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# Motes — 2362
## Beholden — 2362
Motes thought of play.
Beholden never quite understood 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 *played,* that was for sure. She played with her music, her sound design. She played with people's voices, recording them for later and slicing them up into bits and bites, rebuilding them into some work of eerie or jittery or calming beauty. She played with the sounds around her house, her studio, the whole of the world. She played with acoustics. She played with spaces. She played with echoes and reverberations and dead-zones and cones of silence. She played with soundscapes and world-soundtracks.
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.
She hummed and sang. She played the piano, the drums, the guitar. She played the clarinet badly and the flute worse. She played with A Finger Pointing, their own little jazz trio, their own little big band. She played with her friends, jam session after jam session after jam session. She played her own sets, forking countless times over to play at however many clubs or venues. She played at The Party — several instances thereof! — running now for the last century and a half, a party that never ceased, attendees sleeping wherever, in beds or where they had fallen, with each other, alone. Beholden To The Flow Of The Crowds existed for a reason, yes?
She thought of play and, as she levered herself out of her bed, looked wearily around her room, the toys and art, the stuffed animals and silly prints on clothing, and then she forked into Big Motes.
She played as she danced. She played with others, dragging them home for a one-night stand, a few-nights fling, a relationship that lasted a month or two, but so rarely any longer.
She forked into Big Motes and straightened her hair and blouse, set a well-remembered dandelion flower crown atop her head, and made her way out to the rest of the house.
And she played with Motes, too. She really did! She played with her little Dot, tickling her until she said she was going to be sick, or pretending to pick her up by the ears as the skunklet clutched at her forearms. She played dead for Motes when she grew too exhausted to keep up. She lay there, on the floor, eyes closed, breathing turned off, while her charge scampered around, leaping over her, triumphant, hollering about victories, or wept over her unalive-yet-still-souled body at the tragedy — oh, woe! Such tragedy! — of a fallen comrade. Less mother than cool stepdad, she played with her kid.
There was silence there, and emptiness. There was the place to herself in the warm sunlight of a late morning, some three days after first she fell on the playground. There was the comfort of familiarity set beside a hollow feeling in her chest.
But she did not understand it. She did not really get it. She rarely thought about it, but when she did, it was more baffling than it was natural.
Adjusting to a view of the world a few feet higher than it had been some seconds ago, she made her way to the kitchen and poked around. It did not feel like a day for some sugary cereal, nor the cinnamon-sugar toast that she had always loved. It was a day for coffee and something savory and filling. Perhaps a day for a mimosa.
Beholden was not stupid. She was not an idiot. She could conceptualize things around her, and, as in all the many ways the rest of the clade was, she was wickedly intelligent in her own area of hyperfixation, hyperspecialization. When it came to emotions, though, when it came to instincts and base responses, she could not quite understand. It was not her fixation, her specialization.
*An adult breakfast,* a part of her whispered. *Setting aside childish things...*
She did not really know why she played, because she did not really *care* to know why.
She shook her head to dispel the lingering thought, one based in overflow rather than her current mood.
She did not know why she loved, why she loved A Finger Pointing or Motes. She did not know why she loved so few others. She did not know why she felt such devotion to her boss — "not your boss" the common refrain — and her Dot in a way that she could not muster for anyone else. She never bothered to question why.
And so she pulled out a couple of eggs, a few links of chicken sausage, and a dish of frozen hash browns. On a whim, she also pulled out a few large tortillas and some green chili salsa that she — that much of the clade — remembered fondly from her time back phys-side, back when she lived in the central corridor. She may as well go all out, yes?
She did not know why she rose so quickly to anger. She did not know why she and Motes fought at times. She did not know why she got so mad when she saw Motes die on stage. She did not know why, when she and Slow Hours fought, usually about Motes's various deaths, it hurt so much. She shied away from ever trying to figure out why.
The hash browns were the first to go in the pan, laid out in an even layer so that they could crisp up, while two more pans were dreamed up so that she could cook the sausage and eggs meanwhile.
She just knew that she played, that she loved, she got stuck in her big feelings.
