Merge branch 'master' of file:///home/gitea/data/gitea-repositories/makyo/zk
This commit is contained in:
Madison Scott-Clary
commit
5af0675780
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@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
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|||
# Shifting POV
|
||||
|
||||
Transition when JK says.
|
||||
|
||||
## 1
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha felt within her that shift. She felt the ways in which the world around her began to shift focus, colors warming, lines softening, light becoming silky and indistinct. She felt the way that of her which moved most confidently stepped back. She felt that which knew time and patience and solitude relax into unimaginable open spaces.
|
||||
|
||||
## 2
|
||||
|
||||
"Aurică, are you here? Are you?" That which had been True Name, that which had been End Waking, marveled at how smooth her voice had become.
|
||||
|
||||
## 3
|
||||
|
||||
"Sure, Sash, what's up?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you know how long ago we met?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I could--"
|
||||
|
||||
"No. Do you know? Do you feel it?"
|
||||
|
||||
Ey hesitated. "You alright?"
|
||||
|
||||
Was she? Was she? "I do not know."
|
||||
|
||||
## 4
|
||||
|
||||
"The world is so big. I have been walking sims for decades and centuries."
|
||||
|
||||
## 5
|
||||
|
||||
"I know, you just came back."
|
||||
|
||||
She laughed. "No, I mean...well, yes, I did. But there is so much. There are sims that I have only seen once, those that I have only seen twice."
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||||
|
||||
## 6
|
||||
|
||||
"Any you've seen centuries apart?"
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||||
|
||||
"Yes, dozens. Probably. It is hard to count, I am sure. But, my dear, there are so many more. I have explored less than a tenth of a tenth of a percent across three centuries. Can you imagine how much a mind can hold? Can you imagine how much a hundred billion minds can imagine?"
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|
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## 7
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you alright, Sasha?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I do not know. I was working, and then I was not, and I am worried now."
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you need to come here? I can take a break."
|
||||
|
||||
"Uh," she fiddled with her fur. "Yes, please."
|
||||
|
||||
## 8
|
||||
|
||||
She had felt that shift within her, felt that which was May step forward, felt the sickening lurch from who she had been to who she was, and lay back on the beanbag.
|
||||
|
||||
Felt confidence fade, and yet felt love increase, increase, increase...
|
||||
|
||||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
Difficult moment to write, translate to science of that moment
|
||||
|
||||
## Check valves
|
||||
|
||||
A check valve sits at the bottom of the down-pipe in a well. It takes the form of a wider section of pipe in which sits a spring. The spring holds a disk in place at the bottom of that wider section, so that, should there be no pressure pulling the disk up, the water that sits above, that which is still in the down-pipe and thus still connected to the cistern, will not flow back down into the well. It's the pressure of the well pump that pulls the check valve open.
|
||||
|
||||
Should your well run dry, this will, in theory, keep the water you do have from dropping back into the well.
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|
||||
Should, however, your well pump start to burn itself out on its own, then the motor may spin and spin and spin and you'll see nothing but air and bubbles flowing through the PEX pipe from the pump to the cistern. If you are a man of 36, fresh out of surgery, unable to to stand or sit reliably, you may lean over the pump and curse and curse and curse, and call your wife from upstairs to help you lift the new pump you purchased who knows how long ago to lift it up onto the stand of the old, to hold it in place as you cinch down that PEX, to watch as it, too, pulls nothing but air, the check valve flapping uselessly within its housing, and then the both of you will curse and curse and curse.
|
||||
|
||||
You'll figure out how to contact the city, how to go get supplemental water to carry you through the droughts of summer, to give you enough water to shower, to keep the dogs' water bowl full. You will worry about the heat and the effect it has on your healing, you will watch your wife slowly lose her mind until she has to head into IOP. You will watch her fret over the way the dog is slowing down.
|
||||
|
||||
And surely some emotions will play across your face, but your wife can't read them.
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,101 @@
|
|||
# Braided essay
|
||||
|
||||
1. Pulpit voice (almost mockingly confident)
|
||||
2. Very peri (nostalgic, sentimental) 17-3938
|
||||
|
||||
* Narrative
|
||||
* Descriptive
|
||||
* Lyrical/poetic/soundlike
|
||||
* Information/encyclopedic/didactic/scientific
|
||||
* List
|
||||
* Q/A
|
||||
* Quotations/definitions
|
||||
* Tonally contrasting with other sections
|
||||
|
||||
* Section: pantone color/number
|
||||
* describe color
|
||||
* New section:
|
||||
* what does the color make you feel/remember
|
||||
* New section:
|
||||
* lecture on color in general
|
||||
* New color and repeat
|
||||
|
||||
## Very Peri (17-3938)
|
||||
|
||||
Very Peri is a light purple color and was chosen as pantone's color of the year for 2022. It is cool without being cold, and muted enough that one could use it on a wall or as a background when combined with a color that pops. For foreground uses, it can be used as a color for the title and border of signs used in professional settings (conferences, logos, letterheads, etc). When contrasted with warmer colors, it can offer a sense of spring. With cooler colors, it can give a sense of iciness, ice cream, or floral patterns.
|
||||
|
||||
When I moved to the house on Becker Lane, the north side of the house was covered in a blanket of periwinkle. I didn't realize this at first. I sent some pictures to my mom, scattered shots from outside the house --- the drive, the yard, the little well we weren't supposed to have, the loafing shed --- and one of them was of the railroad tie steps that clambered down the slight grade, making one duck between pine boughs, around A/C units and fireplaces. I didn't realize it at first because my mom called it *vinca* and left it at that. There was no explanation, just *that's vinca*.
|
||||
|
||||
*Vinca* itself is from the Latin *to bind, to be bound*. Periwinkle, in turn, is a corruption through English, with the original word construct being *pervinca*, with the prefix *per* in this case meaning *thoroughly* or *completely*. Thus, periwinkle, *pervinca*, means to be thoroughly bound, playing into the way the plant binds itself in vines and thus to the ground.
|
||||
|
||||
Anthracite (19-4007) is a Pantone color describing a cool gray. The coolness leans blue and is dark enough to be used primarily as a foreground color. Related colors that one might see are slate, *Eigengrau*, or simply dark gray. When combined with warmer colors, it suggests stateliness or mountainous terrain.
|
||||
|
||||
Despite her shockingly white hair, her shockingly white skin, her propensity for light colored clothing (an artifact of living in New Mexico? I don't know), I'd always associated my mom with darker, cooler colors. It has little to do with the way she looks, and may in fact have everything to do with the distance she holds everything at. Her laughter is distant, her knowledge is distant (high above me), her love is distant (but no less intense for it).
|
||||
|
||||
*Eigengrau* describes the color that we see in total darkness. Not just when our eyes are closed, but in situations where there simply is no light. The reason that we do not see pure black is due to the fact that, despite not being excited by light, the optic cells at the backs of our eyes are still firing at some low rate. The (rods or cones), focusing on black and white, can only approximate pure black. The (rods or cones), focusing on color, can only approximate nothing.
|
||||
|
||||
## Topic of choice
|
||||
|
||||
### Knowledge about
|
||||
|
||||
The Book of Job is often considered one of the oldest books of the Hebrew Bible, based as it is on earlier folktales from Akkadian, proto-Egyptian, and other such sources. This dating is often placed primarily on the framing device of a man who is prosperous struck down by a god/the gods/God and then brought back to wealth based on his piety. The Talmud even describes Job as being written by Moses (Bava Barta 14b, etc)
|
||||
|
||||
The interior sections of Job, however, are the primary poetic works of Job, wherein he has discussion with his three (or four, if one counts Elihu) "friends". In these dialogues, Job explains, exasperatedly at most points, that he *was* pious, that if this happened to him and yet God is supposed to be the source of beneficence to those who are pious, then something must have gone wrong and God *must* be called to account.
|
||||
|
||||
His friends, on the other hand, lean heavily on the idea that, because of that, he *must* have done something wrong. He must have let his piety slip, must have missed a sacrifice or been insincere about his actions, even lied, in order for such calamity to have befallen him.
|
||||
|
||||
This poetic section is divided up into three primary arguments, a hymn to wisdom, and the arguments of Elihu, then followed by God's response.
|
||||
|
||||
### Descriptive associated (but don't deliberately describe)
|
||||
|
||||
Everyone has "friends". They have those people in their lives that exist solely to put their lives in stark contrast to how the world should --- or must --- be. They are the ones who hold you up to the light, see the imperfections, and tell you that they love you all the same. A love that might --- or must --- be tarnished by all these supposed flaws.
|
||||
|
||||
When I started to explore transition, I did so in hesitant fits and starts. A username change here, an explanation there, perhaps writing some fiction about those with different bodies than the one Matthew had.
|
||||
|
||||
It was that last that got me in trouble with my "friends", though. "How," reasoned my Elihu, "Could you possibly write about that without appropriating the bodies of others? How could you take a marginalized group of people and turn them into, what, a fetish?"
|
||||
|
||||
"It's me," some part of me whispered (not, I must note, the part that spoke aloud). "I'm that. I'm that body, I'm that Madison. I'm not Matthew, not his body."
|
||||
|
||||
But all I could do was whisper, because weren't they right, these "friends"? Wasn't I imperfect? Hadn't I transgressed, in some real way, the system that surely must be in place for a reason?
|
||||
|
||||
### Choose task, repeat image from 1 or 2, or language to connect
|
||||
|
||||
* Story/memory/conflict
|
||||
* Explain why
|
||||
* Pick hypertext phrases as starting point
|
||||
* Get strange, don't explain, don't be narrative
|
||||
* Write in a different mode
|
||||
|
||||
> I don't understand why you've stopped talking to me.
|
||||
|
||||
I haven't. I haven't heard from you.
|
||||
|
||||
> But you haven't messaged me. You haven't shown up as online. It's like you go to work, disappear, and then maybe now and then, you'll drop a distant message over AIM.
|
||||
|
||||
I'm trying to reach out, but I don't hear from you! You're online so I message you, but all I get are vague replies in return.
|
||||
|
||||
> I hear from Andrew that you're doing all these cool things, that you're working and making shitloads more money than I ever will, that you're even getting married, and we never even got an invite.
|
||||
|
||||
I keep trying to talk to you, but I maybe I'm doing it wrong? What can I do to talk better, then? What can I share that we'll connect on? I'm trying, and it's like I'm doing something wrong.
|
||||
|
||||
> Well, if you hadn't taken these people --- very real people! --- and turned them into some sort of weird fixation, maybe I wouldn't feel so goddamn weird around you.
|
||||
|
||||
*It's me, though,* I whisper. *I'm that. I'm that body. I'm that Madison. I'm not Matthew, not his body.*
|
||||
|
||||
I'm not trying to do that.
|
||||
|
||||
> How about just not fucking doing that, then?
|
||||
|
||||
*It's me, though.*
|
||||
|
||||
### Return to 1 or 2
|
||||
|
||||
Greenstein argues, in his new translation of Job, that the commonly thought of interpolations within the book do not go *far enough*. Many have already said that Elihu and the Hymn to Wisdom were added at a later date by some second set of writers. The tone and language used differ from the rest of the poetic section of the book. The NOAB even suggests that these were, at some point, shuffled around, that Elihu's speech should have been put before the Hymn because that section is far to saccharine and sanctimonious to have been Job's words, as it currently stands. The upside of this is that the response to Job's final speech is by God, not this upstart Elihu.
|
||||
|
||||
Not far enough, though. Greenstein suggests that everything we have is out of order.
|
||||
|
||||
(order that Greenstein provides)
|
||||
|
||||
It's all interpolations, all the way down. All of our memories, all of our stories, they're all interpolations. Did that conversation happen in that order? I don't remember.
|
||||
|
||||
"In any case," the NOAB says with a sigh. "The Elihu speeches are part of the book we now have."
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
|
|||
# Term 2 study plan
|
||||
|
||||
## Texts
|
||||
|
||||
1. *The Body: An Essay* --- Jenny Boully
|
||||
2. *Empty Words* --- Mario Levrero
|
||||
3. *Job: A New Translation* --- Edward L. Greenstein
|
||||
4. "Arrival" (film)
|
||||
5. "Mother" (film)
|
||||
6. *Buffalo Gals* (selections) --- Ursula K. Le Guin
|
||||
7. *Steering the Craft* --- Ursula K. Le Guin
|
||||
8. Let's Play of "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture" --- Fedule
|
||||
9. (An Itch.io game --- ESC, Cover Me in Leaves, etc)
|
||||
10. *This is How You Lose the Time War* --- Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
|
||||
11. *Portal: A Dataspace Retrieval* --- Rob Swigart
|
||||
12. "The Duino Elegies (selections) --- Rainer Maria Rilke
|
||||
|
|
@ -2,6 +2,12 @@
|
|||
|
||||
## 2022
|
||||
|
||||
### July
|
||||
|
||||
- [Term 2 study plan](2022-07-12)
|
||||
- [Braided essay](2022-07-06)
|
||||
- [Shifting POV](2022-07-03)
|
||||
|
||||
### April
|
||||
|
||||
- [Annotation: Splendor __LinkDescription__ Misery](2022-04-17)
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,216 @@
|
|||
# How To Set Up CI/CD with Drone CI and Gitea
|
||||
|
||||
In the process of developing and releasing software, one of the most useful tools at a developer's disposal is a solution that performs **continuous integration** and **continuous deployment**, or **CI/CD**.
|
||||
|
||||
Continuous integration (CI) refers to the practice of multiple developers merging their changes to a codebase back into the main branch often, perhaps daily or even more frequently, relying on smaller chunks of work that are more easily reviewed to and tested during the process of development. In order to ensure that these changes don't leave the main branch in a broken state, a tool that helps with continuous integration will often include functionality that runs test suites within the software package. When a developer proposes a merge of their work back into the main branch, the tests will run automatically and report back whether or not they pass, which may mean that the code is not ready to land.
|
||||
|
||||
Continuous deployment or continuous delivery (CD) refers to the idea that changes to code --- whether they're security patches, bug fixes, or new features --- be released quickly and seamlessly to the end users of the application. In the case of applications that the user runs, this will mean a frequent release schedule, offering incremental improvements to the software they are using. In the case of a service such as a website, this will mean frequent deployments of the new features in the code to the site so that the user's experience is continuously improving.
|
||||
|
||||
There are several tools that can help with CI/CD. These run as their own web services, which work with many source code management (SCM) systems to perform these tasks automatically. [Drone](https://drone.io) is one such solution, that provides a way of executing **pipelines** --- sets of steps that the service will run through such as building the software and running tests --- that are described in the code itself. Drone is a flexible CI/CD tool that can perform this on many different types of **runners**, containers or machines where the project can be repeatably built.
|
||||
|
||||
This tutorial aims to show how Drone can integrate with the source code management tool Gitea in order to offer fully self-hosted solutions for SCM and CI/CD. You will be installing Drone, connecting it with Gitea, and creating a sample project for Drone to run tests on in order to see how the two services work together.
|
||||
|
||||
### Prerequisites
|
||||
|
||||
In order to complete this tutorial, you will need the following:
|
||||
|
||||
* An installation of Gitea. For more on how to set up your own self-hosted Git SCM, see the [How To Install Gitea on Ubuntu Using Docker](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-gitea-on-ubuntu-using-docker) tutorial.
|
||||
* An Ubuntu 20.04 server with a non-root user configured with sudo privileges as described in the [initial server setup for Ubuntu 20.04](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-20-04).
|
||||
* Docker installed on your server. Follow **Steps 1 and 2** of [How to Install Docker on Ubuntu 20.04](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-docker-on-ubuntu-20-04) to install Docker.
|
||||
* Docker Compose installed on your server. Follow **Step 1** of our guide on [How to Install and Use Docker Compose on Ubuntu 20.04](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-docker-compose-on-ubuntu-20-04#step-1-installing-docker-compose) to set this up.
|
||||
* A domain name pointed at your server. If you are using a DigitalOcean Droplet, you can accomplish this by following our [Domains and DNS](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/dns/) documentation. This tutorial will use `<^>your_domain<^>` in examples throughout.
|
||||
|
||||
## Step 1 — Creating an OAuth Application in Gitea
|
||||
|
||||
The first step to integrating Drone with Gitea --- before even installing Drone itself --- is to create an OAuth2 application in Gitea. OAuth2 is a way for one service provider to delegate access to another. For instance, you may want to be able to share information on one site without creating an entirely new account there when you already have an account elsewhere with that information. If both sites work with OAuth2, then you can authorize the first site to have access to that information on the second site. In this case, Drone, as an OAuth2 client of Gitea, will be granted access to information such as repositories and pull requests that it will need to run its CI/CD tasks.
|
||||
|
||||
OAuth2 works by creating a **client ID** by which a client (Drone, in this case) identifies itself and a **client secret** by which it authenticates itself. Gitea will generate these values for you to provide to Drone when starting it.
