, almost bored, "Well? Indulge, my dear."
 
 With no recourse, Motes drove the blade into her own neck, an agonizing slowness that played itself out in a death she had experienced before, she had surely suffered in its own, consensual way.
 
-She died then, whimpering ever more weakly, and as her panicked eyes drifted shut one last time, she awoke with a start, already sobbing.
+She died then, whimpering ever more weakly, blood staining her paw and arm and front in an outsized torrent, and as her panicked eyes drifted shut one last time, she awoke with a start, already sobbing.
 
 The house was quiet, as it so often was at this time of the night, when Beholden and A Finger Pointing were either asleep or out at one of their jazzy nightclubs. All the same, she sent a gentle sensorium ping to A Finger Pointing, figuring it best to make sure that they were actually asleep rather than simply under a cone of silence in their room.
 
@@ -72,13 +74,13 @@ She carefully poked her nose into the room, turning the handle to the door as qu
 
 "Is everything alright, Motes?"
 
-"Nightmare," she mumbled. "Can I sleep with you for a bit?"
+"Nightmare," she mumbled, still sniffling. "Can I sleep with you for a bit?"
 
 "Of course, my dear," A Finger Pointing said, stifling a yawn. "I am busy hogging all the bed, anyway, so there is plenty of room."
 
 Sighing in relief, the skunk nodded and padded into the room, closing the door behind her. She had to feel her way to the bed in the dark. The dark, which seemed to press in against her, bearing rapidly distorting memories of the dream. *To think that I could be this disgusting,* echoed in her head. *...lurid visions of youth...*
 
-There was a part of her that strived to convince the rest that the voice in the dark was not that of A Finger Pointing — despite the lilting, everlasting humor that showed even in sleepiness — but that of Michelle/Sasha, her root instance now more than fifty years dead. *It is her waiting with a dagger,* that fraction of her promised. *It is her waiting with yet more cruel words.*
+There was a part of her that strived to convince the rest that the voice in the dark was not that of A Finger Pointing — despite the lilting, everlasting humor that showed even in sleepiness — but that of Michelle/Sasha, her root instance who had ever loved her, now more than fifty years dead. *It is her waiting with a dagger,* that fraction of her promised. *It is her waiting with yet more cruel words.*
 
 But then there was the bed, and then there was the hand holding up the covers to welcome her in, and then there were the arms envelop her, and then there was the feeling of a face — a human face — an unshifting face — her cocladist-*cum*-mother's face — pressed against the back of her neck, and then there was the clumsy addition of Beholden's paw draping over her side, her other cocladist-*cum*-mother clearly still more asleep than awake. 
 
@@ -110,7 +112,7 @@ Beholden laughed. "It is all your fault, my dear. The dream probably showed up *
 
 "I guess," she grumbled. "I will try and remember. It felt like it just kind of floated up into my mind a few weeks ago from out of nowhere."
 
-"Remember, yes," A Finger Pointing said, yawning dramatically and leaning harder until she was able to push both of the skunks over onto their sides. She held up a hand as though inviting them to picture a tableau. "I remember the maps of the Holy Land," she lamented, quoting from some old production, some old classic. "Colored they were. Very pretty! The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty."
+"Remember, yes," A Finger Pointing said, yawning dramatically and leaning harder until she was able to push both of the skunks over onto their sides. She held up a hand as though inviting them to picture a tableau. "I remember the maps of the Holy Land," she lamented, quoting from some old production, some old classic. "Colored, they were. Very pretty! The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty."
 
 Both of the skunks fell into laughter, sprawled awkwardly beneath their down-tree instance on the bed. "That is where we will go, you used to say," Beholden said, keeping up the act. "That is where we will go for our honeymoon."
 
@@ -124,7 +126,7 @@ She saw their gentle manipulation and loved them all the harder for it.
 
 The rest of the morning passed in comfort and lazy chatter, but throughout, some portion of Motes was dedicated to thinking back, to remembering. Comfort and lazy chatter and remembering, then, before the three decided to split off to their own tasks — Beholden into two instances, one to work on music, one to the theatre; A Finger Pointing to some planned brunch; Motes to go for a walk, to go and talk.
 