Definitely a morning for a mimosa.
And so when she found Motes huddled in the middle of her studio, all but curled into a ball as she crouched on the floor, when she found her bloodied, beat up, Beholden panicked. She kept it together long enough to help the little skunk to her room, to fork, to bed. She held herself in one piece as she told Motes time and again that she loved her. She held the panic at bay until she made her way to her studio, locked the completely soundproof door, and crumpled to the ground, screaming and wailing and sobbing. She tore holes in the couch cushions with her claws. She ripped acoustic foam from the walls. She threw the table hard enough to shatter it.
The eggs were fried over easy and the sausage cooked to just this side of burnt so that they offered a pleasant mix of textures, crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside with an indulgent oiliness throughout. These were layered on top of a pile of even crispier hash browns — the kind that shatter beneath a fork when you try to stab them — before the eggs were laid on top and the yolks punctured so that they oozed out over the mess to add a sauce of their own.
And then, when sobs settled into simple tears and not great, heaving things, she waved her paw to unwind the tantrum. She brought into being a glass of water to set on the once more intact table, sat down on the un-torn couch, and moaned through her tears, letting the replaced acoustic foam absorb the sounds.
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.
When she was next able to speak, she began a sensorium message to A Finger Pointing. *"Dot is overflowing, love. She–"*
What was missing...ah! Coffee.
*"I know,"* her partner interrupted. *"I am here."*
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.
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.
She downed half of her mimosa in one go before setting that aside and focusing on her first burrito, each bite topped with a generous spoonful of the salsa until she was left nearly in tears. The rest of the mimosa and a few sips of her coffee, and then the second burrito, similarly doctored.
"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?"
It was some time later — she did not know how long nor care to check, though her coffee mug was empty — before Beholden and A Finger Pointing returned, talking quietly about lunch. On seeing her awake and cognizant, the empty dishes on the table, they both smiled and changed course to settle down on either side of her.
Despite the stinging of new tears in her eyes, she nodded. "Not particularly, but I am here. How did you know that Motes was overflowing?"
"Glad to see you up and about, Dot," Beholden said, briefly touching her nosetip to Motes's cheek in an affectionate skunk-kiss. "We got the ping that you were, thus lunch here rather than out, but it is nice to see you all the same."
A Finger Pointing hesitated, frowned, and pulled a letter from her pocket, handing it over to the skunk. "This. I did not *know* that Dot was overflowing until I got here and saw her door shut tight. I was not at all surprised when you told me."
Bookending her with a similar — though far more human ­— kiss to herother cheek, A Finger Pointing said, "It really is. Are you feeling better, my dear? Please say yes."
As Beholden read through the letter, her lips curled up into a snarl, and she could feel a low growl build in her chest. "'I expect better'!" she muttered darkly, stamping her foot. "Jesus *fucking* Christ. 'Grounded in reality' indeed."
Motes laughed and waited until each was finished before returning the cheek kisses to her cocladists. "I am, mostly. I still have a lot on my mind, but I am no longer buried beneath it." She nodded towards the plates, adding, "I already ate before you got here. I am not sorry."
Smiling humorlessly, A Finger Pointing nodded toward the letter. "I am assuming that this mention of a letter is what took Motes down."
"Nor should you be!" A Finger Pointing scoffed. "I would be disappointed if you had not."
"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."
She laughed. "Of course you would be. You really set up the sim to ping you when I woke?"
A Finger Pointing blanched, stiffened for a long few seconds, then nodded. "Did you get her cleaned up?"
"Just a few things — your door opening, something being done in the kitchen or at the bar, that sort of thing — so that we would know while we were out."
"Yeah, I brought her to enough to get her to fork into her PJs, but she is out hard right now in bed."
"She was worried," Beholden stage-whispered. "You should have seen her brighten when she got the notification you were in the kitchen."
"Thank you, my muse. I had assumed the last bit, at least, and have left her be. I did not wish to add to her stress at the moment."
