Add edits, epigraph

content/draft/002.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 Motes played.
 
-Tonight, she played hard. It was a Big Motes night. It was a human night. It was a night for hovering somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. It was a night for standing as tall as Beholden, as tall as so many of the other Odists, yet far more lithe. Tonight, she dressed up in her finest crepe-cotton blouse and gauzy skirt, and she braided for herself a fresh crown of flowers — marigolds, this time — grown by A Finger Curled and Beholden To The Music Of The Spheres.
+Tonight, she played hard. It was a Big Motes night. It was a human night. It was a night for hovering somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. It was a night for standing as tall as Beholden, as tall as so many of the other Odists, yet far more lithe. Tonight, she dressed up in her finest crepe-cotton blouse and gauzy skirt, and she braided for herself a fresh crown of flowers — marigolds, this time — grown by A Finger Curled and Beholden To The Music Of The Spheres, A Finger Pointing and Beholden's long-lived up-tree instances.
 
 Tonight, Motes played in hedonism. A night at a restaurant out on the town, where she stuffed herself with two Chicago-style hot dogs. "Drag them through the garden!" She laughed — and she was always laughing. "Everything but the ketchup!" A night when she ate all of her fries, and even mopped up the last of the fry sauce with a fingertip.
 
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ And then it was a night for sitting on his balcony and talking while the waves o
 
 They sat and talked, legs dangling through the bars of the balcony's railing over an impossibly high drop, her ears filled with the chatter of an impossible myriad of monkeys some balconies earlier, startled from their slumber by their arrival, her eyes filled with the black and gold of an impossible city built into a cylinder. He pointed to a building in the distance down the length of the cylinder, told her how that one was filled all with gardens, all flowers like those in her hair, now crushed lopsidedly from her forgetting to remove the crown when they'd fucked. He pointed up to the gentle golden glow in the sky, told her that the sun here was in a long, thin line, that it turned on from one end to the other so that one could see dawn coming from down the tube, could hear birdsong come on like a wave, and then turned off in the same direction in a linear sunset. He pointed from one end of the cylinder to another, the bounding walls marked by arcane symbols in neon, and explained that nearly half a billion people called this home, then laughed as she asked, "How many do you think are fucking right now?"
 
-They added one to that number before they slept.
+They added one more to that number before they slept.
 
 And in the morning, she woke pressed against him, limbs all wrapped together and the satiny subdermal waves of sensation still lingering. She dismissed it easily and slowly disentangled herself from the still sleeping otter-or-fisher-or-mink and started to pull stuff from the exchange for breakfast. Cold, cured meats and fish. Cold cheeses. Cold vegetables, fresh and pickled. Dense, nutty bread. Small pastries.
 
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ Empty auditorium.
 
 Empty stage, but for one skunk, kneeling in the center with a clipboard and script laid out before her in a neat arc, a bank of three different colored highlighters resting in her lap.
 
-Where so many of the clade had the stark contrast of black and white fur, hers was the warm brown of cinnamon with the pale cream of white chocolate. Where so many of the other skunks had black noses, black fur fading all but seamlessly before them, hers was far more pink, more easily seen twitching this way or that at some scent or another. Where so many of her family had long, poetic names, hers remained simple, a remnant of some more complicated past.
+Where so many of the skunks of the clade had the stark contrast of black and white fur, hers was the warm brown of cinnamon with the pale cream of white chocolate. Where so many of the other skunks had black noses, black fur fading all but seamlessly before them, hers was far more pink, more easily seen twitching this way or that at some scent or another. Where so many of her family had long, poetic names, hers remained simple, a remnant of some more complicated past.
 
 Motes traipsed down the long, shallow steps of the auditorium aisles, all but skipping in that long-running afterglow. "Sasha!"
 
@@ -80,7 +80,7 @@ She looked up once more, rolled her eyes. "Can you really picture May being into
 
 An eloquent shrug was the reply.
 
-"Well, *huh!*" she said, grinning still. She could feel the limerence for the form starting to fade, could feel the humanity begin to itch, so she waved her hand. "But we can talk about that later! I need to re-skunk. I want to keep this shirt, though."
+"Well, *huh!*" she said, grinning still. She could feel the limerence for her form starting to fade, could feel the humanity begin to itch, so she waved her hand. "But we can talk about that later! I need to re-skunk. I want to keep this shirt, though."
 
 "Alright, dear. I shall look away."
 
@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ Sasha smiled, tipped her clipboard forward to let the skunk see the stage diagra
 
 She laughed. "Well, perhaps that as well. Scheming about dinner. Scheming about coming home to Aurel. Scheming and dreaming."
 
-Motes nodded, carefully turning around one of the piles to read a few lines from the script before setting it back in place. She kicked her legs lazily in the air above her, feeling her tail brush against them. It was all part of the ritual of settling back into being a skunk — this engagement with fur, these childlike acts — in leaning intentionally back into her presented age — somewhere around twelve, today.
+Motes nodded, carefully turning one of the piles around to read a few lines from the script before setting it back in place. She kicked her legs lazily in the air above her, feeling her tail brush against them. It was all part of the ritual of settling back into being a skunk — this engagement with fur, these childlike acts — in leaning intentionally back into her presented age — somewhere around twelve, today.
 
