Update draft

content/_index.md

@@ -4,6 +4,6 @@
 > 
 > She played with fire.
 > 
-> Motes played, because how could she do otherwise?
+> Motes played, because how could she not?
 
 ***Coming soon!***

content/draft/001.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 Motes played.
 
-She played in color. She played in paint. She painted the backdrops for the productions. She painted the props that sat on the stage or rested in the actors' hands. She painted the stage itself, the matte black of so many past productions long abandoned. She painted her nails, her claws, herself. She got it on her fur. She got it on her clothes. She got polka-dots on her nose and stripes over her ears. She painted her dreams, those serene and idyllic landscapes interrupted by hyperblack squares, unexpected and unexplained holes in the world that depicted a nothing-ness, a missing-ness, a not-there-ness that slid easily between the border of absurd and unnerving. She painted the holes in the world that she dreamed about, afraid to touch and yet which would not stop touching her mind in turn.
+She played in color. She played in paint. She painted the backdrops for the productions. She painted the props that sat on the stage or rested in the actors' hands. She painted the stage itself, the matte black of so many past productions long abandoned. She painted her nails, her claws, herself. She got it on her fur. She got it on her clothes. She got stripes over her ears and polka-dots on her nose. She painted her dreams, those serene and idyllic landscapes interrupted by hyperblack squares, unexpected and unexplained holes in the world that depicted a nothing-ness, a missing-ness, a not-there-ness that slid easily between the border of absurd and unnerving. She painted the holes in the world that she dreamed about but was afraid to touch and yet which would not stop touching her mind in turn.
 
 She played in her free time, such as it was — after all, her work, such as it was, was a joy beyond joys, but everything is a sometimes food. She played hide-and-seek in the auditorium. She played tag with the performers and techs. She played pretend. She played horses and kitties and mousies. She played with Warmth In Fire, endless forks dotting countless landscapes, leapfrogging over each other across fields and between trees, bouncing off the walls of canyons and cities, colliding with force enough to knock them spinning and send them dizzy. She hunted down her friends and played hide-and-seek, yes, and tag and horses and kitties and mousies. She hunted down her friends and played puzzle games and rhythm games and stealth games and real life platformers and turn-based sims that locked her in place when it was not her turn.
 
@@ -22,19 +22,17 @@ And so Motes played.
 
 She sat atop her stool, one of her feet perched up there with her so that she could rest her chin somewhere while she painted. A palette sat on an infinitely positionable nothing beside her. A canvas sat on an easel, rickety and well-loved, before her. A brush sat in her paw, and paint sat on the brush. A thin, black rectangle sat on that canvas, as did a mountainous landscape. Music sat in her ears, chirpy and glitchy to offset the serenity of the scene in a new way.
 
-She hummed, her tail fwipped this way, flopped that, and she painted until the painting was finished — there was no guarantee of when that would be: the painting would be finished when it was finished, and when it was finished, she stopped.
-
-The painting was finished, and the time had come to stop.
+She hummed, her tail fwipped this way, flopped that, and she painted until the painting was finished — there was no guarantee of when that would be: the painting would be finished when it was finished, as it now was, and when it was finished, she stopped.
 
 Slipping off her stool, she stumbled clumsily to the side, laughing at the sudden rush of pins-and-needles to her backside and the base of her tail. She inserted a step in her list of things to do before cleaning and plopped down onto her belly, using the remainder of the ochre paint in the brush to doodle the face of a fennec fox on the hardboard floor of her studio. It was one of thousands by now, and they had long since started to overlap.
 
-Once feeling returned to her rump, she pushed herself back to sit cross-legged and started the process of cleaning up.
+Once feeling returned to her rump, she pushed herself back to sit cross-legged and started the process of actually cleaning up.
 
 She used to just wave away her supplies, either letting them dissipate back into her memories or float back to their proper locations in her studio, but some decades prior, she had started using the process of putting things away by hand to unwind from the context of painting.
 
-She split the difference today, and forked quickly into four Moteses: one hauled the stool up above her head and trundled over to plop it down in the corner by the workbench; one ran off with the brush and palette to wash them off in the sink; one brought the easel, painting still clamped to it, over to the corner to dry; one tried to do a handstand in the middle of the room while Motes#root watched. Eventually, she managed for a few seconds before collapsing into a giggling heap.
+She split the difference today, and forked quickly into four Moteses: one hauled the stool up above her head and trundled over to plop it down in the corner by the workbench; one ran off with the brush and palette to wash them off in the sink; one brought the easel, painting still clamped to it, over to the corner to dry; one tried to do a handstand in the middle of the room while Motes#Root watched. Eventually, she managed for a few seconds before collapsing into a giggling heap.
 
-One by one, the various Moteses quit until #root was the only one remaining. She pushed herself to her feet, stretched, and padded out of the pleasantly cluttered studio.
+One by one, the various Moteses quit until #Root was the only one remaining. She pushed herself to her feet, stretched, and padded out of the pleasantly cluttered studio.
 
 "Lights, Dot."
 
@@ -42,7 +40,7 @@ Motes jolted at the sound of A Finger Pointing's voice from the couch beside the
 
 "All done painting?" Beholden asked, the other, larger skunk not yet looking up from where she was slicing a lime into wedges at the bar.
 
-"Mmhm!"
+"Mmhm."
 
 A Finger Pointing ruffled a hand lazily through the skunk's mane. "What were you working on, my dear?"
 
@@ -50,7 +48,7 @@ A Finger Pointing ruffled a hand lazily through the skunk's mane. "What were you
 
 "Are you going to wind up painting thin black lines in another hundred years?" Beholden asked from the bar, a grin audible in her voice. "Just a beautiful landscape cut in half by a hair?"
 
-Motes giggled. "I do not know! Probably. Are you making drinks, Bee?"
+Motes giggled. "I do not know. Probably. Are you making drinks, Bee?"
 
 The other skunk scoffed, tossing her head back, adopting a scolding tone. "Am I making drinks? Am *I* making drinks? And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights of the Ode clade, what happened to your brain?" She laughed, adding, "Why? Want one too?"
 
@@ -60,31 +58,35 @@ Motes blew a raspberry in response. "Yes please!"
 
 "Right, virgin gin fizz it is."
 
-"*Maaa,*" Motes whined. "I am a grown up!"
+"*Maaa~*" Motes whined. "I am a grown up!"
 
 "You are seven, my dear," A Finger Pointing retorted.
 
 Another raspberry.
 
-Beholden poured a tall gin fizz to share with herself and her partner-*cum*-cocladist, lime muddled with sugar and cardamom bitters, gin and soda water. Then she made a second glass sans gin and turned to lean back against the edge of the bar, drink in one paw and bottle of gin in the other, finally facing the two cuddled up on the couch. She absentmindedly started to top up the glass from the bottle. Or, well, 'absentmindedly'. "Oh, *right!* You said virgin," she said, mock surprise in her voice. Gin continued to pour. She winked to the skunklet. "Oh no. *Oh no!* That is *way* too much! Motes! You had better not drink this!"
+Beholden poured a tall gin fizz to share with herself and her partner-*cum*-cocladist, lime muddled with sugar and cardamom bitters, gin and soda water. Then she made a second glass sans alcohol and turned to lean back against the edge of the bar, drink in one paw and bottle of gin in the other, finally facing the two cuddled up on the couch. She 'absentmindedly' started to top up the glass from the bottle. "Oh, *right!* You said virgin," she said, mock surprise in her voice. Gin continued to pour. She winked to the skunklet. "Oh no. *Oh no!* That is *way* too much! Motes! You had better not drink this!"
 
 They all laughed.
 
-Beholden padded over to join them on the couch. She took a long sip from one of the glasses before passing it over to A Finger Pointing, handing the other glass over to Motes. "We are headed out to a pub tonight with a few others, my dear. Jazz and burgers and too much whiskey."
+Beholden padded over to join them on the couch. She took a long sip from one of the glasses before passing it over to A Finger Pointing, handing the other over to Motes. "We are headed out to a pub tonight with a few others, my dear. Jazz and burgers and too much whiskey."
 
-"Is that why you are all dressed up?" Motes asked, her paint-spattered overalls contrasting the both of their all-black ensembles.
+"Is that why you are all dressed up?" Motes asked, her paint-spattered overalls contrasting with both of their all-black ensembles.
 
 They both nodded.
 
+"Who will be there?"
+
+"Ioan, May Then My Name, Unbidden, Ray and Loam..." Beholden said, ticking off names on her fingers. "The usual crowd."
+
 "Can I come?"
 
 A Finger Pointing shrugged. "I do not see why not. Do you want to?"
 
-Motes grinned. "Not really! I just wanted to see if I could."
+Motes grinned. "Not really. I just wanted to see if I could."
 
 Her down-tree pinched her ear between her fingers. "Very well. Will you be staying here by yourself, then?"
 
-She laughed, tilting her head and taking a lapping sip of her drink. "Maybe! Maybe I will find someone to flop with."
+She laughed, tilting her head and taking a lapping sip of her drink. "Maybe. Maybe I will find someone to flop with."
 
 "Cuddly Dot?" Beholden asked, leaning closer to sandwich her between her two guardians, between Ma and Bee.
 
@@ -92,7 +94,7 @@ Motes wriggled right in between them. "Mmhm. Not tired, just lazy."
 
 "Flop away," A Finger Pointing said fondly. "Who do you think you will ask?"
 
-She shrugged. "Beckoning and Muse. Slow Hours, maybe? Dry Grass? I think Warmth is feeling a bit fussy."
+She shrugged. "Beckoning and Muse? Slow Hours, maybe? Dry Grass? I think Warmth is feeling a bit fussy."
 
 "Two peas in a pod," Beholden said. "Two little fusspots."
 
@@ -130,7 +132,7 @@ Motes snorted. "You are also a fat skunk, though."
 
 "You just have a bit to commit to," A Finger Pointing said, nodding. "And we are nothing if not ourselves when it comes to committing to a bit."
 
-"Exactly! We are the same age, right? We were the same person until we were 41, right? I have just had, like...two hundred years to pick my own bit to commit to. I am the kid, you are the weirdo who makes really crazy music, ma is the one who does all the schmoozing and stuff."
+"Exactly! We are the same age, right? We were the same person until we were 41, right? I have just had, like...two hundred years to pick my own bit to commit to. I am the kid, you are the weirdo who makes really crazy music, Ma is the one who does all the schmoozing and stuff."
 
 "*Schmoozing,* huh?" A Finger Pointing laughed. "I suppose that is as good a way to put it as any. Someone has to keep this band of layabouts moving. Someone has to grease all the squeaky wheels in the clade."
 
@@ -144,11 +146,11 @@ Motes snorted. "You are also a fat skunk, though."
 
 The playful banter continued, and while she would occasionally poke her snout in to make a quip of her own, Motes largely just savored her drink, bitter and sour and sweet, and the comfort of being nestled in between her two cocladists, thinking.
 
-She thought about the more than two centuries that had passed since A Finger Pointing had forked into the other nine instances of her stanza, that point when Motes had become Motes. She thought about the time that had followed when she remained essentially a version of A Finger Pointing who had taken up responsibility for sets and props, about those slow years of individuation and differentiation. She thought about the way she had started to toy with her appearance, her actions, her approach to life, and how she had steered herself into this focus on play to reclaim a childhood that had, yes, been pleasant enough, and yet which could have been so much more, now that she had all the time in the world..
+She thought about the more than two centuries that had passed since A Finger Pointing had forked into the other nine instances of her stanza, that point when Motes had become Motes. She thought about the time that had followed when she remained essentially the version of A Finger Pointing who had taken up responsibility for sets and props, about those slow years of individuation and differentiation. She thought about the way she had started to toy with her appearance, her actions, her approach to life, and how she had steered herself into this focus on play to reclaim a childhood that had, yes, been pleasant enough, and yet which could have been so much more, now that she had all the time in the world.
 
 It had not always been smooth, to be sure. The compromises she made early on far outnumbered the ways in which she was earnest to herself.
 
-She did not blame A Finger Pointing, never once. She, of all those in her life, was trustworthy. Motes had once been her, after all, yes? They had had their spats, more than a few, as would be the case between any parent and child — as would be the case between any two individuals. She had had spats with more than just ma. She and Beholden had fought, and at times bitterly, and it was at those times that Bee's guardianship had felt most precarious. It had never disappeared, but it had verged well into the realm of sister — the realm of Slow Hours — or bestest friend — the realm of Warmth In Fire — and away from guardian, away from that parental love.
+She did not blame A Finger Pointing, never once. She, of all those in her life, was trustworthy. Motes had once *been* her, after all, yes? They had had their spats, more than a few, as would be the case between any parent and child — as would be the case between any two individuals. She had had spats with more than just Ma. She and Beholden had fought, and at times bitterly, and it was at those times that Bee's guardianship had felt most precarious. It had never disappeared, but it had verged well into the realm of sister — the realm of Slow Hours — or bestest friend — that of of Warmth In Fire — and away from guardian, away from that parental love.
 
 She did not remember what the spats were about. She could, yes, her memory was as perfect as anyone else's on the three Systems. But she would not, because that was not the point. The point was that she was Motes. She was their Dot, their *Dóttir.* She was the kid, and they were the grown-ups who loved her.
 
@@ -158,13 +160,13 @@ And that is where the friction came from. It came from others fussing about Mote
 
 She was not always. Often, she was in her early twenties. Certainly a far cry from the 41 she had been when she had been forked, or the 32 she had been when Michelle Hadje had first uploaded, but still, far more acceptable in the eyes of the System, far more acceptable in the eyes of the rest of the Ode clade.
 
-It was them, through A Finger Pointing and, on a few occasions, through Slow Hours and Time Rushes, who suggested that she should not do this thing. It was too close, they said, to unwelcome paraphilias, here on the System where one had to be at least eighteen to upload. It was too close, they said, to coming off as someone seeking unwanted attention, affection, sexuality. "I understand that you wish to reclaim childhood," they told her through her ma or siblings. "But you must understand the optics." Never mind that she had long since set aside sexuality in this form, in all but the most carefully curated moments, that she harbored her own fears of those offering unwanted attention, affection, sex. No, it was the optics that needed minding.
+It was them, through A Finger Pointing and, on a few occasions, through Slow Hours and Time Rushes, who suggested that she should not do this thing. It was too close, they said, to unwelcome paraphilias, here on the System where one had to be at least eighteen to upload. It was too close, they said, to coming off as someone seeking unwanted attention, affection, sexuality. "I understand that you wish to reclaim childhood," they told her through her ma or siblings. "But you must understand the optics." Never mind that she had long since set aside sexuality while in this form, that she harbored her own fears of those offering unwanted attention, affection, sex. No, it was the *optics* that needed minding.
 
 And so she kept it under wraps for years and decades.
 
 First it was the feelings she kept to herself. She alone knew them, and then her stanza alone knew them, but no one else.
 
-Then, it was the appearance that she kept to herself. While, shortly after happening on these feelings, she had built herself into an image of youth parked squarely in her early twenties, a human who dressed in flower-embroidered jeans and blouses, who so often wore a flower crown in her hair, who embodied flower-child, she now spent weeks and months tuning various aspects of her shape, of her sensorium. A skunk like so many of her cocladists, rather than a human. Shorter, yes, but that is not all that makes a child. Shorter, proportionately different, clumsier, less developed in all ways aside from mental acuity.
+Then, it was the appearance that she kept to herself. While, shortly after happening on these feelings, she had built herself into an image of youth parked squarely in her early twenties, a human who dressed in flower-embroidered jeans and blouses, who so often wore a flower crown in her hair, who embodied flower-child, she now spent weeks and months tuning various aspects of her shape, of her sensorium. A skunk like so many of her cocladists, rather than a human. Shorter, yes, but that is not all that makes a child. Shorter, proportionately different, clumsier, less developed in all ways aside from mental acuity. Just a kid.
 
 She alone knew this shape, alone in her room, alone in her apartment, alone in her studio with the doors securely shut and the premises swept. She alone knew what she looked like, and then her stanza knew, but precious few others.
 
