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# Motes — 2362
## Beholden — 2362
Motes thought of play.
Beholden never quite understood play.
She thought of all of the play that she had taken part in over the years, all of the games and make believe, all of the jungle-gyms and slides, all of the tag and red-light-green-light and duck-duck-goose, everything going back 276 years, as much as she could remember. She thought of all her toys, from the mound of stuffed animals occupying her bed beside her right now to the awful and cheap RC car she had received on her fifth birthday that worked for that day and that day alone, that never again turned on. She thought of all her friends, of Alexei on the playground the other day — three days ago? Four? — calling out to her as she fell under the spike of panic, of Frida Couch who she had met in kindergarten, who she had told her parents she was dating in third grade, who had died some years after Michelle had uploaded.
She *played,* that was for sure. She played with her music, her sound design. She played with people's voices, recording them for later and slicing them up into bits and bites, rebuilding them into some work of eerie or jittery or calming beauty. She played with the sounds around her house, her studio, the whole of the world. She played with acoustics. She played with spaces. She played with echoes and reverberations and dead-zones and cones of silence. The played with soundscapes and world-soundtracks.
She thought of the way that play defined the Motes that she had become, the way it had shaped the way she interacted with the world, the way it shaped her very form. She thought of how Au Lieu Du Rêve had accepted readily just how well it fit her self-definition. She thought of the family that she had built up around her.
She hummed and sang. She played the piano, the drums, the guitar. She played the clarinet badly and the flute worse. She played with A Finger Pointing, their own little jazz trio, their own little big band. She played with her friends, jam session after jam session after jam session. She played her own sets, forking countless times over to play at however many clubs or venues. She played at The Party — several instances thereof! — running now for the last century and a half, a party that never ceased, attendees sleeping wherever, in beds or where they had fallen, with each other, alone. Beholden To The Flow Of The Crowds existed for a reason, yes?
She thought of play and, as she levered herself out of her bed, looked wearily around her room, the toys and art, the stuffed animals and silly prints on clothing, and then she forked into Big Motes.
She played as she danced. She played with others, dragging them home for a one-night stand, a few-nights fling, a relationship that lasted a month or two, but so rarely any longer.
She forked into Big Motes and straightened her hair and blouse, set a well-remembered dandelion flower crown atop her head, and made her way out to the rest of the house.
And she played with Motes, too. She really did! She played with her little Dot, tickling her until she said she was going to be sick, or pretending to pick her up by the ears as the skunklet clutched at her forearms. She played dead for Motes when she grew too exhausted to keep up. She lay there, on the floor, eyes closed, breathing turned off, while her charge scampered around, leaping over her, triumphant, hollering about victories, or wept over her unalive-yet-souled body at the tragedy — oh, woe! Such tragedy! — of a fallen comrade. Less mother than cool stepdad, she played with her kid.
There was silence there, and emptiness. There was the place to herself in the warm sunlight of a late morning, some three days after first she fell on the playground. There was the comfort of familiarity set beside a hollow feeling in her chest.
But she did not understand it. She did not really get it. She rarely thought about it, but when she did, it was more baffling than it was natural.
Adjusting to a view of the world a few feet higher than it had been some seconds ago, she made her way to the kitchen and poked around. It did not feel like a day for some sugary cereal, nor the cinnamon-sugar toast that she had always loved. It was a day for coffee and something savory and filling. Perhaps a day for a mimosa.
Beholden was not stupid. She was not an idiot. She could conceptualize things around her, and in all the many ways the rest of the clade was, she was wickedly intelligent in her own area of hyperfixation, hyperspecialization. When it came to emotions, though, when it came to instincts and base responses, she could not quite understand. It was not her fixation, her specialization.
*An adult breakfast,* a part of her whispered. *Setting aside childish things...*
She did not really know why she played, because she did not really *care* to know why.
She shook her head to dispel the lingering thought, one based in overflow rather than her current mood.
She did not know why she loved, why she loved A Finger Pointing or Motes. She did not know why she loved so few others. She did not know why she felt such devotion to her boss — "not your boss" the common refrain — and her Dot in a way that she could not muster for anyone else. She never bothered to question why.
And so she pulled out a couple of eggs, a few links of chicken sausage, and a dish of frozen hash browns. On a whim, she also pulled out a few large tortillas and some green chili salsa that she — that much of the clade — remembered fondly from her time back phys-side, back when she lived in the central corridor. She may as well go all out, yes?
She did not know why she rose so quickly to anger. She did not know why she and Motes fought at times. She did not know why she got so mad when she saw Motes die on stage. She did not know why, when she and Slow Hours fought, usually about Motes's various deaths, it hurt so much. She shied away from ever trying to figure out why.
The hash browns were the first to go in the pan, laid out in an even layer so that they could crisp up, while two more pans were dreamed up so that she could cook the sausage and eggs meanwhile.
She just knew that she played, that she loved, she got stuck in her big feelings.
Definitely a morning for a mimosa.
And so when she found Motes huddled in the middle of her studio, all but curled into a ball as she crouched on the floor, when she found her bloodied beat up, Beholden panicked. She kept it together long enough to help the little skunk to her room, to fork, to bed. She held herself in one piece as she told Motes time and again that she loved her. She held the panic at bay until she made her way to her studio, locked the completely soundproof door, and crumpled to the ground, screaming and wailing and sobbing. She tore holes in the couch cushions with her claws. She ripped acoustic foam from the walls. She threw the table hard enough to shatter it.
The eggs were fried over easy and the sausage cooked to just this side of burnt so that they offered a pleasant mix of textures, crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside with an indulgent oiliness throughout. These were layered on top of a pile of even crispier hash browns — the kind that shatter beneath a fork when you try to stab them — before the eggs were laid on top and the yolks punctured so that they oozed out over the mess to add a sauce of their own.
And then, when sobs settled into simple tears and not great, heaving things, she waved her paw to unwind the tantrum. She brought into being a glass of water to set on the once more intact table, sat down on the un-torn couch, and moaned through her tears, letting the replaced acoustic foam absorb the sounds.
Her plate laden with two burritos in one hand and mimosa in the other, she made her way to the couch rather than the dining table and settled down with a long, worn-out sigh.
When she was next able to speak, she began a sensorium message to A Finger Pointing. *"Dot is overflowing, love. She–"*
What was missing...ah! Coffee.
*"I know,"* her partner interrupted. *"I am here."*
While there was joy in making her own, she was already down, she was already comfortable, she was already finished with her time in the kitchen, and so she deemed it easier to just wave a steaming mug into being on the low table before her, already dosed with cream and sugar.
Quelling her shame, she straightened herself up as best she could, deciding not to fork away the mussed up fur or tear-stains on her cheeks, letting some of that trauma show for reasons she could not explain, and stepped back out of her studio to find A Finger Pointing pacing back and forth in the living room.
She downed half of her mimosa in one go before setting that aside and focusing on her first burrito, each bite topped with a generous spoonful of the salsa until she was left nearly in tears. The rest of the mimosa and a few sips of her coffee, and then the second burrito, similarly doctored.
"I came as soon as– oh, Beholden..." Her cocladist's shoulder slumped as she trailed off, putting a halt to her pacing so that she could wrap the skunk up in a hug. "Are you okay, my dear?"
It was some time later — she did not know how long nor care to check, though her coffee mug was empty — before Beholden and A Finger Pointing returned, talking quietly about lunch. On seeing her awake and alert, the empty dishes on the table, they both smiled and changed course to settle down on either side of her.
Despite the stinging of new tears in her eyes, she nodded. "Not particularly, but I am here. How did you know that Motes was overflowing?"
"Glad to see you up and about, Dot," Beholden said, briefly touching her nosetip to Motes's cheek in an affectionate skunk-kiss. "We got the ping that you were, thus lunch here rather than out, but it is nice to see you all the same."
A Finger Pointing hesitated, frowned, and pulled a letter from her pocket, handing it over to the skunk. "This. I did not *know* that Dot was overflowing until I got here and saw her door shut tight. I was not at all surprised when you told me."
Bookending her with a similar — though far more human ­— kiss to herother cheek, A Finger Pointing said, "It really is. Are you feeling better, my dear? Please say yes."
As Beholden read through the letter, her lips curled up into a snarl, and she could feel a low growl build in her chest. "'I expect better'!" she muttered darkly, stamping her foot. "Jesus *fucking* Christ. 'Grounded in reality' indeed."
Motes laughed and waited until each was finished before returning the cheek kisses to her cocladists. "I am, mostly. I still have a lot on my mind, but I am no longer buried beneath it." She nodded towards the plates, adding, "I already ate before you got here. I am not sorry."
Smiling humorlessly, she nodded toward the letter. "I am assuming that this mention of a letter is what took Motes down."
"Nor should you be," A Finger Pointing scoffed. "I would be disappointed if you had not."
"Took her down?" Beholden cried, then quickly tamped down the flare of anger, returning the letter to her partner. "She was covered in blood when I checked on her. Someone must have hit her hard enough to give her a bloody nose. She was all scraped up."
"Of course you would be." Her grin softened to a smile. "You really set up the sim to ping you when I woke?"
A Finger Pointing blanched stiffened for a long few seconds, then nodded. "Did you get her cleaned up?"
"Just a few things — your door opening, something being done in the kitchen or at the bar, that sort of thing — so that we would know while we were out."
"Yeah, I brought her to enough to get her to fork into her PJs, but she is out hard right now in bed."
"She was worried," Beholden stage-whispered. "You should have seen her brighten when she got the notification you were in the kitchen."
She sighed, shoulders slumping. "Thank you, my love. I had assumed the last bit, at least, and have left her be. I did not wish to add to her stress at the moment."
"Beholden was *so* worried," A Finger Pointing said, voice bearing all the drama of some overwrought Shakespearean performer. She spoke loudly, pretending as though she had not heard Beholden, that the skunk was not even there. "I do not know if you noticed while you were down and out, my dear, but I swear, that skunk checked on you at *least* once an hour."
Beholden nodded. "What do we do?"
"She about started crying," Beholden continued, smirk on her muzzle.
"Protect our own," came the immediate answer. "Protect ourselves. Protect our Dot."
""Beholden, you *know* that she will pull through," I kept saying. "She *always* does." You are stronger than your silly cocladist, Dot, are you not?"
