update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/motes/007.md

@@ -351,33 +351,41 @@ The walk home was slow, any faster, and she feared that she might stumble.
 
 Beholden walked with her paws stuffed into the pockets of her hoodie, mostly looking down to her feet as they trudged along the sidewalk, while A Finger Pointing walked with her arm looped through her partner's, trusting the skunk to get them both home.
 
-She needed it; the world had indeed stopped making sense, as though seen in watercolors, too much ink on canvas. The sound of their footsteps on gravel and concrete and grass was a fine grit within her ears.
+She needed it; the world had indeed stopped making sense, as though seen in watercolors, too much ink on canvas. The sound of their footsteps on gravel and concrete and grass was a fine grit within her ears. The sound of the door opening, the feeling of the couch beneath her.
 
-> REWRITE
+There was panic, there, yes — there was dissociation, derealization, depersonalization — panic about the events, panic about Dry Grass and Motes and herself and Beholden, but there was also exhaustion. There was also the knock-on effects of a fit of play some years back, all welling up within her.
 
-In a fit of play some decades back, one of her ephemeral up-tree instances had quit right as they started to crash and she, ever curious, had accepted the merge. After all, when else would she ever know what a crash felt like without crashing herself?
+In that fit of play, that bout of instance artistry decades prior, one of her up-tree instances — two degrees up, a fork of a fork — started to crash. Before they did so completely, however, they managed to quit, to merge back down. Her immediate up-tree, another instance of ever-curious her, accepted the merge blithely. After all, when else would she ever know what a crash felt like without crashing herself?
 
-The effects were both subtle and drastic.
+Nothing happened. It was strange, yes. It was weird and confusing and uncomfortable, but it did not hurt, it did not leave that instance of her affected in any apparent way. Just a pile of jumbled memories slowly seeping in between the ones she had made, herself.
 
-They were subtle for their insidious nature. The sensation of the crash was startling, painful, a dissolution of the self that she had not expected. The pain had come in the sensation of her entire sensorium catching fire all at once. The dissolution of self had come with those nerves-on-fire rapidly unwinding. And even after she returned home, even after she slept, the memory of that sensation lingered within her.
+And so, A Finger Pointing accepted her up-tree's merge just as blithely.
 
-It was more than just a memory, though. It lingered there, quiet, beneath her own senses. She felt that pain waiting for her, felt the way her every nerve, no matter which sense it controlled, was pulled taut.
+The effects were both subtle and dramatic. 
 
-They were drastic because now here she was, some decades hence, still suffering, still feeling the way her vision and hearing and touch and taste and sense of smell all were affected, and when the stress rose, so too did these sensations.
+They were subtle because there was was no sudden incapacitation, no torturous existence that left her craving non-existence. They were subtle because they left her with a life so much like the one she had, but for the fact that her sensorium and sense of self had been severed, separated.
 
-Beholden led her through the door and into their house, guided her to the couch, and bade her sit. She returned a moment later with a glass of lukewarm water, lest the cold from the tap burn her throat. She drank carefully and then lay back against the cushions.
+This was the dissociation. This was the derealization. This was the world around her ceasing to make sense, as though in a dream. As though in a dream because she *did* live in a dream, did she not? She lived in the consensual dream that was the System, yes? It was hyper-dreaming, then, it was understanding a dream within a dream. 
 
-> END REWRITE
+It was like the System before the dream had been made consensual. It was like what image or audio or video transfers had been attempted before the introduction of AVEC, all blurry, all smudged, all almost-but-not-quite what they were, what they were meant to be.
+
+It was having a conversation with a dear one when tired, when one's attention drifted, and then trying to repeat the words that you had almost but not quite heard. It was looking at a scene and remembering that you were standing on a beach a moment ago, and yet being unable to tell water from shore, from sand. It was looking at your partner and not recognizing their face, not recognizing what a face *was.*
+
+It was pain, but she could not tell where or what kind or even if it was pain at all. It was vertigo. It was no up or down.
+
+It was curling in the corner in a fetal position because to do aught else was to risk falling over and breaking a limb.
+
+She wished dearly that she could do so now.
 
 "I am tired, Beholden."
 
-"I know, love," the skunk said, sitting beside her on the couch. 
+"I know, love," the skunk said, sitting beside her on the couch and dreaming up a glass of water for her. 
 
 She could still comprehend, at least, and could still see Beholden there beside her, a look of tired concern painted on her face.
 
 "Do you need anything else?"
 
-She shook her head. "Nothing in particular, no, though if you could stay here for a little while, I would appreciate that."
+She shook her head and carefully sipped her water. "Nothing in particular, no, though if you could stay here for a little while, I would appreciate that."
 
 "Do not be ridiculous," Beholden said, grinning wanly. "Like I would ever fucking leave. I *am* going to send a fork to go check on Dot, though."