@@ -174,19 +176,17 @@ The discussion of optics did not show up for another few years as she tested the
 
 And yet she was of the Ode, was she not? There was an image to maintain that extended beyond the individual.
 
-The feelings, the appearance, rinse and repeat with this and that, with moving in together, with the familial language of 'ma' and 'sis', with sharing a bed when she had a nightmare, as any Odist might. Again and again pushing gently at limitations to search for a slow form of change.
-
-It was her use of 'ma' that caused perhaps the most trouble. It was trouble that came not as a gentle suggestion from 'on high', such as it were, but this suggestion in particular had over time led to frustration and anger in her down-tree instance, A Finger Pointing. She kept it to herself, masked it well enough, but Motes knew the signs.
+The feelings, the appearance, rinse and repeat with this and that, with moving in together, with the familial language of 'Ma' and 'Sis', with sharing a bed when she had a nightmare, as any Odist might. Again and again pushing gently at limitations to search for a slow form of change.
 
 Still, she did as she was told and kept this particular sense of family to herself and those she loved. She was a good girl, of course, always tried to be, but she was also as much an Odist as those who spoke so often of optics. She saw the trends, the prickly taboo against intraclade relationships like that of A Finger Pointing and Beholden, how the subversiveness of found family might rub up against that. She had her guesses, but–
 
 "Motes? Did you hear what I said?" Beholden asked, ruffling her mane all up.
 
-"Nope!" Motes said, smiling primly. "I have been ignoring you both."
+"Nope~" Motes said, smiling primly. "I have been ignoring you both."
 
 Beholden rolled her eyes. "Brat. Lost in thought?"
 
-She shrugged, sipping her drink yet more. "I guess. Was thinking of fusspots and all the trouble calling ma 'ma' caused. Glad it is not a thing anymore."
+She shrugged, sipping her drink yet more. "I guess. Was thinking of fusspots and all the trouble calling Ma 'Ma' caused. Glad it is not a thing anymore."
 
 "*Less* of a thing," A Finger Pointing corrected. "It is not *not* a thing. What Beholden was saying, though, is that we were going to head off. The offer stands for you to join us, Dot."
 
@@ -208,7 +208,7 @@ There was a moment's silence, a sense of laughter, and then, *"Motes Motes Motes
 
 *"And here you are, pinging me, yes."*
 
-*"Mmhm! Was going to make a food or two. Do you want some?"*
+*"Mmhm. Was going to make a food or two. Do you want some?"*
 
 There was a sensation of a haughty frown from Dry Grass. *"Are you allowed to be using the stove, my dear?"*
 
@@ -226,7 +226,7 @@ Dry Grass laughed. *"You had me at maccy-chee. Shall I come over now?"*
 
 *"Yes, please!"*
 
-No sooner had the message completed did Dry Grass blink into being on the default arrival point over by the front door.
+No sooner had the message completed than Dry Grass blinked into being on the default arrival point over by the front door.
 
 Motes finished shoving the tray of salad ingredients up onto the counter and zipped over to her cross-tree cocladist, all but launching herself into her arms. Dry Grass caught her, letting her momentum swing the two of them around in a circle. "Hey kiddo! Way to go almost knocking me over."
 
@@ -246,7 +246,7 @@ Once the dishes had been waved a way and drinks had been made — sweeter cockta
 
 "'Being you'?"
 
-"Uh huh, like the whole kidcore thing. I was thinking about how upset it made people for a long time. Even me! I would hear a thing and get all huffy for a while and go Big Motes for a month or two." She giggled, shrugged. "It all seems really silly now, but it stuck with me."
+"Uh huh, like the whole kidcore thing. I was thinking about how upset it made people for a long time. Even me. I would hear a thing and get all huffy for a while and go Big Motes for a month or two." She giggled, shrugged. "It all seems really silly now, but it stuck with me."
 
 Dry Grass hummed thoughtfully. "Well, I am glad that it has gotten to the point of being silly. Are you thinking about the clade stuff?"
 
@@ -258,7 +258,7 @@ Motes tilted her head, squinting at her.
 
 Holding up her hands disarmingly, Dry Grass added quickly, "Not from me, my dear. Never from me. Most all of it came from Hammered Silver. A lot of her up-trees did not particularly care, and you know I actively like it."
 
-The skunk's smile returned. "I know. You are nice to me! I had figured if not the eighth, then In Dreams would have been the one."
+The skunk's smile returned. "I know. You are nice to me. I had figured if not the eighth, then In Dreams would have been the one."
 
 "Oh, she was definitely another one of the big culprits. Do not get me wrong, I like the seventh stanza alright, but In Dreams can be a stickler over...well, most anything, really."
 
@@ -282,15 +282,15 @@ Motes frowned and pulled apart the logic, doodling pink spirals onto her fingerp
 
 Dry Grass laughed as well. "She is already essentially the prissy HOA president. I respect her as a person, but I do not like her, and I *certainly* do not respect her authority."
 
-"Right, because she wants you to not talk to *any* of us!"
+"Right, because she wants you to not talk to *any* of us."
 
 She nodded. "She cut off the first, eighth, part of the ninth, and now the entire fifth stanza since you took on Sasha."
 
-Motes groaned and rolled onto her back, holding her paws up in the air to inspect her claws. "Which is stupid, because Sasha is nice!"
+Motes groaned and rolled onto her back, holding her paws up in the air to inspect her claws. "Which is stupid, because Sasha is nice."
 
 "She really is, though I have not had as much a chance to speak with her as I might like. She was the last straw in a whole series of events. She does not like Sasha, does not like you, she *really* does not like the family dynamic you have set up."
 
-Bristling, Motes glared over at Dry Grass. "It is all well and good that she not like me, but to not like my family is bullcrap."
+Bristling, Motes glared down at the polish and brush. "It is all well and good that she not like me, but to not like my family is bullcrap."
 
 Dry Grass nodded, expression serious. "It absolutely is. She has gotten quite upset about it a few times, but I just smile and nod and tune her out when she goes into her self-righteous spirals. I am not the type to cut anyone out of my life, for better or worse, but I will absolutely ignore people."
 

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, A Finger Pointing and Beholden's long-lived up-tree instances.
+Tonight, she played hard. It was a Big Motes night. It was a human night. It was a grown up 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 Beckoning and Muse A Finger Pointing and Beholden's long-lived up-tree instances A Finger Curled and Beholden To The Music Of The Spheres.
 
 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.
 
@@ -14,11 +14,11 @@ Tonight, she let him take her home. Tonight she let him pin her to the bed, paw
 
 And then it was a night for sitting on his balcony and talking while the waves of whatever drug he'd given her continued to roll through her in languid pulses. "It is like someone is brushing the underside of my skin with satin in the best possible way," she said, and he laughed.
 
-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 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 over, startled from 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 glow in the sky, golden stars made of lights from so many buildings just like this one, 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 a quarter billion people called this home, then laughed as she asked, "How many do you think are fucking right now?"
 
 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.
+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 — 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.
 
 They sat on the balcony once more, out in the bright sun, and ate their breakfast together, talking of only the small things.
 
@@ -68,7 +68,7 @@ Motes nodded. "I do not remember that from phys-side, no." She paused, head tilt
 
 Sasha looked back down to her papers, picking up an already neat stack and racking it against the stage, a transparent attempt to hide a blush or hint of a smile. "It has come up once or twice, yes."
 
-"Oooh, Sashaaaa," Motes said, laughing. "But wait, does that come from May, True Name, or E.W.?"
+"Oooh, Sashaaaa~" Motes said, laughing. "But wait, does that come from May, True Name, or E.W.?"
 
 She looked up once more, rolled her eyes. "Can you really picture May being into such pain?"
 
@@ -80,11 +80,11 @@ 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 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."
+"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 the topic away. "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."
 
-Motes shimmied out of the blouse and folded it neatly, setting it on the stage before forking into her usual, smaller, soft-furred self once more. Younger, as well, back to that comfortable, comforting expression of youth. "Okay!" she said once she was done once more, rolling around to lay on her belly and poke her snout at one of the piles of paper. "What are you working on, anyway?"
+Motes shimmied out of the blouse and folded it neatly, setting it on the stage before forking into her usual, smaller, soft-furred self once more. Younger, as well, back to that comfortable, comforting expression of youth. "Okay," she said once she was done once more, rolling around to lay on her belly and poke her snout at one of the piles of paper. "What are you working on, anyway?"
 
 Sasha smiled, tipped her clipboard forward to let the skunk see the stage diagram. "Blocking. Planning. Memorization."
 
@@ -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 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.
+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. She hummed a tuneless song. 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?"
 
@@ -104,27 +104,27 @@ Motes stuck her tongue out at her. "I was thinking about how I was talking with
 
 Unexpectedly, Sasha winced, carefully setting down her clipboard with exaggerated care. "Yes. I am sorry, And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights, it was never my intent to create such a schism in the clade."
 
-Pushing herself to hands and knees and crawling around the piles of script, she knelt beside the other skunk, hugging around her shoulders. "It is okay! I do not blame you," she said hastily. "Dry Grass also said that that was just a...um, a last straw, not even the biggest thing."
+Pushing herself to hands and knees and crawling around the piles of script, she knelt beside the other skunk, hugging around her shoulders. "It is okay. I do not blame you," she said hastily. "Dry Grass also said that that was just a...um, a last straw, not even the biggest thing."
 
 "What did she say was?" Sasha asked quietly, shifting an arm around to hug Motes in turn.
 
-"Me," she said, shrugging. "Or, well, she also hates me, but the biggest bit was that I call A Finger Pointing ma, and that she is with Beholden."
+"Me," she said, shrugging. "Or, well, she also hates me, but the biggest bit was that I call A Finger Pointing 'Ma', and that she is with Beholden."
 
-After nearly a minute of silence, Sasha said, "Years back, centuries ago, Jonas started a project of making intraclade relationships taboo. It was a measured process intended to keep *something* taboo while the rest of the System settled into a comfortable non-normativity — or even queer normativity — on most other relationship and identity fronts." Another pause, and then, "Well, and because he was setting me up with May in the form of Zacharias to gain leverage."
+After nearly a minute of silence, Sasha said, "Years back, centuries ago, Jonas started a project of making intraclade relationships taboo. It was a measured process intended to keep *something* taboo while the rest of the System settled into a comfortable non-normativity — or even queer-normativity — on most other relationship and identity fronts." Another pause, and then, "Well, and because he was setting me up with May in the form of Zacharias to gain leverage."
 
 "Gross."
 
 "Very gross. I am glad to be quit of him, even if there are times that I miss the work. All of that to say that Hammered Silver bought into that hook, line, and sinker. She truly believed that it is some horrible taboo to get in a relationship — romantic or familial — within one's own clade."
 
-"But *she* is!" Motes protested. "She is in a relationship with Waking World!"
+"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."
 
-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?"
+Motes furrowed her brow in consternation. "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?"
 
-"Perhaps her performance so convincing that she is fooling us all. Perhaps she is simply fooling herself."
+"Perhaps her performance is so convincing that she is fooling us all. Perhaps she is simply fooling herself."
 
-She scoffed. "Probably the second!"
+She scoffed. "Probably the second."
 
 "Almost certainly," Sasha said, ruffling Motes's mane affectionately. "But it is fine. I have not spoken with her in more than a decade."
 
@@ -144,23 +144,23 @@ Giggling helplessly and pulling herself away from the knuckles grinding against
 
 "She is a lovely person, in her own way," Sasha said gently, then added, "Which is a bitch, yes."
 
-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."
+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 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."
+"So Hammered Silver is upset that Ma has principles," Motes said flatly. "Okay. Got it. Good good, good good good good. Wonderful."
 
 She laughed. "Yes, apparently. A Finger Pointing had some tense meetings with Hammered Silver early on when it became clear — at least within the clade — that she and Beholden were in a relationship, but that tenseness became the norm when you started to poke your little snout–" She tapped at Motes's nose-tip, getting a giggle. "–out into the world, which led to a tacit agreement that they were essentially just meeting up to collect data on their respective stanzas, and then only when A Finger Pointing agreed not to talk about you."
 
 Motes fell silent for a long minute, then two, and eventually rolled onto the other side so that she could bury her face against Sasha's side. "Well, that makes me feel like garbage," she mumbled.
 
-"Hush, little skunk," Sasha said gently. "That is between A Finger Pointing and Hammered Silver. A Finger Pointing had to make a tactical decision: maintain contact with the clade, be the glue that binds so many of us together, keep tabs on Hammered Silver and her ilk; or tell Hammered Silver to kick rocks, she was going to talk about her Dot as much as she damn well pleased. Tactically, she chose to agree to not pass on information about you. Strategically, this gained her a better sense of the sixth — and, to a lesser extent, the seventh — stanza."
+"Hush, little skunk," Sasha said gently. "That is between A Finger Pointing and Hammered Silver. A Finger Pointing had to make a tactical decision: maintain contact with the clade, be the glue that binds so many of us together, keep tabs on Hammered Silver and her ilk; or tell Hammered Silver to kick rocks, she was going to talk about her Dot as much as she damn well pleased. Tactically, she chose to agree to not pass on information about you. Strategically, this gained her a better sense of the sixth stanza — and, to a lesser extent, the seventh later on."
 
-She nodded, pressing her face all the firmer against the stage manager.
+She nodded, pressing her face all the firmer against the stage manager's belly.
 
 "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 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."
+"Okaaay~" She sighed dramatically and pushed herself up to her feet. "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."
 

content/draft/003.md

@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ She picked up the speed into an all out sprint. Her pursuer darted off at sharp
 
 "Oh! Oh oh oh!" came a voice from out the trees and her prey skidded to a halt, quickly reversing direction and racing toward her instead.
 
-*A game of chicken, then!* she thought, grinning fiercely.
+*A game of chicken, then,* she thought, grinning fiercely.
 
 The two ran directly at each other, weaving slightly to make their way around the occasional tree.
 
@@ -48,19 +48,19 @@ Motes galloped after her, giggling.
 
 A few more rounds of leapfrog — repeated a dozen times over with a dozen different instances — and both Motes and Warmth collapsed in the clearing in the woods, panting and laughing. They shoved at each other for a few seconds, rolling about in the grass and wildflowers before sprawling out on their backs, looking up into the cloud-dotted sky.
 
-"You know," Warmth said reaching over to poke Motes in the belly. "If you were not such a fatty, you could probably outrun me!"
+"You know," Warmth said reaching over to poke Motes in the belly. "If you were not such a fatty, you could probably outrun me."
 
-"But I like being a fatty!" Motes countered. "If you were not such a string bean, you...you would...uh...."
+"But I like being a fatty," Motes countered. "If you were not such a string bean, you...you would...uh...."
 
-"Uh huh?" the other skunk prompted, grinning. "What would I do, my dear? Pray tell!"
+"Uh huh?" the other skunk prompted, grinning. "What would I do, my dear? Pray tell~"
 
 Motes laughed and tore up a pawful of grass, tossing it ineffectually at her cocladist, who merely returned the gesture.
 
-Which Offers Heat And Warmth In Fire was a skunk like her, small like her, but had wound up wiry and lithe, perpetually untameable fur stained here and there with green or yellow as if ey had been caught rolling in the grass and dandelions and run off before bothering to wash. It was her friend of friends, a superlative acquaintance that had led to a bond unbreakable.
+Which Offers Heat And Warmth In Fire was a skunk like her, small like her, but had wound up wiry and lithe, perpetually untameable fur stained here and there with green or yellow as if ey had been caught rolling in the grass and dandelions and run off before bothering to wash. A being of indeterminate gender and unsettled pronouns, it was her friend of friends, a superlative acquaintance that had led to a bond unbreakable.
 
 They elbow-crawled over to drape unceremoniously over Motes's front, sighing now that it had caught eir breath. "You are a nerd," they said. "But I guess I like you all the same."
 
-"Pff, call me a nerd," Motes scoffed, petting Warmth's fur up backwards to muss it all the more. "At least I am a cute nerd!"
+"Pff, call me a nerd," Motes scoffed, petting Warmth's fur up backwards to muss it all the more. "At least I am a cute nerd."
 