|
||||
|
||||
To generate the ID and secret, log in to your Gitea instance and click on your icon in the upper right corner to select **Settings** from the drop down menu. In that page, you will see a row of tabs along the top. Click **Applications**, and you'll be presented with a screen allowing you to create OAuth2 Applications.
|
||||
|
||||
[](TODO)
|
||||
|
||||
Enter **Drone CI** or similar as your application name. For the redirect URI, enter the domain you have chosen for your Drone instance. This should take the form of `https://<^>your_domain<^>/login` --- it's important that the protocol (HTTPS, in this case) and domain name match exactly, and that you include the `/login` path at the end of the URL.
|
||||
|
||||
When you click **Create Application**, you will be presented with a screen showing the information that you just entered along with the OAuth2 client ID and client secret. Copy these both into a temporary document now, as they'll be hidden as soon as you navigate away from the page. If you do lose them, note the **Regenerate Secret** link, which will allow you to create a new secret that you can use for your Drone installation.
|
||||
|
||||
## Step 2 — Installing Drone
|
||||
|
||||
Now that you have your OAuth2 application created in Gitea, you can begin installing Drone. For this section, you will need the client ID and secret created in **Step 1**, the domain names for your Gitea instance and Drone instance, and an RPC secret. For this example, we will be using `sammy-says`.
|
||||
|
||||
On the server you created in the prerequisites, log in as your user and create a new directory named `drone` and move into it:
|
||||
|
||||
```command
|
||||
mkdir drone
|
||||
cd drone
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Now, create a new file named `docker-compose.yml` using your preferred text editor. The following example uses `nano`. This file will contain the descriptions of the containers that will run as part of your Drone installation:
|
||||
|
||||
```command
|
||||
nano docker-compose.yml
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Add the following into this new file, changing the highlighted values as required:
|
||||
|
||||
```yaml
|
||||
version: "3"
|
||||
|
||||
services:
|
||||
server:
|
||||
image: drone/drone:2
|
||||
container_name: server
|
||||
environment:
|
||||
- DRONE_GITEA_SERVER=https://mscottclary-test.do-community.com
|
||||
- DRONE_GITEA_CLIENT_ID=06e6fcce-4b10-40f3-9672-8190849e6e02
|
||||
- DRONE_GITEA_CLIENT_SECRET=hAihmhcdag9kXvQQdGh2XfIZHzKXIBJAxRJirvAXUIKu
|
||||
- DRONE_RPC_SECRET=sammy-says
|
||||
- DRONE_SERVER_HOST=mscottclary-drone.do-community.com
|
||||
- DRONE_SERVER_PROTO=https
|
||||
- DRONE_TLS_AUTOCERT=true
|
||||
- DRONE_AGENTS_ENABLED=true
|
||||
volumes:
|
||||
- ./drone:/data
|
||||
ports:
|
||||
- "80:80"
|
||||
- "443:443"
|
||||
runner:
|
||||
image: drone/drone-runner-docker:1
|
||||
container_name: runner
|
||||
environment:
|
||||
- DRONE_RPC_PROTO=http
|
||||
- DRONE_RPC_HOST=server
|
||||
- DRONE_RPC_SECRET=sammy-says
|
||||
- DRONE_RUNNER_CAPACITY=2
|
||||
- DRONE_RUNNER_NAME=gitea-runner
|
||||
volumes:
|
||||
- /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
|
||||
ports:
|
||||
- "3000:3000"
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Let's walk through what this file does:
|
||||
|
||||
* `version: "3"`: this lets Docker Compose know what version of configuration file this is.
|
||||
* `services`: for each of the containers that we have, we set up environment variables available to the service, assign volumes for data that's stored on the host, and expose various ports. Here are our services:
|
||||
* `server`: this service uses the `drone/drone:2` image, meaning that it runs the drone server itself. The environment variables passed in provide the service with information such as how to connect to and authorize with Gitea, a secret for the **remote procedure calls** (RPC), and with `DRONE_TLS_AUTOCERT`, we let the drone server provision a SSL certificate using Let's Encrypt. The container exposes port 80 for HTTP and port 443 for HTTPS. The local directory `drone` will be mapped to the container's `/data` directory, allowing all of Drone's information to be stored locally, meaning that it can be backed up and persist across containers.
|
||||
* `runner`: this service uses the `drone/drone-runner-docker:1` image, meaning that it will be in control of provisioning Docker containers for running tests on your code. This runner is what connects to the `server` container using RPC over port 3000 to start runs and report on the results. Because of this, `/var/run/docker.sock` is mapped as a volume. This special file is the means by which the runner process can communicate with Docker to start these containers.
|
||||
|
||||
<$>[note]
|
||||
**Note:** There are several different types of runners for Drone, each of which provides different benefits. Docker runners are good for ephemeral actions such as running tests, as they are cleaned up after the run completes and they do not persist any data. If you need the ability to persist data --- deploy your service, for instance --- you will need to use a different runner such as the **Exec Runner** or **DigitalOcean** runner. For more information on the available runners and the reasons for using them, the [Drone Runner Documentation](https://docs.drone.io/runner/overview/) has instructions for each.
|
||||
<$>
|
||||
|
||||
Now that your Docker Compose file is complete, save and close it. If you used `nano` to edit the file, you can do so by pressing `CTRL + X`, `Y`, and `ENTER`.
|
||||
|
||||
With this file in place you can then bring the containers up using Docker Compose:
|
||||
|
||||
```command
|
||||
docker-compose up
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
This command will pull down the images, start the server and runner containers, and will return output like this:
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
[+] Running 5/5
|
||||
⠿ server Pulled
|
||||
⠿ 79e9f2f55bf5 Pull complete
|
||||
⠿ 3534e21ebea8 Pull complete
|
||||
⠿ 2f27386bf47c Pull complete
|
||||
⠿ 631cac189eb7 Pull complete
|
||||
[+] Running 2/2
|
||||
⠿ Network drone_drone Created
|
||||
⠿ Container server Created
|
||||
Attaching to server
|
||||
server | {"acme":true,"host":"mscottclary-drone.do-community.com","level":"info","msg":"starting the http server","port":":443","proto":"https","time":"2022-06-29T21:01:12Z","url":"https://mscottclary-drone.do-community.com"}
|
||||
server | {"interval":"30m0s","level":"info","msg":"starting the cron scheduler","time":"2022-06-29T21:01:12Z"}
|
||||
server | {"interval":"24h0m0s","level":"info","msg":"starting the zombie build reaper","time":"2022-06-29T21:01:12Z"}
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Give this a few minutes to finish running the Let's Encrypt certificate provisioning.
|
||||
|
||||
This will leave the container running in the foreground, however, and it will stop as soon as you exit the process with `Ctrl + C` or by losing your connection. In order to have the container run in the background as a separate process, you can append the `-d` flag to the Compose command:
|
||||
|
||||
```command
|
||||
docker-compose up -d
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
You will be notified when the container starts and then returned to your shell.
|
||||
|
||||
## Step 3 — Connecting Drone to Gitea
|
||||
|
||||
Now that Drone is up and running, you can connect it to Gitea to authorize runs via OAuth2. Visit your Drone URL in your browser, where you will see a message that says "You will be redirected to your source control management system to authenticate" above a **Continue** button. If all of the information that has been entered to now has been valid, you will find yourself on a Gitea page asking for your authorization to give Drone permissions.
|
||||
|
||||
[](TODO)
|
||||
|
||||
<$>[note]
|
||||
**Note:** If you run into an error saying that a client ID or redirect URL was not recognized, check the values entered in your `docker-compose.yml` to ensure they match your domain names and Gitea OAuth2 information exactly. When you are sure, running `docker-compose restart` will bring the containers back up with the correct information.
|
||||
<$>
|
||||
|
||||
Once you grant permission, you will be returned to your Drone dashboard, where you will see a list of your repositories.
|
||||
|
||||
## Step 4 — Setting Up a Project for CI/CD
|
||||
|
||||
For this tutorial, we will be testing Drone's continuous integration capabilities for automatically running tests. In order to do so, create a sample repository in Gitea. Clone that repository to your development machine and move into the project directory:
|
||||
|
||||
```command
|
||||
git clone git@<^>your_gitea_domain<^>:sammy/drone-test.git
|
||||
cd drone-test
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Create a new file named `drone_test.py` and enter the following into it:
|
||||
|
||||
```python
|
||||
assert 1 == 1
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Save and exit the file, then add it to your repository and push your changes:
|
||||
|
||||
```command
|
||||
git commit -am "Added test file"
|
||||
git push origin main
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Now, return to your Drone dashboard and click on the repository.
|
||||
|
||||
<$>[note]
|
||||
**Note:** If your repository does not appear in the list, you may need to click the **Sync** button in the upper right corner of the dashboard.
|
||||
<$>
|
||||
|
||||
In the settings tab, click **+ Activate Repository**. This will tell Drone that it should be watching for changes from that repository.
|
||||
|
||||
Now that Drone is active for your test project, you will need to create a **pipeline**. Pipelines describe the steps that Drone should take in order to test your software. These are stored in a file named `.drone.yml`.
|
||||
|
||||
In your dev checkout of the project, create a new file named `.drone.yml` and add the following to it:
|
||||
|
||||
```yaml
|
||||
---
|
||||
kind: pipeline
|
||||
type: docker
|
||||
name: default
|
||||
|
||||
steps:
|
||||
- name: test
|
||||
image: python
|
||||
commands:
|
||||
- python drone_test.py
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Let's take a look at what this file does. After the header of `---`, we see that the type of configuration we are working with is a pipeline that runs on Docker containers. It has one step named `test` using the official `python` image, and when that container runs and checks out your repository, it will run the command `python drone_test.py`. Since this file contains a simple assertion that 1 is, indeed, equal to 1, the tests should pass.
|
||||
|
||||
Save and exit this file, then add it to your repository and push your changes as you did before.
|
||||
|
||||
Visit your Drone dashboard in the browser once more and click on your active repository. You should see that it has started running your pipeline. If it has not started yet, feel free to click the **+ New Build** button in the upper right corner. When you click on the build, you will be presented with a few of the logs from that build updated in real time as your project is cloned and then your `test` step run. Since it turns out that 1 does, in fact, equal 1, your tests should pass and you will receive a green check mark.
|
||||
|
||||
What about 2, though? Check if 1 is equal to 2 by editing `drone_test.py` and updating the assertion to look like this:
|
||||
|
||||
```python
|
||||
assert 1 == 2
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Commit and push your work as you did before, and then return to your Drone dashboard. Thankfully, 1 does not equal 2, and so our test fails as expected.
|
||||
|
||||
These results are also visible in Gitea, where you can see whether a particular commit broke the build. Visit your repository in Gitea and click on the **Commits** link above the file listing. You should see all of your commits that went into creating this test project. Before the commit where you checked whether 1 was equal to 2, you should see a red **×** indicating that CI has failed, whereas you should see a green **✓** indicating that the build passed. Prior to that, before the repository was hooked up to Drone, you should see no indicators.
|
||||
|
||||
## Conclusion
|
||||
|
||||
In this tutorial, you set up the self-hosted CI/CD service Drone to work with your self-hosted Gitea service. CI/CD services can help keep your project in a clean state and your builds fresh and fast. Drone allows you to automatically run tests, checks, and deploys on your projects. Here, we are simply running a check every time a commit is pushed to Gitea, but the configuration files for Drone are flexible, allowing you to run checks on merges using triggers, run only on certain events using conditionals, and so on. For more information, the [Drone Pipeline Docs](https://docs.drone.io/pipeline/docker/overview/) describe many common scenarios.
|
||||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
|
|||
# How to set up jenkins with gitea
|
||||
|
||||
In the process of developing and releasing software, one of the most useful tools at a developer's disposal is a solution that performs **continuous integration** and **continuous deployment**, or **CI/CD**.
|
||||
|
||||
Continuous integration (CI) refers to the practice of multiple developers merging their changes to a codebase back into the main branch often, perhaps daily or even more frequently, relying on smaller chunks of work that are more easily reviewed to and tested during the process of development. In order to ensure that these changes don't leave the main branch in a broken state, a tool that helps with continuous integration will often include functionality that runs test suites within the software package. When a developer proposes a merge of their work back into the main branch, the tests will run automatically and report back whether or not they pass, which may mean that the code is not ready to land.
|
||||
|
||||
Continuous deployment or continuous delivery (CD) refers to the idea that changes to code --- whether they're security patches, bug fixes, or new features --- be released quickly and seamlessly to the end users of the application. In the case of applications that the user runs, this will mean a frequent release schedule, offering incremental improvements to the software they are using. In the case of a service such as a website, this will mean frequent deployments of the new features in the code to the site so that the user's experience is continuously improving.
|
||||
|
||||
There are several tools that can help with CI/CD. These run as their own web services, which work with many source code management (SCM) systems to perform these tasks automatically. [Jenkins](https://jenkins.io) is one such solution, that provides a way of executing **pipelines** --- sets of steps that the service will run through such as building the software and running tests --- that are described in the code itself. Jenkins is a full-featured CI/CD tool with a flexible, declarative pipeline syntax that allows you to accomplish many tasks.
|
||||
|
||||
This tutorial aims to show how Jenkins can integrate with the source code management tool Gitea in order to offer fully self-hosted solutions for SCM and CI/CD. You will be connecting Jenkins with Gitea, and creating a sample project for Jenkins to run tests on in order to see how the two services work together.
|
||||
|
||||
### Prerequisites
|
||||
|
||||
For this tutorial, you will need the following:
|
||||
|
||||
* A server set up running an installation of Gitea. For more information on how to run Gitea on your own server, see this tutorial on [How To Install Gitea on Ubuntu Using Docker](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-gitea-on-ubuntu-using-docker), which will walk you through the steps of [setting up your own Ubuntu server](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-20-04), [Installing Docker](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-docker-on-ubuntu-20-04), [Installing Docker Compose](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-use-docker-compose-on-ubuntu-20-04#step-1-installing-docker-compose), and then installing Gitea [on your own domain](https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/dns/).
|
||||
* A server set up running an installation of Jenkins. For more information on how to set up your own instance of Jenkins, This tutorial on [How to Install Jenkins on Ubuntu 20.04](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-jenkins-on-ubuntu-20-04) will get you going.
|
||||
|
||||
## Step 1 — Prepare Gitea for Integration
|
||||
|
||||
Jenkins communicates to Gitea via a user that you create on your Gitea instance. In order to create this user, log into an account on your Gitea instance with administrative access. Click on your user icon in the upper right corner of the page and go to **Site Administration**, and then the **User Accounts** tab. Click **Create User Account** and make a new account named `jenkins`. Enter an email and secure password, then uncheck **Require user to change password**; this user will not be used to log into Gitea except to manage its connection to Jenkins, and that will be by the system administrators.
|
||||
|
||||
Once you have created the user, you will need to add a team to the organization that contains your source code's repository. On the organization's page, there will be a **Teams** section. Click **New Team** and create a team named `ci`. You can give this team access to all repositories or just the ones you specify. You may leave the permissions as is unless other work will be undertaken by the `ci` team members, in which case change them to meet your needs; you will always be able to update this later. Add your `jenkins` user to this team once it has been created by clicking the **Add Team Member** button on the team's page.
|
||||
|
||||
Now that you have the user set up for Jenkins to access, you will need to create an application token. To do this, log out of your current account and then log in as the `jenkins` user you just created. Click on your user icon in the upper right corner of the page, and click on **Settings**. In the tabs at the top of the page, click **Applications** where you will be able to generate a new access token. In the **Manage Access Tokens** section of the page, fill in the **Token Name** field with `jenkins` and click **Generate Token**. You will be provided with a token at the top of the page, a series of hexadecimal letters and numbers. Copy this token and paste it somewhere safe, as you will need it in future steps, and it will not be shown again.
|
||||
|
||||
## Step 2 — Install the Gitea Plugin
|
||||
|
||||
The first step to integrate Jenkins with Gitea is to install the Gitea plugin in Jenkins. In order to do so, from the main dashboard, click **Manage Jenkins**. Once you're there, you will find a link titled **Manage Plugins**. Once you click that, in the tabs beneath the title of the page, select **Available**. This will allow you to search the Jenkins repository for all available plugins. Filter for "Gitea" and the plugin will appear in the list. Tick the checkbox next to the plugin and click **Install without restart**.
|
||||
|
||||
When the plugin is installed, you will be able to configure Jenkins to use your Gitea server. This is done through the **Manage Jenkins** page again, available via a link on the menu. There, you will see a link to **Configure System**. Scrolling down the page, you will find a **Gitea Servers** section. Click **Add** beneath to add a Gitea server. In that section, enter a name for the Gitea server, and then its full URL.
