A dull clang rang out from the dim light of the stage, followed by a sickening thump. The girl, looking no older than fifteen, sprawled, limp and bloodied, unconscious on parquet. A person stood over her, breathing heavily, spittle flecking their lips and madness in their eyes. They let out a feral scream and leapt high in the air, a length of pipe held over their head and brought it down with all of their might.

Right as it was about to land, the lights went out, leaving the entire auditorium from stage to doors in pitch black. In the darkness, the last of the shout was punctuated with another clang and a horrible crunch.

The play continued from there. The police showed up. The investigation was swift and decisive. The arrest was made. All of this in utter darkness.

Even at the scene change, though, as the lights came back up, as the foyer disappeared and was replaced with a courtroom done up all in wood, the scene for the rest of the performance, the puddle of blood remained on the floor, untouched and bright, arterial red, glinting in the stage-lights.

At first, I thought it must have been a mistake, some stagehand forgetting to clean up the mess. As the play continued, though, it became increasingly clear that this was intentional. The attorneys deftly avoided stepping in the puddle, never looking at it. The judge never looked at it. The jury never looked at it. Neither did the bailiff or any of the witnesses.

The perpetrator, however, couldn't seem to keep their eyes off it. Even as they were brought to the stand, even as they rambled, nigh-incoherently, in response to the whys and hows that the prosecutors threw at them, their gaze never left the blood, still untouched, unsmeared except for where the victim's body had pushed it. Even as flashbacks played out in reverse chronological order, from the police's investigation to the murder to the point at which the perpetrator had first met the victim early in their childhood, all taking place in a feathered spotlight behind the prowling lawyers with the rest courtroom dimmed, they stared, eyes wide. Their expression was at times hungry, at times mournful, but always keenly focused.

As the play drew up to the climax, as the attacker was convicted and condemned to live forever, mouldering in some dark cell, they at last darted around the defense's table, hands still cuffed before them, and collapsed, laughing and sobbing in equal measure, above the pool of blood, smearing it on their hands, over their face and clothes. "I did it!" they howled. "I fucking did it *and it didn't mean a fucking thing!*"

We were once more dropped into utter blackness, treated to nearly five minutes more of wails and screeches, giggles and sobs, laughter and half-words, all slowly fading to silence.

The analogy was clear --- almost ham fisted --- and it left my stomach churning. It left a lump in my throat and a hotness on my face. It left me sobbing. Me and so many others in the audience, from what I saw when the lights came back up. Each seat had a cone of silence above it, preventing me from hearing anyone else. Beside me, Dry Grass had started crying from the beginning and hadn't lifted her head from her arms folded on the small table before us throughout the entire performance.

The auditorium, full at the start, was half-empty by the end, so many of the audience members having left in disgust or pain. <!--Günay, who had uploaded not two weeks prior, left before the stage went dark. PENDING "SENTENCES"-->

But now it was over and the house lights were coming back up, illuminating the two score crescent moon tables scattered through the room, the remaining audience sitting behind them in comfortable chairs. I stayed beside Dry Grass, rubbing her back gently as she worked to get her emotions under control. The audience filed out slowly while a few techs tore down the stage, gesturing at various props and the like, which either blipped out of existence or floated back into storage on their own. The blood on the stage was, thankfully, in the former category.

Dry Grass, now leaning back in her chair and breathing in deliberate calm, and I watched as as a bundle of black and white fur sprinted across the stage and hurled itself out into the audience, making as much of a bee-line for us as was possible with the tables in the way.

Swivelling her chair toward the hurtling skunk, Dry Grass threw her arms wide, letting Motes leap into them.

"Dry Grass Dry Grass Dry Grass!"

"Motes!" She pushed the skunk --- who looked to be no more than ten, despite being the same three hundred odd years old as Dry Grass --- away from her enough to meet her gaze. "You stupid...awful..." She fell to crying, clutching Motes to her front once again.

*"That means I did a good job!"* the skunk sent via a sensorium message as she rested her head over her cocladist's shoulder, grinning at me.