 "You are that," the other skunk admitted. "So am I, mind. Probably cuter than you."
 
@@ -74,9 +74,9 @@ It giggled and pushed its paws up over her face. "Motes Motes Motes! Look at you
 
 "A little," she admitted. "Sort of like 'kinda' or 'gonna'."
 
-"Weirdo," ey stated plainly. "Do you mean what am I doing right now? Because I am using your fat belly as literally the worst pillow."
+"Weirdo," ey stated plainly. "Do you mean what am I doing right now? Because I am using your fat belly as *literally* the worst pillow."
 
-"You could get off me any time now!"
+"You could get off of me at *literally* any time."
 
 "Absolutely not."
 
@@ -94,7 +94,7 @@ Motes nodded. "Tell me about that, then. I do not want mopey Warmth."
 
 "All of the Bălans are nerds," Motes said. "Did you write back to tell em that?"
 
-"Mmhm! I accused em of going back to being a weirdo historian."
+"Mmhm, I accused em of going back to being a weirdo historian."
 
 "Good!"
 
@@ -102,27 +102,29 @@ Ey giggled. "But! Do you want to taste a *frahabrodåt?*"
 
 "What the frick is a *frahabrodåt?*"
 
-As it spoke, ey dreamed up a shallow bowl. "No fucking clue! It apparently means 'fluffy tower'." This began to take shape. It seemed to be a lattice of fine bubbles in pale, sea-foam green. "I have only tried a few of the recipes ey sent, but this one at least gave me some good ideas." The foam began to congeal into a firmer structure that looked to have been shaped by some sort of fork into a square-ish tower. "I do not know if I would call it *good,* but I am guessing by a text description of something an alien showed a non-chef on a System that is not theirs." At last, the tower seemed to be complete, though over the next few seconds it was pocked with a few pips of what seemed to be some similarly pale-green fruit. "Here!"
+As it spoke, ey dreamed up a shallow bowl. "No fucking clue! It apparently means 'fluffy tower'." This began to take shape. It seemed to be a lattice of fine bubbles in pale, sea-foam green. "I have only tried a few of the recipes ey sent, but this one at least gave me some good ideas." The foam began to congeal into a firmer structure that looked to have been shaped by some sort of fork into a square-ish tower. "I do not know if I would call it *good,* but I am guessing by a text description of something an alien showed a non-chef on a System that is not theirs." At last, the tower seemed to be complete, though over the next few seconds it was pocked with a few pips of what seemed to be some similarly pale-green fruit. "Here."
 
 Motes leaned forward and squinted at the dish, sniffing. It smelled like precious little.
 
-"I have not gotten to adding the scent yet," Warmth explained. "That is one area where Codrin did not give much detail."
+"I have not gotten around to adding the scent yet," Warmth explained. "That is one area where Codrin did not give much detail."
 
 "Well, okay," she said, doubtful. She dreamed up a spoon and poked at the...foam? Froth? It was surprisingly sturdy, and although it wobbled, it did not fall over under the touch. 
 
 A grin was growing on the other skunk's face. 
 
+Bad sign.
+
 Figuring there was nothing for it, she gathered up a spoonful of the fluff, complete with a few pips, said, "Onetwothree*go!*" and stuffed it into her mouth...then immediately raced to swallow it. "Mmnglhfnnf!"
 
 Warmth bust into a fit of giggles and forked several times in quick succession, the crowd of em breaking into a wild applause, complete with standing ovation and shouts of 'Bravo! Brava! Bravissimo!', before quitting.
 
-"It tastes like passion fruit and licking battery terminals at the same time!" Motes cried, bringing into being a glass of water to rinse out her muzzle.
+"It tastes like passion fruit and licking battery terminals at the same time," Motes cried, bringing into being a glass of water to rinse out her muzzle.
 
 "I know, right?" ey said dreamily. "I hate it."
 
 "So do I!" At least the water seemed to wash the taste away quickly. "Are the other ones better?"
 
-"Oh, totally!"
+"Oh, totally."
 
 Motes dipped her fingers into the glass and flicked some of the water at Warmth. "Then why the fuc– why the frick did you give me *this* one?"
 
@@ -130,7 +132,7 @@ Motes dipped her fingers into the glass and flicked some of the water at Warmth.
 
 "Yeah, well, I honestly hate it."
 
-"Mmhm! But you saying 'passion fruit' was new! Rye just said it was "sour and sweet and unpleasant" and Praiseworthy would not try it at all. Now I can compare it to passion fruit and try new things."
+"Mmhm! But you saying 'passion fruit' was new. Rye just said it was "sour and sweet and unpleasant" and Praiseworthy would not try it at all. Now I can compare it to passion fruit and try new things."
 
 "Rye is always too polite," Motes said, grinning. "But I like her."
 
@@ -142,7 +144,7 @@ Warmth dismissed the *frahabrodåt* and stretched out on their belly. "Now why d
 
 She shrugged, peeking over at the other skunk through the blades of grass and drooping columbines. "Just family stuff on the brain."
 
-"Precious little of that, my dear," ey said, gently rapping her atop the head while making a hollow clicking noise with its tongue. When Motes merely stuck out her tongue, their expression softened. "Sorry, Mote. Why family stuff? Why is that mope-inducing? Usually you love that. Sometimes you go on about 'ma and Bee this' and 'Sis Hours that' and it is *lovely.*"
+"Precious little of that, my dear," ey said, gently rapping her atop the head while making a hollow clicking noise with its tongue. When Motes merely stuck out her tongue, their expression softened. "Sorry, Mote. Why family stuff? Why is that mope-inducing? Usually you love that. Sometimes you go on about 'Ma and Bee this' and 'Sis Hours that' and it is *lovely.*"
 
 "Slow Hours used to hate it when I called her that," Motes said, smirking, then returned her gaze to the sky. "Just been lots of thinking and talk lately about how much trouble me being small causes."
 
@@ -150,7 +152,7 @@ She shrugged, peeking over at the other skunk through the blades of grass and dr
 
 "I know, but like the smallest. Like, the youngest."
 
-Warmth huffed, indignant. "But *I* am the youngest! I am the babiest! That is my whole thing, yes? I am the most recently forked, the most recently-claimed line."
+Warmth huffed, indignant. "But *I* am the youngest! I am the babiest. That is my whole thing, yes? I am the most recently forked, the most recently-claimed line."
 
 Rolling over onto her side, Motes smiled apologetically at her friend. "I know, I am sorry. We are the little ones, right? Dry Grass even calls us that. Her little ones."
 
@@ -170,13 +172,13 @@ Warmth sighed, stretching their arms in front of em. "I know she has not *actual
 
 "How do you mean?"
 
-"Well, they cut off Dear, right?" it said. "And I am rather a lot of Dear. I am Dear and Rye and Praiseworthy. I am all of my down-trees. I *like* being all of my down-trees. I am proud of it!" She grinned. "I think of all of those, they might like Rye okay, but they hate Dear, and I cannot imagine them being too into Praiseworthy after the *History* named her as the propagandist during Secession."
+"Well, they cut off Dear, right?" it said. "And I am rather a lot of Dear. I am Dear and Rye and Praiseworthy. I am all of my down-trees. I *like* being all of my down-trees. I am proud of it." She grinned. "I think of all of those, they might like Rye okay, but they hate Dear, and I cannot imagine them being too into Praiseworthy after the *History* named her as the propagandist during Secession."
 
 Motes frowned. "Wait, really?"
 
-"I mean, I have not actually talked to them, but they cut off Dear for less." Ey laughed bitterly. "But again, I am also a little one, right? We also have our family dynamic, yes? Hell, Rye and Pointillist are *plenty* chummy, if you know what I mean."
+"I mean, I have not actually talked to them, but they cut off Dear for less." Ey laughed bitterly. "But again, I am also a little one, right? I have dated a cocladist before, have I not? My stanza also has our family dynamic, yes? Hell, Rye and Pointillist are *plenty* chummy, if you know what I mean."
 
-She laughed. "They just write each other letters!"
+She laughed. "They just write each other letters."
 
 "Yeah. *Sexy* letters."
 

content/draft/004.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ She played on precipices. She played along the knife's edge. She played at the p
 
 No.
 
-Motes was played with.
+Motes was played *with.*
 
 She was toyed with. She was dangled by the scruff over the ledge. She was held at the point of the knife. She was backed against the wall with the barrel of a gun to her forehead. She was given a sword and told to fall on it.
 
@@ -18,7 +18,9 @@ All of her play, all of that work she had put into reclaiming all that had been
 
 It was annihilation. It was the opposite of play — of Motes's kind of play, this reclamation of childhood. It was a negating of that play. It was a turning of joy into shame, a turning of fun into fear, a turning of laughter to ash before it leaves the mouth. 
 
-In her dream, she played a game. She played one of those games where she forked and was rendered bodiless and immobile, while her fork was sent along a series of platforms, leaping from one to another and swiping out at skeletons and liches with a long spear. The version of her doing the attacking had an incomplete view of the world, while the disembodied Motes watched from some distance away, treating the game like a literal platformer, sending instructions to her 'character' via sensorium messages.
+In her dream, she played a game.
+
+She played one of those games where she forked and was rendered bodiless and immobile, while her up-tree fork was sent along a series of platforms, leaping from one to another and swiping out at skeletons and liches with a long spear. The version of her doing the attacking had an incomplete view of the world, while the disembodied Motes watched from some distance away, treating the game like a literal platformer, sending instructions to her 'character' via sensorium messages.
 
 She knew this game. Not from having actually played it in the waking world — who knew how real it was? — but she knew this game in her dream. She breezed through levels, one after the other. Enemies fell to her spear, bosses toppled easily, and when they hit the ground, vines would sprout up and flower with a luscious scent.
 
@@ -26,7 +28,7 @@ She could beat this game. She knew this game. She was speed-running it. Little t
 
 She could beat the final boss, who was a mirror of herself. She knew that there was a strike, despite the boss knowing all that she did, being her, that would take her down in an instant.
 
-But when she got to the boss arena, no one was there. Not the crouching version of herself, purple-auraed and glowing-eyed.
+But when she got to the boss arena, no one was there. Not the crouching version of herself, purple-auraed and glowing-eyed. Just her, suddenly in one, suddenly unified instead of spread across two forks.
 
 And then something behind her snagged her by the nape of the neck, bundling up her scruff in unseen fingers and hauling her off the ground. She cried out and kicked as she dangled, swinging blindly with her spear.
 
@@ -62,7 +64,7 @@ With no recourse, Motes drove the blade into her own neck, an agonizing slowness
 
 She died then, whimpering ever more weakly, 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 in their room rather than simply under a cone of silence in their room.
+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.
 
 *"Dot?"* came the sleepy reply.
 
@@ -90,9 +92,9 @@ It wasn't until morning came, when Beholden had slipped away for a few minutes a
 
 "Jesus, Dot," Beholden said, frowning over the rim of her mug. She reached her free arm around the skunk's shoulders and tugged her close against her side in a hug. "I am sorry to hear that. That sounds awful."
 
-A Finger Pointing leaned over to kiss at the tips of her ears. "It really does, my dear, and I think that it is demonstrably untrue that she did not not have this in her. You exist, Motes; you are absolutely my up-tree, and I know where you got it from." She smiled. "And I am absolutely her up-tree, am I not?"
+"It really does, my dear." A Finger Pointing leaned over to kiss at the tips of her ears. "And I think that it is demonstrably untrue that she did not not have this in her. You exist, Motes; you are absolutely my up-tree, and I know where you got it from." She smiled. "And I am absolutely her up-tree, am I not?"
 
-Doing her best to hold still despite the ticklishness of the kisses, Motes nodded. "I know. It was just a dream, and dreams are not real."
+Doing her best to hold still despite the ticklishness of the kisses, Motes nodded. "I know. It was just a dream. Dreams are not real."
 
 "Not unless you are Slow Hours," A Finger Pointing said, nodding. "And even then, there is no guarantee. But come, the details of the dream aside, how are you feeling now?"
 
@@ -102,7 +104,7 @@ Doing her best to hold still despite the ticklishness of the kisses, Motes nodde
 
 A Finger Pointing leaned against Motes in turn — over her, in fact, to the point of resting her head on Beholden's shoulder. "I know that you will not be able to forget about it, not completely, but processing it for what it is — a dream — may well help it be less of a burden," she said. "I have gained comfort in that at times for my own dreams, waking and sleeping."
 
-Motes huddled comfortably between the two. "But what does processing even mean? I feel like even my brain is yelling at me about all of this now." she asked, doing her best to keep a whine out of her voice. "I do not even know why it is all coming up so much lately."
+Motes huddled comfortably between the two. "But what does processing even mean? I feel like even my brain is yelling at me about all of this now," she asked, doing her best to keep a whine out of her voice. "I do not even know why it is all coming up so much lately."
 
 Beholden laughed. "It is all your fault, my dear. The dream probably showed up *because* you have been thinking about it. Others have been talking with you about it *because* you keep bringing it up. Probably best to ask yourself what got you thinking about it in the first place, right?"
 
@@ -110,15 +112,15 @@ Beholden laughed. "It is all your fault, my dear. The dream probably showed up *
 
 "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 bemoaned, 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."
+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."
 
 "We will swim!  We will be happy!" Motes chimed in.
 
 Sighing dreamily, A Finger Pointing nodded. "We should have been poets."
 
-Motes could tell what they were doing. She was as adept at this as they were. The job of an actor is to trick the audience — just for a moment! — that the story playing out before them is more real than the rest of the world, that it is the rest of their lives that is merely a play. A Finger Pointing and Beholden, ma and Bee, were nudging her to set aside for now this dream-rotted headspace, this mopery.
+Motes could tell what they were doing. She was as adept at this as they were. The job of an actor is to trick the audience — just for a moment! — that the story playing out before them is more real than the rest of the world, that it is the rest of their lives that is merely a play. A Finger Pointing and Beholden, Ma and Bee, were nudging her to set aside for now this dream-rotted headspace, this mopery.
 
-She saw their manipulation and loved them all the harder for it.
+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.
 
@@ -130,11 +132,11 @@ For each of those who lived there, the neighborhood was theirs in some specific
 
 Motes had painted it all hundreds of times, of course.
 
-She had painted the prairie, painted the neighborhood, painted those who lived there. She had chosen the colors of many of the houses — had even helped paint some by hand until it had gotten too boring. She had chalked up all of the sidewalks — Warmth had conspired with A Finger Pointing and Serene, the sim's designers, so that colored chalk lines flower behind her automatically as she walked when she so desired — and she so desired — only to fade some hours later. One could always tell where Motes had come and gone.
+She had painted the prairie, painted the neighborhood, painted those who lived there. She had chosen the colors of many of the houses — had even helped paint some by hand until it had gotten too boring. She had chalked up all of the sidewalks — Warmth had conspired with A Finger Pointing and Serene, the sim's designers, so that colored chalk lines flowered behind her automatically as she walked when she so desired — and she so desired — only to fade some hours later. One could always tell where Motes had come and gone.
 
 Thus, when, still sleepy, she trudged out of the ranch-style home she shared with A Finger Pointing and Beholden, colored lines of flowering vines trailed after her bare paws. She guided those vines with her steps or, relishing in a secret pleasure, pretended like they were propelling her forward, pretending that she was a being of growth — that she was a seed, a being of potential — that she was a giant at the head of some toppled beanstalk.
 
-The vines or her feet carried her down through the neighborhood at a contemplative pace, giving her time to think of the conversation she wanted to have before she actually had it. She spoke so often without thinking, letting that be a part of her nature rather than some simple flaw, that to approach something so deliberately as this set her mood from the beginning, and by the time she drifted up one set of steps to the duplex near the far end of the neighborhood, many of her doubts had been set atop well-lit pedestals, and placards beneath each labeled their names, their creators, their provenance.
+The vines or her feet carried her down through the neighborhood at a contemplative pace, giving her time to think of the conversation she wanted to have before she actually had it. She spoke so often without thinking, letting that be a part of her nature rather than some simple flaw, that to approach something so deliberately as this set her mood from the beginning, and by the time she drifted up one set of steps to a duplex near the far end of the neighborhood, many of her doubts had been set atop well-lit pedestals, and placards beneath each labeled their names, their creators, their provenance.
 