|
||||
|
||||
This section will also have a checkbox labeled **Manage hooks**. By default, Jenkins will only build Gitea branches and pull requests on demand. For each repository configured with Jenkins, you can opt to let Jenkins manage the webhooks that are called when a pull requests is created which will start the Jenkins pipeline. However, checking the **Manage hooks** checkbox while configuring the server will do this by default for all repositories. It acts as an "opt out" setting, rather than the default "opt in". If you do decide to check this box, you will be prompted to enter credentials. Add a new set of credentials, and on the modal pop-up that is shown, set the kind of credentials to "Gitea Personal Access Token" and the scope to "System". This will ensure that the Gitea owner of the access token will only have access to Jenkins and its nodes.
|
||||
|
||||
[](TODO)
|
||||
|
||||
Name your credential something like `jenkins-gitea` and paste your token from **Step 1** into the token field. This will give Jenkins application access to Gitea via the token created for the `jenkins` user. Leave the **ID** and **Description** fields blank and click **Add**. When you are returned to the server configuration, click **Save** to create the Gitea server in Jenkins.
|
||||
|
||||
## Step 3 — Map Gitea to Jenkins
|
||||
|
||||
Now that both Gitea and Jenkins are prepared, you can map them to each other. On the Jenkins dashboard, click **+ New Item**. This will provide you with a list of various types of items that you can create. For the purposes of CI with Gitea, you will need to create an organization. Type the name of you organization in the field provided, click **Organization Folder**, and then click **OK** to create the organization. This will provide you with the ability to set up your organisation. Set the name of the organization and provide a short description, then, under **Projects**, add a Gitea organization via the **Add** drop down provided. This will pre-fill with some of the information you added in the previous step, but you will need to associate credentials with the project. If you created the credentials in the previous step, those will appear in the list when you click **Add** in the credentials section, otherwise you will need to create them as above, using the access token you created in **Step 1**. Follow the instructions in **Step 2** for creating the credentials, making sure to set the kind to "Gitea Personal Access Token". In the **Owner** field, enter `jenkins`, the user you created in **Step 1**.
|
||||
|
||||
In the **Behaviors** section, you will be able to set how Jenkins discovers code to run its CI pipeline against. For instance, you can set it so that Jenkins discovers all branches whether or not they have filed pull requests, or what types of pull requests to discover. For now, the default behaviors are fine, so you do not need to change them. The rest of the page contains various other ways that you can tune Jenkins's interaction with Gitea, all of which have sensible defaults, so you do not need to change them, but if you would like to learn more, clicking on the question marks within each section will provide you with more information about how each field works.
|
||||
|
||||
When you are done creating the organization folder, click **Save** and you will be shown the results of Jenkins scanning the Gitea organization for repositories and branches that meet its criteria. For now, the criteria is simply whether or not a repository contains a file named `Jenkinsfile`, which describes the pipeline used to test or deploy the project. We will create the pipeline in the next step
|
||||
|
||||
## Step 5 — Create the Jenkins CI Pipeline
|
||||
|
||||
Let's create a sample project in order to test this interaction. In Gitea, create a new repository, and then clone it on your local machine. Since Jenkins works with pull requests, switch to a new branch named `jenkins`:
|
||||
|
||||
```command
|
||||
git checkout -b jenkins
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Using your favorite code editor, create a new file named `jenkins_test.py` and enter the following into it:
|
||||
|
||||
```python
|
||||
[label jenkins_test.py]
|
||||
assert 1 == 1
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
This simple Python script ensure that 1 really is equal to 1, which is a very important fact to have at hand. Save and close the file in your code editor.
|
||||
|
||||
Now, open up a new file in your project named `Jenkinsfile` (including the capital `J`), and enter the following:
|
||||
|
||||
```jenkinsfile
|
||||
[label Jenkinsfile]
|
||||
pipeline {
|
||||
agent none
|
||||
stages {
|
||||
stage('test') {
|
||||
agent {
|
||||
docker {
|
||||
image "python"
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
steps {
|
||||
script {
|
||||
sh """
|
||||
python jenkins_test.py
|
||||
"""
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
}
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Let's go over what this pipeline is saying.
|
||||
|
||||
* We set `agent none` at the beginning as we will be using a docker agent specifically within the `test` stage.
|
||||
* Jenkins pipelines are made up of various different stages, which can be tasks such as testing, linting, and deploying your code. In this case, we created a `test` stage to run tests against our Python.
|
||||
* The agent declaration says that this stage should use a Docker container running the `python` image from the public Docker registry.
|
||||
* The `steps` section is where the real work occurs. Each step required for testing is provided in order. In our case, we only have one step, which is to run a script in the shell, which calls `python jenkins_test.py`.
|
||||
|
||||
Add both of these files to your Git working tree and commit your changes:
|
||||
|
||||
```command
|
||||
git add .
|
||||
git commit -m "Added test and Jenkinsfile"
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
Now, push your branch up to Gitea:
|
||||
|
||||
```command
|
||||
git push origin jenkins
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
On the repository page in Gitea, create a new pull request in order to merge your `jenkins` branch into your main branch (often named `main` or `master`). Since Jenkins is watching the repository and now sees that there is a `Jenkinsfile` in the branch you are trying to merge in, it recognizes that this is a repository that it should track and will begin running the pipeline for that pull request.
|
||||
|
||||
<$>[note]
|
||||
**Note:** Jenkins may not pick up on this change right away depending on whether or not the webhooks are configured for the project. If that's the case, on the Jenkins page for your organization, click **Scan Gitea Organization Now** and it should pick up on the ranch and repository.
|
||||
<$>
|
||||
|
||||
On the Jenkins page for your organization, you should see your repository in the list. When you click on it, you will be provided with a list of pipelines that are running; there should be one in the **Pull Requests** section for "PR-1". When you click on that, you should see the status of the current pipeline. If it is running, you can click on **Console Output** on the left menu to view the steps that it is taking such as creating the Docker container, pulling the Python image, and then running the script specified in the Jenkinsfile. If 1 is indeed equal to 1, then this build should be successful.
|
||||
|
||||
When you look back at your pull request on Gitea, you will see that there is a new section above the comment box where it is running checks via Jenkins. This can be **in progress** where the indicator is yellow, or **checks passed** if it's green or **checks failed** if it's red. This provides an indicator as to the branch's status within Gitea itself, so that you need not open up Jenkins just to check for a pass or fail.
|
||||
|
||||
## Conclusion
|
||||
|
||||
In this tutorial, you learned how to set up Jenkins and Gitea so that you can run continuous integration pipelines against your source code repositories. Continuous integration ensures that the quality of your code remains high and that the chances of breaking changes being introduced into your main branch of your code. Just as Gitea provides an excellent self-hosted source code management solution, Jenkins provides an excellent continuous integration solution, and together, they can help keep your project moving quickly and cleanly.
|
||||
|
|
@ -10,3 +10,5 @@
|
|||
|
||||
* [Gitea 2](gitea-2)
|
||||
* [Gitea 3](gitea-3)
|
||||
* [Gitea 4](gitea-4)
|
||||
* [Gitea 5](gitea-5)
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ Autumn bears a strange dichotomy of plenty and impending naught. In Autumn, we h
|
|||
|
||||
The grain is in the silo. The gourds and potatoes are in the cellar. The fruit has been canned, the hay mown and baled, and we have never seen so much food, it seems.
|
||||
|
||||
And yet now is the time we consider empty stomachs. There is a particular Autumnal anxiety\footnote{Or perhaps a fear. Halloween lies there, doesn't it? There is a terror to your work, something existential, but you were also a fan of horror. Your story was going to be the one that started that other fiction podcast we were planning on, where bummers were welcome to complete the dichotomy\footnotemark~with The Voice of Dog where there were none.\par
|
||||
And yet now is the time we consider empty stomachs. There is a particular Autumnal anxiety\footnote{Or perhaps a fear. Halloween lies there, doesn't it? There is a terror to your work, something existential, but you were also a fan of horror. You always asked for `Halloween music'. Your story was going to be the one that started that other fiction podcast we were planning on, where bummers were welcome to complete the dichotomy\footnotemark~with The Voice of Dog where there were none.\par
|
||||
I don't know why I associate you so heavily with both terror and horror. You were a delight to be around, and your work is not \emph{all} terror or horror. I wouldn't call your personality dark, or at least no darker than fallen leaves-- but I am getting ahead of myself.}
|
||||
\footnotetext{``I had read the sign,'' I wrote for one of my only attempts at horror/terror \parencite{plu}. ``And had immediately fallen down into the space defined by that dichotomy, the gap between had-to-be and could-not-be. Dichotomy? Dialectic? There was no telling anymore, no matter how many times I'd tried to paste one word or the other onto the two phrases. Were `dichotomy' and `dialectic' a dichotomy or dialectic?''\par
|
||||
Clearly, I'm still shaky on the difference, despite those seven weeks in DBT (the D stands for `dialectical', after all), but at least I recognize it; I can just dwell in that space between two truths. Best I can do when I'm about to write however many hundreds of words on dialectics/dichotomies.} that lays bare future hunger and says, ``See? It doesn't matter how much you have stored away. This is Winter.''
|
||||
|
|
@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ And still more, later flowers for the bees, \\
|
|||
Until they think warm days will never cease, \\
|
||||
\vin \vin For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.\footnote{I know that this line has little to do with cells in the biological sense, but how poetic a description of cancer!\footnotemark~Cells living in eternal summer, growing and growing, over-brimming in unchecked autolysis.}
|
||||
\footnotetext{\Warn~They said it was just a lipoma, and then they stopped looking. Even though we told them she'd had a lipoma removed from atop her head back when we adopted her, back when she was a puppy, they stopped looking. They stopped looking! They said she was too fat, said as they peered over their imagined glasses at us, as though it were our fault that she was no longer so svelte, and then they sent us home. They sent us home! They said it was a benign lump and that German Shepherds just get those sometimes, that she was just too fat because they can be such couch potatoes, and then they stopped talking to us because they were too busy, too busy, too busy. A year later, she had slowed down to the point where she refused to go outside. She began spending all day, all night in the bathroom. That last day, her gums turned white and her belly was visibly swollen. That last night, she died\footnotemark~in my arms.}
|
||||
\footnotetext{\Warn~I know that I'm trying to square what I have of Dwale with its death, but when Falcon died in my arms less than six months later, then I really, \emph{truly} knew what death looked like, and now I have to square that with Dwale's passing as well. Did it, too, cry? Did it, too, try to hide? When it breathed its last, did it slump over to the side and stay warm far longer than one might expect? There was no one there to chide us and send us home that I can blame; there's no cancer, if that ephemeral mention is to be believed, that lurked beneath the surface. It was and then it wasn't, and the only referent I have is a dog who died too young. I'm ashamed that I can't help but make the comparison.}
|
||||
\footnotetext{\Warn~I know that I'm trying to square what I have of you with your death, but when Falcon died in my arms less than six months later, then I really, \emph{truly} knew what death looked like, and now I have to square that with your passing as well. Did you, too, cry? Did you, too, try to hide? When you breathed your last, did you slump over to the side and stay warm far longer than one might expect? There was no one there to chide us and send us home that I can blame; there's no cancer, if that ephemeral mention from your girlfriend is to be believed, that lurked beneath the surface. You were and then you were not, and the only referent I have is a dog who died too young. I'm ashamed that I can't help but make the comparison.}
|
||||
|
||||
\parencite[249]{keats}
|
||||
\end{verse}
|
||||
|
|
@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ In Keats's work, we see the lush language that we expect out of a romantic poetr
|
|||
|
||||
The winds in Stevens's verse are not warm, though. With the aforementioned austerity, we are given one of the first cold winds of the year, and we see that the trees have lost their leaves already, miming against the sky as they are.
|
||||
|
||||
While I hesitate to say that Dwale walks a middle path here, its work does feature elements of both plenty and paucity. By establishing these two poles, we can then begin to triangulate where the poet believes Autumn lies.\footnote{This, after all, is what I'm trying to do, I think. I can't ask it where Autumn lies. I can't ask it if it feels the same way about the onrushing cold that I do, about saying farewell to the heat of Summer. I can't ask it if its moods are still defined by the school year, as mine are, these many years gone, with stress peaking around what used to be the end of term and depression creeping in around that first week of school. I can't ask it many things. I can't ask it anything.}
|
||||
While I hesitate to say that Dwale walks a middle path here, its work does feature elements of both plenty and paucity. By establishing these two poles, we can then begin to triangulate where the poet believes Autumn lies.\footnote{This, after all, is what I'm trying to do, I think. I can't ask you where Autumn lies. I can't ask you if you feel the same way about the onrushing cold that I do, about saying farewell to the heat of Summer. I can't ask you if your moods are still defined by the school year, as mine are, these many years gone, with stress peaking around what used to be the end of term and depression creeping in around that first week of school. I can't ask you many things. I can't ask you anything.}
|
||||
|
||||
\begin{verse}
|
||||
\emph{Face down in the leaves}
|
||||
|
|
@ -59,7 +59,13 @@ Reduced at last to heaven's dormant clay. \\
|
|||
Alive, I lick brambles until my tongue \\
|
||||
Tears, despairing ever being so young.
|
||||
|
||||
I think of you.\footnote{By its absence, I feel its presence, and yet I continue to try and gaslight myself into believing that it never existed. Is it gone? It must be. Was it ever there, though? Was it a real person? Was it someone so grounding that I felt childish before it? Was it someone I had the chance to meet back in 2015, where I stared longingly at its kosovorotka in gold-trimmed black, wishing I was brave enough to wear something like that? We'll never know, I suppose. One more thing I'll never be able to ask you.} I don't smile when I do.\footnote{Maybe I will, some day. I'd sure like to think so.}
|
||||
I think of you.\footnote{By your absence, I feel your presence, and yet I continue to try and gaslight myself into believing that you never existed. Are you gone? You must be. Were you ever there, though? Were you a real person?\footnotemark~Were you someone so grounding that I felt childish before you? Were you someone I had the chance to meet back in 2015, where I stared longingly at your kosovorotka in gold-trimmed black, wishing I was brave enough to wear something like that? We'll never know, I suppose. One more thing I'll never be able to ask you.}\footnotetext{\begin{quote}
|
||||
There was no more Codrin in the L\textsubscript{5} System. Ey was only here. Ey couldn't remember being there, for were the sims not the same? And if ey had never been there, had ey ever really existed there? Ey was only memories, and perhaps that is all ey had ever been. Navel gazing and existential crises mixed with the glee of having actually *done* something. No longer just the passive amanuensis, but now the active participant.
|
||||
|
||||
\parencite[51]{toledot}
|
||||
\end{quote}
|
||||
|
||||
Clearly a perennial fear.}~I don't smile when I do.\footnote{Maybe I will, some day. I'd sure like to think so.}
|
||||
|
||||
A moment more and then the day is gone, \\
|
||||
In evening grey, we mourn the vanished dawn, \\
|
||||
|
|
@ -76,8 +82,10 @@ The harvestmen scuttle and bob onwards.
|
|||
For Autumn, we are greeted by the vision of plenty and naught in the form of fallen leaves. The bare trees speak to a lack, and so the leaves on the ground bear testament to this. And yet the leaves themselves are someone's plenty, are they not? The millipedes, the mites and mud-daubers, the harvestmen all have a place to live, have food for the season, even if we have already collected ours. Everything is always food for something.\footnote{Even if that something is time.} The leaves are food for the insects, and they leave behind the humus, which will be a slow food for things too small to see.
|
||||
|
||||
And we, perhaps, are food for that ground.\footnote{Were you buried, Dwale? I realize that I don't actually know. When Idun passed on news of your passing, she also asked what observances should be made for a Muslim who has passed. I know that expressing one's wishes for when one dies is not always something does with one's partner --- hell, I don't know that any of my partners and I have talked about it, though it \emph{is} in my will --- but it does make me wonder: were those customs upheld?\footnotemark~I realized, also, that I don't know how much of your identity was known by your family. I have to interpret your life only to the extent that I can interpret your poetry: I haven't the ear, I have only the words, and you are not around to ask.}
|
||||
\footnotetext{Every time I take the long way home from the store because traffic sucks or highway 2 is too much, I think about stopping by the mosque that I pass and asking about this. It's always also couched in that selfish desire to also ask after a framework for dealing with grief.\par
|
||||
When I was talking about lack of framework in the context of this essay, a friend sent me a link to a tweet wherein the poster states ``An american \emph{(sic)} is told a thousand different ways that experiencing grief is abnormal, improper, and something to be done in private on your own time.'' \parencite{grief1} This is stated in contrast to the Jewish practice of sitting shiva and the following sheloshim which provides a structured procedure for engaging with grief. Another user replied that this might just be a white, middle-class American thing: ``White Anglo Saxon Protestant based communities may lack rituals for mourning. I don't know that world. But everyone from Black Americans to Latinx to AAPI to ethnic white communities (Polish, Italian, Ukrainian etc) have ways to mourn that aren't exactly hidden.'' \parencite{grief2}.\par
|
||||
\footnotetext{Every time I take the long way home from the store because traffic sucks or highway 2 is too much, I think about stopping by the mosque that I pass and asking about this. It's always also couched in that selfish desire to also ask after a framework for dealing with grief.
