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 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'.
+The day began with a coyote giving a javelina a hand in setting up countless contraptions just within the edge of the forest, describing an invisible net of arcane geometries held there five feet above the ground. The coyote lugged the total station while the javelina 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'.
 
 Theodolite.
 
@@ -37,11 +37,11 @@ Aaron frowned, peered out into the trees in the direction the botanist had been
 
 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."
+"But then you just kept standing there. It wasn't like you were searching for anything. You were just frozen."
 
 "Yeah, sorry. Maybe this place has me a little on edge."
 
-At that, the javelina's demeanor relaxed. "Right, yeah. The air's so thick here, like there's too much oxygen."
+At that, the javelina's demeanor relaxed, heckles relaxing. "Right, yeah. The air's so thick here, like there's too much oxygen."
 
 "Mm."
 
@@ -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, 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."
+At the camp: quiet. The four sat, each in front of their tent, thinking or not, reading or not. At one point, Sara, a lanky Mexican wolf who served as the team's linguist, asked after the geologist, the fifth member of their expedition, and Elanna, *de facto* leader, repeated, "I don't know. He's just gone."
 
 And then: quiet.
 
@@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ Jude shrugged and handed it over, fingers brushing briefly against the wolf's. "
 
 "Yeah. I studied Celtic languages for a while and wrote a paper on the whole blessing for an undergrad anthropology class. Write what you know, I guess."
 
-Aaron asked, "'The whole blessing'?"
+"'The whole blessing'?" Aaron asked.
 
 The ruddy wolf grinned. "Yeah, it's several lines. I think. It's been a while. It's like, 'good luck on your road, may the wind be behind you, may the sun shine on your face, may the rain fall on your fields, and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.'"
 
@@ -95,7 +95,7 @@ Elanna lifted her sleepy head. "You're Catholic."
 
 It wasn't a question. She knew already. Knew all of their profiles. A statement, then, for the benefit of the others.
 
-"Yeah. I'm, uh...gently lapsed, I'd say. I still believe, still read the bible. Just don't go to mass. I don't like it there."
+"Yeah. I'm, uh...gently lapsed, I'd say. I still believe, just don't go to mass. I don't like it there."
 
 Silence.
 
@@ -109,7 +109,7 @@ Jude had tuned out, and some distant part of her was surprised to find that she
 
 That finger pointing toward God.
 
-Elanna's voice broke through the storm of thoughts and non-thoughts, the puma's voice low, purr-tinged. "You okay?"
+Elanna's words broke through the storm of thoughts and non-thoughts, the puma's voice low, purr-tinged. "You okay?"
 
 The coyote frowned, the tension draining from her as a blanket settled over her unsettled mind. Turned, abashed, back toward camp. "No. Maybe. I don't know."
 
@@ -133,15 +133,15 @@ 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 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 its 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.
+And the scent of it --- of herself --- struck her senses 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.
 
-And while the dreamy confusion was mirrored on her face, there was also curiosity, also a detached fondness, an understanding, however inexact, of oneself. And these, too, were inexact, for she did not understand, did not feel fond. Did not feel anything.
+And while the dreamy confusion was mirrored on its face, there was also curiosity, also a detached fondness, an understanding, however inexact, of oneself. And these, too, were inexact, for she did not understand, did not feel fond. Did not feel anything.
 
 And she had stopped thinking of this dream-scented Doppelgänger as something other than herself. She was not it. She was she. She was *she*.
 
-And her hands were her own, were they not? She had a hand in their making. Her hand was forced hand in hand with blood on her hands washing her hands of the matter. After all, was a bird in the hand not worth two in the forest, there beside the outcropping where, written on the stone, were the blood-colored half-words the linguist toiled over day after day?
+And her hands were her own, were they not? She had a hand in their making. Her hand was forced hand in hand with blood on her hands washing her hands of the matter. After all, was a bird in the hand not worth two in the forest, there beside the outcropping where, written on the stone, were the rust-colored half-words the linguist toiled over day after day?
 
 And there she was, and if there had been a transition from the coyote being in her tent to her standing in the woods, to her moving toward where those dead rocks climbing stolidly up from earth, she missed it, just as she had missed that transition between waking and sleeping.