update from sparkleup

writing/hand-of-god-furry.md

@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 %title The Hand of God
 :short-story:writing:horror:furry:fiction:
 
-The day began with Jude giving the Aaron a hand in setting up countless contraptions just past the rim of the forest, describing an invisible net of arcane geometries held there five feet above the ground. She lugged the total station while he placed the equipment. He prattled on as he went, describing what he was doing, what tools he was using, what equipment she was carrying. She largely lost track after the word 'theodolite'.
+The day began with a coyote giving a javelina a hand in setting up countless contraptions just past the rim of the forest, describing an invisible net of arcane geometries held there five feet above the ground. The coyote lugged the total station while he placed the equipment. The javelina prattled on as he went, describing what he was doing, what tools he was using, what equipment she was carrying. She largely lost track after the word 'theodolite'.
 
 Theodolite.
 
@@ -13,17 +13,17 @@ The *-ite* put her in mind of stones. Of something semiprecious. Pretty, but not
 
 *The God-stone? Does that make sense?*
 
-Or perhaps it was the *-dol-* stuck in the middle. Sadness? No, that wasn't it. Pain? Dolorimetry, yes. The measure of pain. Was that a science? A sub-field, perhaps. Not hers, not as a botanist. Not Aaron's.
+Or perhaps it was the *-dol-* stuck in the middle. Sadness? No, that wasn't it. Pain? Dolorimetry, yes. The measure of pain. Was that a science? A sub-field, perhaps. Not hers, not as a botanist. Not the javelina's.
 
 *The God-stone: amber of the highest quality, embedded in which is a kernel of pain.*
 
-Here the Aaron was, doing his physics, doing his job, describing measurements and chromatic aberrations and spherical lenses and timed strobes and...
+Here Aaron was, doing his physics, whatever they were, doing his job, describing measurements and chromatic aberrations and spherical lenses and timed strobes and...
 
-And all the coyote could think was *would I know the God-stone if I saw it? If I touched it?*
+And all Jude could think was *would I know the God-stone if I saw it? If I touched it?*
 
 "Hey."
 
-Jude jerked upright. She had been crouched. Or hunched. A near feral wariness had overtaken her and formed her body into a bow. Taut, ready, tail bristled and tucked. She put forth a conscious effort to straighten up, square her shoulders, let them relax. An attempt at a wag.
+Jude jerked upright. She had been crouched. Or hunched. A near feral wariness had overtaken her and formed her body into a bow. Taut, ready, tail bristled and tucked, ears perked tall, listening, listening. She put forth a conscious effort to straighten up, square her shoulders, let them relax. An attempt at a wag.
 
 "You okay?"
 
@@ -33,19 +33,19 @@ Jude jerked upright. She had been crouched. Or hunched. A near feral wariness ha
 
 "No. Maybe. I don't know."
 
-Aaron frowned, the javelina peered out into the trees in the direction the botanist had been looking. "I thought you might have heard something. You froze and started looking over there--" He gestured with his tusks. "--over to the outcropping."
+Aaron frowned, peered out into the trees in the direction the botanist had been looking. "I thought you might have heard something. You froze and started looking over there--" He gestured with his snout. "--over to the outcropping."
 
-She didn't remember which way she had been facing. She knew that she had turned to face him, though.
+She didn't remember which way she had been facing. She did know that she had turned to face him, though.
 
 "But then you just kept standing there. It wasn't like you were listening. You were just frozen."
 
 "Yeah, sorry. Maybe this place has me a little on edge."
 
-At that, Aaron's demeanor relaxed. "Right, yeah. The air's so thick here, like there's too much oxygen."
+At that, the javelina's demeanor relaxed. "Right, yeah. The air's so thick here, like there's too much oxygen."
 
 "Mm."
 
-They walked back into the shade of a tree that did not belong, epiphytes strange and new winding around its trunk. Once he had strung wires between these arcane points, describing a sigil Jude could never hope to understand, they could seek relief from the Arizona sun. Ferns fingered the air and fronds like hands reached out to touch them.
+They walked back into the shade of a tree that did not belong, epiphytes strange and new winding around its trunk. Once he had strung wires between these arcane points, describing a sigil Jude could never hope to understand, they could seek relief from the Arizona sun, where ferns fingered the air and fronds like hands reached out to touch them.
 
 A flash. A sudden light from all five posts set the clearing in stark relief.
 
@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ And then they unwound the entire procedure from before. Undoing the cabling, une
 
 On the way back to the camp, Aaron continued to chatter. He was measuring the way light and shadow moved so untrod an area. "No reason to think something as basic as light would differ here," he had assured her. Or at least assured her form, as her mind was elsewhere. "But you have to admit, everything's a little strange."
 
-At the camp: quiet. The four sat, each in front of their tent, thinking or not, reading or not. At one point, the linguist asked after the geologist, the fifth member of their expedition, and Elanna, archaeologist and *de facto* leader, repeated, "I don't know. He's just gone."
+At the camp: quiet. The four sat, each in front of their tent, thinking or not, reading or not. At one point, Sara, the linguist, a lanky Mexican wolf, asked after the geologist, the fifth member of their expedition, and Elanna, archaeologist and *de facto* leader, repeated, "I don't know. He's just gone."
 
 And then: quiet.
 
@@ -133,7 +133,7 @@ And when she reached out her hand to touch its face, it reached out its own to r
 
 And the touch was real. It was palpable. It was warm. It was present. There was the softness of her fur. There were the callouses on her pads. There was the dirt caked to her claws.
 
-And her fur was as of as her own felt, and those tiny vibrissae that set contrast to the softness of her fur were beyond familiar: known in a way that proved the relationship beyond a doubt.
+And her fur was as soft as her own felt, and those tiny vibrissae that set contrast to the softness of her fur were beyond familiar: known in a way that proved the relationship beyond a doubt.
 
 And the scent of herself struck her nose in a way that it never had before, coming as it did from another form beyond her own. An olfactory echo to tug at the corners of reality.
 
@@ -161,7 +161,7 @@ And as she did so, she felt that the dirt beneath her claws took root, that her
 
 And her fingers crawled beneath the soil, and drank of the water there, and tasted the nutrients, and found purchase beneath the layer of loam and humus.
 
-And there, her fingers curled around the God-stone, and indeed, she knew it as she felt it, amber with a seed of pain embedded within.
+And there, her fingers curled around the God-stone, and indeed, she knew it as she felt it, amber with a kernel of pain embedded within.
 
 And even as the bark crawled up her arm, splitting fur, she saw her Doppelgänger stand and smile to her. A dreamy smile; not kind, not cruel, not knowing, not ignorant. Just a dreamy, inevitable smile. Just a dream. Just inevitability.