update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/mitzvot/017.md

@@ -4,9 +4,9 @@ The next few days passed in relative peace. There were no fights between the two
 
 May wasn't the only one, either. At one point, Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself and one of her up-tree instances, Where It Watches The Slow Hours Progress visited to talk with True Name. Both were far more earnest in their affection to her, which she seemed to welcome with a sense of cautious relief. Ey supposed it made sense, given A Finger Pointing's habit of making friends with everyone she could.
 
-Ey'd only met Slow Hours once prior and, while she was just as friendly as her down-tree instance, she also seemed somewhat removed from the world as a whole, as though seeing just a little more than everyone around her. "Clairvoyance," A Finger Pointing had whispered to em after that meeting. "She has the outline of the world."
+Ey'd only met Slow Hours once prior and, while she was just as friendly as her down-tree instance, she also seemed somewhat removed from the world as a whole, as though seeing just a little more than everyone around her. "Clairvoyance," A Finger Pointing had whispered to em after that first meeting. "She has the outline of the world."
 
-They'd talked for nearly three hours that afternoon, breaking only to get more water part way through. When they were finished, True Name looked wrung out, though not unhappy. A Finger Pointing mostly looked confused and concerned while Slow Hours kept her faraway, nearly delphic smile.
+They talked for nearly three hours that afternoon, breaking only to get more water part way through. When they were finished, True Name looked wrung out, though not unhappy. A Finger Pointing mostly looked confused and concerned while Slow Hours kept her faraway, nearly delphic smile.
 
 Curiouser and curiouser. Ey'd always pictured A Finger Pointing's stanza as one of the more liberal ones, and had early on noticed that the liberal Odists had largely distanced themselves from the more conservative ones. To have two of them specifically drop by to visit True Name was quite surprising.
 
@@ -78,9 +78,9 @@ True Name laughed. "The pithy one is that I am bored and lonely, and this seems
 
 May nodded. "I do not know if we are the ideal company for you, given our interests, but at least we can try, I suppose."
 
-"For which I am endlessly appreciative," True Name nodded. "Though I do still miss routine. Good company and productive company do not necessarily overlap."
+"For which I am endlessly appreciative," True Name confirmed. "Though I do still miss routine. Good company and productive company do not necessarily overlap."
 
-"'*Productive* company'?" May frowned.
+"'*Productive* company'?"
 
 "You are very nice to be around. Both of you. It is productive for my mental health, perhaps, and nice to be able to rest, but it is not what I *do*, May Then My Name. This is not who I am. I am not one to crash at her friends' place, however pleasant they may be."
 
@@ -96,7 +96,7 @@ May grinned. True Name did not.
 
 May averted her gaze, but nodded all the same.
 
-"My apologies, you two," True Name said with a hint of a bow. "I am restless and anxious. I do not want to meet with Jonas. I do not want to stay in hiding. I do not want to go back to being overworked, but I am unhappy having no work. Call it an addiction, if you will, but I am nothing if I am not True Name." She bared her teeth and, as she continued, her words came faster, hotter, more frustrated. "And why should I not be? I have worked hard to become myself. That I am what I am and unrepentant of that is perhaps a disappointment to many, but it means more to me to stick to what I believe to be true than to--"
+"My apologies, you two," True Name said with a hint of a bow. "I am restless and anxious. I do not want to meet with Jonas. I do not want to stay in hiding. I do not want to go back to being overworked, but I am unhappy having no work. Call it an addiction, if you will, but I am nothing if I am not True Name." She bared her teeth in a bitter sneer and, as she continued, her words came faster, hotter, more frustrated. "And why should I not be? I have worked hard to become myself. That I am what I am and unrepentant of that is perhaps a disappointment to many, but it means more to me to stick to what I believe to be true than to--"
 
 "True Name," May said, interrupting the other skunk's tirade. "Wait."
 
@@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ Ioan frowned as well. Intuition told him the discussion they'd had earlier was q
 
 True Name jolted upright in her seat on the couch. "What the fuck is--"
 
-"Accept it," May said, and ey could see the full force of all her centuries of earnestness focused her cocladist; earnestness, kindness, the right tone, the perfect cant of ears and bristle of whiskers, all of it fine tuned to show True Name just what she needed to see. "It will only help, True Name."
+"Accept it," May said, and ey could see the full force of all her centuries of earnestness focused her cocladist; earnestness, kindness, the right tone, the perfect cant of ears and bristle of whiskers, all of it fine tuned to show her just what she needed to see. "It will only help, True Name."
 