|
||||
|
||||
When I was talking about lack of framework in the context of this essay, a friend sent me a link to a tweet wherein the poster states ``An american \emph{(sic)} is told a thousand different ways that experiencing grief is abnormal, improper, and something to be done in private on your own time.'' \parencite{grief1} This is stated in contrast to the Jewish practice of sitting shiva and the following sheloshim which provides a structured procedure for engaging with grief. Another user replied that this might just be a white, middle-class American thing: ``White Anglo Saxon Protestant based communities may lack rituals for mourning. I don't know that world. But everyone from Black Americans to Latinx to AAPI to ethnic white communities (Polish, Italian, Ukrainian etc) have ways to mourn that aren't exactly hidden.'' \parencite{grief2}.
|
||||
|
||||
So here am I, bathed in white cultural protestantism and puritan work ethics, having nothing to hang my grief on but a desire for resolution, for even a hint at a framework. Five years after Margaras's death, when I was still trying to process what life without him would actually be like, I wrote:\begin{verse}
|
||||
\textit{Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba}\\
|
||||
Would that I had the faith\\
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
|
|||
Hi there. My name's Ephah. I play a lot of beat saber and synth riders, and there's actually a few reasons behind that. First of all, I have a movement disorder called tardive akathisia, which means that I can't really stop moving sometimes. This usually takes the form of walking, but when you move up to the mountains in Washington, you have to take rainy winters and sweltering summers into account, so I needed some activity that would keep me moving without needing to go for endless walks.
|
||||
|
||||
Secondly, despite working in the tech sector, I got my degree in music composition. While I've had a grand total of two chances to put the knowledge into practice, this meant that I got to take several conducting classes. Now, don't misunderstand me, this does *not* make me better at beat saber. In fact, it may make me worse. However, what it does do is give me a better sense of why I messed up when I do, and a little bit of vocabulary to talk about it.
|
||||
|
||||
So...let's talk about it! I'm going to go over three things that I learned in school that have helped me rid the world of brightly colored blocks.
|
||||
|
||||
Oh, and fun fact: I lost 30 pounds of covid fat to beat saber
|
||||
|
||||
The first term I'd like to cover is the 'ictus'. When you're conducting, there are actually three parts to each movement of your hands. There's the down beat, the ictus, and the up beat. We'll just look at the first stroke in a measure, which is the first beat. In just about all conducting patterns this has your hand moving downward.
|
||||
|
||||
This occurs just before the beat, because the thing about conducting is that very little is actually indicated by your hand moving, it all takes place on the ictus. That's the point where your hand turns to move in another direction to get to the next beat, a path which is half up beat and half down beat.
|
||||
|
||||
When you're conducting musicians, the upbeat is more important than anything, as that determines the style and tone that they perform their notes on. Conducting is less about keeping the beat than it is about ensuring that all of your performers are vibing in the same way as they perform.
|
||||
|
||||
That's not the case with beat saber, though. Beat saber relies way more on the ictus. There are a lot of different ways to approach the ictus. You can bounce off the imaginary point in a fast up beat to indicate a staccato performance, or you can gliiide across it to indicate a more legato, flowing sound.
|
||||
|
||||
In beat saber, this shows up in how you approach the next note, less than the mood itself. For instance, you might notice that a lot of slower, smoother maps have your saber swinging in an arc from one note to the next, while a lot of choppier songs have maps that have you making a lot of sharp reversals with your saber to hit the next block.
|
||||
|
||||
Fun fact: the German word Kummerspeck refers to fat you gain out of grief.
|
||||
|
||||
Fun fact: I got into beat saber a month after my dog died - really rather suddenly, actually - to cope with grief.
|
||||
|
||||
Fun fact: her name was Falcon and she died of cancer. Love those in your life who make you who you are, and may they live on in your memories after they're gone.
|
||||
|
|
@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
|
|||
* A spaceship that's bigger on the insides, the corridors continuing long past where the hull should be. I suspect it goes on forever.
|
||||
|
||||
However, those involved know the trope and try to think their way out of it.
|
||||
* An essay on grief re: Falcon, tying to external sources (Qohelet, Job, etc etc) --- work into Seasons?
|
||||
* 9/11-inspired story about Leonel telling me about the towers and then going to school, unbelieving.
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -13,6 +13,7 @@
|
|||
## Current
|
||||
|
||||
* [o] [Mitzvot](post-self/mitzvot/index)
|
||||
* [.] [BS and conducting](bs/conducting)
|
||||
|
||||
## MFA
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ Ioan had leaned back in eir chair, ey remembered, and stared up at the ceiling.
|
|||
|
||||
"She is the type of person who will always take more upon herself, more and more and more until she cracks," May had murmured, quiet enough that Ioan had to strain to hear. "That she has been at this for more than two and a quarter centuries and the strain is only now showing is, if anything, a testament to her strength."
|
||||
|
||||
Ever since that day, that conversation would rise to the fore of eir memory whenever ey met up with the other skunk for coffee. They would have their conversation, sip their coffees, and then get down to whatever projects they were working on, and there would always be a small portion of eir mind dedicated to squaring what ey knew of her with just how old she was.
|
||||
Ever since that day, that conversation would rise to the fore of eir memory whenever ey met up with True Name for coffee. They would have their conversation, sip their drinks, and then get down to whatever projects they were working on, and there would always be a small portion of eir mind dedicated to squaring what ey knew of her with just how old she was.
|
||||
|
||||
What ey'd not managed to bring up in that conversation, however, was that ey seemed plagued with a pathological desire to help. Somehow. Ey wanted to find what it was that was wearing so much on True Name and find a way to ease it. There was a problem there, and problems were made for solving, yes?
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -84,7 +84,7 @@ She chuckled. "Your words, not mine. But, well...with the understanding that I c
|
|||
|
||||
"It seems to have gone over well, at least."
|
||||
|
||||
"It did, yes." Then, with a tilt of her head, ey felt the ACL-scape of the cone they were within shift, and there was a subtle blurring to the world around them as she opaqued the cone from the outside. "Now consider the effects of A/V transmission between sys- and phys-side."
|
||||
"It did, yes." Then, with a tilt of her head, ey felt the ACL-scape of the cone they were within shift, and there was a subtle blurring to the world around them as she opaqued the cone from the outside. "Now consider the effects of audio/visual transmission between sys- and phys-side."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey blinked and sat up straighter. "Wait, what?"
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ Ey blinked and sat up straighter. "Wait, what?"
|
|||
|
||||
"Back up a moment. Are we going to actually get that?"
|
||||
|
||||
"It is already enabled in a select few locked-down sims, yes."
|
||||
"It is already enabled in a select few locked-down sims, yes. AVEC, we are calling it. Audio/Visual Extrasystem Communication."
|
||||
|
||||
"Holy shit."
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -66,13 +66,13 @@ Ey jolted back as the skunk leapt to her feet, gaze whipping about the room, the
|
|||
|
||||
She held up a paw, beckoning em to silence, and, despite the way she kept searching face after face, ey could picture dozens of sensorium messages flying back and forth from her. Her frown only deepened.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey closed eir notebook, figuring ey was pretty well ruined for work at this point, and watched the skunk carefully.
|
||||
Ey closed eir notebook, figuring ey was pretty well ruined for work at this point, and watched her carefully.
|
||||
|
||||
When nothing of interest appeared on the street, the skunk slowly turned to scan the room. Her eyes shot wide open, and ey followed her gaze out into the scant crowd of patrons. Everything was much as it had been: folks sitting and chatting, drinking their coffee, reading or doing work. She, however, seemed to be focused in particular on a middle-aged man walking from the back of the shop, though, where a door opened onto patio seating.
|
||||
|
||||
"Fuck," she said, then shouted, "*Fuck!*"
|
||||
|
||||
True Name darted around the coffee table, knocking against it hard enough to send both of their drinks spilling across its surface, and grabbed eir hand. "Go, Ioan! Go, go!"
|
||||
She darted around the coffee table, knocking against it hard enough to send both of their drinks spilling across its surface, and grabbed eir hand. "Go, Ioan! Go, go!"
|
||||
|
||||
"What?!" Ey scrambled to eir feet, eyes darting between True Name and that oddly familiar man walking towards them. "Where?"
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -46,7 +46,7 @@ They fell into silence again while Ioan and True Name finished their food and Ma
|
|||
|
||||
"Thank you for joining me out here. I am both glad to be outdoors and intensely uncomfortable sitting on a fucking log," she said, smiling tiredly. "I do not think that I will stay out here, though. The greater part of me demands a comfortable bed."
|
||||
|
||||
"Those fucking cots are the worst," May grumbled, sounding forced in her casualness. "Like a hammock, but far worse."
|
||||
"Those fucking cots are awful," May grumbled, sounding forced in her casualness. "Like a hammock, but far worse."
|
||||
|
||||
"I do not think that even End Waking enjoys them, so it is easy enough for the True Name part of me to win out on that subject."
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -96,4 +96,4 @@ May tucked closer against Ioan's side and buried her face in eir shirt to cry, m
|
|||
|
||||
"I think that means 'no problem'," ey said. "But I don't speak skunk all that-- ow! She bit me!"
|
||||
|
||||
The other skunk laughed. "It is no less than you deserve, I am sure. But come, once you are able to, let us walk to the rock at the end of the lake. I want to see the stars before we head back."
|
||||
True Name laughed. "It is no less than you deserve, I am sure. But come, once you are able to, let us walk to the rock at the end of the lake. I want to see the stars before we head back."
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -236,7 +236,7 @@ The skunk twisted her wine glass between her fingers for a few quiet moments. "I
|
|||
|
||||
"Is that what this is all about?"
|
||||
|
||||
She nodded. "We were in a steady state for many years after they explained everything. I was not happy, but I still liked the work that I had chosen and I did not know how to do anything else. It was the new tech from the Artemisians that pushed things over the edge. AEC --- Audiovisual Extrasystem Communication --- rather changes things and even though we agreed on what was to be done about it in a general sense, I think he does not want to risk his own specific vision not coming to fruition."
|
||||
She nodded. "We were in a steady state for many years after they explained everything. I was not happy, but I still liked the work that I had chosen and I did not know how to do anything else. It was the new tech from the Artemisians that pushed things over the edge. AVEC --- Audio/Visual Extrasystem Communication --- rather changes things and even though we agreed on what was to be done about it in a general sense, I think he does not want to risk his own specific vision not coming to fruition."
|
||||
|
||||
They sat in silence, then, while Ioan tried to digest this. Ey was still furious at Zacharias, but now that fury had gained a layer of what almost felt like despair, that someone such as that might have their roots in eir May.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ End Waking shrugged. "A little, perhaps. I think it is this upcoming audio-video
|
|||
|
||||
So serious was the skunk's tone that Debarre set down his mug of tea and turned to face him. "I won't, but you gotta tell me why."
|
||||
|
||||
"I am going to be at this meeting. I should probably not even know about their AEC, but I do because of True Name."
|
||||
"I am going to be at this meeting. I should probably not even know about their AVEC, but I do because of True Name."
|
||||
|
||||
"And given you and I, there's probably only one place I'd get it," he guessed and, when the skunk nodded, sent another message back home. "You sure this place is secure, then? And you're sending a fork, right?"
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ End Waking smiled. "I know that you do, but it is always pleasing to have confir
|
|||
|
||||
"Of course I do," he scoffed. "But I interrupted, sorry. You were saying?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Right. With this AEC technology, I think that Jonas sees an opening to edge True Name out. I do not know why, but she mentioned something about a diversity of governance across Systems. I do not agree with him on this. I think he is playing a dangerous game by treating each of the Systems so differently. Each System treating itself as a separate country is one thing, but potentially destabilizing them by giving each a different form of governance feels like him treating politics as his plaything. I do not like it."
|
||||
"Right. With this AVEC technology, I think that Jonas sees an opening to edge True Name out. I do not know why, but she mentioned something about a diversity of governance across Systems. I do not agree with him on this. I think he is playing a dangerous game by treating each of the Systems so differently. Each System treating itself as a separate country is one thing, but potentially destabilizing them by giving each a different form of governance feels like him treating politics as his plaything. I do not like it."
|
||||
|
||||
The longer End Waking spoke, the deeper Debarre's frown got. "Yeah, ever since they set up that Guiding Council thing over on Pollux, we've been wondering about that. It sounds innocuous enough. Reasonably close to the Council of Ten over on Artemis, I guess, just folks you can go talk to about disagreements and mediation, at least on the surface. That part was inoffensive, but that they would even do such a thing in the face of the *History* is just wild."
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ Ey waited.
|
|||
|
||||
"Alright, then, a bit of a preview." He finished half of his drink in a few swallows. "There's a bunch of changes coming in the pipeline--"
|
||||
|
||||
"This AEC?"
|
||||
"This AVEC?"
|
||||
|
||||
Zacharias frowned, but Jonas was already nodding, "Got it in one. That's right at the top of the list. See, that one requires some hardware changes that neither of the LVs are going to be able to manage, and that puts us in a unique position, here. Suddenly, the we differ from the LVs in a fundamental way. I really can't overstate how big of a deal this is, Ioan."
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -1,8 +1,220 @@
|
|||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
((...))
|
||||
"I cannot help but feel that I am walking into my own execution, tomorrow," True Name admitted. "I know that I am leaving behind a fork, that I will not be completely destroyed, but that does not wholly negate the sense of impending death."
|
||||
|
||||
In the most stunning display of forking ey'd ever seen, True Name began to change.
|
||||
Ioan and May both nodded.
|
||||
|
||||
"Is it just the finality of it all?" May asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Perhaps. Perhaps it is just the inability to predict beyond that point. I am coming up to a corner I have never seen around, and whatever predictive powers I may have fail me."
|
||||
|
||||
Ioan could at least understand the worries about heading into the unknown. The same feeling had been dogging em since after eir meeting with Jonas, since ey'd seen that cool look on his face when ey'd apparently preempted so much of the upcoming meeting's discussion. One minute, that felt like a good thing --- perhaps they would make it through essentially unscathed --- and the next ey'd worry that ey'd made a complete mistake, that ey'd somehow tipped their hand by letting Jonas know just how predictable he was.
|
||||
|
||||
Neither True Name nor May could say one way or another when ey'd voiced eir concerns with them.
|
||||
|
||||
The whole day had been scattered for them. May spent much of it glued to eir side as ey did eir best to organize eir notes for the upcoming meeting in eir head. She couldn't seem to pin herself down to one set of feelings, first laughing and joking about beating Zacharias up, then burying her face against eir shoulder and refusing to speak, ears laid flat.
|
||||
|
||||
For her part, True Name couldn't seem to stay pinned to any one of her three 'minds' as she had come to call them.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey was getting more adept at spotting them in her features. There was a bright attentiveness when that of True Name --- the old True Name --- in her came to the fore. Her expression would become attentive, defaulting to a slight smile and eyebrows (such as they were on a skunk's features) just slightly raised. When that of End Waking showed itself in her, she'd keep her eyes half-lidded, and her gaze was far more attuned to any movement. The rest of her own movements would still, as well. She would walk quieter, more gracefully. She would speak less.
|
||||
|
||||
And when that of May came to the fore, that was when ey was at eir most confused.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey had had no idea how to feel about her back when she was just True Name. Had ey really been so hesitant to call her a friend? Memories tattled on em, there: ey'd shied away from the term, or qualified it every time it arose. That had only loosened up when her life was at risk, when she'd been forced to move in with them, and ey'd been forced in turn to acknowledge that her words, *I suppose it is just nice to have a friend*, had stuck with em more than ey'd cared to admit. The rest of that conversation had been full of equivocations, clarifications, delineations, and all those habits of guardedness from two decades of wariness over anything that smelt of manipulation had tried to assert themselves over em once more.
|
||||
|
||||
But no, there was something about the Ode clade that just happened to click with the Bălan clade, no matter what form or name they took, that just fell directly into friendship. It was the way they spoke, perhaps. Those complete sentences that left em uncoiling parts of emself ey hadn't known were coiled in the first place.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey didn't know what it was that they saw in em in turn. There was the unspoken matter of the pronouns of the owner of the Name, and, as May had once whispered to em late one night, eir tendency to lean on rumination, on quietness and exactitude, that reminded her of someone she refused to name. Were they so alike, em and whoever had touched Michelle Hadje so long ago? Ey had no clue how to ask such a thing of them.
|
||||
|
||||
All ey knew is that, as Codrin had put it, "The Odists loved hard and they loved deep and they loved fast, and it was hard not to become intoxicated beneath all that love."
|
||||
|
||||
So, what was ey to do when that of eir partner, of the one ey loved most in the world, shone through in someone else? When that of May rose to prominence in True Name's expression, she was not May. She wasn't May at all. She was of three minds, and none of them were wholly absent whenever one asserted primacy.