-The fifth stanza had begun its life in an apartment building. As many studios and penthouses as were required for one mind split ten ways. Life on Lagrange had progressed as ever, though, and soon the sense and sensation of being a part of the fifth had changed. It began to encompass relationships fleeting and lasting. It housed devotion, invited in friendship. It grew beyond the bounds of just this tenth of a clade to include all of Au Lieu Du Rêve, and some few decades on, the whole of the project decamped from their city-block sized apartment building.
+The fifth stanza had begun its life in an apartment building in a cozy, artsy town. As many studios and penthouses as were required for one mind split ten ways. Life on Lagrange had progressed as ever, though, and soon the sense and sensation of being a part of the fifth had changed. It began to encompass relationships fleeting and lasting. It housed devotion, invited in friendship. It grew beyond the bounds of just this tenth of a clade to include all of Au Lieu Du Rêve, and some few decades on, the whole of the project decamped from their city-block sized apartment building.
 
 Now, the fifth stanza — along with however many other lovers and friends, coworkers and groupies, up-trees and tracking instances —  occupied a sprawling neighborhood of houses and townhomes, yards and copses of trees, and yes, even a playground. The whole neighborhood crowded against an untamed field, a prairie, a meadow laced up with deer trails and footpaths, dotted with yet more copses of trees lining a creek.
 
@@ -204,7 +206,7 @@ All throughout, Slow Hours listened in silence, letting her talk while brushing
 
 Once her tears began to slow and she wiped at her nose with a tissue, Slow Hours leaned down to kiss her cheek. "I am sorry, Motes. You deserve better than what your sleeping mind has told you," she said gently. "It sounds as though this false vision of your past self was upset with two things: your explorations around age and your explorations around death, yes?"
 
-Stifling some sniffles, aftershocks of the cry just ended, Motes nodded. "Yeah, though I think more the first," she said, wincing at the muffled sound of her voice through her congestion. It sounded round, somehow, wrong. "That is what I have been thinking about most, anyway, that would have led to a dream like that."
+Stifling some sniffles, aftershocks of the cry just ended, Motes nodded. "Yeah, though I think more the first," she said, wincing at the muffled sound of her voice through her congestion. It sounded round, somehow, wrong. "That is what I have been thinking about most, anyway, that would have led to a dream like that. The death was just the punishment."
 
 "And you are not sure where these anxieties came from?"
 
@@ -270,7 +272,7 @@ She wilted, shoulders slumping. "So I might be hearing more of this, then? From
 
 Motes nodded sullenly.
 
-"I know that you said that you do not need to hear that you are not wrong or doing wrong things," Slow Hours said, drawing the skunk up into her lap. "But I will tell you all the same: you are not in any way a mistake. You are approaching this cognizant of the implications. You are holding in your mind both the truth that this *is* you and that an expression of identity like this coming from an adult is fraught."
+"I know that you said that you do not need to hear that you are not wrong or doing wrong things," Slow Hours said, drawing the skunk up into her lap. "But I will tell you all the same: you are not in any way a mistake. You are approaching this cognizant of the implications. You are being safe. You are leaning on support and protection. You are holding in your mind both the truth that this *is* you and that an expression of identity like this coming from an adult is fraught."
 
 "I know," she mumbled, burying her face against her cocladist's shoulder. "Thank you, Slowers."
 

content/draft/005.md

@@ -64,9 +64,13 @@ Her muscles clenched and bunched and tensed and pulled her down into a ball so t
 
 She felt, muffled by those waves of stinging and soreness, the pair of paws that had helped to gently unfold her now touching gingerly around her snout, blood all dried. She saw Beholden's face as though it was one she herself might bear in some thirty years, and that anxiety ratcheted up several notches. Any hope she had of staving off that overflow was now long, long gone. *I am an adult, I should put away childish things, I am an adult...*
 
-"Whoa, whoa! Hey, come here," Beholden murmured, and Motes realized from some few feet above herself that she had started to thrash and wail. She looked down with distant concern. She should stop that. She watched her body slowly relax, watched her face screw up and the tears once more start to flow.
+"Whoa, whoa! Hey, come here," Beholden murmured, and Motes realized from some few feet above herself that she had started to thrash and wail. She looked down with distant concern. 
 
