update from sparkleup

.tags

@@ -148,7 +148,6 @@ family	writing/sawtooth/youre-gone.md	3;"	vimwiki:writing/sawtooth/youre-gone\tw
 fanfic	writing/fanfic/index.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/fanfic/index\twriting/fanfic/index
 fanfic	writing/fanfic/kaddish.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/fanfic/kaddish\twriting/fanfic/kaddish
 fanfic	writing/fanfic/southern-reach.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/fanfic/southern-reach\twriting/fanfic/southern-reach
-fanfic	writing/hand-of-god.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/hand-of-god\twriting/hand-of-god
 fantasy	writing/belek.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/belek\twriting/belek
 fantasy	writing/furrything/001.md	1;"	vimwiki:writing/furrything/001\twriting/furrything/001
 fantasy	writing/furrything/002.md	1;"	vimwiki:writing/furrything/002\twriting/furrything/002
@@ -364,6 +363,7 @@ haiku	writing/poetry/ekstasis.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/poetry/ekstasis\twriting/po
 haiku	writing/poetry/pale-she.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/poetry/pale-she\twriting/poetry/pale-she
 history	writing/tu-pater-et-mater.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/tu-pater-et-mater\twriting/tu-pater-et-mater
 horror	writing/belek.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/belek\twriting/belek
+horror	writing/hand-of-god.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/hand-of-god\twriting/hand-of-god
 horror	writing/inner-demons/content/a-010.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/inner-demons/content/a-010\twriting/inner-demons/content/a-010
 horror	writing/inner-demons/content/a-020.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/inner-demons/content/a-020\twriting/inner-demons/content/a-020
 horror	writing/inner-demons/content/b-010.md	2;"	vimwiki:writing/inner-demons/content/b-010\twriting/inner-demons/content/b-010

writing/hand-of-god.md

@@ -1,7 +1,5 @@
-%title The Hand of God (Southern Reach fic)
-:writing:fanfic:fiction:short-story:
-
-## The biologist
+%title The Hand of God
+:writing:horror:fiction:short-story:
 
 The day began with the botanist giving the physicist a hand in setting up countless contraptions around the rim of the clearing, describing an invisible net of arcane geometries held there five feet above the ground. She lugged the total station while he placed the equipment. He prattled on as he went, describing what he was doing, what tools he was using, what equipment she was carrying. She largely lost track after the word 'theodolite'.
 
@@ -35,7 +33,7 @@ The botanist jerked upright. She had been crouched. Or hunched. A near feral war
 
 "No. Maybe. I don't know."
 
-The physicist frowned, peered out into the trees in the direction the botanist had been looking. "I thought you might have heard something. You froze and started looking over there, over to the staircase."
+The physicist frowned, peered out into the trees in the direction the botanist had been looking. "I thought you might have heard something. You froze and started looking over there, over to the outcropping."
 
 She didn't remember which way she had been facing. She knew that she had turned to face the physicist, though.
 
@@ -55,9 +53,9 @@ The physicist smiled dreamily. "Thank God that worked."
 
 And then they unwound the entire procedure from before. Undoing the cabling, unearthing the rods, undowsing, in some strange way, the work of the theolodite.
 
-On the way back to the camp, the physicist continued to chatter. He was measuring the way light and shadow moved within Area X. "No reason to think something as basic as light would differ here," he had assured her. Or at least assured her form, as her mind was elsewhere. "But you have to admit, everything's a little strange."
+On the way back to the camp, the physicist continued to chatter. He was measuring the way light and shadow moved so untrod an area. "No reason to think something as basic as light would differ here," he had assured her. Or at least assured her form, as her mind was elsewhere. "But you have to admit, everything's a little strange."
 
-At the camp: quiet. The four sat, each in front of their tent, thinking or not, reading or not. At one point, the linguist asked after the architect, and the psychologist repeated, "He went back to base."
+At the camp: quiet. The four sat, each in front of their tent, thinking or not, reading or not. At one point, the linguist asked after the fifth member of their expedition, and the psychologist repeated, "He went back to base."
 
 And then: quiet.
 
@@ -81,7 +79,7 @@ She shrugged and handed it over. "Gift from my dad. We had a...complicated relat
 
 The physicist: "'The whole blessing'?"
 
-She grinned. "Yeah, it's several lines. Uh...*go n-éirí an bóthar leat, go raibh an ghaoth go brách ag do chúl, o lonraí an ghrian go te ar d'aghaidh, go dtite an bháisteach go mín ar do pháirceanna, agus go mbuailimid le chéile arís, go gcoinní Dia i mbos A láimhe thú.* I think. It's been a while. It's like, 'good luck on your road, may the wind be behind you, may the sun shine on your face, may the rain fall on your fields, and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.'"
+She grinned. "Yeah, it's several lines. I think. It's been a while. It's like, 'good luck on your road, may the wind be behind you, may the sun shine on your face, may the rain fall on your fields, and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.'"
 
 It was the most any of them had spoken in hours about anything other than...than work? Than whatever it was they were doing out here in Area X. All of them were listening.
 
@@ -107,9 +105,9 @@ Hands.
 
 Always hands.
 
-The botanist 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 stairs. The stairs. That finger pointing toward God.
+The botanist 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 dead rock, new these last few months, resisting study and understanding.. That finger pointing toward God.
 
-The psychologist: "Are you excited, too?"
+The psychologist: "Where are you going?"
 
 She 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."
 
@@ -139,9 +137,9 @@ And while the dreamy confusion was mirrored on her face, there was also curiosit
 
 And she had stopped thinking of this 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, their beside the stairs where, written on the wall, were the words, "Were lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner"?
+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 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 stairs bored down into the 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 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 yet was she asleep? 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 +151,7 @@ And they reached out toward each other and their fingertips touched and the touc
 
 And they relaxed, and the botanist 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 stairs which were 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, 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 were 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.
 
@@ -169,17 +167,3 @@ And when the physicist awoke, he was the first to notice the botanist was gone.
 
 And when the psychologist awoke, she was the first to notice the new tree, where ferns fingered the air and fronds like hands reached out to touch them.
 
-## The physicist
-
-Breathe.
-
-*Breathe.*
-
-"Come on."
-
-Hands clutched soil.
-Grasped for purchase, for solidity.
-Anything to help keep him anchored to reality.
-*Pin me to perception - or perception to me,* he begged air gone thrawn.
-
-His cries, nonverbal, were nonetheless beat back by some unseen force, some will bent on countering his own with mindless determination.