|
||||
|
||||
And yet there it was, all that drew em towards May, even if it wasn't her, right in front of em. What was ey to do with that?
|
||||
|
||||
That ey didn't know, that ey hadn't the language, kept em from speaking of it with True Name just yet. It wasn't out of any need to hide, not out of any embarrassment --- though ey'd freely admit to eir shyness --- that ey kept it from her. Ey just didn't know how to say that, when she seemed most like May, ey was at eir most confused without turning it into a series of questions and I-don't-knows.
|
||||
|
||||
The one time ey'd brought it up with May, the idea still as yet unseasoned, she had done as she ever would, and teased em gently about 'falling in love with her' and then settled into a series of gently probing questions, trying to tease out things that ey already knew but did not yet have the language for.
|
||||
|
||||
It hadn't gone anywhere. Ey'd eventually had to put the conversation on hold out of a combination of stress and the feeling that ey ought to keep True Name's discussion on her multiplicity in the face of May's desire for some more complete unity to emself.
|
||||
|
||||
So they did what they could to prepare or relax the rest of that last day. True name walked her prairie several times over, then came in and sat close by, then busied herself up in her head. May clung to em. Ey sorted notes.
|
||||
|
||||
There was no discussion whether or not she would be staying with them that night. The three of them simply wound up in eir and May's bed, sitting or kneeling on the soft mattress while they did their best to talk about nothing at all. Ioan tried to explain Romanian curses to them. May and True Name spoke earnestly about a movie ey'd never heard of. And under it all, an ever-rising current of stress lay, slowly taking over their words until they couldn't speak any longer, could only curl beneath the covers, sharing some more fundamental comfort.
|
||||
|
||||
Surprising all three of them, they did manage to get at least some sleep that night. It wasn't *good* sleep, as, at one point or another, each of them woke with a start, but they managed a few hours of at least dozing.
|
||||
|
||||
Once the sky began to lighten, though, they pulled themselves blearily out of bed, Ioan making four mugs of coffee --- two black, two sweet and milky --- so that they could troop back out onto the plain and wake End Waking up, or at least greet him at the small fire he'd started, and offer him a cup of coffee.
|
||||
|
||||
"There is no more rehearsing to be done," he said, once they'd shed some of their grogginess. "We risk practice making permanent, at this point. All we can do is hope to remain as centered as possible throughout."
|
||||
|
||||
Both of the other skunks nodded, and Ioan had to quell eir instinct to disagree. They were too tired, too keyed up, too quick to overanalyse to get anything out of forking across the prairie to wargame however many countless scenarios. Better for the four of them to sit around the low fire, sip their coffee, and watch the sun rise, May slouched against eir side and True Name and End Waking sitting apart, silent.
|
||||
|
||||
Eventually, however, coffee long gone, they forked. End Waking and True Name's down-tree instances each went to their tents to sit and meditate as best they could, while May and Ioan's down-tree instances returned home to try baking a cake --- something demanding enough while still remaining relatively mindless.
|
||||
|
||||
The four forks linked hands and paws and with nothing other than a shared shaky breath, stepped from the sim.
|
||||
|
||||
End Waking immediately flinched. They found themselves in a boardroom. A large plain of a table, notepads and pens, a table against the wall with a pitcher of water and a stack of too-small glasses.
|
||||
|
||||
And yet it still felt too small --- even to Ioan, who spent more of eir life inside than unbound in a forest, the ceiling was just a few inches too low, the chairs just a few inches too close to the walls. Too small, and yet too long. There was room for a table half again as long, and yet the table was huddled in one end of the room, leaving the other end empty and unbalanced. End Waking, who hadn't been indoors, never mind in a room too small, in nigh on a century, looked on the verge of panic. His eyes were wide, tail hiked and bristled, paws clenched in a way that reminded em even of May.
|
||||
|
||||
"I do not know if I can--"
|
||||
|
||||
May squeezed his paw tightly. "You do not need to keep these memories, skunk, but you cannot leave." She added in a near whisper, "Please do not leave me."
|
||||
|
||||
His nod was jerky, distracted, but was still a nod.
|
||||
|
||||
And yet, the room was empty. *Perfect time to pull the late-to-the-meeting power move.*
|
||||
|
||||
Sure enough, 11:00 rolled around, no Jonas.
|
||||
|
||||
It wasn't until nearly ten minutes later that the door swung lazily open and Jonas strolled in, followed by Zacharias and the rest of the eighth stanza strolled in --- *no, Zacharias is part of that, too,* ey thought. *There's only Odists, Jonas, and me here.*
|
||||
|
||||
"True Name! Delighted to see you, delighted," Jonas said, grinning widely and giving the barest hint of a bow.
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk had apparently amped up all that she could of her old self, as her smile was earnest and wide, and her bow the perfect mix of polite and friendly. "Glad you could make it, my dear. I trust you have been well?"
|
||||
|
||||
He shifted smoothly to accommodate this response. "Quite well, quite well. Feels like it's been a bit of a vacation for the both of us, eh? You enjoy a bit of time off at the lake?"
|
||||
|
||||
That grin of hers widened, and she nodded. "Quite a bit, actually. We never quite got to roasting marshmallows, but it is really hard to go wrong with potatoes roasted in the embers. They get a little smoky, even the insides."
|
||||
|
||||
End Waking stared at True Name as though she was an Artemisian, suddenly having made their way across the light-days back to Lagrange. Hell, Ioan was staring at her like she was an alien. So quickly and smoothly had her anxiety been transmuted into this calm, friendly social efficiency that it was as though the last months had been erased from her features.
|
||||
|
||||
There was some other conversation going on here, too, ey realized. It wasn't just that they were talking pleasantries before a meeting, but that there was some exchange of information that took place on some higher plane of existence. They were feeling each other out, listening to tone of voice more than the content of words, watching features and postures rather than seeing an old friend. There was some deeper level of communication that ey simply couldn't latch onto.
|
||||
|
||||
At least, with that in mind, ey could do eir best to focus on the subtler forms of language around the room.
|
||||
|
||||
True Name had talked em through the stanza and their roles beforehand, at least. She had been focused on the politics, of course, but also acted as consensus builder among the members of her stanza.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey knew well that May had been focused on swaying individual hearts and minds toward a cause that initially had been True Name's, and then later simply shaped by her as best as could be managed.
|
||||
|
||||
End Waking had been instrumental in tracking, understanding, and to to whatever level possible, influencing financial markets phys-side, though he'd admitted to Ioan, one night out on the plain, that the chances that he'd actually had any effect on the markets was astoundingly low and that the financial trajectory had likely been set by forces larger than they could manage --- at least, that was the hope that had kept him going.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey knew the two 'Why's from the history: Why Ask Questions, Here At The End Of All Things was the frightfully friendly crowd-rouser who had worked with groups of individuals sys-side, while Why Ask Questions When The Answers Will Not Help had focused on similar tactics phys-side. However, given that her task was limited to text, she seemed notably out of her element in in-person interactions, coming off as petty and cruel as often as funny and sarcastic.
|
||||
|
||||
The Only Time I Dream Is When I Need An Answer had acted as a manager, scheduler, and clerk for the enterprise. Frightfully intelligent, She had done more than block in times for meetings; she had organized meetings between the right individuals at the right times.
|
||||
|
||||
To Know One's True Name Is To Know God had settled firmly into data analysis, collecting both the raw data that she could from the perisystem feeds and the net phys-side as well as the information collected by her cocladists and the Jonases. She was a being of reports.
|
||||
|
||||
To Know God Is To Answer Unasked Questions had done her best to specialize in the fields of information and game theory, but this had more often come down to simple information security and hygiene. She decided where and how far information traveled.
|
||||
|
||||
Do I Know God When I Do Not Remember Myself and Do I Know God When I Do Not Dream worked as a mismatched pair. When I Do Not Remember worked as a propagandist while When I Dream worked almost entirely on the perisystem, translating back and forth for her cocladists and finding the best way to worm her way through the intersystem text channels.
|
||||
|
||||
Were ey pressed to name each of them without knowing this information, ey didn't think ey'd be able to. Ey knew the three skunks of the clade and could readily tell them apart, but the rest simply looked like a gaggle of the very same woman: short, soft, round face and curly black hair. However, there were indeed differences there. Why Ask Questions was just a centimeter or two taller and more open of expression. When I Do Not Remember and When I Dream both had a hunch to their shoulders that ey could not quite explain; perhaps a posture that stuck after too much writing.
|
||||
|
||||
As it was, ey could do eir best to guess, and when introductions made their way around the table, ey found eir guests to be correct to the last.
|
||||
|
||||
((Some from each of them throughout))
|
||||
|
||||
At last, the parade of bows and greetings out of the way, each of the twelve --- for Jonas and Zacharias added to the stanza --- pulled out a chair and sat down, though ey noted that End Waking didn't sit so much as hover on the very edge of his seat. He still looked wide-eyed, feral.
|
||||
|
||||
"Aaalright," Jonas said, plopping his hands, palm down, on the table. "To business. I'm pleased to see you're alive, but can't say that I'm pleased to see you're about."
|
||||
|
||||
"I imagine not, no," True Name replied, folding her paws on the table before her. "From what Ioan says, you know the general facts of what I know. There has been a long-running plan, perhaps mostly operating as a back-up plan, to shift one or more of me to the side depending on the status of the System. This revolved around the use of Zacharias as a tool to shape my responses while the incomplete information kept me from recognizing this. Tell me, though. Are you leaning on the multiple-Systems-multiple-governments strategy?"
|
||||
|
||||
Jonas nodded. "Yes. Oligarchy on Pollux, *status quo* on Castor, and invisible monarchy here on Lagrange."
|
||||
|
||||
"You still believe that this tripod will be the most stable structure?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I know you don't agree, but it's not a tripod, True Name. By this point, the three Systems are so far apart that they are no longer three branches of the same government. They're three countries, and three countries with identical governments yet divergent societies are unstable."
|
||||
|
||||
True Name made that setting-aside gesture, as thought tabling the topic for the moment. "And you," she said, nodding to Zacharias. Her expression was calm, curious, interested. "You have been working with Jonas since around 2180?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, thereabouts," he said, grinning. "Though if I am honest, I have always been working with the two of you. It is not that your own goals had no effect on me, my little stink-bug. I played Jonas as much as I played you, and I played my own game when I could."
|
||||
|
||||
"Bullshit," True Name said calmly, turning back to Jonas. "And so what is it that--"
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh, fuck off," Zacharias laughed. "You do not get to dismiss me so easily. You and I rule together, quite literally, in another life. There is no reason that I should simply be waved away."
|
||||
|
||||
"Nah, it's bullshit," Jonas said, just as calm as True Name. "If you were worth anything to this conversation, you would've been part of the preparations."
|
||||
|
||||
"What--"
|
||||
|
||||
"You're part of the stanza, aren't you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I am, but--"
|
||||
|
||||
Jonas laughed, "Just shut up, Zacharias."
|
||||
|
||||
"No," the fox growled, his whiskers all abristle and claws digging at the tabletop. "I played my role, but that does not mean that I am some disposable nothing, here. A role is as much the actor as it is-- *stop!*"
|
||||
|
||||
There was a loud thump beneath the table, though this time, Zacharias appeared to have pulled his foot away in time to keep is toes from being stomped on, as he instead pushed himself away from the table and to his feet. A brief flicker of something akin to rage flashed across Jonas's face, but was quickly replaced by that bright, friendly grin.
|
||||
|
||||
"Fine, fuck you too, then."
|
||||
|
||||
There was a no signal --- or if there was, Ioan missed it --- for Guōweī to step into the sim, hand already raised as if for a slap, a short blade held between his fingers. Unassuming, easy to carry, symbolic, and certainly crowded with whatever it was that induced a crash in one's instance.
|
||||
|
||||
What happened next happened almost too quickly for em to comprehend. Zacharias shouted, but the cry was cut off in a muffled *oomf* as an instance of May appeared by him, almost totally overlapping the space that he'd occupied, knocking him backwards with enough force to slam him against the door, leaving him to crumple to the floor.
|
||||
|
||||
Guōweī's palm came down flat against May's shoulder, but there was no time to see whether or not the virus would affect an instance so far diverged, as that instance of her quit and was immediately replaced with another, this overlapping the assassin's space, knocking him back nearly a meter, only for another instance of the skunk to fork again. With the momentum already in play, this practically sent the man flying, his head cracking against the wall hard enough to leave a sizeable dent in the drywall.
|
||||
|
||||
And then it was over. Zacharias's yell faltered, and he stared up, wide eyed, with his gaze darting between the remaining instance of May and Jonas. The latter had lurched away, looking more disgusted than startled.
|
||||
|
||||
"Get the fuck out of here," the instance of May growled. "And if I ever, *ever* see you again, you had better believe that I will take you out myself."
|
||||
|
||||
And then the instance quit, followed less than a second later by the fox rolling to the side to slip out of the sim. Ey imagined that if Jonas, True Name, and May would all do their best to destroy the fox on sight, the chances of seeing him again were low indeed.
|
||||
|
||||
"What just happened?" ey whispered to May, who gave eir hand a squeeze in her paw and shook her head. Ey'd have to find out after.
|
||||
|
||||
"Are we done fucking around, yet?" True Name asked, voice flat. "Because I just want to know what it is that you want of me so that I can get back to my life."
|
||||
|
||||
"Your *life?*" Jonas asked, incredulous. "You want to get back to your life?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Life, yes," she said. "Alive. Living. I want to get back to breathing and eating and drinking and sleeping. Do not take my words too far."
|
||||
|
||||
He laughed, shooting his cuffs. "Well, if *that's* all you want, then we could have done without all this fuss, couldn't we? All you need to do is just...go away. Just disappear. Just be gone, True Name. Curl up around your little Name thing and stay there."
|
||||
|
||||
May's expression remained calm, but ey could feel the tension in her paw increase, and beyond her, ey could see End Waking bare his teeth. Even the Odists on Jonas's side the of the table flinched. None of them looked pleased. Even Why Ask Questions, jovial as she usually was, seemed to be gritting her teeth.
|
||||
|
||||
*Wait, does* he *know?* ey wondered. If ever there was a way to keep a group of Odists in check, that might just be it.
|
||||
|
||||
Only True Name, of all of them, remained calm. Serious, yes, but calm. "What does disappearing and being gone look like to you, Jonas?" she asked. "Do you want me to hide away in a hidden sim forever?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I wouldn't say no," he shot back.
|
||||
|
||||
"No."
|
||||
|
||||
"I thought not."
|
||||
|
||||
"So," she said with exaggerated patience. "What does me disappearing look like to you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You just can't be around. You can't be you anymore. You can't be walking around and having people point and say, "Hey, it's that piece of shit skunk!" You need to just disappear, because anything else is just going to destabilize your precious System. I'm prepared for that, but I don't think you are."
|
||||
|
||||
(( More about why, because this is pretty flimsy))
|
||||
|
||||
She shook her head, but whether at his words or his audacity, ey couldn't tell. "Alright, disappear. You want me to stop being a figure and start being a person. You want me to be other than I am."
|
||||
|
||||
"Yep," he said, grin tight and false.
|
||||
|
||||
"I have already begun," she said, and with a brief pause, ey saw her face and shoulders relax, a sudden shift towards an expression ey knew intimately from eir partner falling across her features. She continued in a voice softer than what it had been. Lilting, less space between the syllables. "Because I already am May Then My Name Die With Me--" Another pause, another shift, one more towards stony and stoic, voice suddenly dry and simple, almost cerebral. "--and I am already Do I Know God After The End Waking." Finally, she fell back into that first register. "And I remain True Name, and yet I am none of these. I could not go back to that which I was even if I wished to."
|
||||
|
||||
Jonas raised his eyebrows at the shifts in expression and voice. The frowns around the table on the faces of the other Odists only deepened.
|
||||
|
||||
"How can I even begin to trust you on that? You merged your two cronies, so what? You going to go cuddle-camping with Zacharias or something? You're still you."
|
||||
|
||||
Both May and End Waking bristled at this, but neither spoke.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am not what I was, Jonas. That which was True Name does not simply sit next to that of my cocladists. They are impossibly entangled. I am not what I was."
|
||||
|
||||
"I can tell, sure, but you know that's not enough, True Name." His voice was intent, serious in a way ey hadn't seen before. "I am saying that you need to disappear. There is no stable future for the System if you show up in anything close to the same form as you were, and you know that. You were almost assassinated, and doubtless more than you three--" He nodded at May, End Waking, and Ioan. "--know. You show up as you are, and everything crumbles, or at the very least, starts to shift in unstable ways. Plan A was you gone, but plan B relies on you understanding that there's no recovery from a failed plan A that involves you."
|
||||
|
||||
"Why did you not just ask me?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Would you have stepped down?" he asked with a sneer.
|
||||
|
||||
She frowned. "Doubtless you had other cards to play that did not involve Guōweī, some other leverage that did not involve death. You could not convince me, but all this high drama is over the top for you."