-*Interesting,* she thought. *Yet I acted like a child when I was a child. I am an adult...*
+She should stop that. 
+
+She watched her body slowly relax, watched her face screw up and the tears once more start to flow.
+
+*Interesting,* she thought dispassionately. *Yet I acted like a child when I was a child. I am an adult...*
 
 Her sense of self lagged behind — an idea of a mote of a Motes tethered like a helium balloon — as Beholden carefully lifted her unsouled-yet-still-living body and hoisted her up to carry her from her studio — *the lights, she left the lights on* — to her bedroom. A place of soft things. A soft mattress, a too-thick duvet, stuffed animals and yet more stuffed animals. *I should put away childish things, I am...*
 

content/draft/006.md

@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ It was not always a kid thing. She aged down her appearance, sure, falling into
 
 She owned playfulness because life is play. She owned it because it was so easy to forget the role that play plays in one's life, with its carefully delineated fun times that one fits in around work and sleep and obligations. Life is play, and over time, Motes *became* play.
 
-It changed the way that her cocladists and friends treated her. They started ruffling her hair, trying to get her excited. They started playing with her in the auditorium, hiding to jump out and startle her or running up to tap her on the shoulder and shout "You are it!" before running off to the dressing rooms to change for their role. They started doing all of the good things that one does with kids and none of the bad things. After all, if they needed Serious Motes, they could still talk to her like the fifty year old woman that she was, right?
+It changed the way that her cocladists and friends treated her. They started ruffling her hair as That It Might Give had, trying to get her excited. They started playing with her in the auditorium, hiding to jump out and startle her or running up to tap her on the shoulder and shout "You are it!" before running off to the dressing rooms to change for their role. They started doing all of the good things that one does with kids and none of the bad things. After all, if they needed Serious Motes, they could still talk to her like the fifty year old woman that she was, right?
 
 She liked that.
 
@@ -172,7 +172,7 @@ Above all else, Motes enjoyed piggyback rides.
 
 But always, Motes played.
 
-She played because play was transgressive for one such as her, was it not? Oh, there were games sys-side. Within her own clade was a game designer and curator, What Gifts — and they often leaned on Motes for input and play-testing — and so of course play was okay, but as soon as one presents oneself as she did, as a child, then suddenly that play becomes something that works to define that very part of her. It was transgressive because when Motes played, it cast the play that every adult around her engaged with as either defined by or contrasted against her very presence.
+She played because play was transgressive for one such as her, was it not? Oh, there were games sys-side. Within her own clade was a game designer and curator, What Gifts — and she often leaned on Motes for input and play-testing — and so of course play was okay, but as soon as one presents oneself as she did, as a child, then suddenly that play becomes something that works to define that very part of her and thus vice versa, her childishness casts that play in a childish light. It was transgressive because when Motes played, it cast the play that every adult around her engaged with as either defined by or contrasted against her very presence.
 
 But she played in that transgression. She used it to push and press against those definitions and boundaries. She played as a twenty-something, letting her cocladists and coworkers ruffle her hair to rile her up or jump from behind a curtain to scare her.
 

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.
 

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.
 

content/draft/009.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 Motes thought of play.
 
-She thought of all of the play that she had taken part in over the years, all of the games and make believe, all of the jungle-gyms and slides, all of the tag and red-light-green-light and duck-duck-goose, everything going back 276 years, as much as she could remember. She thought of all her toys, from the mound of stuffed animals occupying her bed beside her right now to the awful and cheap RC car she had received on her fifth birthday that worked for that day and that day alone, that never again turned on. She thought of all her friends, of Alexei on the playground the other day — three days ago? Four? — calling out to her as she fell under the spike of panic, of Frida Couch who she had met in kindergarten, who she had told her parents she was dating in third grade, who had died some years after Michelle had uploaded.
+She thought of all of the play that she had taken part in over the years, all of the games and make believe, all of the jungle-gyms and slides, all of the tag and red-light-green-light and duck-duck-goose, everything going back 276 years, as much as she could remember. She thought of all her toys, from the mound of stuffed animals occupying her bed beside her right now to the awful and cheap RC car she had received on her fifth birthday that worked for that day and that day alone, then never again turned on. She thought of all her friends, of Alexei on the playground the other day — three days ago? Four? — calling out to her as she fell under the spike of panic, of Frida Couch who she had met in kindergarten, who she had told her parents she was dating in third grade, who had died some years after Michelle had uploaded.
 
 She thought of the way that play defined the Motes that she had become, the way it had shaped the way she interacted with the world, the way it shaped her very form. She thought of how Au Lieu Du Rêve had accepted readily just how well it fit her self-definition. She thought of the family that she had built up around her.
 
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ The eggs were fried over easy and the sausage cooked to just this side of burnt
 
 Her plate laden with two burritos in one hand and mimosa in the other, she made her way to the couch rather than the dining table and settled down with a long, worn-out sigh.
 