"Beholden was *so* worried," A Finger Pointing said, voice bearing all the drama of some overwrought Shakespearean performer. She spoke loudly, pretending as though she had not heard Beholden, that the skunk was not even there. "I do not know if you noticed while you were down and out, my dear, but I swear, that skunk checked on you at *least* once an hour."
Beholden nodded. "What do we do?"
"She about started crying," Beholden continued, smirk on her muzzle.
"Protect our own," came the immediate answer. "Protect ourselves. Protect our Dot."
""Beholden, you *know* that she will pull through," I kept saying. "She *always* does." You are stronger than your silly cocladist, Dot, are you not?"
And so they did. They circled around each other, 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.
"She was so rude, cutting off a conversation with Sasha mid-sentence and rushing us back here, putting on her most nonchalant act."
All the while, Beholden did her best to remain calm, or to at least tamp 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.
Motes laughed as they both scoffed at each other, looping her arms through each of theirs and slouching down, settling into the comfort of touch and family. "You are both nerds," she murmured. "Thank you for keeping an eye on me."
She went always alone on her walks, pacing out along the deer trails or walking the loop of the neighborhood time and again or poking her way among the seats and catwalks of the auditorium.
"Of course, my dear," they said in unison. A Finger Pointing continued, "Motes, did you leave any champagne for the rest of us? I would not say no to a Bellini."
Or tried to go alone, as always there was someone willing to go with her, asking gently if she needed company, even if that company was silent, or if she needed instead to talk. Slow Hours volunteered. Unbidden volunteered. A Finger Pointing, having spent so many years, so many decades with her, did not volunteer, but did look after her with a mix of worry and understanding in her face.
"Another mimosa for me, Beholden," Motes added.
The only time she accepted the company was when Dry Grass, fresh out of her meeting with Sasha, did not so much volunteer as, wiping freshly-shed tears from her face, ask Beholden if they could go for a walk together so that she could talk. That Beholden had already slipped on her hoodie, had already drank a glass of water, was already heading towards the door suggested that this was a form of volunteering, but Dry Grass certainly deserved as much as anyone the chance to talk through the position she had found herself in, so Beholden reluctantly said yes.
Laughing, the skunk gave her one more of those nose-dot kisses before disentangling herself to see to drinks.
The two walked in silence, both looking down more at the sidewalk as it passed beneath their feet than around them, both processing in their own way.
"How are you really, Motes?" A Finger Pointing asked, voice lowered less, it seemed, to keep her words from Beholden than to soften the mood. "We need not talk in detail now, but I do wish to know."
"Hey, uh," Beholden said at last once they had made it halfway through the neighborhood, halfway around the usual loop. "Are you okay? I mean, things are awful, but are you feeling okay?"
"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."
Dry Grass started at the sudden intrusion of words, smiling sheepishly over to the skunk. "I mean, no. Yes, in a way, but also no."
Her cocladist nodded. "I imagine so. Are you up to speaking about what happened?"
Beholden smiled wryly. "Do you think you could unpack that for me?"
She nodded. "A little bit. I will let you know if I need to bow out."
She laughed. "Right, sorry. I am a bit all over the place at the moment." She took a deep breath before continuing. "No, I am not okay. I do not even like Hammered Silver, nor do I– *did* I speak with many of the others in my stanza with any frequency, but Hammered Silver stabbed me all the same. It hurts to have someone hate me so much, never mind someone who is also in many ways me."
"Of course." A Finger Pointing took a deep breath, composing herself. "Hammered Silver sent me a letter. She mentioned in it that she had sent you one as well."
"And the 'yes' part?"
Motes wilted.
The answer was a long time coming. "I feel vindicated," Dry Grass said at last. "I feel validated that my estimate of Hammered Silver was correct. She is worse than I thought, maybe, but at least I was not wrong, yes?"
"Yes, I imagine that is much of why you were left overflowing." When Motes nodded, she continued, "I am sorry, my dear. Is that also why you are Big Motes now?"
Beholden snorted. "Wrong in the correct direction."
The answer was a long time coming, the silence filled with the gentle tink of glasses as Beholden mixed their late lunch cocktails, carrying them carefully back to the couch and handing them out so that she could rejoin.