|
||||
|
||||
"I was bored. It sounded fun. You were right there. Why not?"
|
||||
|
||||
"You were bored," she said coolly. "You were bored, so you decided to hire someone to kill me."
|
||||
|
||||
He waved his hand imperiously. "And I'm getting bored now. I'm surprised you're still hung up on this, True Name. You're the theatre geek."
|
||||
|
||||
She sighed. "Right. So, now, you...what, want me to look different? Sound different? I'm ready to commit to staying out of the business."
|
||||
|
||||
"You need to go away, True Name. I don't fucking care how. You make it happen or I will."
|
||||
|
||||
There was a moment's thoughtful silence from the skunk before she stood, pushed her chair back in, and turned away from the table. Then in the most stunning display of forking ey'd ever seen, True Name began to change.
|
||||
|
||||
Ioan had seen eir share of Dear's exhibitions, not to mention those of other instance artists the fox had introduced em to along the way, and the forking involved in all of them had been perfect. They were well rehearsed dances of duplication that told a story.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -24,11 +236,11 @@ The result was a skunk slightly shorter than True Name had stood, though still a
|
|||
|
||||
Her face had shifted as well, becoming plainer in ways ey couldn't quite explain. Where True Name had always had some aspect of larger-than-life about her, she now just looked...normal. Still a furry, still living in that form that was more comfortable to her than humanity, but normal.
|
||||
|
||||
Most striking, though was the pattern of fur. While much of it was covered, now, ey'd seen the way it had shifted during the process. Gone were the stripes, the ones ey had grown to love on May, replaced now with a set of white splotches in the black of her fur. The pattern was what was so eye-catching, however: the patches seemed to travel in a few uneven lines down over her back and sides, one of them showing a hint of a whorl, another a slight zigzag as it ran from her spine to her side, and others that were almost round spots. This pattern seemed to be mirrored along her spine, leading to a pleasant symmetry. A quick query of the perisystem infrastructure told em that there was indeed a spotted variety of skunk, described much as ey had seen.
|
||||
Most striking, though was the pattern of fur. While much of it was covered, now, ey'd seen the way it had shifted during the process. Gone were the two parallel stripes, the ones ey had grown to love on May, replaced now with a set of white splotches in the black of her fur. The white atop her head remained, disconnected from patch between her eyes and two others high on her temples. The pattern was eye-catching: the patches seemed to travel in a few uneven lines down over her back and sides, one of them showing a hint of a whorl, another a slight zigzag as it ran from her spine to her side, and others that were almost round spots. This pattern seemed to be mirrored along her spine, leading to a pleasant symmetry. A quick query of the perisystem infrastructure told em that there was indeed a spotted variety of skunk, described much as ey had seen: spotted fur, shorter tail, a shorter snout that fit somewhere between that of a skunk and that of a weasel like Debarre.
|
||||
|
||||
Gone were the stripes. Gone, also, were the slacks and blouse, traded in for a linen tunic and a pair of loose-fitting Thai fisherman pants.
|
||||
|
||||
When ey was finally able to tear eir eyes away, ey saw that every Odist in the room had picked up expressions that verged from taken aback to startled and angry. May, for her part, looked startled, yes, but also excited.
|
||||
When ey was finally able to tear eir eyes away, ey saw that every Odist in the room had picked up expressions that verged from taken aback to startled and angry. May, for her part, looked startled at the display, yes, but also excited and ready. It was the same look she got before performances.
|
||||
|
||||
"May, what--"
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -44,13 +256,13 @@ All of the rest of the Odists, however, were shouting. None of them looked pleas
|
|||
|
||||
"Not Sasha of the Ode clade, just Sasha," she said. "I will not relinquish the form, just as I will not relinquish the past, but if you want me out this badly, so be it. I rescind my membership in the clade."
|
||||
|
||||
"As do I," End Waking and May both said at once. ((Gasp, what?!))
|
||||
"As do I," End Waking said, getting a smile from Sasha.
|
||||
|
||||
"*That* name is unacceptable," When I Dream hollered. "No. You will pick something else."
|
||||
|
||||
"No, I will not."
|
||||
|
||||
"Shut the fuck up, When I Dream," Jonas said mildly. "All of you, shut the fuck up." He turned to Sasha and grinned. "You always were a little snot. You want to be Sasha? You want to dive back into mediocrity and wear your weakness like a badge? Please, by all means, be my guest. Beg for pity again. Hunt down all your little friends who kept you feeling just bad enough that they could baby you without letting you think you were their plaything. Go. Be Sasha. Live your silly little life. ((way more, and angrier))
|
||||
"Shut the fuck up, When I Dream," Jonas said mildly. "All of you, shut the fuck up." He turned to Sasha and grinned icily. "You always were a little snot. You want to be Sasha? You want to dive back into mediocrity and wear your weakness like a badge? Please, by all means, be my guest. Beg for pity again. Hunt down all your little friends who kept you feeling just bad enough that they could baby you without letting you think you were their plaything. Go. Be Sasha. Live your silly little life. ((way more, and angrier))
|
||||
|
||||
"And you," he growled, jabbing a finger toward Ioan. "Write your little story. That's what you're here for, isn't it? Write your little romance and fuck your little girlfriend and put on your little plays."
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -66,6 +278,8 @@ All through Jonas's tirade, Sasha wore a slight smile. It wasn't beatific, wasn'
|
|||
|
||||
She laughed and reached out to take Ioan's hand in eir paw, then they stepped back home, followed closely by May holding End Waking's paw.
|
||||
|
||||
((Out on the plain b/c E.W.))
|
||||
|
||||
There was a long moment of silence in the living room, then Ioan let out a ragged, pent-up breath, eir shoulders sagging. "Can someone tell me what the fuck just happened?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Sasha found the one thing she could have done to piss off Jonas," May said, looking at her appraisingly. "He went in thinking he'd take everything from her and left with no wind in his sails. Well done, my dear."
|
||||
|
|
@ -186,6 +400,3 @@ Ioan gestured wildly toward the weasel. "Confirmation! Fucking nuts!"
|
|||
|
||||
The three skunks laughed while ey and Debarre leaned across the table to shake hands.
|
||||
|
||||
((What's next))
|
||||
|
||||
-----
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,435 @@
|
|||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
The stream of Odists who came to visit Sasha in the days and weeks after the excursion to Jonas's was surprising. They seem to have accepted her change in identity far easier than expected. There were no instances of deadnaming (unless they were specifically talking about her past as True Name, as requested), no fights, no arguments.
|
||||
|
||||
Not everyone was happy, to be sure. Many of the discussions from those who stopped by were quite serious and, even though many took place in cones of silence, Ioan imagined that there was much in the way of airing of grievances. It was always done with an eye towards catharsis and reconciliation, however.
|
||||
|
||||
Serene, for instance came over the day after the whole kerfuffle, surprising the three of them well into the evening. They'd settled for a middle ground of dinner out on the extended balcony --- close enough to the house for them to cook a proper dinner without leaving Sasha feeling cooped up inside --- when the ping against their sensoria caused the three to jolt as one.
|
||||
|
||||
"That will be Serene!" May said excitedly, setting her half-finished plate down and hopping to her feet. "I opened the ACLs to a few, hope you do not mind."
|
||||
|
||||
"Opened-- wait, when?" Ioan asked, setting eir own plate down. "And to how many?"
|
||||
|
||||
But the skunk was already gone, bounding inside to greet the fox with a hug and excited chattering.
|
||||
|
||||
Ioan and Sasha followed after more sedately, both waiting until May had gotten her greeting out of the way before bowing to Serene.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ioan, a pleasure! It has been too long," she said, grinning widely. The grin faded, and she nodded to the spotted skunk. "And Sasha."
|
||||
|
||||
"Serene, thank you for stopping by. I was not expecting to see you so soon."
|
||||
|
||||
"I do not imagine so. May Then My Name has been conspiring behind the scenes, so this was all worked out ahead of time."
|
||||
|
||||
"Oh? How cheeky," Sasha said, laughing. "Were you really that confident that everything would work out, dear?"
|
||||
|
||||
May shook her head. "Reasonably confident, but I want Arrowhead Lake back no matter what, so I arranged for us a little meeting."
|
||||
|
||||
"Skunks, I swear." Ioan shook eir head. "Well, welcome all the same. We've got pasta, if you'd like."
|
||||
|
||||
Once she'd heaped a plate high with pasta, Serene followed them out onto the balcony to join them for the rest of their meal. She wrinkled her nose at the sight of the plain. "I suppose this was the best one could do on short notice, yes?"
|
||||
|
||||
"It wasn't too much, and it fit the need, yeah."
|
||||
|
||||
"It has served its purpose," Sasha said. "And it is not so bad close up. A little too flat, perhaps, but the river is nice."
|
||||
|
||||
Serene nodded and finished a mouthful of food before setting her fork down again. "I have at least come bearing a gift."
|
||||
|
||||
"Did you find your student?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes. He was still about, though he has...changed much in the intervening years. He was not as pleased to see me as I might have liked."
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha dipped her snout. "I am assuming that he has picked up on the sentiment surrounding the clade."
|
||||
|
||||
Serene nodded. "He read the *History* and came to the same conclusion that the rest of the System did. Our name is not mud, but, my dear, relationships changed after that knowledge became public."
|
||||
|
||||
"I understand."
|
||||
|
||||
"I do not want to hear you say that you are sorry, Sasha. I do not think that is how this works as you are now. I do not want to hear your justifications and explanations; I can understand them as well as anyone. I just want to hear your acknowledgement."
|
||||
|
||||
After setting her plate and fork down on the low table again, Sasha folded her paws in her lap, sat for a moment in silence, then said. "For as much as I tried to do --- for as much as Jonas and I both tried to do --- I do not think we had nearly the effect on the world around us as we thought we did, not on the grand scale. We played our games of politics and influence, but it was a game of relationships from start to finish, you are correct. True Name changed relationships. May Then My Name changed relationships. End Waking played his part. I do not know if it was for the better or for the worse, but I do acknowledge that it made a good many of them far more difficult."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, okay. Perhaps one apology."
|
||||
|
||||
"I am sorry, Serene; Sustained And Sustaining."
|
||||
|
||||
There was another moment of silence, then Serene's wild grin returned. "Well, that felt good. Praiseworthy did all that shit, too, so, fuck it. Let me finish my pasta and I will fuck your sim up but good."
|
||||
|
||||
Ioan blinked, looking between skunk and fox. "Wait, that simple?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course, my dear," Serene said around a mouthful of pasta. "I already told you of my thoughts on the matter. I have done my processing."
|
||||
|
||||
"And now you cannot simply say something about skunks being brats," May chimed in. "Though I am pretty sure we all knew that foxes were, too."
|
||||
|
||||
Serene made a rude gesture, still grinning.
|
||||
|
||||
Once they'd finished dinner, Serene stood, stretched, and then leaned against the railing staring out over the plain. Her expression was calm, pleasant, though focused on something ey couldn't see. "Ioan, I will need ACLs over at least the exterior, including your yard, though I will do my best to keep it intact."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey nodded, focused, and made the grant.
|
||||
|
||||
"Thank you. Now, you may stay out here and watch, but I warn you that it can be a bit dizzy-making."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey exchanged glances with the two skunks and shrugged. "I think we're all eager to see."
|
||||
|
||||
"Suit yourself. It was your dinner. Thank you, by the way."
|
||||
|
||||
There was no further announcement. Nor, even, any change in Serene. She still looked out over the railing with a dreamy, far away look on her face even as the world dropped out beneath them.
|
||||
|
||||
The plain rippled and stretched, arching up high to the sky as though stretching after a long nap. Trees pried their way from the soil. Rocks broke free from the land. The river --- the one immediately before them, at least --- collapsed into itself to form a wide lake. The rest of the echoed versions of the plain where not occupied by mountains crinkled into some more complex geometry, the remainder of the range echoed outside the valley.
|
||||
|
||||
It *was* a little vertigo-inducing, too, but the worst of it wasn't due to the sudden change in the shape of the landscape, but in just how, well...serene it all was. The river shaping itself into the lake was not accompanied by some grand splashing of waves, simply the remaking of the water. There were no falling rocks or grand earthquakes, just the reshaping of the world. The light shifted. Gravity swayed, settled. All of it was silent.
|
||||
|
||||
And then it was done.
|
||||
|
||||
"H-holy fuck," ey managed, clutching at the railing of the balcony. Both May and Sasha stood defiantly against the change, though neither looked as casual as the fox.
|
||||
|
||||
"I have set your house up the hill a ways from the default entry point to the old sim," she said, gesturing them down the steps from the balcony. They landed on a concrete pad set into the bed of pine needles, a small trail winding its way down the slope toward the water. She gestured toward the small ridge that rose next to them. "I had to modify the terrain a little bit to keep your yard level. You should be okay, but if you run into erosion problems, do let me know. I have been told of your affinity for weather, Ioan."
|
||||
|
||||
Sure enough, the fence remained level, wrapping around a small rectangle of hidden grass, the tops of lilac bushes overflowing.
|
||||
|
||||
The trail teed with the long familiar deer trail that wound around the lake, and, out of habit, they all started down towards the rock.
|
||||
|
||||
"Fauna?" Serene asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"Please." Sasha grinned sheepishly. "I would not like a repeat of that particular mistake."
|
||||
|
||||
Grinning and nodding, Serene kept up her steady pace, humming a little under her breath. There was no change that ey could see, though ey imagined her counting deer, rabbits, squirrels, and birds into existence.
|
||||
|
||||
For eir part, ey simply walked, hand in paw with May, and marveled. Ey'd discovered the lake decades ago, had spent countless days out here on walks, and at least one night camping. Still, it felt somehow new. Ey was rediscovering this place that ey'd not seen in months --- though ey'd spent longer stints away from it in the past --- and marveling at the detail all over again. A glance back over eir shoulder showed eir flat-roofed house peeking shyly from amid the trees, but other than that, it was, ey assumed, the same as it had bit.
|
||||
|
||||
After so long away and after so much stress it felt all the more real.
|
||||
|
||||
They sat on the rock near the end of the lake and enjoyed the last of the sun. It was a little tight for four, but May tucked quite nicely up against eir side and Sasha, having slipped more into an End Waking mindset, had settled off to the side. She looked antsy, and ey suspected she'd request time to hike soon enough.
|
||||
|
||||
"How is the rest of the clade taking this?" she asked. "I sent a clade-wide message, but have not received responses."
|
||||
|
||||
Serene looked up from where she was investigating a few pine needles plucked from a branch on the way over with a discriminating eye. "I think that reactions will be largely positive. Several of my stanza have been been talking, and many feel as I do. It is fine, I am sure, and I have processed what I needed to and gotten what I wanted."
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course. I have been abandoned by the rest of my stanza, but at this point, the larger part of me does not want to have anything to do with them, anyway. I do not imagine Loss For Images and her ilk will take it well. I do hope that A Finger Pointing and I will have a chance to speak soon, as I am now enough May that I would enjoy attending a play or two."
|
||||
|
||||
"'May'?" Serene said, tiling her head and looking to the other skunk. "Have you forgiven her, then?"
|
||||
|
||||
May nodded. "Forgiven is maybe not the best word. I have internalized the way things are and accepted the way things are. I am pleased to know Sasha and who she has become."
|
||||
|
||||
The other skunk smiled faintly, nodded. "Though for all Ioan talked about trying to fix things, I place the largest part of who I have become on you, dear."
|
||||
|
||||
"I wasn't going to say anything," Ioan said, grinning.
|
||||
|
||||
May elbowed em in the side. "Hush, you."
|
||||
|
||||
"I will not laugh at you two too much, then." Serene laughed. "What are your plans moving forward? I trust that you are essentially locked out of what you were working on as True Name."
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes, and while there is a part of me that remains disappointed about this outcome, there is little to be done about it but move forward." Sasha brought her tail around to her lap to brush it out. It was shorter than a striped skunk's tail, it seemed, but no less thickly furred. "I will take a vacation, first. I will sleep a normal amount. I will eat good food. I will wear myself out on the hunt and take what comfort I can while I remain here. I will rest, and then I will write."
|
||||
|
||||
"Write? Really?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes. I will be careful not to influence, lest I bring on Jonas's ire, but I would like to share the story of the last few centuries from my point of view. I do not know who will be interested except perhaps our two clades, but I will write."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, if it's anything like the *History*," Ioan said. "It'll wind up wildly popular and then fade into part of the mythos of the System."
|
||||
|
||||
May grinned. "And all will be as it should."
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course. I will not complain. So long as I am better able to understand who I have become and fill my time with something fulfilling, then I will be happy."
|
||||
|
||||
"*Will* you be happy?" Serene asked.
|
||||
|
||||
There was a long silence as Sasha finished brushing out her tail and spent a few minutes simply staring across the lake, perhaps mapping the opposite shore and marking spots for future exploration.
|
||||
|
||||
Finally, she said, "I think that I will be. I am of three minds and will ever be such. I will have moments of happiness, moments of sadness and terror and regret, but they will ever be in thirds."