I shook my head in disbelief and leaned forward to pat her gently between the ears.

After another minute or so, Dry Grass carefully swiveled around to face me, looking over Motes's shoulder in turn. "This little asshole *knows* I hate it when she does those scenes."

The skunk squirmed about in her arms until she was sitting sideways in her lap. "I did not know you were here," she countered. "That would not have changed the show, but I still did not know, or I would have warned you to arrive late."

Dry Grass took the chance to wipe her face with a napkin swiped from the table. "I would have appreciated that, yes."

"You would have hated the original! Ioan wrote it so that my body was supposed to stay on the stage instead of just the blood. When I said I wanted the part, ey changed it to be just the blood so there was not just a kid's body laying on stage, even though it took some creative work with gravity."

I glanced back to the stage, realizing that it was actually canted toward the audience by a few degrees. Enough that we could clearly see the surface of the stage --- back to a blissfully clean matte black instead of the blood-stained parquet that had been there before --- without it being so unnerving as to make us feel like we were going to fall towards it, or that the actors were going to fall into the audience.

"You are right," Dry Grass was saying, straightening out Motes's shirt and overalls, both of which were thoroughly stained with paint. "I would have hated that even more. I did not even see the rest of the play, skunklet. I put my head down and turned down my hearing."

"Aw!"

"It was pretty good," I admitted. "I can tell you about it later."

"No, I will read it on my own at some point when I am calmer." Dry Grass nodded toward the stage. "But look, A Finger Pointing and Beholden."

The two Odists --- one tall, slender, and human, the other a shorter, softer skunk --- made their way far more sedately toward our table. They walked arm in arm, leaning affectionately against each other, each carrying a drink in their free hand and paw.

"Reed!" A Finger Pointing began, reaching out with one arm to offer me a hug. "I am pleased you made it." She glanced at Dry Grass with a rueful smile. "I hope we did not traumatize you *too* much. Have you heard back from the LVs, yet? It is about time, is it not?"

I watched as Beholden started pulling chairs away from the next table over with a gesture, sliding across the floor so that she could flop down into one. As soon as she and A Finger Pointing had done so, Motes forked off two more instances to go pile into each of their laps as well.

"You have, but Motes has already apologized," Dry Grass said. "But yes, news has started to come in from Castor and Pollux. I believe Reed even has a letter."

I nodded. "I do, yeah, but that can wait a bit. How're you? Feeling good about the play?

A Finger Pointing winced at Dry Grass' words, setting her drink down and offering a bow. "I am sorry, my dear; I recognize that our approach to reclamation is at times quite uncomfortable. I will endeavor not to be so careless in the future."

She showed none of that wariness when her eyes came back up to meet mine. "I am sure we each feel differently about this particular production. I, for one, would have been satisfied even if the house were empty; all that preparation, that one climactic performance makes for a potent font of catharsis, does it not?"

I laughed, my throat still raw from my own bout of crying. "I suppose so. Motes certainly seems to think so."

The skunk lingering on Dry Grass's lap grinned proudly to me.

Dry Grass sighed. "That it does, my dear, and that is what keeps it a trauma worth processing."

Beholden laughed. "You are so very much yourself, Dry Grass." She gave her instance of Motes a squeeze. "Please do keep that up. But how are you feeling beside that, Reed?"

I sighed, leaning forward to grab my drink off the bar before settling back in my chair. I was glad I'd gone for a wine rather than anything fizzy. My throat still felt raw from the crying. "I'm doing okay, I think. Coming to terms with it all. The play was...a lot. I guess part of why it hit me so hard was because I heard back from Marsh#Castor today."

"Oh, Reed," Dry Grass said, leaning over to squeeze my hand. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Actually, I was hoping I could get your opinion on some of it, if you don't mind," I said, looking to the others.

Motes, preoccupied obtaining as much affection as she could, merely shrugged.