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."
"Yeah," Motes said at last. "At least, I think so. It was something that I did almost on a whim. I knew I wanted to be Big Motes, or at least that I was not ready to be Little Motes yet. Been thinking about that all morning."
"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."
Beholden tasted her drink, nodded appreciatively, then asked, "Have you come to any conclusions?"
Dry Grass gently nudged her across the street, aiming for the playground and saying as she did so, "I think that is something that every parent worries about."
"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 hat 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 do not know that I am–"
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, adding a wheel of bright pink to the yellow of the dandelions before draping her arm around her cocladist's 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."
"No, no, I get it," she said, taking a seat on one of the swings. "I know that it is complicated. It is easier for some of us, but even my stanza, even the ones who leaned hard into feelings of motherhood still struggle with what it means to call someone like Motes *their* child. Not just a child, but theirs. You do feel some of that sense of parenthood, though, do you not?"
Motes shook her head gently so as not to dislodge crown or umbrella.
"Oh, definitely," Beholden answered without hesitation, claiming a swing beside Dry Grass's. "She is my Dot, I am her Bee. It took me a long time to get to this point, though, and even still, it feels weird at times."
"Good. You are allowed to be Big Motes for a bit while you process this. You are allowed to hold back on all sorts of interactions. I have noticed a lack of 'ma' or 'Bee'– no, no. No need to explain, just an observation. These are things that we will miss and then rejoice when they return."
"I am curious how, if you are open to sharing."
She slouched against A Finger Pointing and hugged around her middle, careful not to spill her drink. "Thank you, my dear. I really do appreciate it. I will get there, too, for all of that. Just...not yet. Not quite yet."
She shrugged. "Sure, though I also want to know why you are curious about this in particular."
Beholden smiled, reached out to brush some of her curls away from her face, added, "Yeah. And if you need us to lay off calling you 'Dot', I am sure–"
Dry Grass smiled, shrugged as well. "Something to talk about that is not my down-tree being a terrible fucking person."
"Absolutely not," Motes said, laughing. "I would not have you change your ways just because I am feeling icky for a bit."
Beholden smirked. "Okay, yeah, that is fair." She scuffed a paw against the gravel, thinking. "It was mostly just hard for me to wrap my head around, I guess. I have some of those same desires in me as your whole stanza does, but they were always minimized and pushed to the side. Even boss has way more than I do, right? Like, it is her job to take care of things. She is not really the boss of Au Lieu Du Rêve, she is its mom."
"It is an offer, Motes," the skunk chided gently. "Not some weird obligation for us."
Holding onto the chains of the swing and nudging herself back a meter or so with her feet, Dry Grass nodded. "I can see that, yes. It is like how I headed into systech stuff because I cared for the System." She smiled faintly. "I was Lagrange's mom."
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."
The skunk nodded. "Yeah, like that. I just have way less of that in me than either you or A Finger Pointing. You are both way better at this than I am. Dot means a lot to me. A whole lot. That we have to have a systech on staff to kick her into forking whenever she dies on stage just kills me. It breaks my heart whenever I see that."
"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."
Dry Grass winced. "Me too. I will not show up to a performance if I know that will happen."
"Oh?"
"Really? Shit. I am sorry. At least I am not alone in that," Beholden mumbled, nudging herself to start swinging as well. "It is moments like those when I feel most like she is my kid, though. I feel that family dynamic most when she is at risk, you know? When Slow Hours and I argue about that sort of thing, that is when I feel most protective of her, like my sister is doing something bad to her."
She nodded. "Are you alright to talk about it? I do not know that even Beholden knows the full extent of what happened."
"Was it always like that?" <!-- more? -->
The skunk shook her head.
She hesitated, simply letting the swing carry her for a few moments. "I do not know. I was really caught off guard when she started calling A Finger Pointing 'Ma'. I mean, so was A Finger Pointing, but that had a lot of implications for me, too, did it not? I was suddenly her mom's wife, right? Or at least partner."
