Update draft

content/draft/001.md

@@ -292,5 +292,4 @@ Dry Grass nodded, expression serious. "It absolutely is. She has gotten quite up
 
 Motes huffed, nodded. "Good. If you stop talking to me, I *will* cry."
 
-"Perish the thought!" The Odist laughed and leaned over to hug her cocladist, careful of her nails. "I will not, do not worry, my dear. You are stuck with me for a good while yet."
+"Perish the thought!" The Odist laughed and leaned over to hug her cocladist, careful of her nails. "I will not. Do not worry, my dear, you are stuck with me for a good while yet."
-

content/draft/002.md

@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+# Motes — 2362
+
 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.

content/draft/003.md

@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+# Motes — 2362
+
 Motes played.
 
 Today, she played prey. Today, she was a mouse to some fox, some owl, some cunning predator. She crept and crawled at first, prowling through the brush and between the trunks of trees. She stuck to where the pine needles made a thick carpet on the floor of this forest or, failing that, the hard domes of granite that interrupted it. Anything she could do to stay away from the scree or gravel, the occasional stands of deciduous trees with their noisier fallen leaves, the stands of blackberry canes that she knew would tug at her clothes and fur, leaving a wake of whimpers and vines whipping backward.

content/draft/004.md

@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+# Motes — 2362
+
 Motes played.
 
 She played on precipices. She played along the knife's edge. She played at the point of a sword, at the barrel of a gun. She played with death. She–

content/draft/005.md

@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+# Motes — 2362
+
 Motes stopped playing.
 
 She stopped playing because she had been out with some friends, some of the others who had decided to give up on grown-up life now that they were here, now that they were decades or centuries old, now that they were functionally immortal. She stopped playing because, as she sprinted full-tilt after a handful of friends, dodging around benches and trees, seesaws and swings, a bolt of panic struck down her spine with an electric intensity and made her tumble into the gravel, made her skid through the pebbles until she crunched up against a jungle gym, left her nose, paws, and elbows bloodied. She stopped playing because for a long minute, she could not breathe, though whether from the adrenaline pulling her nerves taut or the pain in her snout or from the air being knocked out of her, she could not tell.
@@ -28,7 +30,7 @@ She stopped playing and read:
 > 
 > There is a very important set of reasons for this:
 > 
-> 1. Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself and Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps's ongoing romantic relationship remains a thorn in the side of the Ode clade. Even as the taboo seems to be loosening — a thing that I attribute to Sasha's ongoing existence — there remains the issue of the image that this presents of the remaining 99 Odists as a clade of some import.
+> 1. Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself and Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps's ongoing romantic relationship remains a thorn in the side of the Ode clade. Even as the taboo seems to be loosening — a thing that I attribute to the one who has named herself Sasha's ongoing existence — there remains the issue of the image that this presents of the remaining 99 Odists as a clade of some import.
 > 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 with a paraphilia, but a tainting of reputations beyond 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 as affected the reputation of the Ode clade abundantly clear.

content/draft/006.md

@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+# Motes — 2362
+
 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.*

content/draft/007.md

@@ -1,22 +1,121 @@
+# Motes — 2362
+
 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.
 