And so they did. They circled around each other, brought Dry Grass into the fold as officially as they saw fit, providing her with a house. They set up a gentle watch on Motes, set up alerts throughout the house for when her door opened from the inside, for when the bar or kitchen were entered by her. They sought out Slow Hours for a meeting seeking her premonitions, such as they were. They sought out Sasha for a meeting to confirm that there were no existential threats. They sought out Waking World for a meeting to get a better sense of Hammered Silver's intentions.
"She was so rude, cutting off a conversation with Sasha mid-sentence and rushing us back here, putting on her most nonchalant act."
All the while, Beholden did her best to remain calm, or to at least tamp down expressions of overwhelming emotions. There were walks. Many walks. Many excuses to step away to the auditorium or to get fresh air or stretch her legs.
Motes laughed as they both scoffed at each other, looping her arms through each of theirs and slouching down, settling into the comfort of touch and family. "You are both nerds," she murmured. "Thank you for keeping an eye on me."
She went always alone on her walks, pacing out along the deer trails or walking the loop of the neighborhood time and again, poking her way among the seats and catwalks of the auditorium.
"Of course, my dear," they said in unison. A Finger Pointing continued, "Motes, did you leave any champagne for the rest of us? I would not say no to a Bellini."
Or tried to go alone, as always there was someone willing to go with her, asking gently if she needed company, even if that company was silent, or if she needed instead to talk. Slow Hours volunteered. Unbidden volunteered. A Finger Pointing, having spent so many years, so many decades with her, did not volunteer, but did look after her with a mix of worry and understanding in her face.
"Another mimosa for me, Beholden," Motes added.
The only time she accepted the company was when Dry Grass did not so much volunteer as, wiping freshly-shed tears from her face, ask Beholden if they could go for a walk together so that she could talk. That Beholden had already slipped on her hoodie, had already drank a glass of water, was already heading towards the door suggested that this was a form of volunteering, but Dry Grass did certainly deserve the chance to talk through the position she had found herself in.
Laughing, the skunk gave her one more of those nose-dot kisses before disentangling herself to see to drinks.
(( A walk with Dry Grass to calm down the next morning after their meeting ))
"How are you really, Motes?" A Finger Pointing asked, voice lowered less, it seemed, to keep her words from Beholden than to soften the mood. "We need not talk in detail now, but I do wish to know."
(( Confusion and coming to terms with Motes in the family ))
"Okay," she said. "Tender, I guess. Sore, maybe? I am not feeling bad, but I am not yet feeling good. I am feeling like the slightest bump with leave me with a bruise."
(( Caring for A Finger Pointing ))
(((( Pointillist sighs wistfully. "She has recorded me doing all sorts of things in my day-to-day as well. There is a recording of my heartfelt laughter turning to dire sobbing after a really rough day. She chopped it into little slivers of half-recognizable samples and haunted an entire album with it like the world's longest "Chihuahua or Muffin" slideshow." ))))
Her cocladist nodded. "I imagine so. Are you up to speaking about what happened?"
(( The origin of struggling with emotions, tamping down grief in order to work with sound, ever AwDae's thing ))
She nodded. "A little bit. I will let you know if I need to bow out."
"Of course." A Finger Pointing took a deep breath, composing herself. "Hammered Silver sent me a letter. She mentioned in it that she had sent you one as well."
Motes wilted.
"Yes, I imagine that is much of why you were left overflowing." When Motes nodded, she continued, "I am sorry, my dear. Is that also why you are Big Motes now?"
The answer was a long time coming, the silence filled with the gentle tink of glasses as Beholden mixed their late lunch cocktails, carrying them carefully back to the couch and handing them out so that she could rejoin.
"Yeah," Motes said at last. "At least, I think so. It was something that I did almost on a whim. I knew I wanted to be Big Motes, or at least that I was not ready to be Little Motes yet. Been thinking about that all morning."
Beholden tasted her drink, nodded appreciatively, then asked, "Have you come to any conclusions?"
"I think so," she said, looking down at her mimosa. Beholden had topped it with a maraschino cherry poked through with a cocktail umbrella. There was a warmth of adoration starting to fill hat hollow space in her chest. "I am not going to stop playing, not going to stop being her, but...but that really fucking hurt, and I need to know what to do with that pain before I reengage with that, you know?"
Letting her free arm dangle over the arm of the couch, glass held by the rim, A Finger Pointing tucked her own cocktail umbrella into Motes's hair, adding a wheel of bright pink to the yellow of the dandelions before draping her arm around her cocladist's shoulder. "That does make sense, yes. That was one of my worries, even: that this would leave you too wounded to reengage with that part of you that has been so important over the years."
Motes shook her head gently so as not to dislodge crown or umbrella.
"Good. You are allowed to be Big Motes for a bit while you process this. You are allowed to hold back on all sorts of interactions. I have noticed a lack of 'Ma' or 'Bee'– no, no. No need to explain, just an observation. These are things that we will miss and then rejoice when they return."
She slouched against A Finger Pointing and hugged around her middle, careful not to spill her drink. "Thank you, my dear. I really do appreciate it. I will get there, too, for all of that. Just...not yet. Not quite yet."
Beholden smiled, reached out to brush some of her curls away from her face, added, "Yeah. And if you need us to lay off calling you 'Dot', I am sure–"
"Absolutely not," Motes said, laughing. "I would not have you change your ways just because I am feeling icky for a bit."
"It is an offer, Motes," the skunk chided gently. "Not some weird obligation for us."
Her shoulders slumped and she nodded. "Alright. I think my answer still stands, though. I like it when you call me that, even when I am Big Motes. I do not imagine...well, no. I am *sure* this will not last longer than two weeks. That is the deadline I have given myself to process this."
"Of course, Dot," A Finger Pointing said, tightening her grip in a squeeze before gently nudging her to sit back upright. "With this of all things, there will be more than enough processing to fill that time. The situation has...resolved itself while you were sleeping, but even that resolution is complicated."
"Oh?"
She nodded. "Are you alright to talk about it? I do not know that even Beholden knows the full extent of what happened."
The skunk shook her head.
Despite the already warm feeling in her belly from the first mimosa, Motes quickly finished her second in a few gulps. "Then sure," she said, laughing at the burp that followed. "Hit me."
Beholden punched her gently on the shoulder before taking her empty glass and setting it on the table in front of them.
The full story of what had happened over the last few days between A Finger Pointing and Hammered Silver was laid bare over the next hour. Not just that, but much of their story going back into the past as well. Both Beholden and Motes were left with more than a few questions. Over the last few years, their down-tree instance had opened up more and more about how much she had shielded the stanza from the political machinations of the rest of the clade around them, all of the ways in which she had strived to protect them, and yet more of this became clear as she spoke about all of the fuss that Hammered Silver had made over the years.
When she finished and all questions had been answered or deferred, they fell into silence for a long few minutes, the three of them just digesting the last few days each in their own way.
Finally, Motes huffed and flopped back against the couch. "What a fucking bitch."
"Dot, language," Beholden scolded, laughing.
"Fuck fuck fuck," she said, grinning wildly. "Bitch bitch bitch! You can yell at Little Motes~"
"No, she is right, my muse," A Finger Pointing said. "Fucking bitch."
"Well, okay, no disputes there," Beholden said, waving away the three glasses. "What is on your plate next, Motes?"
She shrugged. "Well, I pinged Miss Genet, so we are going to meet later."
"Therapy!" A Finger Pointing exclaimed, waving a hand at nothing in particular. "What a lovely idea."
"After all that?" Beholden said, smirking. "I am surprised that you have not already scheduled something."
"I am so dreadfully busy, Beholden. You know that."
"You spent yesterday afternoon lounging in the auditorium trying every kind of kettle corn you could find on the exchange."
She sat up straight, staring at her partner like she was some alien creature, something too dense to understand the importance of kettle corn. "Yes. Busy."
As A Finger Pointing and Beholden finally got around to whipping up lunch for themselves, the conversation once more fell into comfortable chatter, the sort of banter that so often filed the house, and while, by the time her appointment arrived, Motes had not yet felt comfortable enough to refer to them as 'Ma' and 'Bee', that welcoming sense of family had returned in force, and she felt once more in her comforting role as their Dot, their *dóttir*.
As the afternoon threatened to slide right into evening, Motes took her leave and left A Finger Pointing and Beholden on the couch, canoodling. Clearly that had taken precedence over whatever they had had planned at the auditorium for the rest of the day. That they had come home for her, for Motes, was the base of that warmth that had grown within her.
She made her way out of the house and wandered to the center of the neighborhood. She left the automatic chalk lines going, letting them be the fuel that propelled her forward, let their flowering shapes fit into this perception of herself as a flower child rather than simply a child, a careful reframing that allowed her to have this thing, this gentle goodness.
The neighborhood formed a lazy semicircle, a 'U' that butted up against an avenue that petered out into the nature of the sim in either direction. Across the street — inaccessible to anyone who was unwelcome — sat the back entrance of the theatre Au Lieu Du Rêve most commonly performed at. Just homes and a beloved workplace dropped together into an endless landscape like sugar into so much tea.
In the bowl of the 'U' sat all of the common areas. A pool — one with seats and jets, one that could be a hot tub seating a hundred as easily as it could be an Olympic pool — a few tennis courts for the few — who? — who actually enjoyed the game, a liberal dotting of grills — everyone had a favorite — for cook outs, a "community center" which had long ago turned into a movie-theater-*cum*-cuddlepit...
And there, right at the very lowest point of the bowl of the 'U' sat a playground. What was initially intended to be Motes's haunt, hers and her friends, had long ago turned into a place for late-night musings. Thousands and thousands of times over the years, couples or small groups or lone individuals would converge on the swings or the slide and sit in the dark, staring up on the star-speckled sky, the Milky Way glowing bright enough to light one's face beyond even the Moon, even the gold-and-black of the rest of the neighborhood with its sodium vapor lamps and countless darknesses. It was a place for play, yes, and it was often used for such, but it was also a place for couples to work out their problems or groups to chat about everything and nothing or for one to sit alone, drunk, beneath the stars, looking up and feeling good or bad or simply introspective.
It was not dark now.
There, on the swings, sat a child, a girl, looking to be perhaps twelve or thirteen with brown hair cut into an unruly bob, pale skin shining in the sun, swaying lazily back and forth as she faced away from Motes. She looked mostly down, skidding the heels of her shoes through the gravel beneath the swings, scooping the pebbles out of the way and then smoothing them back into place with her toes.
Motes moved quietly through the grass — quietly enough that the girl did not notice her — and sat down on the free swing within that segment.
"Hi, Sarah," she said.