Despite the already warm feeling in her belly from the first mimosa, Motes quickly finished her second in a few gulps. "Then sure," she said, laughing at the burp that followed. "Hit me."
Dry Grass nodded.
Beholden punched her gently on the shoulder before taking her empty glass and setting it on the table in front of them.
"So it took me a lot of getting used to. Even boss was a little caught off guard by that." She hesitated, looked down to the gravel as she kicked a foot through it. "I am a little ashamed to say that I backed off from her for a while when she did that. 'Bee' is a compromise that felt on the edge of comfort at the time, though now it feels really good when she calls me that. She was so patient with me." Drawing her attention back to Dry Grass, she smiled, adding, "She calls you 'Ma 2.0', did you know that?"
The full story of what had happened over the last few days between A Finger Pointing and Hammered Silver was laid bare over the next hour. Not just that, but much of their story going back into the past as well. Both Beholden and Motes were left with more than a few questions. Over the last few years, their down-tree instance had opened up more and more about how much she had shielded the stanza from the political machinations of the rest of the clade around them, all of the ways in which she had strived to protect them, and yet more of this became clear as she spoke about all of the fuss that Hammered Silver had made over the years.
Dry Grass blinked, then burst out in laughter, laughing until once more the tears flowed down her cheeks, holding herself still on her swing with feet planted firmly on the ground.
When she finished and all questions had been answered or deferred, they fell into silence for a long few minutes, the three of them just digesting the last few days each in their own way.
Beholden waited in silence. She knew well the mechanics of a hysterical laugh-cry — she had at one point recorded A Finger Pointing falling into such and chopped it into little slivers of half-recognizable samples and haunted an entire album with it, so beautiful had she found it — and while her and Dry Grass's relationship did not include a whole lot of hugging, she still nudged herself to the side far enough to rub at her cocladist's shoulder until the tears once more slowed and she was once more able to breathe but for a few few aftershocks of chuckling.
Finally, Motes huffed and flopped back against the couch. "What a fucking bitch."
"Sorry, Beholden," Dry Grass said, once she was able. "I am a little fucked up still, I think."
"Dot, language," Beholden scolded, laughing.
She laughed. "I mean, this is a pretty fucked situation, my dear. I would be surprised if you were not."
"Fuck fuck fuck," she said, grinning wildly. "Bitch bitch bitch! You can yell at Little Motes."
They both settled into swinging in silence once more, just a gentle rocking back and forth to calm down and enjoy time away from so much stress before it would doubtless ramp up once more when Waking World was set to visit after lunch.
"No, she is right, my muse," A Finger Pointing said. "Fucking bitch."
"Hey, Beholden?"
"Well, okay, no disputes there," Beholden said, waving away the three glasses. "What is on your plate next, Motes?"
"Mm?"
She shrugged. "Well, I pinged Miss Genet, so we are going to meet later."
"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."
"Therapy!" A Finger Pointing exclaimed, waving a hand at nothing in particular. "What a lovely idea."
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. It let us carry her around like a briefcase."
"After all that?" Beholden said, smirking. "I am surprised that you have not already scheduled something."
Dry Grass laughed. "Oh god, I cannot imagine."
"I am so dreadfully busy, Beholden. You know that."
Grinning, the skunk continued, "That was fun enough, but what we would use it for was, on summer days, we would lift her up, give her a good heave-ho and toss her into the pool. She would laugh so hard that she would have a hard time swimming and kept swallowing too much pool water. When it was winter, we would have it snow a bunch in one spot–" She pointed over toward a spot by the slide. "–and toss her into it, or let her go down the slide directly into the snow bank."
"You spent yesterday afternoon lounging in the auditorium trying every kind of kettle corn you could find on the exchange."
"I am absolutely going to do that if you all are comfortable."
She sat up straight, staring at her partner like she was some alien creature, something too dense to understand the importance of kettle corn. "Yes. Busy."
Beholden laughed. "To her? Or as yourself?"