-What was missing...ah! Coffee. 
+What was missing...? Ah! Coffee. 
 
 While there was joy in making her own, she was already down, she was already comfortable, she was already finished with her time in the kitchen, and so she deemed it easier to just wave a steaming mug into being on the low table before her, already dosed with cream and sugar.
 
@@ -70,7 +70,7 @@ Laughing, the skunk gave her one more of those nose-dot kisses before disentangl
 
 "Okay," she said. "Tender, I guess. Sore, maybe? I am not feeling bad, but I am not yet feeling good. I am feeling like the slightest bump with leave me with a bruise."
 
-Her cocladist nodded. "I imagine so. Are you up to speaking about what happened?"
+A Finger Pointing nodded. "I imagine so. Are you up to speaking about what happened?"
 
 She nodded. "A little bit. I will let you know if I need to bow out."
 
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ The answer was a long time coming, the silence filled with the gentle tink of gl
 
 Beholden tasted her drink, nodded appreciatively, then asked, "Have you come to any conclusions?"
 
-"I think so," she said, looking down at her mimosa. Beholden had topped it with a maraschino cherry poked through with a cocktail umbrella. There was a warmth of adoration starting to fill that hollow space in her chest. "I am not going to stop playing, not going to stop being her, but...but that really fucking hurt, and I need to know what to do with that pain before I reengage with that, you know?"
+"I think so," she said, looking down at her mimosa. Beholden had topped it with a maraschino cherry poked through with a cocktail umbrella. There was a warmth of adoration starting to fill that hollow space in her chest. "I am not going to stop playing, not going to stop being Little Motes, but...but that really fucking hurt, and I need to know what to do with that pain before I reengage with that, you know?"
 
 Letting her free arm dangle over the arm of the couch, glass held by the rim, A Finger Pointing tucked her own cocktail umbrella into Motes's hair behind her ear, adding a wheel of bright pink to the yellow of the dandelions before draping her arm around her shoulder. "That does make sense, yes. That was one of my worries, even: that this would leave you too wounded to reengage with that part of you that has been so important over the years."
 
@@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ Beholden smiled, reached out to brush some of her curls away from her face, adde
 
 Her shoulders slumped and she nodded. "Alright. I think my answer still stands, though. I like it when you call me that, even when I am Big Motes. I do not imagine...well, no. I am *sure* this will not last longer than two weeks. That is the deadline I have given myself to process this."
 
-"Of course, Dot," A Finger Pointing said, tightening her grip in a squeeze before gently nudging her to sit back upright. "With this of all things, there will be more than enough processing to fill that time. The situation has...resolved itself while you were sleeping, but even that resolution is complicated."
+"Of course, Dot," A Finger Pointing said, tightening her grip in a squeeze before gently nudging her to sit back upright. "With this of all things, I am sure there will be more than enough processing to fill that time. The situation has...resolved itself while you were sleeping, but even that resolution is complicated."
 
 "Oh?"
 
@@ -122,7 +122,7 @@ When she finished and all questions had been answered or deferred, they fell int
 
 Finally, Motes huffed and flopped back against the couch. "What a fucking bitch."
 
-"Dot, language," Beholden scolded, laughing.
+"Dot, language," Beholden scolded.
 
 "Fuck fuck fuck," she said, grinning wildly. "Bitch bitch bitch! You can yell at Little Motes~"
 
@@ -232,7 +232,7 @@ She furrowed her brow, using her shoe to flatten out the gravel beneath her as s
 
 "That's your name, though. Tell me about how that doesn't *feel* like cutting you out of the clade." Sarah smiled gently, adding, "Not that I don't believe you, I just want to understand where you're coming from on this."
 
-"I guess it is that she has not told anyone but her stanza not to talk to me. To us, I mean. Her and In Dreams's stanzas talk to each other. They still talk to the second, third, and fourth. They still talk to What Lives and so on in the ninth. We talk to all of those people, too." She smiled sidelong at Sarah. "So I guess I see where you are going. I do still see her as an aunt because she has not actually said that we are not family — or like a family — she has just cut off contact. She has implied that we *are* still family, but that I did something wrong."
+"I guess it is that she has not told anyone but her stanza not to talk to me. To us, I mean. Her and In Dreams's stanzas talk to each other. They still talk to the second, third, and fourth. They still talk to What Lives and so on in the ninth. We talk to all of those people, too." She smiled sidelong at Sarah. "So I guess I see where you are going. I do still see her as an aunt because she has not actually said that we are not family — or like a family — she has just cut off contact. She has implied that we *are* still family, but that I did something wrong by...I do not know. Tempting Dry Grass?"
 