-((the past))
+> **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  
+> **On:** systime 238+291
+> 
+> Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself,
+> 
+> I am breaking my communication embargo to write you regarding some concerns that I have on the current state of the clade, the fifth stanza, and And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights.
+> 
+> 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:
+> 
+> 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.
+> 3. There is to be no contact between I Remember The Rattle Of Dry Grass and the rest of the sixth stanza until further notice.
+> 
+> I expect better from Odists. Perhaps my expectations are misguided.
+> 
+> — Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver of the Ode clade.
+
+-----
+
+Some treacherously sunny afternoon some centuries back, Sasha/Michelle Hadje sat tiredly on the edge of a fountain in the middle of a brick-paved pedestrian mall. Just a woman or a skunk or perhaps both sitting on the rough stone in classical white, head bowed in concentration as the sun warmed the back of her neck. Beside her sat a man, a politician, watching as she drained her reserves of reputation to bring into being ten more instances of herself, each blissfully unafflicted by the restlessness-of-shape and in many ways less affected by the restlessness-of-mind that plagued her.
+
+"So, what next?" the man asked.
+
+"What is next is that I get assignments from the Council and then take a fucking vacation," she replied. "I plan on sleeping for at least three days straight."
+
+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.
+
+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?
+
+Sasha/Michelle had sat on the rim of the fountain and looked out on the world with tired eyes and wondered at the simple beauty of Old Town Square, the brick pavers and the gas lamps and the twee shops, and forked her first long-lived instance, I Am At A Loss For Images In This End Of Days of the Ode clade.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+And at last, Sasha/Michelle remembered how, even after she fell silent, she and her friend had sat in the glow of the sun, thinking about just how wonderful a time she had had — her directly, her friend in compersion — seeing so complete an experience of a well-produced musical, and forked into her, into Time Is A Finger Pointed At Itself.
+
+She was forked smiling.
+
+And so when this man, this politician, this Jonas asked who wanted an assignment, she had decided instead to linger in that joy, to remember that lovely day instead of searching for some way to reengage with politics. That was left to The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream, the first line of the eighth stanza. She did not know what compelled True Name to lean into politics as she had been forked after A Finger Pointing, but she wished her all the best.
+
+When Michelle/Sasha stood at last, swaying, and tottered towards the remainder of her newly-formed clade, each bearing in their heart some secret, individual joy bestowed upon them by their tired creator, they had all welcomed her into their presence as a first-among-equals and bore her away to home, to her field of grass and dandelions.
+
+What followed was a conversation that lasted until dusk. Each of them minus True Name, already at work, talked about the experience of coming into being, the experience of being settled firmly into one shape unlike their root instance, about the things that they loved and what they might do with that love.
+
+They had not existed for a day and yet A Finger Pointing still loved them each and loved them all together.
+
+She learned of all of their different focuses and kept them straight in her head that she might know them better later, but also she watched how each of them moved, how each of them acted. She kept in mind all that they talked about so that she might share it with True Name.
+
+Hammered Silver was, there. She was the one who, after Sasha/Michelle had tired of walking and requested to sit down, had offered her lap as a pillow that she might dote on her down-tree. There was such love in her eyes, such maternal love, for this woman who was at once herself and not. She did not smile, but cooed in concern as a mother might to some crying child. A Finger Pointing made note of this, too, for, yes, she also felt that concern, but also to see such in someone so like herself was a joy in its own right.
+
+From that point on, A Finger Pointing made herself the glue of this growing clade. She would share weekly or monthly lunches and dinners with each, keeping up with them via letters and, once they were implemented, sensorium messages. Even as her smile remained or veered towards a smirk or wily grin, even as her opinions on each of her cocladists grew more complicated, watching burgeoning loves and animosities, she kept in touch.
+
+-----
 
 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 need to keep them safe as well. She needed to ensure their safety even above her own.
 
-((Sasha))
+((Sasha and Dry Grass))
 
-((the past))
+-----
 
-((Waking World))
+To fall in love with a cocladist is to engage in a radical form of self-love. To fall in love with a cocladist is to find a way that perhaps you *are* your type. To fall in love with a cocladist is to accept that you are large; you contain multitudes. To fall in love with your cocladist is to recognize that your hyperfixations define, in part, your sense of self, and that if you expand beyond one, then perhaps you are more than just one self.
 
-((bitterness and compromises))
+A Finger Pointing forked all nine of her up-tree instances in systime 3, back in the early days when it still cost to fork. She had plans, though, and she had a way around those costs. She forked once, leaving her and her new instance with half of her original reputation, less than it would cost to fork again, and then her new instance simply granted the reputation back to her, enough to fork once more. She had a way around those costs, for in those days, back before the reputation market had patched out that particular glitch, her up-tree instances did not need reputation beyond hers. She had plans. She had ideas for her particular joy. She would lean into theatre, build up a troupe made up of just herself, for surely there were ten roles that needed to be filled in running a theatre.
 
