update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/motes/004.md

@@ -226,4 +226,34 @@ Motes shook her head. "I never really talked to them, even going way back. I did
 
 "A Finger Pointing worked behind the scenes to deal with most things, Speck," Slow Hours said, voice fond. "Still works. Au Lieu Du Rêve is self-sustaining, so she is doing what she does best: caring for her stanza and for the clade as a whole, even the parts of it that dislike her. But come, this is not a conversation about her. This is about your dream. This is about how you feel."
 
+"Right," Motes said, pushing that miserable sensation in her chest down once more. "I feel...I do not know. Usually, it feels like I am just living like myself, if it feels like anything at all. Sometimes it feels transgressive in a fun way, like when I get booted from a sim for being weird or I get strange looks on the street or whatever."
 
+"And sometimes it feels transgressive in a bad way?" Slow Hours asked when Motes drifted to silence.
+
+"Yeah. It feels like I am doing something wrong. That is what I got out of the dream. It was not just that I was doing a bad thing, but a *wrong* thing. A bad thing might be naughty, but a wrong thing is me fuc– messing up. It is me making a mistake. *Being* a mistake."
+
+Her cocladist smiled sadly and reached out to take her paws in her hands. "I could tell you a million, billion, trillion times that you are doing as you say and just living like yourself, that you are not doing a wrong thing, that you are not a wrong person, but I do not think that is what you need to hear, is it, Speck?"
+
+After a moment's hesitation, she shook her head. "That is something I know intellectually already."
+
+"Do you want to hear my thoughts on the clade, then?"
+
+Motes shrugged. "I guess."
+
+Slow Hours nodded, letting her paws go. "I will not say "fuck 'em", much as either of us might want. You must not hyperfixate on them, but neither must you disregard them."
+
+"Why? Do you have a prophecy for me?" Motes asked, grinning faintly. "The last time you gave me a prophecy, it was about whether I should stay friends with one of my one-night stands."
+
+She laughed. "I remember that, yes. You were bound to run into someone who was also into kidcore stuff as Big Motes, and we were stifling you." The mirth faded to something more thoughtful. "But, yes, I have a prediction for you: the clade is not done with you, And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights. Even those who have cut you off have not forgotten you, and it is best that you not forget them."
+
+The skunk frowned, rubbing her paws over her knees and toying with a rip in the denim of her overalls. "Okay," she mumbled. "Where do you get all of this, anyway?"
+
+Slow Hours smiled, tapped at her temple with two fingers. "I have the outline of the world, do I not?"
+
+Motes stuck out her tongue. "That is not an answer!"
+
+"Yes, my dear, it is," her cocladist said haughtily, then the smile returned. "But in reality, most of these prophecies or omens or forecasts that I am apparently known for are simply reads on the situation based on the stories that I have read — and I have read a *lot* of stories. The clade is not done with you because that is not how people work. They do not cut contact with an erstwhile friend and then never think of them again. They think of them *constantly.* The stories wherein 'no contact' holds without further enmity are vanishingly few."
+
+...
+
+"I know that you said that you do not need to hear that you are not wrong or doing wrong things," Slow Hours said, drawing the skunk up into her lap. "But I will tell you all the same: you are not in any way a mistake. You are approaching this cognizant of the implications. You are holding in your mind both the truth that this *is* you and that an expression of identity like this coming from an adult is fraught."