"Motes! Hi!" the girl said, then hesitated. "You're Big Motes today. Do you want me to Big Sarah?"
Motes held onto the chains of the swing and gave herself a push with her feet, testing the way she glided through the air for a few feet back, then a few feet forward.
"Motes?"
"Yeah, actually, I think I would like Big Sarah today."
Nodding, Sarah Genet stepped off the swing and summarily disappeared, leaving behind a fork still sitting down. This new instance was far older, looking to be sixty or so years old with silvery-gray hair in a similar bob, her skin just as pale and yet fraught with wrinkles, her smile kind and gaze always attentive.
"Is this better?" she asked.
Motes smiled, nodded and gave herself another gentle kick, keeping the same back-and-forth going, the same few feet of earth wafting beneath her feet. "Thanks."
"Of course, Motes. Would you like me to prompt or wait?"
She caught herself in the act of merely shrugging, then shook her head to clear it. "Thanks for asking," she said. After a long moment's thought, she sighed. "I think I would like for you to prompt me today. I do not yet know where to start."
"That's fine," Sarah said gently. "You said in your message that you've just come up from overflowing. Can you tell me about that?"
"Mmhm. Just a few hours ago, actually. Beholden and Pointillist are still back at home after coming to check on me." She smiled down to the ground as it swung beneath her. "They set up alerts around the house so they would know when I was up."
"That's sweet of them."
"It is. I...uh," she trailed off. "The overflow started when I got a letter from within the clade. It really fucked me up. Like, *really* bad."
"And that's why you're Big Motes? Why you didn't say 'Ma'?"
She smirked. "You read me like the Sunday comics," she said, laughing. "Yes."
Sarah smiled in turn, far more gently. "Tell me about this letter, then. Tell me what'd be enough for you to get knocked out of commission."
And so she did. She summarized portions of it, then pulled it up to read the most impactful bits. She talked about the feelings of the month leading up to this, the conversations and the dream. She talked about how she had stopped playing, how it hurt to think of reengaging, how she knew she would but there was work to be done first.
And then, on Sarah's gentle urging, she worked her way backwards. She worked her way back through the months and years before, the feelings that lingered, the various comings-to-terms that she had had over the years. She talked through and made her own connections, letting Sarah suggest when her voice stumbled to a halt.
"Motes," Sarah said gently. "Tell me why Hammered Silver's opinion matters to you."
Motes snorted. "It should not."
"But it does, doesn't it? A Finger Pointing has addressed it and you're all but guaranteed to not have to deal with this again unless Hammered Silver's gone off the deep end, which it doesn't sound like she has."
She nodded slowly, mulling the question over in her head, brow furrowed.
"Let me split it into two, maybe. First, what about it hurt? Why are you still hurting? And second, who is Hammered Silver to you?"
Motes put her feet down, letting the drag of shoe against gravel slow her to a stop. "Who is she to me? You mean, other than a weirdly invasive aunt who thinks she knows better?" The bitterness in her voice rose, and she was helpless to stop it. "Some old bat who is more concerned about the image of the clade that any — literally *any* — of us living earnestly?"
Sarah raised a brow. "That is absolutely an answer, yes. You still see her as part of the clade?" she asked. "You still see her as an aunt?"
Stymied, she ground her heels down against the gravel beneath the swing.
"I think it's worth digging into, but if you need–"
"No, that is a good point." Motes groaned. That hollow feeling within her chest once more grew, and she squinted her eyes shut. "I guess I do, yeah."
"To which? A part of the clade or aunt?"
"Both."
"Why do you feel she's still a part of the clade to you? That feels like it might be the easier one to answer."
Motes nodded. "Yeah. I guess it just feels like that is something that only the cladist can decide, right? I cannot just say that she is *not* an Odist."
"Hasn't she done that to you and yours, though?"
She furrowed her brow, using her shoe to flatten out the gravel beneath her as she thought. "I do not know that she has, though. She still calls me And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights — she was such a bitch about names, actually, 'the one who has named herself Sasha' *every* time — and even if she did not need to, she did write 'of the Ode clade' after my name."
"That's your name, though. Tell me about how that doesn't *feel* like cutting you out of the clade." Sarah smiled gently, adding, "Not that I don't believe you, I just want to understand where you're coming from on this."
"I guess it is that she has not told anyone but her stanza not to talk to me. To us, I mean. Her and In Dreams's stanzas talk to each other. They still talk to the second, third, and fourth. They still talk to What Lives and so on in the ninth. We talk to all of those people, too." She smiled sidelong at Sarah. "So I guess I see where you are going. I do still see her as an aunt because she has not actually said that we are not family — or like a family — she has just cut off contact. She has implied that we *are* still family, but that I did something wrong."
Sarah laughed. "I really was just trying to figure things out, not lead you along, but that's an important connection to make, there. Family members cutting off others in the family is common enough to be a whole area of study. How does it feel to treat the rest of the clade as an extended family, though?"
"That is, like...my whole bit, is it not? I am play-acting the kid. I am method-acting, and Pointillist and Beholden and Slow Hours and everyone is in on it."
"Even Hammered Silver? Even those who *aren't* in on it?"
Motes frowned.
"It's okay if you act as though they are," Sarah said. "Or if they become a part of your internal conception of the play. They don't need to be actively in on it if it's an internal representation of your world."
"Right," she mumbled, looking out into the neighborhood and swaying gently from side to side in her swing. "I guess it makes more sense when you talk about family members cutting each other off. If that is a thing that families do with any frequency, then there is no reason for me to not incorporate that."
"'No reason'?" Sarah asked, picking up on the rhythm of Motes's swaying.
"Well, obviously I hate it," she said, laughing. "But if I am going to get shit on like this, then I guess all I can do–"
"'All'?"
Motes snorted. "*One* thing I can do is reclaim it and turn it into a family spat, right?"
Sarah laughed and pushed herself to start swinging in earnest. "That's what I was getting at, yeah. But tell me more about being Big Motes. You've talked about the family aspect of it, but it sounds like you were thinking about this even before Hammered Silver sent you her letter."
Before she realized what she was doing, Motes was already starting to swing along with Sarah. Back to that movement, back to that little twinge of play. *This* was why she appreciated her therapist, all of these little nudges, all of this meeting her on her terms. After all, had she not appeared at first as a girl a few years older than her, as she had so many times before? One of those girls who seems infinitely wise to someone younger?
Motes smiled faintly out to the world as it swung beneath and around her. "I do not know that there was anything that spurred on all of the discussions or the dream — though I imagine the dream was a result of all of the thinking that I had been doing leading up to it. It was just on my mind. Maybe I have been doubting myself more of late."
"Doubting how? The last time we talked, you didn't sound like you were doubting yourself. You talked about how everyone had a different nickname for you."
She laughed, feeling earnest joy at the memory. "Dot! Speck! Mote! Kiddo and skunklet and little one," she called out to sky and grass. "Yes, you are right. But I also talked about how I had fallen again into that feeling that maybe my name had played a role in who I had become. Motes, yes? Small, little things that drift across your vision. Microscopic things. I talked about whether the name came first, or the nature, yes?"
"Mmhm. You used Beholden as a counter example."
"I said she should have been in charge of lights," Motes said, still grinning. "'Beholden to the heat of the lamps'? That has nothing to do with music or sound."
Still smiling, herself, Sarah countered, "And then I pointed out Loss For Images and That It Might Give. 'That it might give the world orders' being primarily a director is pretty on the nose."
"Yeah," she said, sighing as the grin started to fade. "Yeah. There is a mix of both. It does not matter whether or not the name or the nature came first, not in this case. What matters is that it got stuck in my craw, right? I got stuck thinking about it, and then Hammered Silver sent me her stupid letter and it all came to a head."
"Some things are just coincidences."
Motes nodded.
"Hammered Silver sent you the letter because she learned about Dry Grass visiting the fifth stanza. That's not something you had any say over — at least not beyond liking when she visits — and certainly not anything to do with how you were feeling, right?"
She remained silent. She remained silent for a long time, and when the arc of her swing started to slow, she began pumping her legs, working vigorously to get herself swinging as high as she could, swinging to the point where she looked now straight down to the center of the Earth, and now directly up to the heavens.
"Motes?" Sarah's voice came from a distance, from all the way down there with her feet planted on the ground, from where she was anchored.
"Maybe it did," she hollered. She imagined the way her voice must have Dopplered past her therapist with each arc of the swing and started to giggle. "Maybe me talking about this with Dry Grass did lead to the letter. Maybe it is my fault."
"You mean you think she went and told Hammered Silver to let her visit you after you talked about your worries?" Sarah called out to her.
"Yeah!"
"What does that change?"
"Nothing!" Motes said, laughing joyously. "It changes nothing. In fact, I hope that *is* the case! At that point, Hammered Silver really *is* just a bitch."
Sarah laughed, and Motes felt the sound in the air as she breezed past.
*I respect her as a person, but I do not like her,* Dry Grass had said. *And I certainly do not respect her authority.*
*Do not worry, my dear,* Dry Grass had said. *You are stuck with me for a good while yet.*
*I would rather tell Hammered Silver to go fuck herself,* Dry Grass had said in the end.
Perhaps Dry Grass had excused herself from the sixth stanza. Perhaps she had taken an opportunity to make her opinions known. Perhaps she had spoken up, talked back, shot down a little bit of Hammered Silver's authority by standing up for Motes.
Perhaps she ought to hug Dry Grass extra-tight next time she saw her.

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# Motes — 2362
Motes played.
Motes thought of play.
She played in the dark. She played crawling on hands and knees. She played hide and seek. She played stealth missions. She played silently, muffling the sound of her passage and keeping her breathing quiet; it was against the rules to turn it off. She played base commander, repelling invisible foes, hollering out orders to her friends. She played noisily, her voice echoing off the rocky walls with laughter and shouts bouncing around seemingly endlessly.
She thought of all of the play that she had taken part in over the years, all of the games and make believe, all of the jungle-gyms and slides, all of the tag and red-light-green-light and duck-duck-goose, everything going back 276 years, as much as she could remember. She thought of all her toys, from the mound of stuffed animals occupying her bed beside her right now to the awful and cheap RC car she had received on her fifth birthday that worked for that day and that day alone, that never again turned on. She thought of all her friends, of Alexei on the playground the other day — three days ago? Four? — calling out to her as she fell under the spike of panic, of Frida Couch who she had met in kindergarten, who she had told her parents she was dating in third grade, who had died some years after Michelle had uploaded.