"I am fine with it," Dry Grass said, then added with a smirk, "That is why I brought you here, after all, is it not? That and the experience?"

I laughed, nodded.

A Finger Pointing leaned down to her Motes's ear. "My dear, could you--?" she cooed, beckoning Beholden and the other Motes to join us at the table. "Please, Reed; I am *intensely* curious what they have to say about all this."

Beholden seemed focused on straightening out Motes' mane --- perhaps a little more than could be expected, as though working to distract herself --- though she nodded all the same.

"Alright, thanks. I'll just read it to you, it's fairly short." Feeling a little silly just staring off into space to read, I summoned up the letter on a sheet of paper and began to read.

> Reed,
> 
> Words cannot express how glad I am to hear from you! Over the last few weeks, we've heard that they were finally on track to start bringing Lagrange back online, and then we finally got the notice that the System had finally come back up and that they'd gotten the non-recoverable losses down to 1%. We had a small party here with all the Marshans here --- there's a new one, by the way, Hyacinth. They'll write you their own letter.
> 
> We weren't the only ones, either. Every one of us was invited to no less than three other parties celebrating the news. You may be out of reach for those of us on the launches, but we do still love you all, and deeply. Thinking we'd lost you for good was one hell of a way to prove that to ourselves.
> 
> Over the next week, we started to hear from more and more people as news of their clades back on Lagrange began to trickle in. Most of those we talked to spoke of losses of tracking or tasked instances. No small pain, of course, as some of those tracking instances were tracking things like relationships, but a few days later, we heard an instance of first one missing cladist, then another. A friend we made after Launch was inconsolable after learning that he just no longer existed on Lagrange in any form. He had had a clade of two, and both were wiped out, plus all three of their tasked instances. The Arondight clade on Lagrange is no more.
> 
> Our anxiety began to grow without hearing from you. We knew you were busy, at least: news of Sedge working as hard as she was reached even us in those first days. Still, I wish you'd written sooner.
> 
> To finally get a letter that said that I was dead, however, made me feel in a way I can't even begin to describe. I was sad, because of course I was --- someone I knew and talked with with some regularity was now dead. I was stunned, because of course I was --- the disaster was now very immediate and real, affecting my own clade.
> 
> But what am I to do with the knowledge that it was specifically me that was dead? You live on, as do Lily and Cress, Rush and Sedge and Tule, but the root of your clade is now gone. You're now six instead of seven. You're now a clade without a root instance. *We're* a clade without a root instance. I exist, sure, as does Marsh#Pollux, but our down-tree does not. We came from them, didn't we?
> 
> Here I went on for some length about what it must mean for a clade to be without a root, about how you're now three completely separate clades, unrelated. That's still true, in a way. It's true in the clade sense, in the *tree* sense, but apparently no longer in the mechanical sense. This cross-tree merging! It sounds like it's going to change everything. No more merging down only. 'Cross-tree' means less now; sure, there's the lack of shared memory, but no longer are they out of reach of merging.
> 
> I don't blame you at all for what you all did to create Anubias. I know that it hurt Vos and Pierre, and I hope that, some time in the future, they can bring themselves to forgive you. But honestly, I would have done the same. I would've done everything in my power to reach for some bit of the old to bring back to life. I know that Anubias is *not* me, that they can never be the root of the clade, but you did what you felt you had to to try and make your lives more complete.
> 
> I hope there are more letters on the way, but please write me as soon as you get this. You'll have had eight months of getting used to life without our root instance. You'll have had eight months without Marsh, and I want to know how it feels. I want to know how to get over this very real, but very strange grief.
> 
> Until then, you all have all our love. I'm glad to hear that, even in the midst of this, that love is still a thing and that you and Dry Grass are getting closer. Keep yourselves safe, and stay in touch. We'll do the same.
> 
> Marsh#Castor

When I finished reading, our little crowd sat in silence, each thinking their own thoughts.