 She was startled back to awareness by Sasha's voice. "What are you thinking about, little skunk?"
 
@@ -118,7 +118,7 @@ After nearly a minute of silence, Sasha said, "Years back, centuries ago, Jonas
 
 "But *she* is!" Motes protested. "She is in a relationship with Waking World!"
 
-Sasha snorted. "Do not let her hear you say that. She would say that she is not, that it is a partnership, it is two actors playing their parts: she, the mother; him, the father. Dad jokes and all. They are roles in a long-running production." She winked conspiratorially, adding, "Though I am not sure that Waking World would agree with her. I think he very much thinks of himself as her husband, of the both of them as very much in love with each other."
+Sasha snorted. "Do not let her hear you say that. She would say that she is not, that it is a partnership, it is two actors playing their parts: she, the mother; him, the father — dad jokes and all. They are roles in a long-running production." She winked conspiratorially, adding, "Though I am not sure that Waking World would agree with her. I think he very much thinks of himself as her husband, of the both of them as very much in love with each other."
 
 Motes furrowed her brow in concentration. "She does not make any sense," she said. "She hates ma and Bee for dating and hates me for being their daughter and all the others my siblings or whatever, and then she marries Waking World?"
 
@@ -132,7 +132,7 @@ She scoffed. "Probably the second!"
 
 Sasha laughed and turned the ruffling into a noogie. "This is not a competition, Motes," she chided. "But if it were, then yes, you would win. She has cut off even A Finger Pointing."
 
-Laughing and pulling herself away from the knuckles grinding against her scalp, the skunk sat up. "I thought they were on better terms, though. Ma met with her once a month, even."
+Giggling helplessly and pulling herself away from the knuckles grinding against her scalp, the skunk sat up. "I thought they were on better terms, though. Ma met with her once a month, even."
 
 "When she found out that I had joined Au Lieu Du Rêve, Hammered silver cut all contact with the fifth, yes?"
 
@@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ Laughing and pulling herself away from the knuckles grinding against her scalp,
 
 The smaller skunk giggled helplessly, slouching down until she was able to use Sasha's thigh as a pillow. "Okay, but why does she hate ma, though? She is, like...the nicest person in the whole world."
 
-"She really is, at least to us, but she is also uncompromising to her very core. She stood up for herself and Beholden, she stood up for you as you are, she stood up for your dynamic as a family–" Sasha took a deep breath through gritted teeth. "And she stood up for me, for which I am endlessly appreciative, and endlessly frustrated that she should have cause to."
+"She really is, at least to us, but she is also uncompromising to her very core. She stood up for herself and Beholden as a couple, she stood up for you as you are, she stood up for your dynamic as a family–" Sasha took a deep breath through gritted teeth. "And she stood up for me, for which I am endlessly appreciative, and endlessly frustrated that she should have cause to."
 
 "So Hammered Silver is upset that ma has principles," Motes said flatly. "Okay. Got it. Good good, good good good good. Wonderful."
 
@@ -160,7 +160,7 @@ She nodded, pressing her face all the firmer against the stage manager.
 
 "A Finger Pointing loves you, Motes, deeply and truly. Do not ever forget that. Hammered Silver can absolutely go kick rocks and go suck an egg and go eat coke and any number of other antiquated idioms. Your ma believed that even then, and when Hammered Silver requested that she not speak of you, in that moment, they ceased being friends and became instead polite adversaries."
 
-"No, I believe that," Motes said, voice muffled against Sasha's own blouse. "I do not blame her. Hammered Silver put her in a stupid position, so she did what she had to because she has principles."
+"No, I believe that," Motes said, voice muffled against Sasha's blouse. "I do not blame her. Hammered Silver put her in a stupid position, so she did what she had to because she has principles."
 
 "Right, and those principles go beyond just the three of you. She was thinking of Dry Grass, too, yes? And of Waking World and of Fogs The View and of Time Makes Prey, and of all of the other, nicer folks she has spoken to in the sixth stanza on the sly. Many have continued to shun me, which is fine, so be it, they value their relationship with Hammered Silver more than Dry Grass does, but at least they are still talking with A Finger Pointing."
 
@@ -168,7 +168,7 @@ She nodded, pressing her face all the firmer against the stage manager.
 
 "That she is." Sasha smiled, nudging Motes on the shoulder. "Now, come. Let us get you home, yes? Get you some food and let you crow about your exploits to anyone who will listen, yes? Show off your blouse, yes?"
 
-She sighed dramatically and pushed herself up to her feet. "Okaaay. I had breakfast a bit ago, but I want pizza or a burger or something greasy. They just feel so good to eat!"
+She sighed dramatically and pushed herself up to her feet. "Okaaay. I had breakfast a bit ago, but I want pizza or a burger or something greasy."
 
 Sasha laughed, forking another instance to take Motes by the paw, letting her down-tree continue working. "I am sorry that this topic has been nipping at your heels these last few days, little skunk. I have probably shared more than A Finger Pointing may have wished, but she and I will talk, and you will get your pizza or burger or pizza-burger and talk about things at your own pace, dear."