 Sarah laughed. "I really was just trying to figure things out, not lead you along, but that's an important connection to make, there. Family members cutting off others in the family is common enough to be a whole area of study. How does it feel to treat the rest of the clade as an extended family, though?"
 
@@ -254,9 +254,9 @@ Motes frowned.
 
 Motes snorted. "*One* thing I can do is reclaim it and turn it into a family spat, right?"
 
-Sarah laughed and pushed herself to start swinging. "That's what I was getting at, yeah. But tell me more about being Big Motes. You've talked about the family aspect of it, but it sounds like you were thinking about this even before Hammered Silver sent you her letter."
+Sarah pushed herself to start swinging. "That's what I was getting at, yeah. But tell me more about being Big Motes. You've talked about the family aspect of it, but it sounds like you were thinking about this even before Hammered Silver sent you her letter."
 
-Before she realized what she was doing, Motes was already starting to swing along with Sarah. Back to that movement, back to that little twinge of play. *This* was why she appreciated her therapist, all of these little nudges, all of this meeting her on her terms. After all, had she not appeared at first as a girl a few years older than her, as she had so many times before? One of those girls who seems infinitely wise to someone younger?
+Before she realized what she was doing, Motes was already starting to swing along with Sarah. Back to that movement, back to that little twinge of play. *This* was why she appreciated her therapist, all of these little nudges, all of this meeting her on her terms. After all, had she not appeared at first as a girl a few years older than Little Motes, as she had so many times before? One of those girls who seems infinitely wise to someone younger?
 
 Motes smiled faintly out to the world as it swung beneath and around her. "I do not know that there was anything that spurred on all of the discussions or the dream — though I imagine the dream was a result of all of the thinking that I had been doing leading up to it. It was just on my mind. Maybe I have been doubting myself more of late."
 

content/draft/010.md

@@ -44,13 +44,13 @@ Motes giggled. "I mean, I guess so. Big Motes understands it better, but she is
 
 This had long ago become a hint to drop into conversations that to continue would be to break the illusion, to pull back the curtain and expose the play for what it was: merely a performance.
 
-Neither of them, neither of these two consummate performers, wanted that. Alexei could probably pry it out of her, pry out all of the details of all that had happened — and she may yet send him a letter as Big Motes for more context later — pry her out of this space for a little bit if he wanted.
+Neither of them, neither of these two consummate performers, wanted that. Alexei could probably pry it out of her, pry out all of the details of all that had happened, pry her out of this space for a little bit if he wanted — and she may yet send him a letter as Big Motes for more context later.
 
 He did not, so he said nothing and flopped backwards on the rock, resting his head on one arm while draping the other over his face to block out the sun. "Sounds dumb," he said. "I'm just glad you're back and that you're not in trouble or anything."
 
 Panting, Motes scooted so that her back rested against a spire of rock to get as much shade as she could. Black fur and bright sun coexisted too energetically at times. "No, not really in trouble," she said. "I may have made myself feel like I was in trouble, but that is just me being a dummy."
 
-There was a snort of laughter from the boy. "That is definitely a you thing."
+There was a snort of laughter from the boy. "That's *definitely* a you thing."
 
 She mulled over this, tallying up the various anxieties she had felt over the years, the worries she had expressed or let color her actions, all the times she disappeared from youth, from play, from this form. Despite her desire to let Big Motes handle such things, a question began to gnaw at her, a desire for feedback.
 "Yeah, I guess," she mumbled. "You ever get anxious about all this?"
@@ -97,7 +97,7 @@ She laughed. "Some of us. Some of us drifted apart, but some of us stick togethe
 
 "I guess, yeah," he said. "I'm not a dispersionista, though, so I can't really understand. I don't have any up-trees or cross-trees or whatever. It sucks that she's being a bully, though, 'cause she kind of *is* you, isn't she?"
 
-Motes sighed. "I guess, yeah. That is why it hurt and why I had to spend a lot of time thinking about it."
+Motes sighed. "Sort of, yeah. That is why it hurt and why I had to spend a lot of time thinking about it."
 
 He reached out and gave her tail a gentle tug — not something she usually tolerated, but the conversation had been so gentle, it had no scent of meanness to it — and smiled up to her. "Well, *I* think you're better than she is, so clearly she isn't you. Tell her to get stuffed!"