She played in Rock Park, a hulking mound of salmon, pink, gold, and buff flagstone that had been stacked in such a way as to create a series of twisty, narrow tunnels throughout. The tunnels turned sharply, or required her to climb up vague suggestions of ladders made by protruding slabs of rock, or dumped her down into a central cavern, the ground covered in a layer of velvety soft mulch to cushion any falls. The cavern that opened out on one end into a broader playground, all of the equipment themed to be related to a quarry: dump trucks and bucket hoists and front end loaders and excavators.
She thought of the way that play defined the Motes that she had become, the way it had shaped the way she interacted with the world, the way it shaped her very form. She thought of how Au Lieu Du Rêve had accepted readily just how well it fit her self-definition. She thought of the family that she had built up around her.
She played throughout the rest of the park, hauling that mulch or digging into it with the equipment or her paws, putting those digger claws of hers to use. She played in the grass, played in the little stands of pine trees that dotted the field beyond, the two whitewashed gazebos. Sometimes there were roller-blades or bikes or skateboards. Sometimes there were self-propelled levitation boots that let you putter along at a few miles per hour a hand's breadth above the ground and which would do all they could to keep you from falling over.
She thought of play and, as she levered herself out of her bed, looked wearily around her room, the toys and art, the stuffed animals and silly prints on clothing, and then she forked into Big Motes.
She played with her friends. She played with strangers she had seen before yet never talked to. She played with those she saw once and then never saw again.
She forked into Big Motes and straightened her hair and blouse, set a well-remembered dandelion flower crown atop her head, and made her way out to the rest of the house.
She played until she got tired, until enough of her friends got bored and wandered off, until the long, breezy morning in this sim sighed its way into the heat of afternoon. She played until the obvious thing to do was to climb up to the top of the tunnel-ridden pile of flagstone to sit at the summit, enjoying the sun with Alexei.
There was silence there, and emptiness. There was the place to herself in the warm sunlight of a late morning, some three days after first she fell on the playground. There was the comfort of familiarity set beside a hollow feeling in her chest.
The park was only one part of a small town, only one part of a sizeable sim, but it was a popular destination for those who leaned into childhood on Lagrange for its permissive attitudes and curious inhabitants, most of whom seemed to be families — found or blood — and many of whom were the kids who played here. Alexei lived here with the family he had built: three guardians, one of whom was his great-grandfather by blood, and a sister.
Adjusting to a view of the world a few feet higher than it had been some seconds ago, she made her way to the kitchen and poked around. It did not feel like a day for some sugary cereal, nor the cinnamon-sugar toast that she had always loved. It was a day for coffee and something savory and filling. Perhaps a day for a mimosa.
"Motes," he said after they had sat in silence for some time. "Where were you, anyway? I know you said you didn't want to talk about it, but it's just us, right?"
*An adult breakfast,* a part of her whispered. *Setting aside childish things...*
She shrugged and picked at the rock with a claw, worrying loose a thin chip of flagstone. "I still do not *want* to talk about it," she said, then grinned over at him. "But I will anyway."
She shook her head to dispel the lingering thought, one based in overflow rather than her current mood.
"That's because you never shut up."
And so she pulled out a couple of eggs, a few links of chicken sausage, and a dish of frozen hash browns. On a whim, she also pulled out a few large tortillas and some green chili salsa that she — that much of the clade — remembered fondly from her time back phys-side, back when she lived in the central corridor. She may as well go all out, yes?
She laughed and threw the chip of rock at him. "That is not *not* true. I guess it is extra true, actually, since most of my time away was spent talking." She tried to scratch up another chip, but she seemed to have lucked out that first time. "Sorry I just disappeared a while back."
The hash browns were the first to go in the pan, laid out in an even layer so that they could crisp up, while two more pans were dreamed up so that she could cook the sausage and eggs meanwhile.
"Yeah, I was worried. I thought you got hurt real bad. What happened?"
Definitely a morning for a mimosa.
She hesitated, averting her gaze to look out into the park around her, the park she had claimed as her domain not half an hour before. "I got a high priority ping that made me fall, and then I hit my face on that stupid dome."
The eggs were fried over easy and the sausage cooked to just this side of burnt so that they offered a pleasant mix of textures, crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside with an indulgent oiliness throughout. These were layered on top of a pile of even crispier hash browns — the kind that shatter beneath a fork when you try to stab them — before the eggs were laid on top and the yolks punctured so that they oozed out over the mess to add a sauce of their own.
"I saw you had a bloody nose, yeah," he said, patting her shoulder. "That sucks. Was it a come-home ping?"
Her plate laden with two burritos in one hand and mimosa in the other, she made her way to the couch rather than the dining table and settled down with a long, worn-out sigh.
"Nah, it was just a warning," she said, speaking slowly while she organized her thoughts, trying to figure out just how much to say. "It was one of my cocladists being rude. She sent me a horrible letter, and wanted me to be in all the wrong moods when I read it, I think."
What was missing...ah! Coffee.
"Ew."
While there was joy in making her own, she was already down, she was already comfortable, she was already finished with her time in the kitchen, and so she deemed it easier to just wave a steaming mug into being on the low table before her, already dosed with cream and sugar.
"Ew is right. She is one of those in the clade that does not like me doing this," she said, gesturing down at herself, out at the playground. "She sent me a huge letter telling me that in a million different ways."
She downed half of her mimosa in one go before setting that aside and focusing on her first burrito, each bite topped with a generous spoonful of the salsa until she was left nearly in tears. The rest of the mimosa and a few sips of her coffee, and then the second burrito, similarly doctored.
Alexei screwed up his face in a wince. "Double-ew. So were you in trouble? Are you still?"
It was some time later — she did not know how long nor care to check, though her coffee mug was empty — before Beholden and A Finger Pointing returned, talking quietly about lunch. On seeing her awake and alert, the empty dishes on the table, they both smiled and changed course to settle down on either side of her.
"I do not think so. At least, everyone is telling me I am not, that it was just her being a b-word and that she just wanted me and my family to feel bad so that she could feel like she had done something."
"Glad to see you up and about, Dot," Beholden said, briefly touching her nosetip to Motes's cheek in an affectionate skunk-kiss. "We got the ping that you were, thus lunch here rather than out, but it is nice to see you all the same."
"So a bully," he said flatly.
Bookending her with a similar — though far more human ­— kiss to herother cheek, A Finger Pointing said, "It really is. Are you feeling better, my dear? Please say yes."
Motes giggled. "I mean, I guess so. Big Motes understands it better, but she is busy."
Motes laughed and waited until each was finished before returning the cheek kisses to her cocladists. "I am, mostly. I still have a lot on my mind, but I am no longer buried beneath it." She nodded towards the plates, adding, "I already ate before you got here. I am not sorry."
This had long ago become a hint to drop into conversations that to continue them would be to break the illusion, to pull back the curtain and expose the play for what it was: merely a performance.
"Nor should you be," A Finger Pointing scoffed. "I would be disappointed if you had not."
Neither of them, neither of these two consummate performers, wanted that. Alexei could probably pry it out of her, pry out all of the details of all that had happened — and she may yet send him a letter as Big Motes for more context later — pry her out of this space for a little bit if he wanted.
"Of course you would be." Her grin softened to a smile. "You really set up the sim to ping you when I woke?"
He did not, so he said nothing and flopped backwards on the rock, resting his head on one arm while draping the other over his face to block out the sun. "Sounds dumb," he said. "I'm just glad you're back and that you're not in trouble or anything."
"Just a few things — your door opening, something being done in the kitchen or at the bar, that sort of thing — so that we would know while we were out."
Panting, Motes scooted so that her back rested against a spire of rock to get as much shade as she could. Black fur and bright sun coexisted too energetically at times. "No, not really in trouble," she said. "I may have made myself feel like I was in trouble, but that is just me being a dummy."
"She was worried," Beholden stage-whispered. "You should have seen her brighten when she got the notification you were in the kitchen."
There was a snort of laughter from the boy. "That is definitely a you thing."
"Beholden was *so* worried," A Finger Pointing said, voice bearing all the drama of some overwrought Shakespearean performer. She spoke loudly, pretending as though she had not heard Beholden, that the skunk was not even there. "I do not know if you noticed while you were down and out, my dear, but I swear, that skunk checked on you at *least* once an hour."
She mulled over this, tallying up the various anxieties she had felt over the years, the worries she had expressed or let color her actions, all the times she disappeared from youth, from play, from this form. "Yeah, I guess," she mumbled. "You ever get anxious about all this?"
"She about started crying," Beholden continued, smirk on her muzzle.
"All this?"
""Beholden, you *know* that she will pull through," I kept saying. "She *always* does." You are stronger than your silly cocladist, Dot, are you not?"
"Being a kid, that sort of thing."
"She was so rude, cutting off a conversation with Sasha mid-sentence and rushing us back here, putting on her most nonchalant act."
"Isn't this stuff for being busy?"
Motes laughed as they both scoffed at each other, looping her arms through each of theirs and slouching down, settling into the comfort of touch and family. "You are both nerds," she murmured. "Thank you for keeping an eye on me."
She frowned. "I know, but I want to know. I just got back from two weeks of freaking out."
"Of course, my dear," they said in unison. A Finger Pointing continued, "Motes, did you leave any champagne for the rest of us? I would not say no to a Bellini."
"Two and a half," Alexei said.
"Another mimosa for me, Beholden," Motes added.
"Please?"
Laughing, the skunk gave her one more of those nose-dot kisses before disentangling herself to see to drinks.
"Hmph."
"How are you really, Motes?" A Finger Pointing asked, voice lowered less, it seemed, to keep her words from Beholden than to soften the mood. "We need not talk in detail now, but I do wish to know."
"Pretty pleeease?" she whined. "With a cherry on top?"
"Okay," she said. "Tender, I guess. Sore, maybe? I am not feeling bad, but I am not yet feeling good. I am feeling like the slightest bump with leave me with a bruise."
It was his turn to mull things over, apparently, given the comfortable, thoughtful silence that followed. "I dunno. Sometimes, I guess. Sometimes I worry about where I can go like this, right? Like, we met when we were big. We met at that crazy bar with all the crazy music. I go to that stuff as Big Alexei, kinda because I don't want to get trampled, and kinda because I'm worried they'll kick me out."
Her cocladist nodded. "I imagine so. Are you up to speaking about what happened?"
"Yeah," she said, lining a few pebbles up in a row. "I have been kicked out of lots and lots and lots of places."