 No one answered the door when she knocked, so she hesitantly pressed the doorbell. This, she knew — for it was the same throughout the neighborhood — was created to send a sensorium ping to the inhabitant.
 
@@ -146,7 +148,7 @@ Motes nodded. *"Hi Slow Hours. Yes please."*
 
 There was a quiet chime from the door and the letters on the nameplate faded from 'Slow Hours' to 'Au Lieu Du Rêve Library'. This done, there was a quiet click and the door swung lazily open.
 
-Beyond, rather than the comfortable and comfortably her home that Slow Hours kept, there was a well-lit reading room, a solarium of sorts with glass that looked out over some far distant part of the selfsame prairie that the neighborhood abutted. A table, several chairs, and a small collection of far more comfortable recliners huddled in the middle, while beyond, room of shelving stretched into dimness.
+Beyond, rather than the comfortable and comfortably her home that Slow Hours kept, there was a well-lit reading room, a solarium of sorts with glass that looked out over some far distant part of the selfsame prairie that the neighborhood abutted. A table, several chairs, and a small collection of far more comfortable recliners huddled in the middle, while beyond, a room of shelving stretched into dimness.
 
 And there, already levering herself out of her chair, was Where It Watches The Slow Hours Progress. Sis Hours, her big sister. Slowers. Slow, if she was feeling particularly cheeky. Had Beholden been human or Slow Hours a skunk, they could easily have been mistaken for twins, so similar were their builds — short, soft, round of face with curly black hair framing that pale skin versus short, soft, round of face with thick white mane framing that black fur — and yet as soon as they spoke the differences were immediately evident. Where Beholden was brash and snarky, Slow Hours was quiet and thoughtful. Where Beholden leaned into music as the lead sound tech, Slow Hours leaned into books as the lead script manager. Where Beholden was fun — really, truly, earnestly fun and a joy to be around — Slow Hours was nice. She was the one with which one spoke about feelings. She was the one who cried with you.
 
@@ -156,11 +158,11 @@ Behind her, scattered among the shelves, several more instances of her cocladist
 
 Motes huffed.
 
-"Come, my dear." Slow Hours rested her hand atop the skunk's head. "Do you want to go sit outside?"
+"You are transparent, my dear. It is a strength of yours." Slow Hours rested her hand atop the skunk's head. "Now, come. Do you want to go sit outside?"
 
 "Yes please," she said, feeling suddenly smaller still.
 
-She was a long time in opening up, which seemed to suit her cocladist just fine. Slow Hours summoned up a blanket and, disregarding the patio furniture that littered the concrete that ringed the solarium as well as the hard-packed dirt trail, picked her way out into the prairie. Holding two of the corners, she threw the blanket out to spread it over the shin-high grass. It seemed to float there, and for a long moment, neither of them move. Skunk and woman observed this magic carpet in gingham, bending blades and heads of stiff-stalked grass.
+She was a long time in opening up, which seemed to suit her cocladist just fine. Slow Hours summoned up a blanket and, disregarding the patio furniture that littered the concrete that ringed the solarium as well as the hard-packed dirt trail, picked her way out into the prairie. Holding two of the corners, she threw the blanket out to spread it over the shin-high grass. It seemed to float there, and for a long moment, neither of them moved. Skunk and woman observed this magic carpet in gingham hovering inches above the ground, bending blades and heads of stiff-stalked grass.
 
 When Motes remained in place, Slow Hours instead stepped onto the blanket and tramped dutifully around the rim of it, tamping down the grass so that they would not sink so deep into the blanket. That done, she lowered herself to sit cross-legged near the center and patted her lap.
 
@@ -180,7 +182,7 @@ Motes pawed up at her cocladist's hand on her ear. "Well, okay. That is fair. No
 
 "You see? You do understand. Now. Tell me what is on your little skunk mind."
 
-"I had a dream last night," she said, beginning slowly. "And I already talked about it with ma and Bee, and I think I sort of understand the ways in which it is wrong. Like, we talked about the fact that it was just a dream, and that it was probably spurred by how much I have been thinking about that sort of thing anyway, and that, since I cannot tell why I started thinking about all of this stuff, what I need to do is to start thinking back and remembering what might have happened that started the thoughts before."
+"I had a dream last night," she said, beginning slowly. "And I already talked about it with Ma and Bee, and I think I sort of understand the ways in which it is wrong. Like, we talked about the fact that it was just a dream, and that it was probably spurred by how much I have been thinking about that sort of thing anyway, and that, since I cannot tell why I started thinking about all of this stuff, what I need to do is to start thinking back and remembering what might have happened that started the thoughts before."
 
 Slow Hours nodded quietly. "Start at the dream, then, and we will talk from there. I am sure that I will infer what you mean by 'this stuff'."
 
@@ -214,7 +216,7 @@ Slow Hours smiled down to her. "You know, A Finger Pointing mentioned to me that
 
 "Because she loves you and because I love you. Because we want to see you happy and we notice when you are not."
 
-Motes pushed herself halfway up to sitting so that she could hug around Slow Hours's middle. "Love you too, Slowers," she said, then sat up the rest of the way, wiping yet more tears away. "I have been talking about it a lot, though, yeah. I talked about it with ma and Bee, and I talked about it with Dry Grass, and also with Sasha. Everyone talked about how some people in the clade got all upset about it."
+Motes pushed herself halfway up to sitting so that she could hug around Slow Hours's middle. "Love you too, Slowers," she said, then sat up the rest of the way, wiping yet more tears away. "I have been talking about it a lot, though, yeah. I talked about it with Ma and Bee, and I talked about it with Dry Grass, and also with Sasha and Warmth. Everyone talked about how some people in the clade got all upset about it."
 
 She nodded. "I have heard mention of the sixth and seventh stanzas, yes, and I thought for some time that the eighth was also quite unhappy, but I believe Sasha when she says that they had not ever really engaged with it specifically."
 
@@ -226,7 +228,7 @@ Motes shook her head. "I never really talked to them, even going way back — I
 
 "Much of that was because A Finger Pointing fielded most of their interactions," Slow Hours said. "She is quite protective of you — of all of us — and if she can do something to protect us, she will."
 
-"Sasha said something like that," she said, brow furrowed. "She said that ma had been working behind the scenes to deal with Hammered Silver getting angry about just about everything."
+"Sasha said something like that," she said, brow furrowed. "She said that Ma had been working behind the scenes to deal with Hammered Silver getting angry over just about everything."
 
 "A Finger Pointing worked behind the scenes to deal with most things, Speck," Slow Hours said, voice fond. "Still works. Au Lieu Du Rêve is self-sustaining, so she is doing what she does best: caring for her stanza and for the clade as a whole, even the parts of it that dislike her. But come, this is not a conversation about her. This is about your dream. This is about how you feel."
 
@@ -254,7 +256,7 @@ The skunk frowned, rubbing her paws over her knees and toying with a rip in the
 
 Slow Hours smirked, tapped at her temple with two fingers. "I have the outline of the world, do I not?"
 
-Motes stuck out her tongue. "That is not an answer!"
+Motes stuck out her tongue. "That is not an answer."
 
 "Yes, my dear, it is," her cocladist said haughtily, then the smile returned. "But in reality, most of these prophecies or omens or forecasts that I am apparently known for are simply reads on the situation based on the stories that I have read — and I have read a *lot* of stories. The clade is not done with you because that is not how people work. They do not cut contact with an erstwhile friend and then never think of them again. They think of them *constantly.* The stories wherein 'no contact' holds without further enmity are vanishingly few."
 

content/draft/005.md

@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ She stopped playing and read:
 > 2. Your insistence on both appearing as and acting like a child on a System where such remains transgressive both by its very nature and relation to paraphilia as well as by the fact that there simply are no children sys-side.
 > 3. The 'family' dynamic that you live within inside the fifth stanza. Treating Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself and Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps as your 'mothers', as your other cocladists as your siblings, is beyond a mere dalliance, but a tainting of reputations outside merely your own; it is a way of dragging others into a behavior that has a very real impact on how they — and, by extension, the rest of the clade — are perceived.
 > 4. The inclusion of the one who has named herself Sasha in not just the daily workings of Au Lieu Du Rêve but the social dealings of the fifth stanza. If I Am To Bathe In Dreams and I hold no jurisdiction over the fifth stanza, but we do hold control over our interactions with each other, and we have made our stance on the one who has named herself Sasha and how she has affected the reputation of the Ode clade abundantly clear.
-> 5. The involvement of I Remember The Rattle Of Dry Grass counter to my requests laid out for the entirety of my stanza. This goes beyond her willing participation and into the actions of the fifth stanza in general and you specifically: these no-contact orders are expected to be upheld by *both* parties. Yes, this is complicated by the individual nature of a cladist, and yet the request has been made, and plainly. For a member of a stanza to so flagrantly disregard a request and for that to be enabled by the other party leaves me feeling personally slighted.
+> 5. The involvement of I Remember The Rattle Of Dry Grass counter to my requests laid out for the entirety of my stanza. This goes beyond her disregard of the no-contact order and into her willing participation in the actions of the fifth stanza in general and engagement with you specifically: these no-contact orders are expected to be upheld by *both* parties. Yes, this is complicated by the individual nature of a cladist, and yet the request has been made, and plainly. For a member of a stanza to so flagrantly disregard a request and for that to be enabled by the other party leaves me feeling personally slighted.
 > 
 > Therefore, I am writing to reinforce the current status:
 > 
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ She stopped playing and read:
 
 When Motes overflowed, she cut herself off from play. She froze where she was. She went nonverbal, became all but catatonic. It would last days. She would disappear from the world and she would stop playing, and if she stopped playing, she would no longer be herself.
 
-So, when Motes stopped playing that day, she promised herself that she would not do that. She promised herself that, as best she could, she would do anything but that. She promised herself that she would keep going because she did not want to be seen like this. She did not want to be caught like this, with a letter in her hand, with shame on her face, with guilt all matted in her fur.
+So, when Motes stopped playing that day, she promised herself that she would *not* do that. She promised herself that, as best she could, she would do anything *but* that. She promised herself that she would keep going because she did not want to be seen like this. She did not want to be caught like this, with a letter in her hand, with shame on her face, with guilt all matted in her fur.
 
 Instead, she stood up, committed the contents of the letter to an exocortex, a hidden and compartmentalized part of her memory that rendered it inaccessible until she went looking, and then destroyed the original. There was a part of her that wanted to rip it up, to rip it into confetti and stomp on the shredded paper, to burn those shreds in a small pyre, to put the fire out with her crying, to grind ash and tears together until she had a paint with which to spell out her anger and despair.
 
@@ -89,13 +89,13 @@ But no, Beholden only hugged her, kissed her on top of the head, and tucked her
 
 And then it was dark and she was alone, her body and this mere mote of a Motes who lingered up above.
 
-Days passed out of time and time passed out of mind and mind drifted only in darkness where darkness gave no count of days. Delineations came only ever from within. She knew, for instance, that she got hungry at one point and quickly turned the sensation off. She knew that at one point that she got too warm and so she commanded the room to be colder so that she could bundle up.
+Days passed out of time and time passed out of mind and mind drifted only in darkness where darkness gave no count of days. Delineations came only ever from within. She knew, for instance, that she got hungry at one point and quickly turned the sensation off. She knew that at one point she got too warm and so she commanded the room to be colder so that she could bundle up.
 
-The only interruption than came from the outside was the door at one point creaking open. Motes did not know how long had passed — this life without play admitted no hours — but she did know that it must have been night, for precious little light came in, and what light did make it into the room was Moon silver. She knew also that she was far closer to her body now, perhaps halfway there.
+The only interruption that came from the outside was the door at one point creaking open. Motes did not know how long had passed — this life without play admitted no hours — but she did know that it must have been night, for precious little light came in, and what light did make it into the room was Moon silver. She knew also that she was far closer to her body now, perhaps halfway there.
 
-Even with so little light, it was plain to see A Finger Pointing's silhouette, and so she remained where she was.
+Even with so little light, it was plain to see A Finger Pointing's silhouette, tall and slender, and so she remained where she was.
 
-Her down-tree instance did not wait by the door but instead crept in and closed it behind her, and Motes had to track her progress by the whisper of her slacks, the soft sound of her feet on the carpet. And then there was the shifting of the bed and the feeling of  settling down behind her, laying over the covers.
+Her down-tree instance did not wait by the door but instead crept in and closed it behind her, and Motes had to track her progress by the whisper of her slacks, the soft sound of her feet on the carpet. And then there was the shifting of the bed and the feeling of a weight settling down behind her, laying over the covers.
 
 "I love you, Dot," she said, arm tucking up and around her.
 

content/draft/006.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 Motes had, at one point, started to play.
 
-That is how time's inevitable arrow works, after all, is it not? There was a time when Motes was not, when she had not yet existed, and then there was a point at which she began, and from then on, she existed. Her presence was in the world, and it was undeniable. There were witnesses. There were knock-on effects. She undeniably *was.*
+That is how time's inevitable arrow works, after all, is it not? There was a time when Motes was not, when she had not yet existed, and then there was a point at which she began, and from then on, she existed. Her presence was in the world, and it was undeniable. There were witnesses. There were knock-on effects. She inescapably *was.*
 
 And so, there was a time at which she did not play, did not surround herself with play, did not define herself by it, and then there was a point at which she began to play. It was a starting point. It was an inflection point, at which she collided with the idea of play and her trajectory was changed.
 
@@ -16,13 +16,13 @@ Roly-poly Michelle Hadje, 263 years ago, sitting in kindergarten, shitty paintbr
 
 Silly, roly-poly Michelle Hadje in her dirt-brown corduroys splotched with a patch of red from having sat down directly in a puddle of paint. It was not a drip so easily wiped away but well and truly ground into the ridged fabric of her trousers.
 
-"Oh! Miss Hadje! Michelle, Michelle, Michelle!" her teacher had tutted. Miss Willard always looked as though she regretted that she was not able to scruff children, to lift them off the ground and give them a good shake, or perhaps to rub their noses in the messes they made like some naughty pooch. "Your mother will be so upset, won't she?"
+"Oh! Miss Hadje! Michelle, Michelle, Michelle!" her teacher tutted. Miss Willard always looked as though she regretted that she was not able to scruff children, to lift them off the ground and give them a good shake, or perhaps to rub their noses in the messes they made like some naughty pooch. "Your mother will be so upset, won't she?"
 
 And Michelle cried. She cried because — people-pleaser her — she wanted nothing other than to be a good girl. She wanted her teacher to like her. She wanted her mother to love her. She wanted to be good and to never risk that love, and here she was, being told that she had done wrong, that her mother would be upset!
 
-It was all so silly! She was a kid! She was five and a half! Of course she was going to get messy. Of course there would be paint on her hands, and so why should there not also be paint on her pants? She was a kid and she was clumsy and a mess like that was just a part of her life.
+It was all so silly! She was a kid! She was five and a half! Of course she was going to get messy. Of course there would be paint on her hands, and so why should there not also be paint on her pants? She was a kid and she was clumsy, and a mess like that was just a part of her life.
 
-Her mother had picked her sobbing daughter up from school, and after much cajoling, much reassuring her that she would not abandon her, would not leave her by the side of the road to be picked up by...who exactly? She reassured her that the paint stain was fine, and that she would have a chat with Miss Willard. When your daughter's neurodivergence presents itself in anxiety, perhaps you get used to reassuring her that you love her, and when you are mother, perhaps you never tire of doing so.
+Her mother picked her sobbing daughter up from school, and after much cajoling, much reassuring her that she would not abandon her, would not leave her by the side of the road to be picked up by...who exactly? She reassured her that the paint stain was fine, and that she would have a chat with Miss Willard. When your daughter's neurodivergence presents itself in anxiety, perhaps you get used to reassuring her that you love her, and when you are mother, perhaps you never tire of doing so.
 
