update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/motes/001.md

@@ -108,11 +108,15 @@ She shrugged. "Beckoning and Muse. Slow Hours, maybe? Dry Grass? I think Warmth
 
 "Not your boss," A Finger Pointing said lazily.
 
-"–to boss's sweetness. Here you are, fat little skunk–" She poked Motes in the belly.
+"–to Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself of the Ode clade's sweetness."
+
+This gained her a tug on the ear, which earned a laugh in turn.
+
+"Here you are, fat little skunk–" She poked Motes in the belly.
 
 Motes snorted. "You are also a fat skunk, though."
 
-"Complaining? I thought not. Here you are talking about a plate of salt and carbs while I am looking forward to a salad the size of my head and a burger that is also mostly salad."
+"Complaining? I thought not. You have fallen asleep on my belly more than once. Here you are talking about a plate of salt and carbs while I am looking forward to a salad the size of my head and a burger that is also mostly salad."
 
 "I *also* like those things, though," Motes countered. "Like, I would eat the heck out of a salad right about now."
 
@@ -134,4 +138,35 @@ The playful banter continued, and while she would occasionally poke her snout in
 
 She thought about the more than two centuries that had passed since A Finger Pointing had forked into the other nine instances of her stanza, that point when Motes and become Motes. She thought about the time that had followed when she remained essentially a version of A Finger Pointing who had taken up responsibility for sets and props, about those slow years of individuation and differentiation. She thought about the way she had started to toy with her appearance, her actions, her approach to life, and how she had steered herself into this focus on play to reclaim a childhood that had, yes, been pleasant enough, and yet which could have been so much more.
 
-It had not always been smooth, to be sure. The compromises she made early on far outnumbered the ways in which she was earnest to herself. <!-- only ever doing this in private at first, friction from another stanza passed on through A Finger Pointing, the issues with leaning into a family dynamic -->
+It had not always been smooth, to be sure. The compromises she made early on far outnumbered the ways in which she was earnest to herself.
+
+She did not blame A Finger Pointing, never once. She, of all those in her life, was trustworthy. Motes had once been her, after all, yes? They had had their spats, more than a few, as would be the case between any parent and child --- as would be the case between any two individuals: she had had spats with more than just ma. She and Beholden had fought, and at times bitterly, and it was at those times that Bee's protectiveness had felt most precarious. It had never disappeared, but it had verged well into the realm of sister, the realm of Slow Hours, or bestest friend, the realm of Time Rushes, and away from guardian, away from that parental love.
+
+She did not remember what the spats were about. She could, yes, her memory was as perfect as anyone else's on the three Systems. But she would not, because that was not the point. The point was that she was Motes. She was their Dot, their Dóttir. She was the kid, and they were the grown-ups who loved her.
+
+And so their protectiveness made sense, yes? They wanted to keep her safe, yes? They could not help but keep *themselves* safe, yes?
+
+And that is where the friction came from. It came from others in the stanza fussing about Motes-as-kid.
+
+She was not always. Often, she was in her early twenties. Certainly a far cry from the 41 she had been when she had been forked, or the 32 she had been when Michelle Hadje had first uploaded, but still, far more acceptable in the eyes of the System, far more acceptable in the eyes of the rest of the Ode clade.
+
+It was them, through A Finger Pointing and, on a few occasions, Slow Hours and Time Rushes, who suggested that she should not do this thing. It was too close to unwelcome paraphilias, here on the System where one had to be at least eighteen to upload. It was too close to coming off as someone seeking unwanted attention, affection, sexuality. "I understand that you wish to reclaim childhood," they said through her ma or siblings. "But you must understand the optics." Never mind that she had long since set aside sexuality, that she harbored her own fears of those offering unwanted attention, affection, sex. The optics were what needed minding.
+
+And so she kept it under wraps for years and decades.
+
+First it was the feelings she kept to herself. She alone knew them, and then her stanza alone knew them, but no one else.
+
+Then, it was the appearance that she kept to herself. While, shortly after happening on these feelings, she had built herself into an image of youth parked squarely in her early twenties, a human who dressed in flower-embroidered jeans and blouses, who so often wore a flower crown in her hair, who embodied flower-child, she now spent weeks and months tuning various aspects of her shape, of her sensorium. A skunk, rather than a human. Shorter, yes, but that is not all that makes a child. Shorter, proportionately different, clumsier, less developed in all ways aside from mental acuity.
+
+She alone knew this shape, alone in her room, alone in her studio with the doors securely shut and the premises swept. She alone knew what she looked like, and then her stanza knew, but precious few others.
+
+When first she began to explore outside the sphere of her stanza, when she first began to be perceived by the world around her, she lasted perhaps a week before the first gentle suggestions began to arrive. Perhaps this was just an 'us' thing, yes? A thing for playing with just Au Lieu Du Rêve, our little theatre troupe? We can play with these feelings somewhere safe.
+
+The discussion of optics did not show up for another few years as she tested the limits of this admonition. More people had uploaded, after all. More furries, of course, and more people with similar interests. There were more friends to be made.
+
+And yet she was of the Ode, was she not? There was an image to maintain that extended beyond the individual.
+
+The feelings, the appearance, rinse and repeat with this and that, with the familial language of 'ma' and 'sis', with sharing a bed when she had a nightmare, as any Odist might. Again and again pushing gently at limitations to search for a slow form of change.
+
+It was her use of 'ma' that caused perhaps the most trouble. It was trouble that came not as a gentle suggestion from 'on high', such as it were, but 
+<!-- only ever doing this in private at first, friction from another stanza passed on through A Finger Pointing, the issues with leaning into a family dynamic -->