-((the past))
+There was her, the executive director and administrator.
+
+There was That It Might Give The World Orders, the director.
+
+There was The World Is An Audience Before A Stage, the educator within and without.
+
+There was Where It Watches The Slow Hours Progress, the script manager and librarian.
+
+There was And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights, the set and prop designer.
+
+There was Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps, the sound and music director.
+
+There was If I Walk Backward, Time Moves Forward, who explored interactivity in art.
+
+There was If I Walk Forward, Time Rushes On, the dancer and choreographer. 
+
+There was If I Stand Still, The World Moves Around Me, the stage manager who dabbled in lights.
+
+There was And The Only Constant Was Change, an actor with a penchant for death scenes and just plain strange bird.
+
+And they all acted, and they all promoted, and they all taught and helped as techs and loved each other. They were all hedonists, to the last, because A Finger Pointing was a hedonist, one who wanted to enjoy life to the fullest and to be everybody's friend.
+
+She spent time with them all, yes, but the benefit of diving deep into music is that Beholden began to seek out live shows and concerts, and so when A Finger Pointing spent time with her, they became events. They started to veer perilously close to dates.
+
+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 rather 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 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.
+((the past: relationships))
+
+((Waking World and Dry Grass))
+
+((the past: Motes))
+
+((bitterness and compromises with Dry Grass))
+
+((the past: family))
 
 ((Contacting Hammered Silver))
 

content/draft/008.md

@@ -1,3 +1,303 @@
+# Motes — 2362
+
 Motes thought of play.
 