My eyes were drawn to A Finger Pointing, to the pensive tapping-together of her fingertips. "I have been looking forward to the opportunity to speak with you about just that, Reed. About this cross-tree merge, I mean. About Anubias." She glanced at Beholden, who nodded, though her own gaze remained pensive, then went on. "We, too, are without our root instance. We are without our Michelle Hadje, she who became ten, who became --- nominally --- one hundred."

Dry Grass carefully nudged Motes out of her lap so that she could straighten out her blouse. The little skunk wandered off to haul up a far-too-big chair for herself.

"It has been a long time for us." Dry Grass smiled faintly. "A *very* long time. You have had eight months, my dear."

I looked down at the paper, just as I had done for much of the day already.

"I would like to hear how you feel, Reed," Dry Grass said. "We all have our thoughts on the matter --- we are Odists, of *course* we do --- I am sure, but before we taint yours, tell us how you feel."

I sighed, eventually folding up the letter and returning it to my pocket. The physicality of it made it feel more real, focused my mind in one particular spot. Getting it out of my hands gave me, somehow, permission to look up and speak directly to the others.

"I'm feeling torn," I admitted. "I like Anubias. They've quickly found a place in our clade. They aren't *Marsh*, though, and I've been...I don't know." I took a moment to reclaim my train of thought as my speech stumbled to a stop. "I guess I'm well into grieving now, and even if Vos hasn't reopened communication, I'm sitting with her in that loss of someone important. Whether or not it's important that they were the root instance varies from day to day. Today, it feels pretty important."

Dry Grass nodded. "There were times throughout our history that Michelle felt more like a friend or sister than our down-tree instance. It hurt either way, but the mechanical aspects, the sundering of the ten stanzas, lingered often in our thoughts."

"It seemed rather more symbolic, for my part, that particular note," A Finger Pointing commented. "We seldom merged with her after those first few years. What really bothered *me* was the implication that we were all doomed to quit, that what happened to her was a premonition of what was to come."

Beholden looked suddenly away, mastering some intense emotion that washed over her face. She seemed to want to speak, though, so we all remained in silence.

"And we *do* have that in us," she said at last, voice thick. "We do have the capability--" A Finger Pointing reached over to her partner, pulling her close by the shoulders. She sniffed, sighed, then went on. "--in Death Itself and I Do Not Know, but also in Muse."

Motes drew her legs up onto the chair with her and buried her face in her arms.

"I do not *like* it," Beholden added with a bitter chuckle. "I think I actually *hate* it, that she could do that --- that *any* of them could do that. One more thing to be anxious about after months and months of anxiety."

A Finger Pointing watched Dry Grass carefully while Beholden spoke, turning her gaze on me only after some silence lingered between us. "I do not believe this premonition, of course, but you can see how it affects each of us. There is enough death in our clade to make us wonder, yes?"

She spent a moment doting on Beholden before straightening up, adjusting her blouse with a sigh. "There is, perhaps, some of my longing for Dear in this --- instance artistry has held my interest since I met it --- but I have been gradually reaching out to each of my cocladists in the hopes of creating a synthesis of our clade --- our own Anubias, if you will --- not to recreate Michelle but to better understand one another and ourselves through the lens of someone who is each of us at once."

Dry Grass nodded. "The mutual understanding is a thing I am particularly interested in. There have been schisms within our clade that might...well, not be mended, but may at least provide greater understanding."

Motes lifted her head and, despite the tear-tracks in the fur on her cheeks, smirked. "*We* got cut off!" she said proudly. "Even you did, Dry Grass!"

"For a bit, kiddo," she said, laughing.

"I do not know that we will resolve disputes so dire as that with a mediating instance," A Finger Pointing said with a soft chuckle. "Although I have occasionally done such within the fifth stanza --- even before this business with cross-tree merging --- what I am really interested in is how it might give us a more complete picture of the Ode clade at large. We have occasionally been accused of idolatry, of placing the *idea* of the clade above the community that it comprises, but now I think our community is all but dead, and in desperate need of some unifying identity lest we ever remain shattered."

