http://localhost:1313/draft/ Recent content on Motes Played Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us http://localhost:1313/draft/000/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/000/ She died at play, Gambolled away Her lease of spotted hours, Then sank as gaily as a Turk Upon a Couch of flowers.   Her ghost strolled softly o’er the hill Yesterday, and Today, Her vestments as the silver fleece — Her countenance as spray. — Emily Dickinson http://localhost:1313/draft/001/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/001/ Motes — 2362 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 stripes over her ears and polka-dots on her nose. http://localhost:1313/draft/002/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/002/ Motes — 2362 Motes played. 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. http://localhost:1313/draft/003/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/003/ 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. http://localhost:1313/draft/004/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/004/ 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– No. 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. http://localhost:1313/draft/005/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/005/ Motes — 2362 Motes stopped playing. She stopped playing because, some weeks later, she was 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 old or centuries, 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. http://localhost:1313/draft/006/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/006/ 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 inescapably was. http://localhost:1313/draft/007/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/007/ A Finger Pointing — 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. http://localhost:1313/draft/008/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/008/ Beholden — 2362 Beholden never quite understood play. 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. http://localhost:1313/draft/009/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/009/ 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. http://localhost:1313/draft/010/ Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://localhost:1313/draft/010/ 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.