She nodded. "A little bit. I will let you know if I need to bow out."
"You're also older than I am," he retorted. "So we've probably been kicked out of places at the same rate."
"Of course." A Finger Pointing took a deep breath, composing herself. "Hammered Silver sent me a letter. She mentioned in it that she had sent you one as well."
She blew a raspberry at him, got one in return.
Motes wilted.
"You're not really talking about anxiety, though, right? Like, you're talking about shame, I think."
"Yes, I imagine that is much of why you were left overflowing." When Motes nodded, she continued, "I am sorry, my dear. Is that also why you are Big Motes now?"
Another few pebbles wound up in the row as she sat in silence.
The answer was a long time coming, the silence filled with the gentle tink of glasses as Beholden mixed their late lunch cocktails, carrying them carefully back to the couch and handing them out so that she could rejoin.
"Yeah." He rolled onto his side to look at her, leaving his arm half-draped over his face to block out the sun. "I guess I kinda do, though it always comes from the outside. Like, getting kicked out of a place is whatever, but when someone I meet as Big Alexei learns about Little Alexei and gets all upset and yells at me or cuts contact–"
"Yeah," Motes said at last. "At least, I think so. It was something that I did almost on a whim. I knew I wanted to be Big Motes, or at least that I was not ready to be Little Motes yet. Been thinking about that all morning."
At this, Motes winced.
Beholden tasted her drink, nodded appreciatively, then asked, "Have you come to any conclusions?"
He frowned. "That's what happened, isn't it? You had someone cut contact because they learned of it? One of your cocladists?"
"I think so," she said, looking down at her mimosa. Beholden had topped it with a maraschino cherry poked through with a cocktail umbrella. There was a warmth of adoration starting to fill hat hollow space in her chest. "I am not going to stop playing, not going to stop being her, but...but that really fucking hurt, and I need to know what to do with that pain before I reengage with that, you know?"
"Yeah," she mumbled. "She already knew, though, she just found out one of her up-trees was still talking to me."
Letting her free arm dangle over the arm of the couch, glass held by the rim, A Finger Pointing tucked her own cocktail umbrella into Motes's hair, adding a wheel of bright pink to the yellow of the dandelions before draping her arm around her cocladist's shoulder. "That does make sense, yes. That was one of my worries, even: that this would leave you too wounded to reengage with that part of you that has been so important over the years."
"She made her own up-trees cut contact, too?" He furrowed his brow. "Aren't you guys like super dispersionistas?"
Motes shook her head gently so as not to dislodge crown or umbrella.
She laughed. "Some of us. Some of us drifted apart, but some of us stick together really tightly. I have ma and Bee and a bunch of siblings, right?"
"Good. You are allowed to be Big Motes for a bit while you process this. You are allowed to hold back on all sorts of interactions. I have noticed a lack of 'Ma' or 'Bee'– no, no. No need to explain, just an observation. These are things that we will miss and then rejoice when they return."
"I guess, yeah," he said. "I'm not a dispersionista, though, so I can't really understand. I don't have any up-trees or cross-trees or whatever. It sucks that she's being a bully, though, 'cause she kind of *is* you, isn't she?"
She slouched against A Finger Pointing and hugged around her middle, careful not to spill her drink. "Thank you, my dear. I really do appreciate it. I will get there, too, for all of that. Just...not yet. Not quite yet."
Motes sighed. "I guess, yeah. That is why it hurt and why I had to spend a lot of time thinking about it."
Beholden smiled, reached out to brush some of her curls away from her face, added, "Yeah. And if you need us to lay off calling you 'Dot', I am sure–"
He reached out and gave her tail a gentle tug — not something she usually tolerated, but the conversation had been so gentle, it had no scent of meanness to it — and smiled up to her. "Well, *I* think you're better than she is, so clearly she isn't you. Tell her to get stuffed!"
"Absolutely not," Motes said, laughing. "I would not have you change your ways just because I am feeling icky for a bit."
She laughed, reaching out to bat at his hand. "I guess I pretty much did, because here I am~"
"It is an offer, Motes," the skunk chided gently. "Not some weird obligation for us."
After that, their conversation fell back into more comfortable things. They spoke of friends. They spoke of the pros and cons of Rock Park. They spoke of families and the secret pleasures of being punished. Then they played a half-hearted game of tag before Motes finally said goodbye and stepped home just in time for the evening's planned activities, floating on a cloud of joy like she had not experienced in more than two weeks.
Her shoulders slumped and she nodded. "Alright. I think my answer still stands, though. I like it when you call me that, even when I am Big Motes. I do not imagine...well, no. I am *sure* this will not last longer than two weeks. That is the deadline I have given myself to process this."
At home, she dashed to the kitchen and gulped down a glass of water, laughed at the uncomfortable chill this left her with, and then dashed out into the fading afternoon.
"Of course, Dot," A Finger Pointing said, tightening her grip in a squeeze before gently nudging her to sit back upright. "With this of all things, there will be more than enough processing to fill that time. The situation has...resolved itself while you were sleeping, but even that resolution is complicated."
It was a night for good food and terrible movies.
"Oh?"
Beholden grilled hot dogs and bratwurst and Motes, yes, had them loaded up with veggies, dragged through the garden.
She nodded. "Are you alright to talk about it? I do not know that even Beholden knows the full extent of what happened."
Ioan grilled *frigărui,* kebabs loaded up with Carpathian seasonings, and *mititei,* a quick sausage.
The skunk shook her head.
Warmth made an array of its best guesses at Artemisian food, some of which were quite tasty. Few who tried the fluffy tower of *frahabrodåt* went back for seconds, at which ey seemed quite proud.
Despite the already warm feeling in her belly from the first mimosa, Motes quickly finished her second in a few gulps. "Then sure," she said, laughing at the burp that followed. "Hit me."
Motes ate it all. She ate herself overfull. She ate herself messy, leaving her shirt dotted with mustard and grease, her lips shining with the oily sheen of at least three different types of sausage.
Beholden punched her gently on the shoulder before taking her empty glass and setting it on the table in front of them.
Thus sated, she darted around the gathering, the thirty or so people who had showed up from both within the clade and without. She hugged everyone who wanted a hug, chased Warmth in multiples, the two little skunks leapfrogging each other and leaving their fur and clothes stained green with with grass. She drank a few margaritas, allowing through only a modicum of the drunkenness so that she remained cognizant and present through the tipsiness, awake and alert through the haze.
The full story of what had happened over the last few days between A Finger Pointing and Hammered Silver was laid bare over the next hour. Not just that, but much of their story going back into the past as well. Both Beholden and Motes were left with more than a few questions. Over the last few years, their down-tree instance had opened up more and more about how much she had shielded the stanza from the political machinations of the rest of the clade around them, all of the ways in which she had strived to protect them, and yet more of this became clear as she spoke about all of the fuss that Hammered Silver had made over the years.
She wove around A Finger Pointing and Beholden, drawing figure eights around these anchors of her life with wanderings of herself, trailing love and affection as she went, demanding that they dote upon her, that they lean down so that she could give them nose-dot kisses.
When she finished and all questions had been answered or deferred, they fell into silence for a long few minutes, the three of them just digesting the last few days each in their own way.
And then, as she had several times over the last week, she latched herself onto Dry Grass. As they had over the last week, they revelled in the closeness and affection, the joy in allowing themselves to be around each other despite meaningless admonitions. As they had, they spoke mostly of small things, of interesting things they had seen or nice foods that they had eaten or simple stories made up on the spot.
Finally, Motes huffed and flopped back against the couch. "What a fucking bitch."
It was important to her that she be around this person she considered a member of her family. One of the close ones, not one of the distant ones, not one that had cut her off. It was important that they spend quality time together, that through that time, she *lived* her gratefulness for Dry Grass's presence.
"Dot, language," Beholden scolded, laughing.
And then, when they all piled into the movie-theater-*cum*-cuddlepit, A Finger Pointing, Beholden, and Dry Grass slouched into a beanbag. Dry Grass dragged Motes into her lap while they all settled in. They sat silent through the first part of movie, watching off and on, dozing now and then. The movie was not important. It was good, she was sure, but that was not the point.
"Fuck fuck fuck," she said, grinning wildly. "Bitch bitch bitch! You can yell at Little Motes~"
An hour or so later, after Beholden and A Finger Pointing had fallen asleep against each other amid all the softness, Dry Grass set up a cone of silence over the beanbag and nudged Motes to sit beside her rather than on her and said, "Hey, kiddo. I would like to apologize for everything that happened this month."
"No, she is right, my muse," A Finger Pointing said. "Fucking bitch."
Motes scrubbed her paws over her face to wake up more fully. "How do you mean?"
"Well, okay, no disputes there," Beholden said, waving away the three glasses. "What is on your plate next, Motes?"
"All of that wretched business with my down-tree."
She shrugged. "Well, I pinged Miss Genet, so we are going to meet later."
"That was not your fault, though. She is just a bit– she is just a b-word."
"Therapy!" A Finger Pointing exclaimed, waving a hand at nothing in particular. "What a lovely idea."
Dry Grass smiled faintly. "I will let that slide. She is *definitely* a bitch, yes." A pause, and then she continued, "But it rather was my fault, my dear. I mentioned that I had been visiting after that evening with the salad and maccy chee. I made her mad, then told her to go fuck herself."
"After all that?" Beholden said, smirking. "I am surprised that you have not already scheduled something."
Motes sat for a moment in silent, watching the movie, half-listening at the muffled audio that made its way through the silence. "I had guessed, yeah."
"I am so dreadfully busy, Beholden. You know that."
Her cocladist frowned. "That is why I am sorry. So much happened, and I started it without really thinking of how it would impact everyone."
"You spent yesterday afternoon lounging in the auditorium trying every kind of kettle corn you could find on the exchange."
She shrugged. "But then, maybe I started by whining at you about it. It is nobody's fault but Hammered Silver's." She giggled sleepily, adding, "She made herself mad, even. I do not believe you that you say you did."
She sat up straight, staring at her partner like she was some alien creature, something too dense to understand the importance of kettle corn. "Yes. Busy."
Dry Grass's expression softened and she brushed some of the skunk's mane out of her face. "I suppose there is that," she said quietly. "We could go back and forth placing blame as much as we would like–"
As A Finger Pointing and Beholden finally got around to whipping up lunch for themselves, the conversation once more fell into comfortable chatter, the sort of banter that so often filed the house, and while, by the time her appointment arrived, Motes had not yet felt comfortable enough to refer to them as 'Ma' and 'Bee', that welcoming sense of family had returned in force, and she felt once more in her comforting role as their Dot, their *dóttir*.