As A Finger Pointing and Beholden finally got around to whipping up lunch for themselves, the conversation once more fell into comfortable chatter, the sort of banter that so often filed the house, and while, by the time her appointment arrived, Motes had not yet felt comfortable enough to refer to them as 'ma' and 'Bee', that welcoming sense of family had returned in force, and she felt once more in her comforting role as their Dot, their *dóttir*.
"Oh, to her!" she said, smirking. "Though who knows, maybe I would give the slide version a go, myself."
As the afternoon threatened to slide right into evening, Motes took her leave and left A Finger Pointing and Beholden on the couch, canoodling. Clearly that had taken precedence over whatever they had had planned at the auditorium for the rest of the day. That they had come home for her, for Motes, was the base of that warmth that had grown within her.
The conversation of good things continued — Motes designing the playground, 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 skunks 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.
She made her way out of the house and wandered to the center of the neighborhood. She left the automatic chalk lines going, letting them be the fuel that propelled her forward, let their flowering shapes fit into this perception of herself as a flower child rather than simply a child, a careful reframing that allowed her to have this thing, this gentle goodness.
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.
The neighborhood formed a lazy semicircle, a 'U' that butted up against an avenue that petered out into the nature of the sim in either direction. Across the street — inaccessible to anyone who was unwelcome — sat the back entrance of the theatre Au Lieu Du Rêve most commonly performed at. Just homes and a beloved workplace dropped together into an endless landscape like sugar into so much tea.
Lunch, despite being a sauce served over rice, was all the same dry and ashen in Beholden's mouth as she struggled with so many swirling feelings, so many spiraling thoughts around what had happened.
In the bowl of the 'U' sat all of the common areas. A pool — one with seats and jets, one that could be a hot tub seating a hundred as easily as it could be an Olympic pool — a few tennis courts for the few — who? — who actually enjoyed the game, a liberal dotting of grills — everyone had a favorite — for cook outs, a "community center" which had long ago turned into a movie-theater-*cum*-cuddlepit...
Still, she managed to clean her plate, managed to straighten herself up for the meeting with Waking World, managed to only yell at him a little bit. She managed as best she could as they did their best to learn what paths forward they had.
And there, right at the very lowest point of the bowl of the 'U' sat a playground. What was initially intended to be Motes's haunt, hers and her friends, had long ago turned into a place for late-night musings. Thousands and thousands of times over the years, couples or small groups or lone individuals would converge on the swings or the slide and sit in the dark, staring up on the star-speckled sky, the Milky Way glowing bright enough to light one's face beyond even the Moon, even the gold-and-black of the rest of the neighborhood with its sodium vapor lamps and countless darknesses. It was a place for play, yes, and it was often used for such, but it was also a place for couples to work out their problems or groups to chat about everything and nothing or for one to sit alone, drunk, beneath the stars, looking up and feeling good or bad or simply introspective.
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.
It was not dark now.
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. This was the price she paid for being Au Lieu Du Rêve's very own AwDae. 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.
There, on the swings, sat a child, a girl, looking to be perhaps twelve or thirteen with brown hair cut into an unruly bob, pale skin shining in the sun, swaying lazily back and forth as she faced away from Motes. She looked mostly down, skidding the heels of her shoes through the gravel beneath the swings, scooping the pebbles out of the way and then smoothing them back into place with her toes.
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 partner 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.
Motes moved quietly through the grass — quietly enough that the girl did not notice her — and sat down on the free swing within that segment.
She knew well by now the ways in which A Finger Pointing had changed over the years, about how the crash had affected her.
"Hi, Sarah," she said.
She knew well because she had seen the exhaustion or fear or slackness in her partner's expression when the dissociation would crawl over her, had heard how she would turn down her sensorium almost all the way just to survive.
"Motes! Hi!" the girl said, then hesitated. "You're Big Motes today. Do you want me to Big Sarah?"
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 of her hitting the stage and the note of dreamy confusion in her voice when she realized how badly her body was broken, the tired frustration as she forked herself whole.
Motes held onto the chains of the swing and gave herself a push with her feet, testing the way she glided through the air for a few feet back, then a few feet forward.