 She thought of all of the play that she had taken part in over the years, all of the games and make believe, all of the jungle-gyms and slides, all of the tag and red-light-green-light and duck-duck-goose, everything going back 276 years, as much as she could remember. She thought of all her toys, from the mound of stuffed animals occupying her bed beside her right now to the awful and cheap RC car she had received on her fifth birthday that worked for that day and that day alone, that never again turned on. She thought of all her friends, of Alexei on the playground the other day — three days ago? Four? — calling out to her as she fell under the spike of panic, of Sarah Couch who she had met in kindergarten, who she had told her parents she was dating in third grade, who had died some years after Michelle had uploaded.
+
+She thought of the way that play defined the Motes that she had become, the way it had shaped the way she interacted with the world, the way it shaped her very form. She thought of how Au Lieu Du Rêve had accepted readily just how well it fit her self-definition. She thought of the family that she had built up around her.
+
+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 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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+*An adult breakfast,* a part of her whispered. *Setting aside childish things...*
+
+She shook her head to dispel the lingering thought, one based in overflow rather than her current mood.
+
+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?
+
+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.
+
+Definitely a morning for a mimosa.
+
+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 crispy 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.
+
+Her plate laden with two burritos in one hand and mimosa in the other, she made her way to the couch rather than the dining table and settled down with a long, worn-out sigh.
+
+What was missing...ah! Coffee. 
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+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 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."
+
+"Nor should you be!" A Finger Pointing scoffed. "I would be disappointed if you had not."
+
+She laughed. "Of course you would be. You really set up the sim to ping you when I woke?"
+
+"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."
+
+"She was worried," Beholden stage-whispered. "You should have seen her brighten when she got the notification you were in the kitchen."
+
+"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 about started crying," Beholden continued, smirk on her muzzle.
+
+""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?"
+
+"She was so rude, cutting off a conversation with Sasha mid-sentence and rushing us back here, putting on her most nonchalant act."
+
+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 out for me."
+
+"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."
+
+"Another mimosa for me, Beholden," Motes added.
+
+Laughing, the skunk gave her one more of those nose-dot kisses before disentangling herself to see to drinks.
+
+"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."
+
+"Okay," she said. "Tender, I guess. Sore, maybe? I am not feeling bad, but I am not yet feeling good. I am feeling like the slightest bump with leave me with a bruise."
+
+Her cocladist nodded. "I imagine so. Are you up to speaking about what happened?"
+
+She nodded. "A little bit. I will let you know if I need to bow out."
+
+"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."
+
+Motes wilted.
+
+"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?"
+
+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," 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."
+
+Beholden finished tasting her drink, nodded appreciatively, then asked, "Have you come to any conclusions?"
+
+"I think so," she said, looking down at her mimosa. Beholden had topped it with a maraschino cherry poked through with a cocktail umbrella. There was a warmth of adoration starting to fill 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?"
+
+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."
+
+Motes shook her head gently so as not to dislodge crown or umbrella.
+
+"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."
+
+She slouched against A Finger Pointing and hugged around her chest, 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."
+
+Beholden smiled, reaching 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–"
+
+"Absolutely not," Motes said, laughing. "I would not have you change your ways just because I am feeling icky for a bit."
+
+"It is an offer, Motes," the skunk chided gently. "Not some weird obligation for us."
+
+Her shoulders slumped and she nodded. "Alright. I think my answer still stands, though. I like it when you call me that, even when I am Big Motes. I do not imagine...well, no. I am *sure* this will not last longer than two weeks. That is the deadline I have given myself to process this."
+
+"Of course, Dot," A Finger Pointing said, tightening her grip in a squeeze before gently nudging her to sit back upright. "With this of all things, there will be more than enough processing to fill that time. The situation has...resolved itself while you were sleeping, but even that resolution is complicated."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+She nodded. "Are you alright to talk about it? I do not know that even Beholden knows the full extent of what happened."
+
+The skunk shook her head.
+
+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."
+
+Beholden punched her gently on the shoulder before taking her empty glass and setting it on the table in front of them.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Finally, Motes huffed and flopped back against the couch. "What a fucking bitch."
+
+"Dot, language," Beholden scolded, laughing.
+
+"Fuck fuck fuck," she said, grinning wildly. "Bitch bitch bitch! You can yell at Little Motes."
+
+"No, she is right, my muse," A Finger Pointing said. "Fucking bitch."
+
+"Well, okay, no disputes there," Beholden said, waving away the three glasses. "What is on your plate next, Motes?"
+
+She shrugged. "Well, I pinged Miss Genet, so we are going to meet later."
+
+"Therapy!" A Finger Pointing exclaimed, sitting up straighter. "What a lovely idea."
+
+"After all that?" Beholden said, smirking. "I am surprised that you have not already scheduled something."
+
+"I am so dreadfully busy, Beholden. You know that."
+
+"You spent yesterday afternoon lounging in the auditorium trying every kind of kettle corn you could find on the exchange."
+
+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."
+
+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*.
+
+As the afternoon started to threaten to slide right into evening, Motes took her leave and left A Finger Pointing and Beholden on the couch, canoodling. Clearly that had taken precedent 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 begun to grow within her.
+
+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, left their flowering shapes fit into this perception of herself as a flower child rather than simply a child, a gentle reframing that allowed her to have this thing, this gentle goodness.
+
+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 — in accessible to anyone who was unwelcome — sat the back entrance of the theatre Au Lieu Du Rêve most commonly performed at. Just homes and beloved workplace dropped into an endless landscape like sugar into so much tea.
+
+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 seeing a hundred as easily as 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 theatre-*cum*-cuddlepit...
+
+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 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.
+
+It was not dark now.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Hi, Sarah," she said.
+
+"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 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 week and change 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."
+
+"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.*
+
+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/009.md

@@ -1 +1,45 @@
+# 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 afternoon in this sim sighed its way into evening. 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 golden hour 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 bad. What happened?"
+
+((Talk about where she was, Alexei's thoughts, etc, he ought to tug her tail just because))
+
+((Home, big dinner in the neighborhood, movie night))
+
+((Talk with Dry Grass))
+
+And then, when the movie was over and many of those in the community center had started to doze on their beanbags and couches, when Dry Grass fell asleep one too many times and begged off to go back home — not without yet another tight hug from Motes and a promise to be back — 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 the 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 why should she not?