"And she would always be the wrong one," Motes interrupted. "Frick her. She is the one holding grudges, we are the ones doing what we want. She is the one hurting people, we are the ones just playing and having fun and not hurting anyone."
As the afternoon threatened to slide right into evening, Motes took her leave and left A Finger Pointing and Beholden on the couch, canoodling. Clearly that had taken precedence over whatever they had had planned at the auditorium for the rest of the day. That they had come home for her, for Motes, was the base of that warmth that had grown within her.
There was another moment of silence, of Dry Grass furrowing her brow and thinking, and then at last she lay back on the beanbag and tugged Motes back up to lay on her front. "Yes," she murmured as the skunk got comfortable. "Yes, I guess both of those are true."
She made her way out of the house and wandered to the center of the neighborhood. She left the automatic chalk lines going, letting them be the fuel that propelled her forward, let their flowering shapes fit into this perception of herself as a flower child rather than simply a child, a careful reframing that allowed her to have this thing, this gentle goodness.
They stayed like that for the rest of the film, Dry Grass petting Motes and Motes telling Dry Grass stories about the day, little nothings that showed that fun, that lack of pain.
The neighborhood formed a lazy semicircle, a 'U' that butted up against an avenue that petered out into the nature of the sim in either direction. Across the street — inaccessible to anyone who was unwelcome — sat the back entrance of the theatre Au Lieu Du Rêve most commonly performed at. Just homes and a beloved workplace dropped together into an endless landscape like sugar into so much tea.
And then, when the movie was over and many of those in the community center had started to doze on their beanbags and couches, and her ma and Bee put kisses on her snout and left arm in arm, when Dry Grass fell asleep one too many times and begged off to walk back home — not without yet another tight hug from Motes and a promise to be back soon — when Motes herself started to get sleepy, she disentangled herself from the rest of that dozy comfort and slipped out into the cool of the night.
In the bowl of the 'U' sat all of the common areas. A pool — one with seats and jets, one that could be a hot tub seating a hundred as easily as it could be an Olympic pool — a few tennis courts for the few — who? — who actually enjoyed the game, a liberal dotting of grills — everyone had a favorite — for cook outs, a "community center" which had long ago turned into a movie-theater-*cum*-cuddlepit...
Rather than turning left, off toward home, she turned right to the other arm of the 'U' that made up the neighborhood and started wandering through the grass until she hit sidewalk. There, vines in chalk blossomed lazily behind her footsteps, and in the night. In the light of the stars and the moon and the streetlamps, they seemed to glow in pale oranges and whites and blues. She played with them by taking wobbling, drunken steps, crossing one leg in front of the other, pirouetting clumsily to make them tie themselves into knots.
And there, right at the very lowest point of the bowl of the 'U' sat a playground. What was initially intended to be Motes's haunt, hers and her friends, had long ago turned into a place for late-night musings. Thousands and thousands of times over the years, couples or small groups or lone individuals would converge on the swings or the slide and sit in the dark, staring up on the star-speckled sky, the Milky Way glowing bright enough to light one's face beyond even the Moon, even the gold-and-black of the rest of the neighborhood with its sodium vapor lamps and countless darknesses. It was a place for play, yes, and it was often used for such, but it was also a place for couples to work out their problems or groups to chat about everything and nothing or for one to sit alone, drunk, beneath the stars, looking up and feeling good or bad or simply introspective.
Even so, she continued down around the slow curve of the neighborhood's main street, not bothering to venture into any of the cul-de-sacs. The chalk lines were fun, a little trail describing where the little skunk had wandered, but she *was* tired. It had been a long first day back as Little Motes, and she had successfully packed it to the brim with all that she had wanted to do, and that success gave to her a sense of rightness.
It was not dark now.
It was a rightness of form — of species, of size, of appearance.
There, on the swings, sat a child, a girl, looking to be perhaps twelve or thirteen with brown hair cut into an unruly bob, pale skin shining in the sun, swaying lazily back and forth as she faced away from Motes. She looked mostly down, skidding the heels of her shoes through the gravel beneath the swings, scooping the pebbles out of the way and then smoothing them back into place with her toes.
It was a rightness of mindset — of play, of childlike wonder, of a recognition of who she was and who she had been and who she could become.
Motes moved quietly through the grass — quietly enough that the girl did not notice her — and sat down on the free swing within that segment.
She made it halfway around the bend, down to the very base of the 'U', and, following some whim, some spark of desire, darted back into the grass to race up the ladder of the jungle gym and launch herself down the slide with a shout. She tumbled off the end and into the gravel in an undignified, giggling heap.
"Hi, Sarah," she said.
Motes played, because how could<!--why would(?)--> she not?
"Motes! Hi!" the girl said, then hesitated. "You're Big Motes today. Do you want me to Big Sarah?"
Motes held onto the chains of the swing and gave herself a push with her feet, testing the way she glided through the air for a few feet back, then a few feet forward.
"Motes?"
"Yeah, actually, I think I would like Big Sarah today."
Nodding, Sarah Genet stepped off the swing and summarily disappeared, leaving behind a fork still sitting down. This new instance was far older, looking to be sixty or so years old with silvery-gray hair in a similar bob, her skin just as pale and yet fraught with wrinkles, her smile kind and gaze always attentive.
"Is this better?" she asked.
Motes smiled, nodded and gave herself another gentle kick, keeping the same back-and-forth going, the same few feet of earth wafting beneath her feet. "Thanks."
"Of course, Motes. Would you like me to prompt or wait?"
She caught herself in the act of merely shrugging, then shook her head to clear it. "Thanks for asking," she said. After a long moment's thought, she sighed. "I think I would like for you to prompt me today. I do not yet know where to start."
"That's fine," Sarah said gently. "You said in your message that you've just come up from overflowing. Can you tell me about that?"
"Mmhm. Just a few hours ago, actually. Beholden and Pointillist are still back at home after coming to check on me." She smiled down to the ground as it swung beneath her. "They set up alerts around the house so they would know when I was up."
"That's sweet of them."
"It is. I...uh," she trailed off. "The overflow started when I got a letter from within the clade. It really fucked me up. Like, *really* bad."
"And that's why you're Big Motes? Why you didn't say 'Ma'?"
She smirked. "You read me like the Sunday comics," she said, laughing. "Yes."
Sarah smiled in turn, far more gently. "Tell me about this letter, then. Tell me what'd be enough for you to get knocked out of commission."
And so she did. She summarized portions of it, then pulled it up to read the most impactful bits. She talked about the feelings of the month leading up to this, the conversations and the dream. She talked about how she had stopped playing, how it hurt to think of reengaging, how she knew she would but there was work to be done first.
And then, on Sarah's gentle urging, she worked her way backwards. She worked her way back through the months and years before, the feelings that lingered, the various comings-to-terms that she had had over the years. She talked through and made her own connections, letting Sarah suggest when her voice stumbled to a halt.
"Motes," Sarah said gently. "Tell me why Hammered Silver's opinion matters to you."
Motes snorted. "It should not."
"But it does, doesn't it? A Finger Pointing has addressed it and you're all but guaranteed to not have to deal with this again unless Hammered Silver's gone off the deep end, which it doesn't sound like she has."
She nodded slowly, mulling the question over in her head, brow furrowed.
"Let me split it into two, maybe. First, what about it hurt? Why are you still hurting? And second, who is Hammered Silver to you?"
Motes put her feet down, letting the drag of shoe against gravel slow her to a stop. "Who is she to me? You mean, other than a weirdly invasive aunt who thinks she knows better?" The bitterness in her voice rose, and she was helpless to stop it. "Some old bat who is more concerned about the image of the clade that any — literally *any* — of us living earnestly?"
Sarah raised a brow. "That is absolutely an answer, yes. You still see her as part of the clade?" she asked. "You still see her as an aunt?"
Stymied, she ground her heels down against the gravel beneath the swing.
"I think it's worth digging into, but if you need–"
"No, that is a good point." Motes groaned. That hollow feeling within her chest once more grew, and she squinted her eyes shut. "I guess I do, yeah."
"To which? A part of the clade or aunt?"
"Both."
"Why do you feel she's still a part of the clade to you? That feels like it might be the easier one to answer."
Motes nodded. "Yeah. I guess it just feels like that is something that only the cladist can decide, right? I cannot just say that she is *not* an Odist."
"Hasn't she done that to you and yours, though?"
She furrowed her brow, using her shoe to flatten out the gravel beneath her as she thought. "I do not know that she has, though. She still calls me And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights — she was such a bitch about names, actually, 'the one who has named herself Sasha' *every* time — and even if she did not need to, she did write 'of the Ode clade' after my name."
"That's your name, though. Tell me about how that doesn't *feel* like cutting you out of the clade." Sarah smiled gently, adding, "Not that I don't believe you, I just want to understand where you're coming from on this."
"I guess it is that she has not told anyone but her stanza not to talk to me. To us, I mean. Her and In Dreams's stanzas talk to each other. They still talk to the second, third, and fourth. They still talk to What Lives and so on in the ninth. We talk to all of those people, too." She smiled sidelong at Sarah. "So I guess I see where you are going. I do still see her as an aunt because she has not actually said that we are not family — or like a family — she has just cut off contact. She has implied that we *are* still family, but that I did something wrong."
Sarah laughed. "I really was just trying to figure things out, not lead you along, but that's an important connection to make, there. Family members cutting off others in the family is common enough to be a whole area of study. How does it feel to treat the rest of the clade as an extended family, though?"
"That is, like...my whole bit, is it not? I am play-acting the kid. I am method-acting, and Pointillist and Beholden and Slow Hours and everyone is in on it."
"Even Hammered Silver? Even those who *aren't* in on it?"
Motes frowned.
"It's okay if you act as though they are," Sarah said. "Or if they become a part of your internal conception of the play. They don't need to be actively in on it if it's an internal representation of your world."
"Right," she mumbled, looking out into the neighborhood and swaying gently from side to side in her swing. "I guess it makes more sense when you talk about family members cutting each other off. If that is a thing that families do with any frequency, then there is no reason for me to not incorporate that."
"'No reason'?" Sarah asked, picking up on the rhythm of Motes's swaying.
"Well, obviously I hate it," she said, laughing. "But if I am going to get shit on like this, then I guess all I can do–"
"'All'?"