So she set her mind to caring for her partner. It was as she had always done. It was as she must do.
"Motes?"
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.
"Yeah, actually, I think I would like Big Sarah today."
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, 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. She used tweezers or tongs or perhaps chopsticks to lift them free, nudge them to lay flat that she might read deeper into them.
Nodding, Sarah Genet stepped off the swing and summarily disappeared, leaving behind a fork still sitting down. This new instance was far older, looking to be sixty or so years old with silvery-gray hair in a similar bob, her skin just as pale and yet fraught with wrinkles, her smile kind and gaze always attentive.
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 carefully replaced all of those emotions, still unprocessed, into their container and once more sealed it tight.
"Is this better?" she asked.
She could not do it, could not push her way into engaging with these feelings, these emotions. Not yet. Not tonight.
Motes smiled, nodded and gave herself another gentle kick, keeping the same back-and-forth going, the same few feet of earth wafting beneath her feet. "Thanks."
"Of course, Motes. Would you like me to prompt or wait?"
She caught herself in the act of shrugging again, then shook her head to clear it. "Thanks for asking," she said. After a long moment's thought, she sighed. "I think I would like for you to prompt me today. I do not yet know where to start."
"That's fine," Sarah said gently. "You said in your message that you've just come up from overflowing. Can you tell me about that?"
"Mmhm. Just a few hours ago, actually. Beholden and Pointillist are still back at home after coming to check on me." She smiled down to the ground as it swung beneath her. "They set up alerts around the house so they would know when I was up."
"That's sweet of them."
"It is. I...uh," she trailed off. "The overflow started when I got a letter from within the clade. It really fucked me up. Like, *really* bad."
"And that's why you're Big Motes? Why you didn't say 'ma'?"
She smirked. "You read me like the Sunday comics," she said, laughing. "Yes."
Sarah smiled in turn, far more gently. "Tell me about this letter, then. Tell me what'd be enough for you to get knocked out of commission."
And so she did. She summarized portions of it, then pulled it up to read the most impactful bits. She talked about the feelings of the month leading up to this, the conversations and the dream. She talked about how she had stopped playing, how it hurt to think of reengaging, how she knew she would but there was work to be done first.
And then, on Sarah's gentle urging, she worked her way backwards. She worked her way back through the months and years before, the feelings that lingered, the various comings-to-terms that she had had over the years. She talked through and made her own connections, letting Sarah suggest when her voice stumbled to a halt.
"Motes," Sarah said gently. "Tell me why Hammered Silver's opinion matters to you."
Motes snorted. "It should not."
"But it does, doesn't it? A Finger Pointing has addressed it and you're all but guaranteed to not have to deal with this again unless Hammered Silver's gone off the deep end, which it doesn't sound like she has."
She nodded slowly, mulling the question over in her head, brow furrowed.
"Let me split it into two, maybe. First, what about it hurt? Why are you still hurting? And second, who is Hammered Silver to you?"
Motes put her feet down, letting the drag of shoe against gravel slow her to a stop. "Who is she to me? You mean, other than a weirdly invasive aunt who thinks she knows better?" The bitterness in her voice rose, and she was helpless to stop it. "Some old bat who is more concerned about the image of the clade that any — literally *any* — of us living earnestly?"
Sarah raised a brow. "That is absolutely an answer, yes. You still see her as part of the clade?" she asked. "You still see her as an aunt?"
Stymied, she ground her heels down against the gravel beneath the swing.
"I think it's worth digging into, but if you need–"
"No, that is a good point." Motes groaned. That hollow feeling within her chest once more grew, and she squinted her eyes shut. "I guess I do, yeah."
"To which? A part of the clade or aunt?"
"Both."
"Why do you feel she's still a part of the clade to you? That feels like it might be the easier one to answer."
Motes nodded. "Yeah. I guess it just feels like that is something that only the cladist can decide, right? I cannot just say that she is *not* an Odist."
"Hasn't she done that to you and yours, though?"