 -----
 
@@ -32,15 +32,15 @@ She is going to be a Motes who gets kicked from sims, who gets barred from entry
 
 She will be a Motes who gets sneered at. She will be scolded for some vague infraction, impropriety, some sin against God, against man, against the sanctity of the System. Or perhaps she will be a Motes who is studiously ignored. She will be the one others cross the street to avoid, the one others stay away from lest they be tainted with transgression by association.
 
-She is also going to be a Motes who inspires feelings of protection, of care, of *joie de vivre.* She is going to be one who is going to show the hedonism in play, one whose *raison d'être* is to have fun, and inspire in others a sense of compersion for that fun. She is going to be a Motes who makes one want to play in turn. She is going to be the one you want to hold in your lap, the one you want to call adorable, the one you want to hold close and protect from pain.
+She is also going to be a Motes who inspires feelings of protection, of care, of *joie de vivre.* She is going to be one who shows the hedonism in play, one whose *raison d'être* is to have fun, and inspire in others a sense of compersion for that fun. She is going to be a Motes who makes one want to play in turn. She is going to be the one you want to hold in your lap, the one you want to call adorable, the one you want to hold close and protect from pain.
 
 -----
 
-Sometime in the late 2100s, Motes was invited to a weird hyperformal event, one of Rye's book releases. She and her cocladists, her friends, all grumbled about it for their own reasons. It was all well and good to dress up in a skirt, but a dress? Fuck that. 
+Sometime in the late 2100s, Motes was invited to a strange, hyper-formal event, one of Rye's book releases. She and her cocladists, her friends, all grumbled about it for their own reasons. 
 
-Warmth dressed in its best mixture of clothes, something that shifted slowly over time between masculine and feminine, and yet those in attendance addressed em as almost exclusively ‘she’, and partway through, they pulled Motes aside to have a little grumbly bitch session. The bitch session quickly turned into into an emotional wave, a tide rolling inexorably in, and Motes burst into tears. She had dressed up in a fine black dress, hip-hugging and chic, and it was making her absolutely miserable.
+Warmth dressed in its best mixture of clothes, something that shifted slowly over time between masculine and feminine, and yet those in attendance addressed em as almost exclusively 'she', and partway through, they pulled Motes aside to have a little grumbly bitch session. The bitch session quickly turned into into an emotional wave, a tide rolling inexorably in, and Motes burst into tears. She had dressed up in a fine black dress, hip-hugging and chic, and it was making her absolutely miserable.
 
-As Warmth and her partner, Hold My Name, comforted her, four or five Warmths surrounding her while Hold My Name brushed her hair, the three of them got to talking about identity and the ways in which appearance and social situations ground up against that. Warmth wanted– no, needed that recognition of fluidity that night.
+As Warmth and her on-again-off-again partner, Hold My Name, comforted her, four or five Warmths surrounding her while Hold My Name brushed her hair, the three of them got to talking about identity and the ways in which appearance and social situations ground up against that. Warmth wanted– no, needed that recognition of fluidity that night.
 
 Motes increasingly needed out of this strict adherence to form.
 
@@ -48,11 +48,11 @@ Motes increasingly needed out of this strict adherence to form.
 
 The inflection point came when she, the Motes who had been forked not three years prior, the Motes who was still a human who looked much like A Finger Pointing, her immediate down-tree, sat in a paint tray while painting a stage-wide sunset on a scrim.
 
-There she was, kneeling carefully on the stage and twisting around to see the red splotch ground into the seat of her sturdy work overalls, and laughing. She laughed as she recognized the mess she had made — one big butt-print on the matte black of the stage — and she laughed at the way the paint had very clearly started to seep into the denim of her overalls. She laughed as memories flooded into her mind, of red paint on corduroy, of Miss Willard's snippy admonition, of her mom's patient reassurances. She laughed and, rather than wave away the mess that she had made on her overalls, she lay down on her front and summoned up a smaller paintbrush instead of the roller she had been using, loaded it up with paint, and started filling in the awkward splotch of paint on the stage into the body of some critter, round and soft. She took a break from her sunset and instead painted a fat, cartoonish skunk all in red.
+There she was, kneeling carefully on the stage and twisting around to see the red splotch ground into the seat of her sturdy work overalls, and laughing. She laughed as she recognized the mess she had made — one big butt-print on the matte black of the stage — and she laughed at the way the paint had very clearly started to seep into the denim of her overalls. She laughed as memories flooded into her mind, of red paint on corduroy, of Miss Willard's snippy admonition, of her mom's patient reassurances. She laughed and, rather than wave away the mess that she had made on her overalls, she lay down on her front and summoned up a smaller paintbrush instead of the roller she had been using, loaded it up with paint, and started filling in the awkward splotch on the stage into the body of some critter, round and soft. She took a break from her sunset and instead painted a fat, cartoonish skunk all in red.
 
 By the time That It Might Give The World Orders, the play's director, found her, she had added an idealized field of grass and dandelions, had painted in a frolicking fennec fox in blue, and still lay on her front, the seat of her pants colored in red from the paint she had sat in.
 
-Rather than admonish her like Miss Willard of past, That It Might Give had stood in silence for a long minute, looking down at her cocladist laying down and painting with a sheepish grin on her face, and then laughed. She laughed, leaned down, and ruffled Motes's hair and then sat with her, doodling bumblebees on the stage's surface, floating up above skunk and fennec, above grass and dandelions, and sharing in memories.
+Rather than admonish her like Miss Willard of the past, That It Might Give had stood in silence for a long minute, looking down at her cocladist laying down on her belly and painting with a sheepish grin on her face, and then laughed. She laughed, leaned down, and ruffled Motes's hair and then sat with her, doodling bumblebees on the stage's surface, floating up above skunk and fennec, above grass and dandelions, and sharing in memories.
 
 -----
 
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ They are two different ways of moving in the world, and yet they end in the same
 
 Motes fell into friendship as a kid. She fell into friendship with Alexei. She fell into friendship with Who Walks The Path. She fell into friendship with so many other kids she met at this playground or at that game sim. 
 
-Fell into and fell out of, yes? For kids fall out of friendship just as easily. They find a similarity and become the bestest of friends with each other and then that turns out to not be enough to maintain a friendship or it turns out that the other kid has another, bestester friend or it turns out that the other kid is actually kind of a b-word. And so Motes fell into friendship with Jonie who was a dog and then fell out of that friendship some few weeks later when Jonie who was a dog called Motes stinky one too many times and she was *not* stinky. She fell into friendship with Khadijah Bt. Faisal when she went through a rope skipping phase and then fell out of it when the phase ended and Khadijah cried and cried and cried and when Motes tried to rekindle the friendship the trust had already been broken. She fell out of relationships but never as many as she fell into and relationships lasted years or decades.
+Fell into and fell out of, yes? For kids fall out of friendship just as easily. They find a similarity and become the bestest of friends with each other and then that turns out to not be enough to maintain a friendship or it turns out that the other kid has another, bestester friend or it turns out that the other kid is actually kind of a b-word. And so Motes fell into friendship with Jonie who was a dog and then fell out of that friendship some few weeks later when Jonie who was a dog called Motes stinky one too many times and she was *not* stinky. She fell into friendship with Khadijah when she went through a rope skipping phase and then fell out of it when the phase ended and Khadijah cried and cried and cried and when Motes tried to rekindle the friendship the bond had already been broken. She fell out of relationships but never as many as she fell into and relationships lasted years or decades.
 
 She fell into and out of friendships and forgot, perhaps, how to form adult friendships, and so many people she met as Big Motes only passed through her life for a week or so.
 
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ She liked that.
 
 Slow Hours, Motes's big sister, had once had it said about her by Deny All Beginnings, town crier to her town scryer, "It seems so often to me that you have the criss-cross pattern of a schoolyard tool imprinted on your face, no doubt hurled at at you by a god." She explained this to Motes that there was some contemporary interpretation of the Greek god Apollo hurling a dodgeball at the innocent to bless them with the gift of prophecy.
 
-And she had indeed become the prophet of the clade, the one checkered with predictions and who bore the heady scent of omens. She was the Delphic oracle to so many other prognosticators. She would get this dreamy, distant smile on her face and then she would speak. She would say, "I will tell you two truths and one lie about the future" and then she would say unnerving things that would almost certainly come to pass. Yes, they make take years to do so, but she was uncanny in her accuracy.
+And she had indeed become the prophet of the clade, the one checkered with predictions and who bore the heady scent of omens. She was the Delphic oracle to so many other prognosticators. She would get this dreamy, distant smile on her face and then she would speak. She would say, "I will tell you two truths and one lie about the future" and then she would say unnerving things that would almost certainly come to pass. Yes, they might take years to do so, but she was uncanny in her accuracy.
 
 So Motes came to her, to the crowd of other crew, who always seemed to tolerate Slow Hours better than the cast, came to her and threw herself dramatically across her cocladist's lap, requesting some brushings to get the paint flecks out of her tail while she thought about how to say what she needed to say.
 
@@ -98,11 +98,11 @@ So Motes came to her, to the crowd of other crew, who always seemed to tolerate
 
 "You were your big self, yes?"
 
-She nodded. "We danced for a bit in the pit and then got some drinks and talked outside, then danced some more." When Slow Hours remained attentively silent, she continued. "And that was it. That is all I ever do, right? Go to a show, get wasted, maybe get laid, and then I go back to the stuff I really enjoy. I have my friends here. I have my work. I have you and Beholden and A Finger Pointing–" This was before she had openly started referring to them by familial terms. "–and Beckoning and Muse and that is all I need! I do not need much else to continue to from one day to the next. I do not *do* love or deep friendships. Not like that."
+She nodded. "We danced for a bit in the pit and then got some drinks and talked outside, then danced some more." When Slow Hours remained attentively silent, she continued. "And that was it. That is all I ever do, right? Go to a show, get wasted, maybe get laid, and then I go back to the stuff I really enjoy. I have my friends here. I have my work. I have you and Beholden and A Finger Pointing–" This was before she had openly started referring to them by familial terms. "–and Beckoning and Muse and that is all I need. I do not need much else to continue to from one day to the next. I do not *do* love or deep friendships. Not like that."
 
 Slow Hours nodded. "I sense a 'but', Speck."
 
-"Wellll..." Motes said, pushing herself back up to sitting. "I do not do love, but a lot of people do, including a lot of the people I wind up spending the night with in Big Motes mode. I am honest and up front, duh, and most understand that this is just for the fun of it. I am a healthy woman, right? I am two centuries old, but I am still thirty, yeah? I like sex as much as any two hundred year old woman in her thirties."
+"Wellll..." Motes said, pushing herself back up to sitting. "I do not do love, but a lot of people do, including a lot of the people I wind up spending the night with in Big Motes mode. I am honest and up front, duh, and most understand that this is just for the fun of it. I am a healthy woman, right? I am, like, a century and a half old, but I am still thirty, right? I like sex as much as any hundred and fifty year old woman in her thirties."
 
 She nodded, laughing.
 
@@ -120,7 +120,7 @@ She groaned and buried her face against her cocladist's shoulder. "I knooow. Any
 
 She shook her head. "That was part of what I wanted to talk to you about."
 
-Slow Hours asked her several questions. She asked about the person. She asked about the day before. She asked about the morning after. She asked about Beholden and Unbidden and the crowd around her. She asked about how drunk she had been, how high. She asked like there was some thread being tugged, whether by her fingers or by Motes's or Apollo himself. No one ever asked how this worked, not even Slow Hours — *especially* not Slow Hours — lest the whole thing come tumbling down.
+Slow Hours asked her several questions. She asked about the person. She asked about the day before. She asked about the morning after. She asked about Beholden and Unbidden and the crowd around her. She asked about how drunk she had been, how high. She asked like there was some thread being tugged, whether by her fingers or by Motes's or by Apollo himself. No one ever asked how this worked, not even Slow Hours — *especially* not Slow Hours — lest the whole thing come tumbling down.
 
 "Speck," she said, interrupting Motes at one point. "Here are two truths and a lie."
 
@@ -162,7 +162,7 @@ Motes should not, she is told, do many things, and yet she does them anyway. She
 
 She is told these things via hints and intimations. She is told these things through A Finger Pointing and Slow Hours and countless others.
 
-She is told gently. She is told to be careful. She is told out of a sense of protectiveness. She is told because, regardless of the implications of these warnings, the fifth stanza really does love her — they tell her and she believes — and she is told because even she can see many ways that there are plenty and sufficient reasons that someone looking young in a world with a lower bound on age would be viewed with disdain, and yet she may not see *all* of those ways.
+She is told gently. She is told to be careful. She is told out of a sense of protectiveness. She is told because, regardless of the implications of these warnings, the fifth stanza really does love her — they tell her and she believes them — and she is told because even she can see many ways that there are plenty and sufficient reasons that someone looking young in a world with a lower bound on age would be viewed with disdain, and yet she may not see *all* of those ways.
 
 -----
 
@@ -178,15 +178,15 @@ But she played in that transgression. She used it to push and press against thos
 
 She played as a child — even if, at first, it was only within the confines of home, and then within the stanza's neighborhood, and then within the troupe, before she ever did so in public.
 
-She played in that familial identity, of A Finger Pointing as 'ma' and Beholden as 'Bee' and Slow Hours as Sis Hours — even if, at first, it was only within the confines of home; even if, at first, it engendered awkward and cautious feelings.
+She played in that familial identity, of A Finger Pointing as 'Ma' and Beholden as 'Bee' and Slow Hours as Sis Hours — even if, at first, it was only within the confines of home; even if, at first, it engendered awkward and cautious feelings.
 
-Life's but a walking shadow, a player poor that struts and frets upon the stage, yes? All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, yes?
+Life is but a walking shadow, a player poor that struts and frets upon the stage, yes? All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players, yes?
 
 Motes played because life was a play.
 
 But even as she tested those boundaries and always respected them when they were set, she would ever negotiate a way forward such that she could live this life that she had set for herself.
 
-It was a bit, and she was committed to it. She was an actress, yes? She had a part to play, yes? The kid? The child? The daughter and sister, yes? It was method acting over the course of a lifetime. She committed to the bit and convinced herself to forget how to uncommit, and that, in itself was lovely.
+It was a bit, and she was committed to it. She was an actress, yes? She had a part to play, yes? The kid? The child? The daughter and sister, yes? It was method acting over the course of a lifetime. She committed to the bit and convinced herself as best she could to forget how to uncommit, and that, in itself was lovely.
 
 -----
 

content/draft/007.md

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ A Finger Pointing was not playing.
 
 She was not fucking around. She was not putting up with this. She would never put up with this, never should have put up with this. Seven years of silence, five decades of barely concealed spying, a century of awkward attempts to maintain a friendship, a cohesion, a sense of community with someone who clearly loathed some integral part of her life.
 
-She was not going to play around, here. She was not going to play soft. She was not going to play hard. She was not going to play at all, not with Hammered Silver, not anymore.
+She was not going to play around, here. She was not going to play soft. She was not even going to play hard: she was not going to play at all. Not with Hammered Silver. Not anymore.
 
 > **To:** Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself of the Ode clade **(EYES-ONLY)**   
 > **From:** Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver of the Ode clade  
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ She was not going to play around, here. She was not going to play soft. She was
 > 
 > Upon learning that I Remember The Rattle Of The Dry Grass has continued in her association with you, And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights, and the one who has named herself Sasha, I have instituted a no-contact order between her and the rest of the sixth stanza for her perfidy. It was my hope that my previous directive regarding the fifth stanza would have been clear enough to require no further clarification, and yet this is the situation that we have found ourselves in.
 > 
-> This letter serves as a means to reinforce that this no-contact order still stands. That I even need to send such a reminder is upsetting and insulting. I have sent a letter to And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights explaining my reasoning more clearly for someone who seems obstinately opposed to staying grounded to reality. I will reiterate the status of this request here for clarity:
+> This letter serves as a means to reinforce that this no-contact order still stands. That I even need to send such a reminder is upsetting and insulting. I have sent a letter to And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights explaining my reasoning more clearly for someone who seems obstinately opposed to staying grounded in reality. I will reiterate the status of this request here for clarity:
 > 
 > 1. There is to be no contact between the fifth stanza and either the sixth or seventh stanzas.
 > 2. There is to be no contact between the one who has named herself Sasha and either the sixth or seventh stanzas.
@@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ Some treacherously sunny afternoon some centuries back, Sasha/Michelle Hadje sat
 
 He laughed. "I wholeheartedly endorse this course of action. One of you want to take on an assignment today?"
 