Motes snorted. "*One* thing I can do is reclaim it and turn it into a family spat, right?"
Sarah laughed and pushed herself to start swinging in earnest. "That's what I was getting at, yeah. But tell me more about being Big Motes. You've talked about the family aspect of it, but it sounds like you were thinking about this even before Hammered Silver sent you her letter."
Before she realized what she was doing, Motes was already starting to swing along with Sarah. Back to that movement, back to that little twinge of play. *This* was why she appreciated her therapist, all of these little nudges, all of this meeting her on her terms. After all, had she not appeared at first as a girl a few years older than her, as she had so many times before? One of those girls who seems infinitely wise to someone younger?
Motes smiled faintly out to the world as it swung beneath and around her. "I do not know that there was anything that spurred on all of the discussions or the dream — though I imagine the dream was a result of all of the thinking that I had been doing leading up to it. It was just on my mind. Maybe I have been doubting myself more of late."
"Doubting how? The last time we talked, you didn't sound like you were doubting yourself. You talked about how everyone had a different nickname for you."
She laughed, feeling earnest joy at the memory. "Dot! Speck! Mote! Kiddo and skunklet and little one," she called out to sky and grass. "Yes, you are right. But I also talked about how I had fallen again into that feeling that maybe my name had played a role in who I had become. Motes, yes? Small, little things that drift across your vision. Microscopic things. I talked about whether the name came first, or the nature, yes?"
"Mmhm. You used Beholden as a counter example."
"I said she should have been in charge of lights," Motes said, still grinning. "'Beholden to the heat of the lamps'? That has nothing to do with music or sound."
Still smiling, herself, Sarah countered, "And then I pointed out Loss For Images and That It Might Give. 'That it might give the world orders' being primarily a director is pretty on the nose."
"Yeah," she said, sighing as the grin started to fade. "Yeah. There is a mix of both. It does not matter whether or not the name or the nature came first, not in this case. What matters is that it got stuck in my craw, right? I got stuck thinking about it, and then Hammered Silver sent me her stupid letter and it all came to a head."
"Some things are just coincidences."
Motes nodded.
"Hammered Silver sent you the letter because she learned about Dry Grass visiting the fifth stanza. That's not something you had any say over — at least not beyond liking when she visits — and certainly not anything to do with how you were feeling, right?"
She remained silent. She remained silent for a long time, and when the arc of her swing started to slow, she began pumping her legs, working vigorously to get herself swinging as high as she could, swinging to the point where she looked now straight down to the center of the Earth, and now directly up to the heavens.
"Motes?" Sarah's voice came from a distance, from all the way down there with her feet planted on the ground, from where she was anchored.
"Maybe it did," she hollered. She imagined the way her voice must have Dopplered past her therapist with each arc of the swing and started to giggle. "Maybe me talking about this with Dry Grass did lead to the letter. Maybe it is my fault."
"You mean you think she went and told Hammered Silver to let her visit you after you talked about your worries?" Sarah called out to her.
"Yeah!"
"What does that change?"
"Nothing!" Motes said, laughing joyously. "It changes nothing. In fact, I hope that *is* the case! At that point, Hammered Silver really *is* just a bitch."
Sarah laughed, and Motes felt the sound in the air as she breezed past.
*I respect her as a person, but I do not like her,* Dry Grass had said. *And I certainly do not respect her authority.*
*Do not worry, my dear,* Dry Grass had said. *You are stuck with me for a good while yet.*
*I would rather tell Hammered Silver to go fuck herself,* Dry Grass had said in the end.
Perhaps Dry Grass had excused herself from the sixth stanza. Perhaps she had taken an opportunity to make her opinions known. Perhaps she had spoken up, talked back, shot down a little bit of Hammered Silver's authority by standing up for Motes.
Perhaps she ought to hug Dry Grass extra-tight next time she saw her.

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# Motes — 2362
Motes played.
She played in the dark. She played crawling on hands and knees. She played hide and seek. She played stealth missions. She played silently, muffling the sound of her passage and keeping her breathing quiet; it was against the rules to turn it off. She played base commander, repelling invisible foes, hollering out orders to her friends. She played noisily, her voice echoing off the rocky walls with laughter and shouts bouncing around seemingly endlessly.
She played in Rock Park, a hulking mound of salmon, pink, gold, and buff flagstone that had been stacked in such a way as to create a series of twisty, narrow tunnels throughout. The tunnels turned sharply, or required her to climb up vague suggestions of ladders made by protruding slabs of rock, or dumped her down into a central cavern, the ground covered in a layer of velvety soft mulch to cushion any falls. The cavern that opened out on one end into a broader playground, all of the equipment themed to be related to a quarry: dump trucks and bucket hoists and front end loaders and excavators.
She played throughout the rest of the park, hauling that mulch or digging into it with the equipment or her paws, putting those digger claws of hers to use. She played in the grass, played in the little stands of pine trees that dotted the field beyond, the two whitewashed gazebos. Sometimes there were roller-blades or bikes or skateboards. Sometimes there were self-propelled levitation boots that let you putter along at a few miles per hour a hand's breadth above the ground and which would do all they could to keep you from falling over.
She played with her friends. She played with strangers she had seen before yet never talked to. She played with those she saw once and then never saw again.
She played until she got tired, until enough of her friends got bored and wandered off, until the long, breezy morning in this sim sighed its way into the heat of afternoon. She played until the obvious thing to do was to climb up to the top of the tunnel-ridden pile of flagstone to sit at the summit, enjoying the sun with Alexei.
The park was only one part of a small town, only one part of a sizeable sim, but it was a popular destination for those who leaned into childhood on Lagrange for its permissive attitudes and curious inhabitants, most of whom seemed to be families — found or blood — and many of whom were the kids who played here. Alexei lived here with the family he had built: three guardians, one of whom was his great-grandfather by blood, and a sister.
"Motes," he said after they had sat in silence for some time. "Where were you, anyway? I know you said you didn't want to talk about it, but it's just us, right?"
She shrugged and picked at the rock with a claw, worrying loose a thin chip of flagstone. "I still do not *want* to talk about it," she said, then grinned over at him. "But I will anyway."
"That's because you never shut up."
She laughed and threw the chip of rock at him. "That is not *not* true. I guess it is extra true, actually, since most of my time away was spent talking." She tried to scratch up another chip, but she seemed to have lucked out that first time. "Sorry I just disappeared a while back."
"Yeah, I was worried. I thought you got hurt real bad. What happened?"
She hesitated, averting her gaze to look out into the park around her, the park she had claimed as her domain not half an hour before. "I got a high priority ping that made me fall, and then I hit my face on that stupid dome."
"I saw you had a bloody nose, yeah," he said, patting her shoulder. "That sucks. Was it a come-home ping?"
"Nah, it was just a warning," she said, speaking slowly while she organized her thoughts, trying to figure out just how much to say. "It was one of my cocladists being rude. She sent me a horrible letter, and wanted me to be in all the wrong moods when I read it, I think."
"Ew."
"Ew is right. She is one of those in the clade that does not like me doing this," she said, gesturing down at herself, out at the playground. "She sent me a huge letter telling me that in a million different ways."
Alexei screwed up his face in a wince. "Double-ew. So were you in trouble? Are you still?"
"I do not think so. At least, everyone is telling me I am not, that it was just her being a b-word and that she just wanted me and my family to feel bad so that she could feel like she had done something."
"So a bully," he said flatly.
Motes giggled. "I mean, I guess so. Big Motes understands it better, but she is busy."
This had long ago become a hint to drop into conversations that to continue would be to break the illusion, to pull back the curtain and expose the play for what it was: merely a performance.
Neither of them, neither of these two consummate performers, wanted that. Alexei could probably pry it out of her, pry out all of the details of all that had happened — and she may yet send him a letter as Big Motes for more context later — pry her out of this space for a little bit if he wanted.
He did not, so he said nothing and flopped backwards on the rock, resting his head on one arm while draping the other over his face to block out the sun. "Sounds dumb," he said. "I'm just glad you're back and that you're not in trouble or anything."
Panting, Motes scooted so that her back rested against a spire of rock to get as much shade as she could. Black fur and bright sun coexisted too energetically at times. "No, not really in trouble," she said. "I may have made myself feel like I was in trouble, but that is just me being a dummy."
There was a snort of laughter from the boy. "That is definitely a you thing."
She mulled over this, tallying up the various anxieties she had felt over the years, the worries she had expressed or let color her actions, all the times she disappeared from youth, from play, from this form. "Yeah, I guess," she mumbled. "You ever get anxious about all this?"
"All this?"
"Being a kid, that sort of thing."
"Isn't this stuff for Big Motes being busy?"
She frowned. "I know, but I want to know. I just got back from two weeks of freaking out."
"Two and a half," Alexei said.
"Please?"
"Hmph."
"Pretty pleeease?" she whined. "With a cherry on top?"
It was his turn to mull things over, apparently, given the comfortable, thoughtful silence that followed. "I dunno. Sometimes, I guess. Sometimes I worry about where I can go like this, right? Like, we met when we were big. We met at that crazy bar with all the crazy music. I go to that stuff as Big Alexei, kinda because I don't want to get trampled, and kinda because I'm worried they'll kick me out."
"Yeah," she said, lining a few pebbles up in a row. "I have been kicked out of lots and lots and lots of places."
"You're also older than I am," he retorted. "So we've probably been kicked out of places at the same rate."
She blew a raspberry at him, got one in return.
"You're not really talking about anxiety, though, right? Like, you're talking about shame, I think."
Another few pebbles wound up in the row as she sat in silence.
"Yeah." He rolled onto his side to look at her, leaving his arm half-draped over his face to block out the sun. "I guess I kinda do, though it always comes from the outside. Like, getting kicked out of a place is whatever, but when someone I meet as Big Alexei learns about Little Alexei and gets all upset and yells at me or cuts contact–"
At this, Motes winced.
He frowned. "That's what happened, isn't it? You had someone cut contact because they learned of it? One of your cocladists?"
"Yeah," she mumbled. "She already knew, though, she just found out one of her up-trees was still talking to me."
"She made her own up-trees cut contact, too?" He furrowed his brow. "Aren't you guys like super-dispersionistas?"
She laughed. "Some of us. Some of us drifted apart, but some of us stick together really tightly. I have Ma and Bee and a bunch of siblings, right?"
"I guess, yeah," he said. "I'm not a dispersionista, though, so I can't really understand. I don't have any up-trees or cross-trees or whatever. It sucks that she's being a bully, though, 'cause she kind of *is* you, isn't she?"