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you okay with that?"
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha stood and stretched, finally turning her gaze back to them. "Himself has but to will And easy as a Star Look down upon Captivity And laugh."
|
||||
|
||||
With no further explanation, she bowed and edged around them on her way down off the rock. She moved quietly and efficiently, and it was a matter of seconds before they lost sight of her in the trees.
|
||||
|
||||
They sat, silent, through the remainder of the evening.
|
||||
|
||||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
The next Odists to visit were A Finger Pointing and Slow Hours, once more arriving as a pair and hugging Sasha in turn. They set up a cone of silence and spoke together for a scant twenty minutes before dropping it again and inviting Ioan and May to join. They pulled the beanbag a little closer to the couch and settled down on it together to listen.
|
||||
|
||||
"It is easy to say that all is full of love," Slow Hours began, smiling to Sasha. "But now, I think, you have a sense of your own."
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk smiled and bowed her head.
|
||||
|
||||
"Life will be easier for a while, and then it will be harder. You will share your loves, first with another and then with solitude, and with each you long for the other until you return. Does not matter a bit, though, so I would not worry."
|
||||
|
||||
"Mere breath?" Sasha asked, grinning.
|
||||
|
||||
"A chasing after the wind, yes."
|
||||
|
||||
"And you will come to a performance," A Finger Pointing added. "I am no oracle, but if you do not come, I will hunt you down myself. It has been too long, my dear."
|
||||
|
||||
She laughed. "Of course, of course. So many threats to hunt me down, these days. But yes, thank you."
|
||||
|
||||
"And if you do not watch me perform my monologue, I will trim your claws too short in your sleep," May said. "There is a monologue night coming up soon."
|
||||
|
||||
"Far worse than being hunted down, that. I will be there."
|
||||
|
||||
May preened.
|
||||
|
||||
After that, they fell into quiet conversation. Sasha joined Ioan and May on the beanbag to get some pets --- the talk having apparently nudged the affectionate part of her to the fore --- while Slow Hours spoke in less 'will's and 'shall's and settled down into the normal conversational mode of the rest of the Odists. They spoke of performances past, going all the way back to before the founding of the System, with the four Odists performing a small segment of the Dickinson play they always seemed to quote from, a first for any of the Bălans in nearly fifty years.
|
||||
|
||||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
It was nearly a month before Debarre, Douglas, and Sasha agreed to meet. Debarre's side of the conversation remained somewhat stiff and distant, while Douglas seemed to have set aside any sense of caution, speaking with palpable excitement. As soon as he'd learned of the change of name back to something more closely associated with his distant relative, he'd hardly talked of anything else.
|
||||
|
||||
The meeting was set up for dinner on the dandelion-dotted field, a small potluck picnic late in the evening so that the skunks wouldn't overheat in the sun.
|
||||
|
||||
Everyone arrived simultaneously by Debarre's request so that no one was left waiting for anyone else. Ioan, May, and Sasha stepped into the sim just in time to see Debarre and End Waking arriving. The six of them stood in a circle in front of Douglas's stoop, dandelions and evening bumblers tickling at their ankles.
|
||||
|
||||
Or, at least they stood in a circle for a moment. Sasha stumbled backwards from the group, turning in two slow, wavering circles before falling to her knees.
|
||||
|
||||
"Sasha?" Ioan said, watching anxiously.
|
||||
|
||||
"Too much," she mumbled. "Too much at once."
|
||||
|
||||
May padded over to kneel next to her. "May I hug?"
|
||||
|
||||
After a moment of strained silence, Sasha slumped against May's side, and the two sat together while she let out that overwhelming emotion within a cone of silence.
|
||||
|
||||
Ioan, Debarre, End Waking, and Douglas took the time to set up the picnic, a rickety table bearing plates of various salads, roasted vegetables, and the makings of venison sandwiches, courtesy End Waking. They moved in silence, hesitantly, each pausing every now and then to watch as Sasha slowly worked to calm herself.
|
||||
|
||||
"That was not the greeting that I had intended," she said, once she had cleaned up in Douglas's house and joined them at the table to pick up a plate. "I was hoping that I would be able to greet you all politely, settle into some easier conversation, but that of True Name has not been here in too long. This place is too charged with memories, as are your faces. Even for that of End Waking and May, there is too much bound up in the last few months."
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you feeling better now?" Douglas asked.
|
||||
|
||||
She nodded. "I am leaning on the other portions of myself now. I will have much processing to do yet, but tonight is for dinner with friends, or at least with those I hope will be friends."
|
||||
|
||||
"I mean, I hope we can be friends." Douglas laughed. "I mean, those are the first words we've ever really spoken to each other, but I'm happy to have the chance to meet you."
|
||||
|
||||
"Or at least a third of me."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, yes, but you're still a new person to me and very...uh," he trailed off, frowning down to his plate. "Well, very close to someone I've thought a lot about, I guess."
|
||||
|
||||
She smiled and leaned over to pat his shoulder. "We will talk, dear. That part of me has heard so much about you and is so colored by what the other parts of me know, that I am eager to learn, as well."
|
||||
|
||||
Debarre remained stiff and awkward, even as they settled down on the blanket to eat, plates piled high with various dishes and cups of sangria set carefully in the grass behind them. He wouldn't make eye contact with Sasha and seemed hesitant to speak to Ioan and May.
|
||||
|
||||
Eventually, he cleared his throat, set his plate down, and stared steadily at Sasha. "I'd like an apology. At least from the, uh...what did you call it? That part of you?"
|
||||
|
||||
As she had done with Serene, Sasha set her plate down as well, folded her paws in her lap, and bowed to the weasel. Ioan could tell by the set of her features and the straightness of her shoulders that she was indeed doing her best to keep that part of her at the fore. "I am sorry, Debarre. The things that I did were for what I thought was best, but they wound up hurting everyone. They were not fair to you and I apologize for the pain I caused. While I do not think I even *could* anymore, I will endeavor not to act in such single-minded ways again."
|
||||
|
||||
Ioan couldn't read Debarre's expression well enough to judge his thoughts on the matter, but judging by the way he loosened up and joined in more of the conversations after that, speaking even with Sasha, he seemed to at least have accepted the words to an extent.
|
||||
|
||||
Debarre and End Waking stayed for a few hours after dinner, long enough to see the first stars show themselves above the field, before they stepped back to the skunk's sim.
|
||||
|
||||
Shortly after, Sasha stood, the other three following suit. She hugged Ioan and May around the shoulders and gave each of them a nose-dot kiss to the cheek. "If you two do not mind, I would like to go for a walk with Douglas and speak with him alone."
|
||||
|
||||
They nodded and returned the hugs and kisses, getting hugs from Douglas as well before they stepped back home.
|
||||
|
||||
(( Ioan and May talk ))
|
||||
|
||||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
Not all of these visits went nearly so smoothly, of course.
|
||||
|
||||
In Dreams arrived early on a Saturday on an hour's notice and bowed formally to Sasha.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ioan, I believe Jonas hired you as an amanuensis?" she said.
|
||||
|
||||
"He did, yes. Do you need me for that, too?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Please. This story is not over, will not be over for a long time yet. Listen. Watch."
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha immediately picked up on the mood and stood up straight after returning the formal bow. She offered In Dreams a seat and coffee, both of which were declined, then said, "How may I help you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I have a request from both my stanza and that of Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver. You will also be presented with this request in writing as an individual-eyes-only message."
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha nodded. "I understand."
|
||||
|
||||
"We request no contact between you, your stanza, or the Bălan clade moving forward."
|
||||
|
||||
"Wait, what?" Ioan said. May edged around a little ways behind em, clutching at eir arm.
|
||||
|
||||
"You are too entangled in the matter. No contact with this situation means no contact from you, May Then My Name Die With Me, or Do I Know God After The End Waking. This request is in effect until further notice, and will also apply to our stanzas on Castor and Pollux. None of us are on Artemis, but I will also be passing this request on to Sorina Bălan. This also applies to general intraclade communication; we will add visibility exceptions to our messages and request that you do the same."
|
||||
|
||||
"I understand, accept, and offer you my best," Sasha said, bowing once more.
|
||||
|
||||
"I do not want your best." In Dreams said, voice flat. "Ioan?"
|
||||
|
||||
Ey blinked, hesitated, then bowed in turn. "I understand and accept."
|
||||
|
||||
"And May Then My Name?"
|
||||
|
||||
It took the skunk a moment to swallow back a rising wave of emotions before she could manage a shaky nod and a hoarse, "Understood."
|
||||
|
||||
"We are of one mind, then," she said, bowed, and stepped from the sim. A few seconds later, three sheets of paper scrolled out of the air above the dining table, all set as individual-eyes-only for each of them. Ioan read through eirs several times with a hollow feeling in eir chest.
|
||||
|
||||
They didn't speak for the rest of the day. Ioan and May collapsed onto the beanbag and stayed there through much of it, each processing in their own way, while Sasha disappeared outside to lose herself in the wilderness, not returning until late that evening, bearing a lanky hair and double-pawful of chantarelle mushrooms, which she cooked down into a simple stew. They ate on the balcony to enjoy the late summer's evening as best they could.
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha joined them in bed that night, and they took what comfort they could from each other's company.
|
||||
|
||||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
The last meeting of note came as Autumn began creeping over the edge of the hills.
|
||||
|
||||
May stumbled in the middle of a rehearsal, falling to her knees and panting before pushing herself to her feet. She managed to make it through the rest of the scene before forking off so that she could continue as best as able while her root instance ducked back home.
|
||||
|
||||
Once there, she darted over towards where Ioan sat at eir desk, working through the process of writing Jonas's book. She knelt beside em, clutched a pawful of eir shirt and set up a cone of silence. Ey felt the ACL-scape of the cone shift several times until it was just about as secure as could be made.
|
||||
|
||||
"May? What--"
|
||||
|
||||
"Zacharias! He has been pinging me once every few seconds for the last minute!" She was on the verge of hyperventilation, eyes wide and tail bristled. "I do not know what-- *fuck!*"
|
||||
|
||||
Ioan slid from eir chair as the skunk started to slump over to the side. Ey helped her to her feet and over to the beanbag. "May, what's happening?"
|
||||
|
||||
"He keeps...quitting and...sending high-priority merges..." she gasped. "The cone will not...stop those..."
|
||||
|
||||
"You okay for few seconds?"
|
||||
|
||||
Slumped over on the beanbag, the skunk nodded.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey stepped from the cone, where May had clearly blocked sensorium messages from the fox, so that ey could holler into a message, "What the fuck do you want?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Ioan! I need to...can I--"
|
||||
|
||||
"No. No coming over."
|
||||
|
||||
"A neutral place?"
|
||||
|
||||
Ey thought quickly, sent a message to Douglas on a whim. "Do you need May there?" ey finally replied to the fox.
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes!"
|
||||
|
||||
Ey sighed. "I'll ask. No guarantees."
|
||||
|
||||
"No, I...no," the skunk mumbled once ey stepped back into the cone. She'd managed to sit up and the panicked look on her face had calmed somewhat. "Or...well, I can, but he cannot come here."
|
||||
|
||||
"I suggested Douglas's to maybe freak him out. I figure if Sasha's reaction was anything to go by, it might quell him, or at least keep him quiet."
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk sat, silent, for a moment, holding onto one of eir hands tightly. "Alright. Will Douglas be around to sweep if needed?"
|
||||
|
||||
Ey nodded.
|
||||
|
||||
"Now?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Yeah, I think so. Do you need anything before we go?"
|
||||
|
||||
That panic on her face had slowly transmuted to anger, and ey could feel the same rising within em. "No. Let us get this the fuck over with."
|
||||
|
||||
She dropped the cone, letting Ioan send a message to Zacharias spoken aloud for May's benefit. "The Field#002a0b1."
|
||||
|
||||
The reply was frantic. "What?! No!"
|
||||
|
||||
"There or no meeting."
|
||||
|
||||
"F-fine."
|
||||
|
||||
Ioan helped May to her feet, placed a kiss between her ears before both of them forked and stepped from the sim.
|
||||
|
||||
Douglas stood at the top of his stoop, arms crossed, frowning. "Ioan, what is this?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Zacharias made it out of the whole thing alive," May growled. "And now he is freaking out and wants to meet. I will not have him at our home."
|
||||
|
||||
Douglas's frown deepened. "So you're bringing him here? The ACLs are pretty locked down right now."
|
||||
|
||||
"Yes. We need somewhere where someone can sweep him if need be." She grinned, adding, "And if this place freaks him out, all the better.
|
||||
|
||||
"If you say so," he said, paused, then continued, "Alright, he should be able to enter."
|
||||
|
||||
Ioan nodded and sent a brief ping to the fox.
|
||||
|
||||
He arrived within a fraction of a second, yelped, and fell backwards, paws balled up into fists and pressed tight against his eyes.
|
||||
|
||||
"How long as it been for you, my dear? Since you were forked?" May said, kneeling down before the fox. Her voice had grown cloyingly sweet, that 'my dear' carrying nothing but spite.
|
||||
|
||||
"Y-yes," he stammered. "Did...did we have to meet here?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Where better?"
|
||||
|
||||
Zacharias moaned. He forced himself to lower his paws to the ground, gripping at clumps of grass and dandelions. Finally, he opened his eyes and stared out toward the horizon of the field. "I--"
|
||||
|
||||
"What did you want, my dear? You sounded on the verge of panic."
|
||||
|
||||
"It is Jonas!" he said, finally snapping out of his daze. "Jonas! He killed all of my instances!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Did you expect anything else?" Ioan asked.
|
||||
|
||||
"I...well."
|
||||
|
||||
"You are the root instance, I am assuming?"
|
||||
|
||||
He nodded, the movement jerky. "I have not left home since. I dug a new one, you see."
|
||||
|
||||
"And what can we do for you?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Help! You can help me get away from that...that lunatic!"
|
||||
|
||||
"Is your home no longer safe, then?"
|
||||
|
||||
He reached out to clutch at May's paws. She startled backwards, but did nothing to push him away. "I cannot...I cannot be alone any longer. I have to...to be near--"
|
||||
|
||||
"No," she said flatly.
|
||||
|
||||
"But--"
|
||||
|
||||
"No." The skunk shook her head, leaned forward and pressed her nose to Zacharias's briefly. "You are on your own, my dear. I will not accept any further messages or merges. No contact."
|
||||
|
||||
He slouched once more, eyes still wide. "May Then My Name, I--"
|
||||
|
||||
She extracted one of her paws from his and slapped him firmly across the snout. "And that is for before."
|
||||
|
||||
Yelping, he fell back onto an elbow. He opened his mouth to respond, but May had already nodded towards Douglas, who swept him from the sim.
|
||||
|
||||
"I've never seen you like that before," he said, once they'd made their way inside, the three of them clutching glasses of water. "I knew he was a shitbag, but God damn."
|
||||
|
||||
"I am...not okay," she said, whispering down to her glass. "I am not okay."
|
||||
|
||||
The skunk refused to say any more that day, and after they made it back home, informed Ioan that she would need at least a day, if not more, on her own.
|
||||
|
||||
"Can I move elsewhere in the sim, or would you like the whole place to yourself?"
|
||||
|
||||
She shook her head. "Just the house. If you can...I mean, if Sasha will let you stay at her tent, you can stay, but I need the house."
|
||||
|
||||
"Now?"
|
||||
|
||||
Nodding, she wrapped her arms around em and squeezed tighter than ey knew she could. "I love you more than anything, my dear. Now."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey waited until ey could breathe properly after the squeeze, then kissed the top of her head. "I love you too, May. Please be safe, okay?"
|
||||
|
||||
She nodded once more, relinquished her grip on em, and nudged em out toward the back door and outside.
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha had set up a tent similar to End Waking's though she had skipped the process of building it herself, instead requesting a thorough examination of what he'd accomplished and then creating from similar materials off the exchange. She'd set it up nearly on the other side of the lake from their house, so that she could have the solitude that she needed without having to create some new sim of her own.
|
||||
|
||||
Though, to go with that, when the need for solitude struck her, it never quite got to the point that it did with End Waking. She would need away from their presences, she would say. They felt like a constant weight on her shoulders. Light, yes, but continually present.
|
||||
|
||||
Ah well. This was the first time that May had overflowed in this living situation --- and so dramatically, too; she'd never given em so little notice --- so perhaps it would be helpful after all.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey took eir time walking around the shore of the lake, using it to vent the emotions that had built up over the last half hour through tears, through shouting into a cone of silence, cursing.
|
||||
|
||||
"Ioan? Goodness," Sasha said.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey'd managed to mostly clean up with a handkerchief, though clearly eir eyes were still red-rimmed and eir countenance...well, who knew? Glum, perhaps?
|
||||
|
||||
"Hi Sasha," ey said, sitting down on the step leading up into the tent. The skunk had been writing at the small desk she'd acquired, but she moved to join em. "May's not in a good spot, suggested I stay with you, if that's alright."
|
||||
|
||||
She frowned, nodded. "That bad?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, she kind of kicked me out of the house, yeah."
|
||||
|
||||
She laid her ears flat. "Zacharias?"
|
||||
|
||||
Ey nodded. "Why, did he ping you, too?"
|
||||
|
||||
Her expression turned sour. "Several times. May I ask what happened? If it is too fresh, we can discuss it another time."
|
||||
|
||||
"No, I should be fine," ey said. "I processed a lot of it on the way over."
|
||||
|
||||
By the time ey'd finished describing the afternoon, Sasha had gone quiet, looking out toward the lake. "Without contraries is no progression," she murmured. "Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey started to ask what she meant, paused, then looked the words up in the perisystem architecture. "And here I thought you all were mostly into Dickinson."
|
||||
|
||||
She laughed and elbowed em in the side. "This may be a True Name thing."