-They — this gaggle of skunks and women who were still in some way skunks — put their heads together to discuss, and even then, even so few minutes after they had come into being, taken for their names the first lines of the ten stanzas of a poem each held close to their heart, it became clear that they differed in some fundamental way that went beyond simple individuation.
+They — this gaggle of skunks and women who were still in some way skunks — put their heads together to discuss, and even then, even so few minutes after they had come into being and taken for their names the first lines of the ten stanzas of a poem each held close to their heart, it became clear that they differed in some fundamental way that went beyond simple individuation.
 
 Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself, the woman who bore the first line of the fifth stanza for a name, had lived through this four times, enough times to know just what had been done, for had she not been Michelle/Sasha for the first four first lines coming into being?
 
@@ -44,7 +44,7 @@ Sasha/Michelle had sat on the rim of the fountain and looked out on the world wi
 
 Michelle/Sasha had remembered a day two decades back when she had sat on the rim of a fountain not so different from this one, sat beside an erstwhile partner who made such a better friend than lover that they remained in love in friendship in their own gentle way until ey had given emself to the act of creation, and forked into her second long-lived instance, Life Breeds Life But Death Must Now Be Chosen.
 
-Sasha/Michelle had thought of their conversation together, those two better-friends-than-lovers, about some musical her grandparents had taken her to for her birthday, how she had sung out of key, *"Oh, my Rivkah, where have you gone?"* and then hid her face behind her coffee cup, and forked off her third long-lived instance, Oh, But To Whom Do I Speak These Words.
+Sasha/Michelle had thought of their conversation together, those two better-friends-than-lovers, about some musical her grandparents had taken her to for her birthday, how she had sung out of key, *"Oh, my Rivkah, where have you gone?"* then hid her face behind her coffee cup, and forked off her third long-lived instance, Oh, But To Whom Do I Speak These Words.
 
 Michelle/Sasha had smiled at the memories of how she had, despite her poor attempt at expressing the joy of that song, gushed about nearly every aspect of the production, the use of projectors to add a visual dreaminess to the stage, the subtle use of props as percussion instruments, and forked again into her fourth long-lived instance, Among Those Who Create Are Those Who Forge.
 
@@ -70,13 +70,13 @@ From that point on, A Finger Pointing made herself the glue of this growing clad
 
 Yes, there were steps that she needed to take. There were ways that she needed to keep herself safe. There were ways that those who above all else she loved might come to harm and she needed to keep them safe as well. She needed to ensure their safety even above her own.
 
-Dry Grass was the first she kept safe. A home was provided to her within the fifth stanza's neighborhood, a little cottage some doors down from where A Finger Pointing, Beholden, and Motes lived. She may have been safe as she was, they both agreed, but safety from her down-tree's anger was not the only safety that was needed. There was also safety from being alone, from being left without support.
+Dry Grass was the first she kept safe. A home was provided to her within the fifth stanza's neighborhood, a little cottage some doors down from where A Finger Pointing, Beholden, and Motes lived. She may have been safe where she was, they both agreed, but safety from her down-tree's anger was not the only safety that was needed. There was also safety from being alone, from being left without support.
 
 Dry Grass did not weep. She did not sob. The tears she shed that night, sitting around the kitchen table with A Finger Pointing and Beholden, were tears of fury. They were tears of betrayal.
 
 The next day, they worked together.
 
-They reconvened around that same kitchen table, though this time, instead of Beholden, Sasha joined them, the cinnamon skunk holding a mug of coffee, one of those mochas she so loved, in her paws, staring down into the remnants of the whipped cream that remained atop.
+They reconvened around that same kitchen table, though this time, instead of Beholden, Sasha joined them, the cinnamon skunk holding a mug of coffee — one of those mochas she so loved — in her paws, staring down into the remnants of the whipped cream that remained atop.
 
 "I am sorry to hear that, Dry Grass. I am sorry to both of you," she said.
 
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ Both nodded.
 
 "It has been more than a few years since I have spoken to Hammered Silver," Sasha admitted. "I last spoke with her around the time that the Artemisians arrived, yes? Before I became that which I am, yes?" A faint smirk painted her muzzle as she added, "The one who has named herself Sasha, yes?"
 
-A Finger Pointing grit her teeth, counting silently to ten. "That she weaponized all of our names against us only makes me all the angrier. I do not know what to expect of her, though. I do not know what her true intent is."
+A Finger Pointing gritted her teeth, counting silently to ten. "That she weaponized all of our names against us only makes me all the angrier. I do not know what to expect of her, though. I do not know what her true intent is."
 
 "As in what is her goal for sending this letter?"
 
@@ -156,7 +156,7 @@ She spent time with them all, yes, but the benefit of diving deep into music is
 
 At some point, though they disagreed on when — was it five years later? Ten? Each argued passionately for one, and then the other — they *became* dates.
 
-There was sense of aromancy in A Finger Pointing that grew after she forked. <!-- Discuss --> She never could say where from; perhaps it was simply that she would rather have been friends with anyone 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.
+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 anyone 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 yes, they had each other.
 
@@ -164,7 +164,7 @@ There was, of course, the social implications to consider, the taboo around intr
 
 True Name suggested. She suggested that, as pleased as she was for them, their relationship remain something for behind closed doors. Something where they kept their I-love-yous and kisses for a shared bed rather than out on the town or at however many gatherings they might wish to go to. Politics was, as ever, politics, and here are the political reasons laid bare.
 
-Hers were the kind suggestions. The comprehensible suggestions. The ones based in logic and explained clearly: maintaining a sense of taboo in what was quickly becoming a queer-normative society added to the desire for change. Comprehensible, yes; the logic was sound, internally consistent. Wrong, of course, but if such was to be the way of things, then so be it.
+Hers were the kind suggestions. The comprehensible suggestions. The ones based in logic and explained clearly: maintaining a sense of taboo in what was quickly becoming a queer-normative society added to the desire for change by providing something to reach for. Comprehensible, yes; the logic was sound, internally consistent. Wrong, of course, but if such was to be the way of things, then so be it.
 
 Other suggestions: not so kind.
 
@@ -182,7 +182,7 @@ It was the first letter of several. It was the first time of many that she stood
 
 A Weapon Against The Waking World, it turned out, was perfectly happy to meet with them.
 
-Waking World had long ago taken up the mantle of 'dad'. Not father, not pa, but specifically dad. Where Hammered Silver reveled in feelings of motherhood, of caring and cherishing and clinging tight, such as they might be sys-side, he had reveled in all the glorious humor of fatherhood, of protecting and uplifting and letting go. He was a being of idle quips and truly terrible dad jokes. He was a man who might call you 'sport' or 'champ' as easily as 'friend'. He was, in all ways except physical, *your* dad, whoever you might be.
+Waking World had long ago taken up the mantle of 'dad'. Not father, not guardian, but specifically dad. Where Hammered Silver reveled in feelings of motherhood, of caring and cherishing and clinging tight, such as they might be sys-side, he had reveled in all the glorious humor of fatherhood, of protecting and uplifting and letting go. He was a being of idle quips and truly terrible dad jokes. He was a man who might call you 'sport' or 'champ' as easily as 'friend'. He was, in all ways except physical, *your* dad, whoever you might be.
 
 He had long ago taken the form of a stocky man, hairline receding, tall enough, looking just enough like an Odist that one could see that he might belong to the clade — his name aside, of course — and yet the resemblance was slight enough that seeing him beside Hammered Silver would not inspire comments of "siblings...?"
 
@@ -212,7 +212,7 @@ Waking World blanched. "Wait, shit, really? Uh..." He folded his hands in his la
 
 She nodded. "None of us know why, but we are asking around to see if anyone knows what happened. It could be she just fell or something. I imagine the letter she got must have been a hell of a shock." She smiled faintly, shakily. "I apologize, though, earnestly. That should not have spilled over onto you."
 
-He nodded, giving a hint of a bow from where he sat. "Well," he started once more. "All of that to say that she is mad as hell, but in a very her way. She is feeling mad at Dry Grass for visiting and mad at herself for the decision she made — I do not think even she agrees with it — so she is just getting mad at every little thing. That is probably why she sent off that flurry of letters."
+He nodded, giving a hint of a bow from where he sat. "Well," he started once more. "All of that to say that she is mad as hell, but in a very *her* way. She is feeling mad at Dry Grass for visiting and mad at herself for the decision she made — I do not think even she agrees with it — so she is just getting mad at every little thing. That is probably why she sent off that flurry of letters."
 
 "Flurry?" A Finger Pointing asked, frowning.
 
@@ -226,9 +226,9 @@ Waking World shrugged. "She even sent me one. I got it while in the next room ov
 
 "Is that something we need to be concerned about, though?" she asked. "Beholden is not the only one worried about her getting violent."
 
-"Really, no, I do not think you have anything like that to worry about from her". Rubbing his palms together, he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "I might, but that is my role in this."
+"Really, no, I do not think you have anything like that to worry about from her". Rubbing his palms together, he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "I might, but that is my role in this: I rein her in by being a target."
 
-"Well, is there anything we can do about it, then? I do not like your role in this, either, but again, that will be a conversation for later. I find myself all but blind with fury, though, and the thought that I might just let this slide back into silence is unconscionable. Were she to allow us to be in the same room..." She trailed off, letting the aposiopesis speak for her.
+"Well, is there anything we can do about it, then? I do not like your role in this either, but again, that will be a conversation for later. I find myself all but blind with fury, though, and the thought that I might just let this slide back into silence is unconscionable. Were she to allow us to be in the same room..." She trailed off, letting the aposiopesis speak for her.
 
 "I am half tempted to find a way back just to give her a punch to the gut," Dry Grass growled. "But I have been locked out of the entire sim."
 
@@ -284,7 +284,7 @@ But at some point, even the closest of friendships find a point of irreconcilabl
 
 Theirs was not the closest of friendships.
 
-One day, sometime late in the 2100s or early 2200s, sometime systime 100, there was a point where the tenor of these meetings once more changed. Once more, there was a distance, a stiffness, and when pressed, once more nothing came from it.
+One day, sometime late in the 2100s or early 2200s, sometime around systime 100, there was a point where the tenor of these meetings once more changed. Once more, there was a distance, a stiffness, and when pressed, once more nothing came from it.
 
 No letter came.
 
@@ -347,11 +347,11 @@ A Finger Pointing nodded stiffly, agreed, and scheduled the next lunch date.
 
 -----
 
-The walk home was slow, any faster, and she feared that she might stumble.
+The walk home was slow; any faster, and she feared that she might stumble.
 
 Beholden walked with her paws stuffed into the pockets of her hoodie, mostly looking down to her feet as they trudged along the sidewalk, while A Finger Pointing walked with her arm looped through her partner's, trusting the skunk to get them both home.
 
-She needed it; the world had indeed stopped making sense, as though seen in watercolors, too much ink on canvas. The sound of their footsteps on gravel and concrete and grass was a fine grit within her ears. The sound of the door opening, the feeling of the couch beneath her.
+She needed it. The world had indeed stopped making sense, as though seen in watercolors, too much pigment on canvas. The sound of their footsteps on gravel and concrete and grass was a fine grit within her ears. The sound of the door opening, the feeling of the couch beneath her, the colors of Motes's paintings on the wall, each was too much.
 
 There was panic, there, yes — there was dissociation, derealization, depersonalization — panic about the events, panic about Dry Grass and Motes and herself and Beholden, but there was also exhaustion. There was also the knock-on effects of a fit of play some years back, all welling up within her.
 
@@ -363,7 +363,7 @@ And so, A Finger Pointing accepted her up-tree's merge just as blithely.
 
 The effects were both subtle and dramatic. 
 
-They were subtle because there was was no sudden incapacitation, no torturous existence that left her craving non-existence. They were subtle because they left her with a life so much like the one she had, but for the fact that her sensorium and sense of self had been severed, separated.
+They were subtle because there was was no sudden incapacitation, no torturous existence that left her craving non-existence. They were subtle because they left her with a life so much like the one she had, but for the fact that her sensorium and sense of self had been severed, separated. *That* was the drama.
 
 This was the dissociation. This was the derealization. This was the world around her ceasing to make sense, as though in a dream. As though in a dream because she *did* live in a dream, did she not? She lived in the consensual dream that was the System, yes? It was hyper-dreaming, then, it was understanding a dream within a dream. 
 
@@ -371,7 +371,7 @@ It was like the System before the dream had been made consensual. It was like wh
 
 It was having a conversation with a dear one when tired, when one's attention drifted, and then trying to repeat the words that you had almost but not quite heard. It was looking at a scene and remembering that you were standing on a beach a moment ago, and yet being unable to tell water from shore, from sand. It was looking at your partner and not recognizing their face, not recognizing what a face *was.*
 
-It was pain, but she could not tell where or what kind or even if it was pain at all. It was vertigo. It was no up or down.
+It was pain, but she could not tell where or what kind or even if it was pain at all. It was vertigo. It was no up, no down.
 
 It was curling in the corner in a fetal position because to do aught else was to risk falling over and breaking a limb.
 
@@ -401,7 +401,7 @@ A Finger Pointing sighed. "I suppose she would not have, no." She rolled her hea
 
 Beholden nodded slowly. "That is good, then."
 
-"It will just mean a bit of a compromise on my morals." She paused, organizing her thoughts. "It will mean letting some of this hurt through. It will mean letting Hammered Silver get to me — just a little bit — so that she can feel a little bit of a victory. It is a compromise."
+"It will just mean a bit of a compromise on my morals." She paused, organizing her thoughts. "It will mean letting some of this hurt through. It will mean letting Hammered Silver get to me — just a little bit — so that she can feel a little bit of a victory and hold onto that instead of us. It is a compromise."
 
 The skunk bridled. "You are right. I do not like it at *all.* That is a shitty fucking compromise."
 
@@ -411,7 +411,7 @@ She chuckled drily, took another sip of water. "To be fair, my muse, neither do
 
 An end to a friendship with a person is not the end of knowing that person. An end to a friendship can be sudden or gradual. It can be the type of thing that happens in one fell swoop: an argument, perhaps, or a disappearance. It can be the type of thing that takes months and years and decades: a drifting apart, perhaps, or a series of slow decisions. It can be both: an inflection point is reached and neither realizes it until down the line and, oh, perhaps it had ended long ago.
 
-A Finger Pointing was not sure when it was that her friendship with Hammered Silver *actually* ended, because there were so many points at which it *could have* ended that it was hard to pick just one. There were so many letters, now all stored in a single exo so that they would not simply live within her actual memory at all times, and each of those could have been the end of a friendship as easily as any other.
+A Finger Pointing was not sure when it was that her friendship with Hammered Silver *actually* died, because there were so many points at which it *could have* died that it was hard to pick just one. There were so many letters, now all stored in a single exo so that they would not simply live within her actual memory at all times, and each of those could have been the end of a friendship as easily as any other.
 
 There was still that point of realization, though. There was that point when she realized that she had long ago ceased to be Hammered Silver's friend, had long ago become merely her cocladist, some obligation to be followed up upon out of a tired sense of formality or information gathering over friendship-colored lunches.
 
@@ -433,7 +433,7 @@ But no, the end of their friendship came far earlier. Decades earlier.
 
 At some point back in the early 2100s, Motes had begun exploring this role of the babiest Odist of the fifth stanza — in her twenties, sure, but a being built entirely out of play. A note arrived.
 
-At some point back in the late 2100s, Motes had begun exploring this form of childhood — no one's child in particular, sure, but a being built entirely out of play. A note arrived.
+At some point back in the late 2100s, Motes had begun exploring this form of childhood — no one's child in particular, sure, and everyone's, but a being built entirely out of play. A note arrived.
 