Dry Grass smiled wryly. "I was surprised at just how willing Hammered Silver was. She cut off three entire stanzas --- and, briefly, me --- and I expected that would mean that she would be rather opposed to the idea. I am curious to see how that goes, in the end." Turning to me, she continued, grinning, "But you also dealt with that with Lily, yes? You punched her, even."

A Finger Pointing looked wide-eyed at me, leaning back. "Reed?"

I laughed. "It was hardly a punch! I slapped her in the heat of an argument. Don't worry, I got that and more from Vos," I said, shaking my head. "I still feel awful about that. It's...well, not really something I thought I had in me. Everything was just so stressful around then. It was less than a week after the attack."

My words didn't seem to reach her, or perhaps they weren't convincing enough. She looked warily to Dry Grass, then back to me. "Grief in the wake of the Century Attack has caused a great deal of pain; and it did not stop with the loss of our loved ones on New Year's Eve, did it? Muse quit a week later out of despair --- her and so many others in her position --- and now I learn the Marshans and their beloved are *hitting* each other!"

Any lingering mirth I felt quickly died. What had since turned to a source of humor between me and Lily --- at least on the occasions we *did* talk --- was suddenly brought into contrast with the rest of our lives. "No, you bring up a good point. I stand by the fact that it felt awful at the time, and it stung for a long while after. I don't see myself as a violent person, but clearly I have it in me. Vos remains no-contact, so I can't guess how she feels, but she didn't seem the type to lean on violence, either."

Dry Grass, looking between her cocladist and I with an expression more of curiosity than anxiety, said, "You do not strike me as violent either, but it does have me wondering just how much that remains after the fact."

"I should hope he does not strike you at all!" A Finger Pointing quipped. She looked to me with a disarming smile, and I felt at once the dialectic couched within her words. This fighting --- though unconscionable --- was no isolated event; more than one of my friends had similarly lashed out, and the feeds were filled with cladists hunting for therapists.

I snorted. "I have not, nor do I plan to. It has me watching my actions like a hawk, and while I'm sure the anxiety over the fact that I'm capable of such things will fade, I doubt I'll ever forget about it --- really, truly forget: it'll stay in the forefront of my mind whenever strong feelings come up."

Dry Grass nodded. "I would not want you to remain in anxiety, of course, but I am pleased to hear that it is something you are cognizant of."

A Finger Pointing crosses her arms. "Anubias possesses both your and Lily's perspective on that spat; what have they to say about it?"

"It's certainly come up in conversations with them, how they were dealing with the conflicting views of everything from throughout the clade. Marsh had clearly done so, after all, right? So it's not like it's out of reach for us to fully reconcile."

Beholden smirked. "I know Slow Hours and I have had our spats from time to time--."

"More than that!" Motes said, grinning.

"--*often*, so the cross-tree merging has given us another tool to mediate." She rolled her eyes, adding, "*When* we remember to actually use it."

"Well, huh," I said, sitting back in my chair, arms crossed. "I hadn't actually made that connection --- that cross-tree merging could be a deliberate form of mediation rather than some accident of Anubias."

"You would have to commit, yes? The both of you would."

"Right. Things are *better,* but they aren't *great.* She still has her issues with your clade."

The skunk snorted. "Yes, yes. Yet more of the same, I assume."

I laughed, nodded. "Too much sensationalist history, I guess."

"I still want to kick Ioan's ass for some of that."

A Finger Pointing tilts her head at Beholden. "You want to kick Ioan's ass for all the embarrassing things ey has made you say on that very stage behind us."

"I want to kick eir ass just in general," she said primly. "It just seems like it might be fun."

"Oh, it *is*," she mused, before turning her gaze on me once more. "So let that be my request to you, Reed. I want you and Lily to talk about this, to consult with Anubias, and to tell me how that goes. I am sure Dear would have a heyday if it were here to explore cross-tree merging, but seeing as it went the Ansible --- I am *very* much stealing that turn of phrase --- I think I would like to collaborate with you three on this."