She furrowed her brow, using her shoe to flatten out the gravel beneath her as she thought. "I do not know that she has, though. She still calls me And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights — she was such a bitch about names, actually, 'the one who has named herself Sasha' *every* time — and even if she did not need to, she did write 'of the Ode clade' after my name."
"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."
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?"
"That is, like...my whole bit, is it not? I am play-acting the kid. I am method-acting, and Pointillist and Beholden and Slow Hours and everyone is in on it."
"Even Hammered Silver? Even those who *aren't* in on it?"
Motes frowned.
"It's okay if you act as though they are," Sarah said. "Or if they become a part of your internal conception of the play. They don't need to be actively in on it if it's an internal representation of your world."
"Right," she mumbled, looking out into the neighborhood and swaying gently from side to side in her swing. "I guess it makes more sense when you talk about family members cutting each other off. If that is a thing that families do with any frequency, then there is no reason for me to not incorporate that."
"'No reason'?" Sarah asked, picking up on the rhythm of Motes's swaying.
"Well, obviously I hate it!" she said, laughing. "But if I am going to get shit on like this, then I guess all I can do–"
"'All'?"
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 in earnest. "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?
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."
"Doubting how? The last time we talked, you didn't sound like you were doubting yourself. You talked about how everyone had a different nickname for you."
She laughed, feeling earnest joy at the memory. "Dot! Speck! Mote! Kiddo and skunklet and little one," she called out to sky and grass. "Yes, you are right. But I also talked about how I had fallen again into that feeling that maybe my name had played a role in who I had become. Motes, yes? Small, little things that drift across your vision. Microscopic things. I talked about whether the name came first, or the nature, yes?"
"Mmhm. You used Beholden as a counter example."
"I said she should have been in charge of lights," Motes said, still grinning. "'Beholden to the heat of the lamps'? That has nothing to do with music or sound."
Still smiling, herself, Sarah countered, "And then I pointed out Loss For Images and That It Might Give. 'That it might give the world orders' being primarily a director is pretty on the nose."
"Yeah," she said, sighing as the grin started to fade. "Yeah. There is a mix of both. It does not matter whether or not the name or the nature came first, not in this case. What matters is that it got stuck in my craw, right? I got stuck thinking about it, and then Hammered Silver sent me her stupid letter and it all came to a head."
"Some things are just coincidences."
Motes nodded.
"Hammered Silver sent you the letter because she learned about Dry Grass visiting the fifth stanza. That's not something you had any say over — at least not beyond liking when she visits — and certainly not anything to do with how you were feeling, right?"
She remained silent. She remained silent for a long time, and when the arc of her swing started to slow, she began pumping her legs, working vigorously to get herself swinging as high as she could, swinging to the point where she looked now straight down to the center of the Earth, and now directly up to the heavens.
"Motes?" Sarah's voice came from a distance, from all the way down there with her feet planted on the ground, from where she was anchored.
"Maybe it did," she hollered. She imagined the way her voice must have Dopplered past her therapist with each arc of the swing and started to giggle. "Maybe me talking about this with Dry Grass did lead to the letter. Maybe it is my fault."
"You mean you think she went and told Hammered Silver to let her visit you after you talked about your worries?" Sarah called out to her.
"Yeah!"
"What does that change?"
"Nothing!" Motes said, laughing joyously. "It changes nothing. In fact, I hope that *is* the case! At that point, Hammered Silver really *is* just a bitch."
Sarah laughed, and Motes felt the sound in the air as she breezed past.
*I respect her as a person, but I do not like her,* Dry Grass had said. *And I certainly do not respect her authority.*
*Do not worry, my dear,* Dry Grass had said. *You are stuck with me for a good while yet.*
*I would rather tell Hammered Silver to go fuck herself,* Dry Grass had said in the end.
Perhaps Dry Grass had excused herself from the sixth stanza. Perhaps she had taken an opportunity to make her opinions known. Perhaps she had spoken up, talked back, shot down a little bit of Hammered Silver's authority by standing up for Motes.
Perhaps she ought to hug Dry Grass extra-tight next time she saw her.
Perhaps some day she might.