 And at some point back in the mid 2200s, Motes had begun exploring the concept of family. She had since moved in with A Finger Pointing and Beholden, and the longer she stayed, the more she fell in love with them as her guardians and the more they fell in love with her as their charge.
 
@@ -441,7 +441,7 @@ For this was true of all of her up-trees, and for much of Au Lieu Du Rêve besid
 
 She was their matron, in a way. She was their protector. She shielded them as best she could from the politics that so much of their cocladists were engaging in throughout the rest of the System. "But that is my job," she reasoned aloud when she became more open about this protection. "That is why we have an administrator for Au Lieu Du Rêve, yes? Someone has to deal with the politics of running a theatre, yes?"
 
-The first time Motes called A Finger Pointing 'ma', there had been a conversation, full of various confusions and inquiries and boundaries. Both came to an agreement that this was not comfortable. Not now, not yet.
+The first time Motes called A Finger Pointing 'Ma', there had been a conversation, full of various confusions and inquiries and boundaries. Both came to an agreement that this was not comfortable. Not now. Not yet.
 
 A year later — for what is a year to a cladist? — Motes did it again, and this time she asked first, and permission was granted to see how it felt. It was still uncomfortable, but perhaps there was joy to be found. Perhaps there was expectations and standards and trust that could be built up.
 
@@ -457,15 +457,15 @@ This built up a false equivalence within all three of them. It allowed them to c
 
 And so it remained largely at home, at home with the three of them and at home in the neighborhood that was slowly building up around them. It remained a secret, but, like A Finger Pointing and Beholden's relationship, it remained an open one. The quiet of the secret allowed them live to their fullest, and the openness allowed them to share joy where they felt safe doing so.
 
-But then, some time back around systime 182, back around the time the clocks ticked over to 2306, back around the time Michelle/Sasha had summoned them all to her field to merge centuries of memory and then quit, perished, Hammered Silver sent one of her longest letters yet. It was in some ways a screed. It was beyond simply admonition, note, or missive. It was an epistle, some general letter intended to be a point of instruction not just to her but to the world as a whole.
+But then, some time back around systime 182, back around the time the clocks ticked over to 2306, back around the time Michelle/Sasha had summoned them all to her field to merge centuries of memory and then quit — perished — Hammered Silver sent one of her longest letters yet. It was in some ways a screed. It was beyond simply admonition, note, or missive. It was an epistle, some general letter intended to be a point of instruction not just to her but to the world as a whole.
 
-The screed, well worth embodying as a physical letter if only to be torn up, ripped to shreds, burnt to ash, soaked with tears to douse the fire, ground into a paint, and used to spell out anger and despair, spelled out in nigh-unintelligible detail all of the ways in which she and hers had fallen short.
+The screed — well worth embodying as a physical letter if only to be torn up, ripped to shreds, burnt to ash, soaked with tears to douse the fire, ground into a paint, and used to spell out anger and despair — laid out in nigh-unintelligible detail all of the ways in which she and hers had fallen short.
 
 Motes had existed. She had tested the limits and found them flexible. She had found the boundaries negotiable. She had poked her nose out into the world and found it largely amenable to her existence. She had lived her life in play. She had played as a child and played as an adult. She had gone down slides and been bitten during sex and died on-stage and off, all countless times.
 
 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 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.
 
 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.
 
@@ -479,7 +479,7 @@ That was the time their friendship died, the moment A Finger Pointing received t
 
 Once she had had her water, and then a simple drink mixed by Beholden, and spent an hour resting, 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 to Hammered Silver when she was finished.
+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.
 
 "Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver," she began, bowing toward her recording instance. "I will not apologize for breaking our silence, but I will allow it to fall over us once more after I am finished with this message. This is simply too important for me to leave unsaid.
 
@@ -515,7 +515,9 @@ She read the letter through twice and then committed it to an exocortex and dest
 
 "What a fucking bitch," she muttered to herself as she turned to return inside.
 
-A simple dinner. A few glasses of wine. A quiet evening saying nothing while she lounged with her head on Beholden's lap while the skunk worked.
+At least it had fucking 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.
 
 As darkness fell, as they planned on bed, she checked up on Motes for herself.
 

content/draft/008.md

@@ -1,305 +1,177 @@
-# 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.

content/draft/009.md

@@ -1,165 +1,305 @@
 # Motes — 2362
 
-Motes played.
+Motes thought of play.
 
-She played in the dark. She played crawling on hands and knees. She played hide and seek. She played stealth missions. She played silently, muffling the sound of her passage and keeping her breathing quiet; it was against the rules to turn it off. She played base commander, repelling invisible foes, hollering out orders to her friends. She played noisily, her voice echoing off the rocky walls with laughter and shouts bouncing around seemingly endlessly.
+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 in Rock Park, a hulking mound of salmon, pink, gold, and buff flagstone that had been stacked in such a way as to create a series of twisty, narrow tunnels throughout. The tunnels turned sharply, or required her to climb up vague suggestions of ladders made by protruding slabs of rock, or dumped her down into a central cavern, the ground covered in a layer of velvety soft mulch to cushion any falls. The cavern that opened out on one end into a broader playground, all of the equipment themed to be related to a quarry: dump trucks and bucket hoists and front end loaders and excavators.
+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 played throughout the rest of the park, hauling that mulch or digging into it with the equipment or her paws, putting those digger claws of hers to use. She played in the grass, played in the little stands of pine trees that dotted the field beyond, the two whitewashed gazebos. Sometimes there were roller-blades or bikes or skateboards. Sometimes there were self-propelled levitation boots that let you putter along at a few miles per hour a hand's breadth above the ground and which would do all they could to keep you from falling over.
+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 with her friends. She played with strangers she had seen before yet never talked to. She played with those she saw once and then never saw again.
+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.
 
-She played until she got tired, until enough of her friends got bored and wandered off, until the long, breezy morning in this sim sighed its way into the heat of afternoon. She played until the obvious thing to do was to climb up to the top of the tunnel-ridden pile of flagstone to sit at the summit, enjoying the sun with Alexei.
+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.
 
-The park was only one part of a small town, only one part of a sizeable sim, but it was a popular destination for those who leaned into childhood on Lagrange for its permissive attitudes and curious inhabitants, most of whom seemed to be families — found or blood — and many of whom were the kids who played here. Alexei lived here with the family he had built: three guardians, one of whom was his great-grandfather by blood, and a sister.
+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.
 
-"Motes," he said after they had sat in silence for some time. "Where were you, anyway? I know you said you didn't want to talk about it, but it's just us, right?"
+*An adult breakfast,* a part of her whispered. *Setting aside childish things...*
 
-She shrugged and picked at the rock with a claw, worrying loose a thin chip of flagstone. "I still do not *want* to talk about it," she said, then grinned over at him. "But I will anyway."
+She shook her head to dispel the lingering thought, one based in overflow rather than her current mood.
 
-"That's because you never shut up."
+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 laughed and threw the chip of rock at him. "That is not *not* true. I guess it is extra true, actually, since most of my time away was spent talking." She tried to scratch up another chip, but she seemed to have lucked out that first time. "Sorry I just disappeared a while back."
+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.
 
-"Yeah, I was worried. I thought you got hurt real bad. What happened?"
+Definitely a morning for a mimosa.
 
-She hesitated, averting her gaze to look out into the park around her, the park she had claimed as her domain not half an hour before. "I got a high priority ping that made me fall, and then I hit my face on that stupid dome."
+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.
 
-"I saw you had a bloody nose, yeah," he said, patting her shoulder. "That sucks. Was it a come-home ping?"
+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.
 
-"Nah, it was just a warning," she said, speaking slowly while she organized her thoughts, trying to figure out just how much to say. "It was one of my cocladists being rude. She sent me a horrible letter, and wanted me to be in all the wrong moods when I read it, I think."
+What was missing...ah! Coffee. 
 
-"Ew."
+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.
 
-"Ew is right. She is one of those in the clade that does not like me doing this," she said, gesturing down at herself, out at the playground. "She sent me a huge letter telling me that in a million different ways."
+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.
 
-Alexei screwed up his face in a wince. "Double-ew. So were you in trouble? Are you still?"
+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 alert, the empty dishes on the table, they both smiled and changed course to settle down on either side of her.
 
-"I do not think so. At least, everyone is telling me I am not, that it was just her being a b-word and that she just wanted me and my family to feel bad so that she could feel like she had done something."
+"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."
 
-"So a bully," he said flatly.
+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."
 
-Motes giggled. "I mean, I guess so. Big Motes understands it better, but she is busy."
+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."
 
-This had long ago become a hint to drop into conversations that to continue them would be to break the illusion, to pull back the curtain and expose the play for what it was: merely a performance.
+"Nor should you be," A Finger Pointing scoffed. "I would be disappointed if you had not."
 
-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.
+"Of course you would be." Her grin softened to a smile. "You really set up the sim to ping you when I woke?"
 
-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."
+"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."
 
-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."
+"She was worried," Beholden stage-whispered. "You should have seen her brighten when she got the notification you were in the kitchen."
 
-There was a snort of laughter from the boy. "That is definitely a you thing."
+"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."
 
-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. "Yeah, I guess," she mumbled. "You ever get anxious about all this?"
+"She about started crying," Beholden continued, smirk on her muzzle.
 
-"All this?"
+""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?"
 
-"Being a kid, that sort of thing."
+"She was so rude, cutting off a conversation with Sasha mid-sentence and rushing us back here, putting on her most nonchalant act."
 
-"Isn't this stuff for being busy?"
+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 frowned. "I know, but I want to know. I just got back from two weeks of freaking out."
+"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."
 
-"Two and a half," Alexei said.
+"Another mimosa for me, Beholden," Motes added.
 
-"Please?"
+Laughing, the skunk gave her one more of those nose-dot kisses before disentangling herself to see to drinks.
 
-"Hmph."
+"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."
 
-"Pretty pleeease?" she whined. "With a cherry on top?"
+"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."
 
-It was his turn to mull things over, apparently, given the comfortable, thoughtful silence that followed. "I dunno. Sometimes, I guess. Sometimes I worry about where I can go like this, right? Like, we met when we were big. We met at that crazy bar with all the crazy music. I go to that stuff as Big Alexei, kinda because I don't want to get trampled, and kinda because I'm worried they'll kick me out."
+Her cocladist nodded. "I imagine so. Are you up to speaking about what happened?"
 
-"Yeah," she said, lining a few pebbles up in a row. "I have been kicked out of lots and lots and lots of places."
+She nodded. "A little bit. I will let you know if I need to bow out."
 
-"You're also older than I am," he retorted. "So we've probably been kicked out of places at the same rate."
+"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."
 
-She blew a raspberry at him, got one in return.
+Motes wilted.
 
-"You're not really talking about anxiety, though, right? Like, you're talking about shame, I think."
+"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?"
 
-Another few pebbles wound up in the row as she sat in silence.
+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.
 
-"Yeah." He rolled onto his side to look at her, leaving his arm half-draped over his face to block out the sun. "I guess I kinda do, though it always comes from the outside. Like, getting kicked out of a place is whatever, but when someone I meet as Big Alexei learns about Little Alexei and gets all upset and yells at me or cuts contact–" 
+"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."
 
-At this, Motes winced.
+Beholden tasted her drink, nodded appreciatively, then asked, "Have you come to any conclusions?"
 
-He frowned. "That's what happened, isn't it? You had someone cut contact because they learned of it? One of your cocladists?"
+"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?"
 
-"Yeah," she mumbled. "She already knew, though, she just found out one of her up-trees was still talking to me."
+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."
 
-"She made her own up-trees cut contact, too?" He furrowed his brow. "Aren't you guys like super dispersionistas?"
+Motes shook her head gently so as not to dislodge crown or umbrella.
 
-She laughed. "Some of us. Some of us drifted apart, but some of us stick together really tightly. I have ma and Bee and a bunch of siblings, right?"
+"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 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?"
+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."
 
-Motes sighed. "I guess, yeah. That is why it hurt and why I had to spend a lot of time thinking about it."
+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–"
 
-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!"
+"Absolutely not," Motes said, laughing. "I would not have you change your ways just because I am feeling icky for a bit."
 
-She laughed, reaching out to bat at his hand. "I guess I pretty much did, because here I am!"
+"It is an offer, Motes," the skunk chided gently. "Not some weird obligation for us."
 
-After that, their conversation fell back into more comfortable things. They spoke of friends. They spoke of the pros and cons of Rock Park. They spoke of families and the secret pleasures of being punished. Then they played a half-hearted game of tag before Motes finally said goodbye and stepped home just in time for the evening's planned activities, floating on a cloud of joy like she had not experienced in more than two weeks.
+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."
 
-At home, she dashed to the kitchen and gulped down a glass of water, laughed at the uncomfortable chill this left her with, and then dashed out into the fading afternoon. 
+"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."
 
-It was a night for good food and terrible movies.
+"Oh?"
 
-Beholden grilled hot dogs and bratwurst and Motes, yes, had them loaded up with veggies, dragged through the garden.
+She nodded. "Are you alright to talk about it? I do not know that even Beholden knows the full extent of what happened."
 
-Ioan grilled *frigărui,* kebabs loaded up with Carpathian seasonings, and *mititei,* a quick sausage.
+The skunk shook her head.
 
-Warmth made an array of its best guesses at Artemisian food, some of which were quite tasty. Few who tried the fluffy tower of *frahabrodåt* went back for seconds, at which ey seemed quite proud.
+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."
 
-Motes ate it all. She ate herself overfull. She ate herself messy, leaving her shirt dotted with mustard and grease, her lips shining with the oily sheen of at least three different types of sausage.
+Beholden punched her gently on the shoulder before taking her empty glass and setting it on the table in front of them.
 
-Thus sated, she darted around the gathering, the thirty or so people who had showed up from both within the clade and without. She hugged everyone who wanted a hug, chased Warmth in multiples, the two little skunks leapfrogging each other and leaving their fur and clothes stained green with with grass. She drank a few margaritas, allowing through only a modicum of the drunkenness so that she remained cognizant and present through the tipsiness, awake and alert through the haze.
+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.
 
-She wove around A Finger Pointing and Beholden, drawing figure eights around these anchors of her life with wanderings of herself, trailing love and affection as she went, demanding that they dote upon her, that they lean down so that she could give them nose-dot kisses.
+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.
 
-And then, as she had several times over the last week, she latched herself onto Dry Grass. As they had over the last week, they revelled in the closeness and affection, the joy in allowing themselves to be around each other despite meaningless admonitions. As they had, they spoke mostly of small things, of interesting things they had seen or nice foods that they had eaten or simple stories made up on the spot. 
+Finally, Motes huffed and flopped back against the couch. "What a fucking bitch."
 
-It was important to her that she be around this person she considered a member of her family. One of the close ones, not one of the distant ones, not one that had cut her off. It was important that they spend quality time together, that through that time, she *lived* her gratefulness for Dry Grass's presence.
+"Dot, language," Beholden scolded, laughing.
 
-And then, when they all piled into the movie-theater-*cum*-cuddlepit, A Finger Pointing, Beholden, and Dry Grass slouched into a beanbag. Dry Grass dragged Motes into her lap while they all settled in. They sat silent through the first part of movie, watching off and on, dozing now and then. The movie was not important. It was good, she was sure, but that was not the point.
+"Fuck fuck fuck," she said, grinning wildly. "Bitch bitch bitch! You can yell at Little Motes~"
 
-An hour or so later, after Beholden and A Finger Pointing had fallen asleep against each other amid all the softness, Dry Grass set up a cone of silence over the beanbag and nudged Motes to sit beside her rather than on her and said, "Hey, kiddo. I would like to apologize for everything that happened this month."
+"No, she is right, my muse," A Finger Pointing said. "Fucking bitch."
 
-Motes scrubbed her paws over her face to wake up more fully. "How do you mean?"
+"Well, okay, no disputes there," Beholden said, waving away the three glasses. "What is on your plate next, Motes?"
 
-"All of that wretched business with my down-tree."
+She shrugged. "Well, I pinged Miss Genet, so we are going to meet later."
 
