update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/motes/009.md

@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ She forked into Big Motes and straightened her hair and blouse, set a well-remem
 
 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.
+Adjusting to a view of the world a few feet higher than it had been some seconds ago, a view without a snout, movement without a tail, 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 and hot. Perhaps a day for a mimosa.
 
 *An adult breakfast,* a part of her whispered. *Setting aside childish things...*
 
@@ -86,9 +86,9 @@ The answer was a long time coming, the silence filled with the gentle tink of gl
 
 Beholden tasted 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?"
+"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 that 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."
+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 behind her ear, 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.
 
@@ -142,7 +142,7 @@ She shrugged. "Well, I pinged Miss Genet, so we are going to meet later."
 
 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 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 comfortable role as their Dot, their *dóttir*.
 
 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.
 
@@ -152,11 +152,11 @@ The neighborhood formed a lazy semicircle, a 'U' that butted up against an avenu
 
 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...
 
-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.
+And there, right at the very lowest point of the bowl of the 'U' sat the 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.
 
 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.
+There, on the swings, sat a child, a girl, looking to be perhaps twelve or thirteen with black hair tied in an unruly ponytail, coppery 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.
 
@@ -170,7 +170,7 @@ Motes held onto the chains of the swing and gave herself a push with her feet, t
 
 "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.
+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 salt-and-pepper hair in a much neater ponytail, her skin just as brown and yet fraught with wrinkles, her smile kind and gaze always attentive.
 
 "Is this better?" she asked.
 
@@ -254,7 +254,7 @@ Motes frowned.
 
 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."
+Sarah laughed and pushed herself to start swinging. "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?
 
@@ -292,7 +292,7 @@ She remained silent. She remained silent for a long time, and when the arc of he
 
 "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.
+Sarah laughed, and Motes felt the sound in the air as she breezed past, felt her flower crown flutter away in the wind of her passage and fall to the ground in a lazy shower of dandelions, felt the little pink cocktail umbrella A Finger Pointing had tucked behind her ear, by her ma, tug this way and that on her hair.
 
 *I respect her as a person, but I do not like her,* Dry Grass had said. *And I certainly do not respect her authority.*