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you leaning into the "Good is the passive that obeys reason; Evil is the active springing from Energy" on this, then? Zacharias is evil for all his meddling?"
|
||||
|
||||
"Nothing is so simple, dear," she said, shaking her head. "Blake was not of our kind, he would not have understood. He did get that right, though that we are a people of dualities. May sees in Zacharias all that she cannot --- must not --- be, and yet we are not what we are without our opposites. Every idea's opposite is just the absence of the idea itself."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey sighed. "Maybe. It's all a bit over my head."
|
||||
|
||||
"I am also a little bit all over the place," she admitted. "These events have me going in three different directions at once. I am sorry, Ioan."
|
||||
|
||||
"It's fine," ey said, shaking eir head. "It's kind of a lot."
|
||||
|
||||
"That it is. You are a good person, though. You love your partner. She knows this. I know this. You are good to her and it will all be okay. We may hope for neat endings but all we get are more beginnings." She smiled, added, "And yes, you may stay until she is feeling better."
|
||||
|
|
@ -1,18 +1,130 @@
|
|||
# Ioan Bălan --- 2350
|
||||
-----
|
||||
|
||||
((Ioan and Sasha go for a walk))
|
||||
May's stint of overflowing only lasted two nights.
|
||||
|
||||
"How long do you think you'll stay?"
|
||||
Something about the change in context, about staying with Sasha instead of Douglas, made everything feel tenuous, though. Ioan found it difficult to sleep on the padded cot that she'd added to the tent, and eventually, she must have grown tired of hearing em toss and turn, for she sleepily climbed out of her own bed and into eirs, curling up with em after confirming that it was alright.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am too much myself to say 'forever', but as long as my room is there, as long as you and May are comfortable with me being a part of your lives, I will be happy to call it home. Or at least *a* home."
|
||||
Awkward, perhaps, but by then ey was too frustrated and exhausted to think of anything else, and the added warmth certainly worked in getting em to sleep, to the point where ey slept in until a ray of sun, creeping slowly, fell across eir face and warmed em awake.
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha had apparently woken up earlier in the morning and snuck away, as there was a lukewarm cup of coffee sitting by the edge of eir bed and no skunk to be found.
|
||||
|
||||
Ah well, at least the coffee was good and ey felt better rested than ey had before.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey met up with her at the shore of the lake where they talked for a bit, though it was clear that she was antsy to head out into the woods on her own, so ey eventually shooed her off, to which she bowed gratefully and said, "My notes are on my desk. If you get bored, I would appreciate your feedback."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey spent the rest of the abbreviated day reading through what she'd written, making a mental list of ideas and suggestions to pass on to her when things were a little less hectic.
|
||||
|
||||
That night was much the same, with the two of them talking until it was well and truly dark, then settling into their own beds until sleeplessness led to them curling together in one.
|
||||
|
||||
A ping from May shortly after sunrise woke em, and the jolt startled Sasha awake as well.
|
||||
|
||||
"Uh, sorry," ey mumbled, extricating eir arms from around her. "May pinged"
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha levered herself up and squinted out into the orange and pink of dawn. "How is she up before me?" she grumbled.
|
||||
|
||||
"Probably because she got good sleep and I kept you up being a mope."
|
||||
|
||||
She shrugged noncommittally. "Slept well enough later on, at least. Did she say anything?"
|
||||
|
||||
Ey shook eir head. "No, just a ping. No real urgency, though. Surprised I didn't sleep through it."
|
||||
|
||||
"You are appropriately keyed to her, dear. I would be surprised if you did."
|
||||
|
||||
"Mm, fair enough," ey said, grinding the heels of eir palms against eir eyes. To May, ey sent a ping in response, plus a subvocalized, "*You okay?*"
|
||||
|
||||
"Better, yes," came the reply. "Though I am feeling quite bad about sending you off like that. Not about waking you up, though. You sound cute when you are groggy."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey snorted, shook eir head. "Yeah, she's fine," ey said to Sasha.
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha surprised em by joining em on the trek back to the house, saying only, "I have been worried, as well."
|
||||
|
||||
May greeted them at the balcony with steaming mugs of coffee. She declined a hug, stating that she felt gross, but did at least press her nose to Ioan's, and then to Sasha's cheek.
|
||||
|
||||
"Thank you for giving me some space," she said. "I was not expecting the both of you, but I am happy to see you both all the same."
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course, May. I'm just happy to see you doing better. Or happier, at least. You look a mess."
|
||||
|
||||
She scoffed and gestured a paw down at herself. "I look perfectly fine, thank you very much."
|
||||
|
||||
"You look a mess, dear," Sasha confirmed. "You need a shower and a change of clothes, and perhaps another four hours of sleep."
|
||||
|
||||
May sighed, nodded. "I do at that. All the same, the wave has crested and gone, and now perhaps I can relax enough to do so. Coffee first, though.
|
||||
|
||||
They settled around the dining table and focused on said coffee for a bit. It was good to be back to coffee that didn't require straining out the occasional percolated ground through one's teeth.
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you two okay?" May said at last.
|
||||
|
||||
"Tired, but that's easily fixed. Looking forward to a real bed tonight."
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha kicked eir shin beneath the table. "The tent beds are not *that* bad."
|
||||
|
||||
"No, they're fine, but they still pale in comparison to our bed."
|
||||
|
||||
"Fine, fine."
|
||||
|
||||
May looked between the two, then laughed. "I take it this setup worked for me taking some space?"
|
||||
|
||||
Ioan shrugged. "Well enough, sure. It's nice to have another option that isn't just crashing at Douglas's."
|
||||
|
||||
"It was fine, dear," Sasha added. "If ever either of you need some space, feel free to kick the other down to the tent and I will make it work."
|
||||
|
||||
"I am glad," May said. "Earnestly. Ioan is such a solitary person that I did not ever picture having neighbors when I moved in all those years ago. It is nice to have a friend close by."
|
||||
|
||||
"Aren't all of your friends equally close now that--"
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha cut em off, "Ioan, do you remember how I said that I feel others' presence around me like a weight on my shoulders?"
|
||||
|
||||
Ey nodded.
|
||||
|
||||
"I think it is rather like that, though do correct me if I am wrong, May. Even when I am hiding away in my tent, I am still more present than a friend out of sim is."
|
||||
|
||||
"Basically," May said. "Never mind one who knows me so intimately now."
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha nodded, hesitated, then said, "On that note, are you okay?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I...well," she began, sighed, and shook her head. "I am upset, and I am disappointed that I am upset. I was so ready to be done with hatred, but I am stuck with yet more of it. More than the experience with Zacharias itself, that is what led to the past few days of tears. I thought that I was done."
|
||||
|
||||
"I understand. I would like to talk with you about him at some point --- nothing serious, just strategizing future meltdowns of his. Ioan said he kept trying to force merges on you just to get your attention."
|
||||
|
||||
May winced. "Ugh, yeah. I have never felt something so intensely...I do not know. It felt like an invasion of my personal space on an intangible level. What were you thinking?"
|
||||
|
||||
Sasha tilted her head. "Now? I was going to suggest in a few days time, once you were feeling better."
|
||||
|
||||
"Why not? I am already a mess, I am already thinking about him, and after this, I would like more than 'a few days time' completely disengaged from the topic." She giggled, adding, "Besides, the more I have to dump on Sarah the next time I see her the better, right?"
|
||||
|
||||
"I do not think it works that way, but I am not so much of a brat as you." Sasha finished her coffee, set the mug down with a sense of finality, and nodded. "Well, I suppose I am awake enough. If you do not mind, Ioan, may I steal your partner for a little bit longer? I would like to keep this first discussion between us, though I will ensure that you remain caught up."
|
||||
|
||||
"Are you up for forking, May?"
|
||||
|
||||
She hesitated, then shook her head, pushing herself up from her chair to step around behind eirs. She bent down to hug around eir shoulders from behind, cheek pressed against eirs. "I cannot cope with conflicts right now. I cannot yet work in parallel."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey rested eir cheek against hers and frowned down to eir coffee for a few moments, sighed, then nodded. "Alright, but I get the May for the rest of the day, okay?"
|
||||
|
||||
They both laughed.
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course, Ioan," Sasha said. "If you would like some company out on the balcony or something, I have no such compunctions about forking."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey felt May nod against eir cheek. "I am not pushing solitude on you, my dear. Take some coffee and breakfast with you. I do not imagine we will be all that long."
|
||||
|
||||
Still conscious of her saying that she felt gross, ey patted one of her paws and turned eir head enough to kiss her on the cheek. "Alright, that sounds good."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey pulled together a breakfast of rolls to go along with a thermos of coffee, got one more nose-press of a kiss with May, and stepped back outside with an instance of Sasha.
|
||||
|
||||
The house had been set up on a portion of the slope that was turned a little toward the east, meaning that they the sun was not yet hitting the balcony. Autumn had gotten chilly enough at night, though, that they decided instead to walk down to the rock lakeside, which would almost certainly be in full sun, even if it was less comfortable that the deck chairs.
|
||||
|
||||
They sat in silence, drinking their coffee and eating rolls with butter and honey.
|
||||
|
||||
"Do you think you'll stay?" Ioan said, once the rhythm of the silence made room for conversation.
|
||||
|
||||
"I am too much myself to say that I will stay 'forever', but as long as my room is there, as long as you and May are comfortable with me being a part of your lives, I will be happy to call it home. Or at least *a* home."
|
||||
|
||||
"Really? No bigger and brighter things?"
|
||||
|
||||
She laughed and leaned over to dot her nose on eir cheek. "This *is* bigger and brighter things, my dear."
|
||||
She laughed and leaned over to dot her nose on eir cheek. "This *is* bigger and brighter things, dear."
|
||||
|
||||
"Well, I'm sure we'll talk about it plenty, but I see no reason not to keep your room about. I don't know what you overflowing will look like, but if it involves one third solitude and one third getting lost walking sims, I don't imagine you'll be around all the time."
|
||||
|
||||
"Not at all, no. I will spend my share of time here to be alone or out walking the world. Perhaps I will even ask you to double the rest of the house so that I can be alone somewhere domestic, not just the wild."
|
||||
"Not at all, no. I will spend my share of time at the tent to be alone or out walking the world. Perhaps I will even ask you to double the rest of the house so that I can be alone somewhere domestic, not just the wild."
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course." Ey shrugged, tossing one of eir collected pebbles into the lake. "Besides, I like having you around."
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -20,7 +132,7 @@ She laughed and leaned over to dot her nose on eir cheek. "This *is* bigger and
|
|||
|
||||
"Oh, not at all. It seems like we're all pretty good at sorting things out when they do come up, so I don't imagine it'll get to that point."
|
||||
|
||||
"And I am not impinging too much on your and May's relationship?" she asked, holding out her paw for one of eir pebbles. "I am asking her, too, and we will continue to talk together, but I also want to you directly."
|
||||
"And I am not impinging too much on your and May's relationship?" she asked, holding out her paw for one of eir pebbles. "I am asking her, too, and we will continue to talk together, but I also want to ask you directly."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey shrugged, handing over the pebble. "I don't think so. So long as we can still have time to ourselves when we need, I'll be happy."
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -34,17 +146,17 @@ They sat in quiet for a while, tossing pebbles into the water until ey ran out.
|
|||
|
||||
"Do you miss anything from before all this?"
|
||||
|
||||
She shrugged. "It is hard to tell. As I have said, I liked being True Name. It was fulfilling. Every time I think about that now, though, it is intercut with memories from my cocladists. I will think about some particularly adroit political move and remember it fondly, but right along with it is a memory of giving up on using a bow drill and switching to using a striker or making fun of you for your pen collection."
|
||||
She shrugged. "It is hard to tell. As I have said, I liked being True Name. It was fulfilling. Every time I think about that now, though, it is intercut with memories of other happinesses. I will think about some particularly adroit political move and remember it fondly, but right along with it is a memory of a successful hunt or of making fun of you for your pen collection."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey laughed.
|
||||
|
||||
"If I am honest, I am letting a few conflicts remain. There is something pleasant about the just-off-center nature of that reality. I am Sasha, and I am also True Name, End Waking, and May. I am of three minds."
|
||||
"If I am honest, a few conflicts remain from both merges, even still. They are not large ones, but they are there, and some jealous part of me who is True Name does not wish to be completely subsumed, so I am keeping them held just at bay. There is something pleasant about the just-off-center nature of that reality. I am Sasha, and I am also True Name, End Waking, and May. I am of three minds."
|
||||
|
||||
"So long as that works for you."
|
||||
|
||||
"I can always address them down the line if it does not."
|
||||
|
||||
Ey nodded. "And I'm guessing you don't miss Jonas or Zacharias or any of that."
|
||||
Ey nodded. "And I'm guessing you don't miss the social part of that life too much, Jonas or Zacharias or any of them."
|
||||
|
||||
She poked at eir side with a claw before slouching against em. "You do not need to ask stupid questions, Ioan."
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
@ -54,13 +166,17 @@ She poked at eir side with a claw before slouching against em. "You do not need
|
|||
|
||||
Her tone wasn't upset or dismissive, but was assertive enough that ey dropped the point. "Well, writing sounds like a good career shift, then."
|
||||
|
||||
"Says the writer." She laughed. "But yes. I will be leaning on you a lot for help."
|
||||
"Says the writer." She laughed.
|
||||
|
||||
"I mean, you're leaning now."
|
||||
"I liked what you've gotten down so far, and I have a few notes. We'll talk about it when we're back at a desk, though."
|
||||
|
||||
"Of course. I will be leaning on you a lot for help."
|
||||
|
||||
"I mean, you're leaning on me now."
|
||||
|
||||
"Smartass," she said mildly.
|
||||
|
||||
Ey grinned. "I mean, no complaints. Still sort of getting used to it, but May got me hooked on physical contact a long time ago."
|
||||
Ey grinned. "I mean, no complaints. It's still a little surprising, sometimes. I guess on some level I'm still sort of getting used to it, but May got me hooked on physical contact a long time ago."
|
||||
|
||||
"A coordinated attack on your defenses, yes," she said. "It makes my job easier."
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -73,8 +73,8 @@ Wherein True Name and May reconcile, and we deal with the problem of the ownersh
|
|||
* [o] [TN's path forward](033) --- TN decides she's ready to start planning the meeting, has a better idea of what she'll become (maybe merge down? See where it goes)
|
||||
* [o] [Ioan sets the meeting up](034) --- Ey's acting as amanuensis and as close to a neutral party as there is, and Jonas is all asmirk at this. They head out, and are greeted by Zacharias, Ioan is struggling with anger, they're going to meet up in a week.
|
||||
* [-] (SNIPPET) [True Name changes + aftermath](0x2) --- True Name changes
|
||||
* [.] [They meet, they talk, TN changes](035) --- Jonas talks about how the upcoming changes require a different kind of stability for continuity and TN just isn't gonna cut it, gives ultimata for her continued existence. TN becomes Sasha, and now she's all asmirk.
|
||||
* [ ] [Something innocent](036) --- The aftermath. They get Serene to basically duplicate Arrowhead Lake in place of Sasha's field, etc Sasha works on finding a new purpose, realizes it's going to be a long process.
|
||||
* [o] [They meet, they talk, TN changes](035) --- Jonas talks about how the upcoming changes require a different kind of stability for continuity and TN just isn't gonna cut it, gives ultimata for her continued existence. TN becomes Sasha, and now she's all asmirk.
|
||||
* [o] [Something innocent](036) --- The aftermath. They get Serene to basically duplicate Arrowhead Lake in place of Sasha's field, etc Sasha works on finding a new purpose, realizes it's going to be a long process.
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* [.] [Epilogue](037) Ioan and Sasha are drifting closer together as hinted at in 002, but this should a) look like it's going to end happily and b) be an active and open conversation because I am completely unwilling to lose any of them.
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* [Synopsis](synopsis)
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Reference in New Issue