-"That was not your fault, though. She is just a bit– she is just a b-word."
+"Therapy!" A Finger Pointing exclaimed, waving a hand at nothing in particular. "What a lovely idea."
 
-Dry Grass smiled faintly. "I will let that slide. She is *definitely* a bitch, yes." A pause, and then she continued, "But it rather was my fault, my dear. I mentioned that I had been visiting after that evening with the salad and maccy chee. I made her mad, then told her to go fuck herself."
+"After all that?" Beholden said, smirking. "I am surprised that you have not already scheduled something."
 
-Motes sat for a moment in silent, watching the movie, half-listening at the muffled audio that made its way through the silence. "I had guessed, yeah."
+"I am so dreadfully busy, Beholden. You know that."
 
-Her cocladist frowned. "That is why I am sorry. So much happened, and I started it without really thinking of how it would impact everyone."
+"You spent yesterday afternoon lounging in the auditorium trying every kind of kettle corn you could find on the exchange."
 
-She shrugged. "But then, maybe I started by whining at you about it. It is nobody's fault but Hammered Silver's." She giggled sleepily, adding, "She made herself mad, even. I do not believe you that you say you did."
+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."
 
-Dry Grass's expression softened and she brushed some of the skunk's mane out of her face. "I suppose there is that," she said quietly. "We could go back and forth placing blame as much as we would like–"
+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*.
 
-"And she would always be the wrong one," Motes interrupted. "Frick her. She is the one holding grudges, we are the ones doing what we want. She is the one hurting people, we are the ones just playing and having fun and not hurting anyone."
+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.
 
-There was another moment of silence, of Dry Grass furrowing her brow and thinking, and then at last she lay back on the beanbag and tugged Motes back up to lay on her front. "Yes," she murmured as the skunk got comfortable. "Yes, I guess both of those are true."
+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.
 
-They stayed like that for the rest of the film, Dry Grass petting Motes and Motes telling Dry Grass stories about the day, little nothings that showed that fun, that lack of pain.
+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.
 
-And then, when the movie was over and many of those in the community center had started to doze on their beanbags and couches, and her ma and Bee put kisses on her snout and left arm in arm, when Dry Grass fell asleep one too many times and begged off to walk back home — not without yet another tight hug from Motes and a promise to be back soon — when Motes herself started to get sleepy, she disentangled herself from the rest of that dozy comfort and slipped out into the cool of the night.
+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...
 
-Rather than turning left, off toward home, she turned right to the other arm of the 'U' that made up the neighborhood and started wandering through the grass until she hit sidewalk. There, vines in chalk blossomed lazily behind her footsteps, and in the night. In the light of the stars and the moon and the streetlamps, they seemed to glow in pale oranges and whites and blues. She played with them by taking wobbling, drunken steps, crossing one leg in front of the other, pirouetting clumsily to make them tie themselves into knots.
+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.
 
-Even so, she continued down around the slow curve of the neighborhood's main street, not bothering to venture into any of the cul-de-sacs. The chalk lines were fun, a little trail describing where the little skunk had wandered, but she *was* tired. It had been a long first day back as Little Motes, and she had successfully packed it to the brim with all that she had wanted to do, and that success gave to her a sense of rightness.
+It was not dark now.
 
-It was a rightness of form — of species, of size, of appearance.
+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.
 
-It was a rightness of mindset — of play, of childlike wonder, of a recognition of who she was and who she had been and who she could become.
+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 made it halfway around the bend, down to the very base of the 'U', and, following some whim, some spark of desire, darted back into the grass to race up the ladder of the jungle gym and launch herself down the slide with a shout. She tumbled off the end and into the gravel in an undignified, giggling heap.
+"Hi, Sarah," she said.
 
-Motes played, because how could<!--why would(?)--> she not?
+"Motes! Hi!" the girl said, then hesitated. "You're Big Motes today. Do you want me to Big Sarah?"
+
+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.
+
+"Motes?"
+
+"Yeah, actually, I think I would like Big Sarah today."
+
+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.
+
+"Is this better?" she asked.
+
+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 merely shrugging, 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.

content/draft/010.md

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+# Motes — 2362
+
+Motes played.
+
+She played in the dark. She played crawling on hands and knees. She played hide and seek. She played stealth missions. She played silently, muffling the sound of her passage and keeping her breathing quiet; it was against the rules to turn it off. She played base commander, repelling invisible foes, hollering out orders to her friends. She played noisily, her voice echoing off the rocky walls with laughter and shouts bouncing around seemingly endlessly.
+
+She played in Rock Park, a hulking mound of salmon, pink, gold, and buff flagstone that had been stacked in such a way as to create a series of twisty, narrow tunnels throughout. The tunnels turned sharply, or required her to climb up vague suggestions of ladders made by protruding slabs of rock, or dumped her down into a central cavern, the ground covered in a layer of velvety soft mulch to cushion any falls. The cavern that opened out on one end into a broader playground, all of the equipment themed to be related to a quarry: dump trucks and bucket hoists and front end loaders and excavators.
+
+She played throughout the rest of the park, hauling that mulch or digging into it with the equipment or her paws, putting those digger claws of hers to use. She played in the grass, played in the little stands of pine trees that dotted the field beyond, the two whitewashed gazebos. Sometimes there were roller-blades or bikes or skateboards. Sometimes there were self-propelled levitation boots that let you putter along at a few miles per hour a hand's breadth above the ground and which would do all they could to keep you from falling over.
+
+She played with her friends. She played with strangers she had seen before yet never talked to. She played with those she saw once and then never saw again.
+
+She played until she got tired, until enough of her friends got bored and wandered off, until the long, breezy morning in this sim sighed its way into the heat of afternoon. She played until the obvious thing to do was to climb up to the top of the tunnel-ridden pile of flagstone to sit at the summit, enjoying the sun with Alexei.
+
+The park was only one part of a small town, only one part of a sizeable sim, but it was a popular destination for those who leaned into childhood on Lagrange for its permissive attitudes and curious inhabitants, most of whom seemed to be families — found or blood — and many of whom were the kids who played here. Alexei lived here with the family he had built: three guardians, one of whom was his great-grandfather by blood, and a sister.
+
+"Motes," he said after they had sat in silence for some time. "Where were you, anyway? I know you said you didn't want to talk about it, but it's just us, right?"
+
+She shrugged and picked at the rock with a claw, worrying loose a thin chip of flagstone. "I still do not *want* to talk about it," she said, then grinned over at him. "But I will anyway."
+
+"That's because you never shut up."
+
+She laughed and threw the chip of rock at him. "That is not *not* true. I guess it is extra true, actually, since most of my time away was spent talking." She tried to scratch up another chip, but she seemed to have lucked out that first time. "Sorry I just disappeared a while back."
+
+"Yeah, I was worried. I thought you got hurt real bad. What happened?"
+
+She hesitated, averting her gaze to look out into the park around her, the park she had claimed as her domain not half an hour before. "I got a high priority ping that made me fall, and then I hit my face on that stupid dome."
+
+"I saw you had a bloody nose, yeah," he said, patting her shoulder. "That sucks. Was it a come-home ping?"
+
+"Nah, it was just a warning," she said, speaking slowly while she organized her thoughts, trying to figure out just how much to say. "It was one of my cocladists being rude. She sent me a horrible letter, and wanted me to be in all the wrong moods when I read it, I think."
+
+"Ew."
+
+"Ew is right. She is one of those in the clade that does not like me doing this," she said, gesturing down at herself, out at the playground. "She sent me a huge letter telling me that in a million different ways."
+
+Alexei screwed up his face in a wince. "Double-ew. So were you in trouble? Are you still?"
+
+"I do not think so. At least, everyone is telling me I am not, that it was just her being a b-word and that she just wanted me and my family to feel bad so that she could feel like she had done something."
+
+"So a bully," he said flatly.
+
+Motes giggled. "I mean, I guess so. Big Motes understands it better, but she is busy."
+
+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.
+
+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."
+
+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. "Yeah, I guess," she mumbled. "You ever get anxious about all this?"
+
+"All this?"
+
+"Being a kid, that sort of thing."
+
+"Isn't this stuff for Big Motes being busy?"
+
+She frowned. "I know, but I want to know. I just got back from two weeks of freaking out."
+
+"Two and a half," Alexei said.
+
+"Please?"
+
+"Hmph."
+
+"Pretty pleeease?" she whined. "With a cherry on top?"
+
+It was his turn to mull things over, apparently, given the comfortable, thoughtful silence that followed. "I dunno. Sometimes, I guess. Sometimes I worry about where I can go like this, right? Like, we met when we were big. We met at that crazy bar with all the crazy music. I go to that stuff as Big Alexei, kinda because I don't want to get trampled, and kinda because I'm worried they'll kick me out."
+
+"Yeah," she said, lining a few pebbles up in a row. "I have been kicked out of lots and lots and lots of places."
+
+"You're also older than I am," he retorted. "So we've probably been kicked out of places at the same rate."
+
+She blew a raspberry at him, got one in return.
+
+"You're not really talking about anxiety, though, right? Like, you're talking about shame, I think."
+
+Another few pebbles wound up in the row as she sat in silence.
+
+"Yeah." He rolled onto his side to look at her, leaving his arm half-draped over his face to block out the sun. "I guess I kinda do, though it always comes from the outside. Like, getting kicked out of a place is whatever, but when someone I meet as Big Alexei learns about Little Alexei and gets all upset and yells at me or cuts contact–" 
+
+At this, Motes winced.
+
+He frowned. "That's what happened, isn't it? You had someone cut contact because they learned of it? One of your cocladists?"
+
+"Yeah," she mumbled. "She already knew, though, she just found out one of her up-trees was still talking to me."
+
+"She made her own up-trees cut contact, too?" He furrowed his brow. "Aren't you guys like super-dispersionistas?"
+
+She laughed. "Some of us. Some of us drifted apart, but some of us stick together really tightly. I have Ma and Bee and a bunch of siblings, right?"
+
+"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."
+
+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!"
+
+She laughed, reaching out to bat at his hand. "I guess I pretty much did, because here I am~"
+
+After that, their conversation fell back into more comfortable things. They spoke of friends. They spoke of the pros and cons of Rock Park. They spoke of families and the secret pleasures of being punished. Then they played a half-hearted game of tag before Motes finally said goodbye and stepped home just in time for the evening's planned activities, floating on a cloud of joy like she had not experienced in more than two weeks.
+
+At home, she dashed to the kitchen and gulped down a glass of water, laughed at the uncomfortable chill this left her with, and then dashed out into the fading afternoon. 
+
+It was a night for good food and terrible movies.
+
+Beholden grilled hot dogs and bratwurst and Motes, yes, had them loaded up with veggies, dragged through the garden.
+
+Ioan grilled *frigărui,* kebabs loaded up with Carpathian seasonings, and *mititei,* a quick sausage.
+
+Warmth made an array of its best guesses at Artemisian food, some of which were quite tasty. Few who tried the fluffy tower of *frahabrodåt* went back for seconds, at which ey seemed quite proud.
+
+Motes ate it all. She ate herself overfull. She ate herself messy, leaving her shirt dotted with mustard and grease, her lips shining with the oily sheen of at least three different types of sausage.
+
+Thus sated, she darted around the gathering, the thirty or so people who had showed up from both within the clade and without. She hugged everyone who wanted a hug, chased Warmth in multiples, the two little skunks leapfrogging each other and leaving their fur and clothes stained green with with grass. She drank a few margaritas, allowing through only a modicum of the drunkenness so that she remained cognizant and present through the tipsiness, awake and alert through the haze.
+
+She wove around A Finger Pointing and Beholden, drawing figure eights around these anchors of her life with wanderings of herself, trailing love and affection as she went, demanding that they dote upon her, that they lean down so that she could give them nose-dot kisses.
+
+And then, as she had several times over the last week, she latched herself onto Dry Grass. As they had over the last week, they revelled in the closeness and affection, the joy in allowing themselves to be around each other despite meaningless admonitions. As they had, they spoke mostly of small things, of interesting things they had seen or nice foods that they had eaten or simple stories made up on the spot. 
+
+It was important to her that she be around this person she considered a member of her family. One of the close ones, not one of the distant ones, not one that had cut her off. It was important that they spend quality time together, that through that time, she *lived* her gratefulness for Dry Grass's presence.
+
+And then, when they all piled into the movie-theater-*cum*-cuddlepit, A Finger Pointing, Beholden, and Dry Grass slouched into a beanbag. Dry Grass dragged Motes into her lap while they all settled in. They sat silent through the first part of movie, watching off and on, dozing now and then. The movie was not important. It was good, she was sure, or bad, but that was not the point.
+
+An hour or so later, after Beholden and A Finger Pointing had well and truly fallen asleep against each other amid all the softness, Dry Grass set up a cone of silence over herself and the skunk, nudged Motes to sit beside her rather than on her, and said, "Hey, kiddo. I would like to apologize for everything that happened this month."
+
+Motes scrubbed her paws over her face to wake up more fully. "How do you mean?"
+
+"All of that wretched business with my down-tree."
+
+"That was not your fault, though. She is just a bit– she is just a b-word."
+
+Dry Grass smiled faintly. "I will let that slide. She is *definitely* a bitch, yes." A pause, and then she continued, "But it rather was my fault, my dear. I mentioned that I had been visiting after that evening with the salad and maccy chee. I made her mad, then told her to go fuck herself."
+
+Motes sat for a moment in silent, watching the movie, half-listening at the muffled audio that made its way through the silence. "I had guessed, yeah."
+
+Her cocladist frowned. "That is why I am sorry. So much happened, and I started it without really thinking of how it would impact everyone."
+
+She shrugged. "But then, maybe I started by whining at you about it. It is nobody's fault but Hammered Silver's." She giggled sleepily, adding, "She made herself mad, even. I do not believe you that you say you did."
+
+Dry Grass's expression softened and she brushed some of the skunk's mane out of her face. "I suppose there is that," she said quietly. "We could go back and forth placing blame as much as we would like–"
+
+"And she would always be the wrong one," Motes interrupted. "Frick her. She is the one holding grudges, we are the ones doing what we want. She is the one hurting people, we are the ones just having fun and playing."
+
+There was another moment of silence, of Dry Grass furrowing her brow and thinking, and then at last she lay back on the beanbag and tugged Motes back up to lay on her front. "Yes," she murmured as the skunk got comfortable. "Yes, I guess both of those are true."
+
+They stayed like that for the rest of the film, Dry Grass petting Motes and Motes telling Dry Grass stories about the day, little nothings that showed that fun, that lack of pain.
+
+And then, when the movie was over and many of those in the community center had started to doze on their beanbags and couches, and her ma and Bee put kisses on her snout and left arm in arm, when Dry Grass fell asleep one too many times and begged off to walk back home — not without yet another tight hug from Motes and a promise to be back soon — when Motes herself started to get sleepy, she disentangled herself from the rest of that dozy comfort and slipped out into the cool of the night.
+
+Rather than turning left, off toward home, she turned right to the other arm of the 'U' that made up the neighborhood and started wandering through the grass until she hit sidewalk. There, vines in chalk blossomed lazily behind her footsteps, and in the night. In the light of the stars and the moon and the streetlamps, they seemed to glow in pale oranges and whites and blues. She played with them by taking wobbling, drunken steps, crossing one leg in front of the other, pirouetting clumsily to make them tie themselves into knots.
+
+Even so, she continued down around the slow curve of the neighborhood's main street, not bothering to venture into any of the cul-de-sacs. The chalk lines were fun, a little trail describing where the little skunk had wandered, but she *was* tired. It had been a long first day back as Little Motes, and she had successfully packed it to the brim with all that she had wanted to do, and that success gave to her a sense of rightness.
+
+It was a rightness of form — of species, of size, of appearance.
+
+It was a rightness of mindset — of play, of childlike wonder, of a recognition of who she was and who she had been and who she could become.
+
+She made it halfway around the bend, down to the very base of the 'U', and, following some whim, some spark of desire, darted back into the grass to race up the ladder of the jungle gym and launch herself down the slide with a shout. She tumbled off the end and into the gravel in an undignified, giggling heap.
+
+Motes played, because how could<!--why would(?)--> she not?