update from sparkleup

writing/hand-of-god.md

@@ -105,7 +105,7 @@ Hands.
 
 Always hands.
 
-Jude had tuned out, and some distant part of her was surprised to find that she had stood, that she had been pacing, that she had stopped and hunched and tensed, once more facing the outcropping. The outcropping of pale and dead rock, new and uncharted, and its surrounding forest, growing now these last few months. The rock that resisted study and comprehension. Resisted humanity, pushed it away with some dark sense of unwelcome.
+Jude had tuned out, and some distant part of her was surprised to find that she had stood, that she had been pacing, that she had stopped and hunched and tensed, once more facing the outcropping. The outcropping of pale and dead rock, new and uncharted, and its surrounding forest, growing now these last few months. The rock that resisted study and comprehension. Resisted humanity, pushed it away with some dark sense of unwelcome, and yet drew the eye.
 
 That finger pointing toward God.
 
@@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ Elanna's voice broke through the compulsion. "You okay?"
 
 The botanist frowned, the tension draining from her as a blanket settled over her unsettled mind. Turned, abashed, back toward camp. "No. Maybe. I don't know."
 
-The hand of God had loosened its grip around her mind and here she was, back at camp, back beneath the trees, back by the tall reeds, back by the ferns fingering the air and the fronds like hands reaching out to them.
+The hand of God had loosened its grip around her mind and here she was, back at camp, back by the barrel cactus and saguaro, back beyond the trees, where ferns fingered the air and fronds like hands reached out to touch them.
 
 It did not last.
 
@@ -139,9 +139,9 @@ And while the dreamy confusion was mirrored on her face, there was also curiosit
 
 And she had stopped thinking of this dream-scented Doppelgänger as something other than herself. She was not it. She was she. She was *she*.
 
-And her hands were her own. She had a hand in their making. Her hand was forced hand in hand with blood on her hands washing her hands of the matter. After all, was a bird in the hand not worth two in the clearing, there beside the outcropping where, written on the stone, were the words the linguist toiled over day after day?
+And her hands were her own. She had a hand in their making. Her hand was forced hand in hand with blood on her hands washing her hands of the matter. After all, was a bird in the hand not worth two in the forest, there beside the outcropping where, written on the stone, were the words the linguist toiled over day after day?
 
-And there she was, and if there had been a transition from her being in her tent to her standing in the clearing, to her moving toward where those dead rocks climbing stolidly up from earth, she missed it, just as she had missed that transition between waking and sleeping.
+And there she was, and if there had been a transition from her being in her tent to her standing in the woods, to her moving toward where those dead rocks climbing stolidly up from earth, she missed it, just as she had missed that transition between waking and sleeping.
 
 And yet was she asleep? She must be. Was she? She was here, and the air was heavy, and the light had failed, and the quiet was absolute aside from the sounds of the night. No words, no words.
 
@@ -153,7 +153,7 @@ And they reached out toward each other and their fingertips touched and the touc
 
 And they relaxed, and Jude felt that even as the darkness deepened, the light within her grew, and they both settled down to their knees.
 
-And finally, the mirroring was broken as the *her* that was not her slid *her* fingers up over her wrist and gently guided her hand down toward the soil, loamy and damp, and she knew then that she must spread her fingers and dig them down into the earth, there by the outcropping which was a finger pointing at God such that she was in turn pointing at...at what? At the owner of that hand? At the owner of that finger?
+And finally, the mirroring was broken as the *her* that was not her slid *her* fingers up over her wrist and gently guided her hand down toward the soil, strangely loamy, strangely damp, and she knew then that she must spread her fingers and dig them down into the earth, there by the outcropping which was a finger pointing at God such that she was in turn pointing at...at what? At the owner of that hand? At the owner of that finger?
 
 And as she did so, she felt that the dirt beneath her fingernails took root, that her nails themselves must have been rootlets and that her arm a stolon, that her whole body was the runner for some tree, some entity other than herself, for at that point, she took root.
 
@@ -169,5 +169,5 @@ And she felt growth accelerate as, bound now to the earth, her bones became wood
 
 And when Aaron awoke, he was the first to notice Jude was gone. 
 
-And when Elanna awoke, she was the first to notice the new tree, there by the numinous outcropping, where ferns fingered the air and fronds like hands reached out to touch them.
+And when Elanna awoke, she was the first to notice the new tree, there by the numinous outcropping and its attendant forest, where ferns fingered the air and fronds like hands reached out to touch them.