Motes sighed. "I guess, yeah. That is why it hurt and why I had to spend a lot of time thinking about it."
He reached out and gave her tail a gentle tug — not something she usually tolerated, but the conversation had been so gentle, it had no scent of meanness to it — and smiled up to her. "Well, *I* think you're better than she is, so clearly she isn't you. Tell her to get stuffed!"
She laughed, reaching out to bat at his hand. "I guess I pretty much did, because here I am~"
After that, their conversation fell back into more comfortable things. They spoke of friends. They spoke of the pros and cons of Rock Park. They spoke of families and the secret pleasures of being punished. Then they played a half-hearted game of tag before Motes finally said goodbye and stepped home just in time for the evening's planned activities, floating on a cloud of joy like she had not experienced in more than two weeks.
At home, she dashed to the kitchen and gulped down a glass of water, laughed at the uncomfortable chill this left her with, and then dashed out into the fading afternoon.
It was a night for good food and terrible movies.
Beholden grilled hot dogs and bratwurst and Motes, yes, had them loaded up with veggies, dragged through the garden.
Ioan grilled *frigărui,* kebabs loaded up with Carpathian seasonings, and *mititei,* a quick sausage.
Warmth made an array of its best guesses at Artemisian food, some of which were quite tasty. Few who tried the fluffy tower of *frahabrodåt* went back for seconds, at which ey seemed quite proud.
Motes ate it all. She ate herself overfull. She ate herself messy, leaving her shirt dotted with mustard and grease, her lips shining with the oily sheen of at least three different types of sausage.
Thus sated, she darted around the gathering, the thirty or so people who had showed up from both within the clade and without. She hugged everyone who wanted a hug, chased Warmth in multiples, the two little skunks leapfrogging each other and leaving their fur and clothes stained green with with grass. She drank a few margaritas, allowing through only a modicum of the drunkenness so that she remained cognizant and present through the tipsiness, awake and alert through the haze.
She wove around A Finger Pointing and Beholden, drawing figure eights around these anchors of her life with wanderings of herself, trailing love and affection as she went, demanding that they dote upon her, that they lean down so that she could give them nose-dot kisses.
And then, as she had several times over the last week, she latched herself onto Dry Grass. As they had over the last week, they revelled in the closeness and affection, the joy in allowing themselves to be around each other despite meaningless admonitions. As they had, they spoke mostly of small things, of interesting things they had seen or nice foods that they had eaten or simple stories made up on the spot.
It was important to her that she be around this person she considered a member of her family. One of the close ones, not one of the distant ones, not one that had cut her off. It was important that they spend quality time together, that through that time, she *lived* her gratefulness for Dry Grass's presence.
And then, when they all piled into the movie-theater-*cum*-cuddlepit, A Finger Pointing, Beholden, and Dry Grass slouched into a beanbag. Dry Grass dragged Motes into her lap while they all settled in. They sat silent through the first part of movie, watching off and on, dozing now and then. The movie was not important. It was good, she was sure, or bad, but that was not the point.
An hour or so later, after Beholden and A Finger Pointing had well and truly fallen asleep against each other amid all the softness, Dry Grass set up a cone of silence over herself and the skunk, nudged Motes to sit beside her rather than on her, and said, "Hey, kiddo. I would like to apologize for everything that happened this month."
Motes scrubbed her paws over her face to wake up more fully. "How do you mean?"
"All of that wretched business with my down-tree."
"That was not your fault, though. She is just a bit– she is just a b-word."
Dry Grass smiled faintly. "I will let that slide. She is *definitely* a bitch, yes." A pause, and then she continued, "But it rather was my fault, my dear. I mentioned that I had been visiting after that evening with the salad and maccy chee. I made her mad, then told her to go fuck herself."
Motes sat for a moment in silent, watching the movie, half-listening at the muffled audio that made its way through the silence. "I had guessed, yeah."
Her cocladist frowned. "That is why I am sorry. So much happened, and I started it without really thinking of how it would impact everyone."
She shrugged. "But then, maybe I started by whining at you about it. It is nobody's fault but Hammered Silver's." She giggled sleepily, adding, "She made herself mad, even. I do not believe you that you say you did."
Dry Grass's expression softened and she brushed some of the skunk's mane out of her face. "I suppose there is that," she said quietly. "We could go back and forth placing blame as much as we would like–"
"And she would always be the wrong one," Motes interrupted. "Frick her. She is the one holding grudges, we are the ones doing what we want. She is the one hurting people, we are the ones just having fun and playing."
There was another moment of silence, of Dry Grass furrowing her brow and thinking, and then at last she lay back on the beanbag and tugged Motes back up to lay on her front. "Yes," she murmured as the skunk got comfortable. "Yes, I guess both of those are true."
They stayed like that for the rest of the film, Dry Grass petting Motes and Motes telling Dry Grass stories about the day, little nothings that showed that fun, that lack of pain.
And then, when the movie was over and many of those in the community center had started to doze on their beanbags and couches, and her ma and Bee put kisses on her snout and left arm in arm, when Dry Grass fell asleep one too many times and begged off to walk back home — not without yet another tight hug from Motes and a promise to be back soon — when Motes herself started to get sleepy, she disentangled herself from the rest of that dozy comfort and slipped out into the cool of the night.
Rather than turning left, off toward home, she turned right to the other arm of the 'U' that made up the neighborhood and started wandering through the grass until she hit sidewalk. There, vines in chalk blossomed lazily behind her footsteps, and in the night. In the light of the stars and the moon and the streetlamps, they seemed to glow in pale oranges and whites and blues. She played with them by taking wobbling, drunken steps, crossing one leg in front of the other, pirouetting clumsily to make them tie themselves into knots.
Even so, she continued down around the slow curve of the neighborhood's main street, not bothering to venture into any of the cul-de-sacs. The chalk lines were fun, a little trail describing where the little skunk had wandered, but she *was* tired. It had been a long first day back as Little Motes, and she had successfully packed it to the brim with all that she had wanted to do, and that success gave to her a sense of rightness.
It was a rightness of form — of species, of size, of appearance.
It was a rightness of mindset — of play, of childlike wonder, of a recognition of who she was and who she had been and who she could become.
She made it halfway around the bend, down to the very base of the 'U', and, following some whim, some spark of desire, darted back into the grass to race up the ladder of the jungle gym and launch herself down the slide with a shout. She tumbled off the end and into the gravel in an undignified, giggling heap.
Motes played, because how could<!--why would(?)--> she not?

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writing/post-self/motes/index.md
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@ -17,18 +17,20 @@ Story about Hammered Silver losing her shit and cutting out the fifth stanza for
## loose threads
* The dynamic between Dry Grass and Hammered Silver is very "uh huh sure okay whatever you say" but doesn't actually change anything; does this finally change after the argument?
* Waking World has made it his job to keep Hammered Silver on a leash; maybe a second conversation after? The first conversation through Dry Grass ("oh yeah, WW says Hammered Silver can't do shit, she's just looking to make you feel bad")
* [X] The dynamic between Dry Grass and Hammered Silver is very "uh huh sure okay whatever you say" but doesn't actually change anything; does this finally change after the argument?
* [O] Waking World has made it his job to keep Hammered Silver on a leash; maybe a second conversation after? The first conversation through Dry Grass ("oh yeah, WW says Hammered Silver can't do shit, she's just looking to make you feel bad")
* [ ] Bring back: Warmth says "No one wants to be an outcast."
## Outline
* [X] [A: Intro](001) --- About Motes; Motes paints; Beholden and boss are heading out; Dry Grass comes over.
* [O] [B: Sasha speaks](002) --- Motes gets fucked (and fucked up); talks with Sasha about what happened.
* [O] [C: Warmth speaks](003) --- Visiting Warmth and Rye; The Warmth/Motes Dynamic™; discussing the nature of being an outcast (viz both Dear being a shit as well as Hammered Silver cutting off part of the ninth).
* [O] [D: Slow Hours speaks](004) --- Motes has a nightmare; Motes joins Beholden and A Finger Pointing to calm down; talks with Slow Hours about dreams.
* [O] [E: A letter from Hammered Silver](005) --- The letter; going for a walk as big Motes; staying that way for a week; pulled aside by Beholden to talk about it; A Finger Pointing is out for Some Reason; talking with Sarah.
* [O] [D': Flashback to the past](006) --- The origins of Motes told; some anecdotes (including Slow Hours's prophecy).
* [O] [C': A Finger Pointing and Hammered Silver](007) --- A Finger Pointing gets a letter, too; discussing what to do about it; risk assessment with Waking World and Sasha; message to Hammered Silver.
* [X] [B: Sasha speaks](002) --- Motes gets fucked (and fucked up); talks with Sasha about what happened.
* [X] [C: Warmth speaks](003) --- Visiting Warmth and Rye; The Warmth/Motes Dynamic™; discussing the nature of being an outcast (viz both Dear being a shit as well as Hammered Silver cutting off part of the ninth).
* [X] [D: Slow Hours speaks](004) --- Motes has a nightmare; Motes joins Beholden and A Finger Pointing to calm down; talks with Slow Hours about dreams.
* [X] [E: A letter from Hammered Silver](005) --- The letter; going for a walk as big Motes; staying that way for a week; pulled aside by Beholden to talk about it; A Finger Pointing is out for Some Reason; talking with Sarah.
* [X] [D': Flashback to the past](006) --- The origins of Motes told; some anecdotes (including Slow Hours's prophecy).
* [X] [C': A Finger Pointing and Hammered Silver](007) --- A Finger Pointing gets a letter, too; discussing what to do about it; risk assessment with Waking World and Sasha; message to Hammered Silver.
* [.] [?: Beholden](007b) --- Beholden muses on the past, family, and anger.
* [O] [B': Hunting for a new way forward](008) --- Big Motes for a bit; not going to stop playing or stop being Little Motes, just wants to know how to deal with the pain; talking with Sarah.
* [O] [A': Outro](009) --- About the future of Motes.
* [X] [B': Hunting for a new way forward](008) --- Big Motes for a bit; not going to stop playing or stop being Little Motes, just wants to know how to deal with the pain; talking with Sarah.
* [X] [B': Hunting for a new way forward](009) --- Big Motes for a bit; not going to stop playing or stop being Little Motes, just wants to know how to deal with the pain; talking with Sarah.
* [X] [A': Outro](010) --- About the future of Motes.