 Her face contorting with the strain of holding what must be a very large high priority merge at bay without either remembering or forgetting it, True Name gasped. "May... May Then... Why..."
 
@@ -130,9 +130,9 @@ They both stared down at her.
 
 "One moment," she said, waving away the spilled water so that she could kneel by the couch. There was a moment's hesitation before she brushed some of the skunk's longer head fur away from her face. "Can you close your eyes?"
 
-When True Name didn't respond, didn't move, May gently brushed her paw down to close them for her. She leaned closer, whispering a few more questions ey could not hear to the skunk, though there was still no response.
+When True Name didn't respond, didn't move, May gently brushed her paw down to close them for her. She leaned closer, whispering a few more questions ey could not hear, though there was still no response.
 
-After lingering a moment longer, she stood shakily, took Ioan's hand in her paw and led em to the balcony. As soon as the door shut behind them, she burst into tears.
+After lingering a moment longer, she stood shakily, took Ioan's hand in her paw and led em to the balcony despite the cold. As soon as the door shut behind them, she burst into tears.
 
 Ey guided her carefully to the bench swing to sit her down, letting her cry herself out against eir shoulder.
 
@@ -152,7 +152,7 @@ She nodded, swallowing down that wave of tears as best she could. "We are good a
 
 "Did something go wrong, then?"
 
-"End Waking has not merged down in more than a century and a half, not since Michelle quit, and all she had to do then was let the memories fall onto her and then quit herself. He has diverged quite far in that time, as is to be expected, which means the potential for conflicts."
+"End Waking has not merged down in more than a century and a half, even when Michelle quit, all she had to do was let the memories fall onto her and then quit herself. He has diverged quite far in that time, as is to be expected, which means the potential for conflicts."
 
 Eir frown deepened. Ey thought ey could tell where this was going. "Aren't those usually just when memories don't line up, though?"
 
@@ -164,7 +164,7 @@ Ey nodded.
 
 "And it was too much?" ey asked.
 
-Her face screwed up again as she nodded. "I nuh-never wanted t-to hur-hurt her," May stammered as the tears started to flow once more.
+Her face screwed up again as she nodded. "I nuh-never wanted t-to hur-hurt her," she stammered as the tears started to flow once more.
 
 Ey got eir arms around her again and held her close. A quick glance through the windows showed that True Name still lay on the couch, breathing shallowly.
 

writing/post-self/mitzvot/018.md

@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ The mood throughout remained somewhere between anxious and remorseful.
 
 That evening, True Name requested that they eat dinner out at the lake rather than at home, saying, "I am feeling too cooped up by walls and yet more walls."
 
-Ey supposed it made sense, now that she had the competing memories of End Waking and however many personality traits that came with. He had only visited Ioan and May a scant handful of times, and then always out in the yard, seeming uncomfortable whenever they remained indoors.
+Ey supposed it made sense, now that she had the competing memories of End Waking and however many personality traits that came with. He had only visited Ioan and May a scant handful of times, and then always out in the yard, always refusing to go indoors.
 
 So, they packed up a simple dinner of sausages, zucchini, and potatoes to cook and stepped out to the lake.
 
@@ -40,7 +40,7 @@ May sniffled and looked off toward the lake in the deepening evening.
 
 "What does that leave you, now?"
 
-"I do not know yet, Ioan. It makes me too full of being, of time to be just one thing. It will likely take me several days to settle into...something. To settle into myself, whatever that means."
+"I do not know yet, Ioan. It makes me too full of being, of time, to be just one thing. It will likely take me several days to settle into...something. To settle into myself, whatever that means."
 
 They fell into silence again while Ioan and True Name finished their food and May looked down at her paws or into the fire.
 
@@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ May only nodded, swallowing back tears.
 
 There was no more holding back the tears, at that, though she did her best to cry silently.
 
-True Name smiled more kindly than she had yet that night. "But you still thought of me. "I do not want her to die," you said. You said that you do not know why you still care about me, and you said so to your cocladist perhaps not yet knowing that I would have that memory as well. You two are both meddlesome brats, but thank you for thinking of me."
+True Name smiled more kindly than she had yet that night. "But you still thought of me. "I do not want her to die," you said. You said that you do not know why you still care about me, and you said that to your cocladist perhaps not yet knowing that I would have that memory as well. You two are both meddlesome brats, but thank you for thinking of me."
 
 May tucked closer against Ioan's side and buried her face in eir shirt to cry, making a rude gesture at her down-tree instance before hugging her arms around eir waist.