update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/marsh/015.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ Life on Lagrange seemed to be limping back into something resembling order, at l
 
 The default arrival point was a newly renovated LaGuardia airport, something that was only ever in the planning stages when I had lived there for a brief few months, and transit into the city itself was via bus and subway, both packed with other cladists.
 
-Dry Grass and I sat in a well-tailored cone of silence, letting us talk about in peace.
+Dry Grass and I sat in a well-tailored cone of silence, letting us talk in peace.
 
 "Everyone looks so nervous," I observed at one point.
 
@@ -34,7 +34,7 @@ I laughed, looking down to my lap and resting my hand atop hers. "I suppose so,
 
 "We are all anxious, as you say, but we are more than that: we are still here. We are still alive. We will do all that we can to continue living, and those phys-side will see to that."
 
-Once we stepped off the train, still holding hands both out of affection and so as not to lose each other in the crowds, we walked the short distance to the replica Horn & Hardart's, still talking of life on Lagrange. We talked of when we had uploaded, of the first things that we did sys-side, of the origins of the System that Dry Grass's root instance still remembered.
+Once we stepped off the train, still holding hands both out of affection and so as not to lose each other in the crowds, we walked the short distance to the replica Horn & Hardart, still talking of life on Lagrange. We talked of when we had uploaded, of the first things that we did sys-side, of the origins of the System that Dry Grass's root instance still remembered.
 
 "The 2110s were a horrible mess," she said once we sat down with our cups of shitty coffee and small bowls of soup: chicken noodle for her, clam chowder for me. It was too thick, too grainy from the flour used to thicken it, and it needed copious amounts of pepper to make it in any way interesting. It was, as far as I could tell, a perfect reproduction. "Pandemics. The WF and Sino-Russian Bloc having a staring contest over the Carpathians. Governments trying to disappear anyone who knew too much in the worst way possible, which accidentally led to the creation of the System. Turns out, it's a pretty good place to store your undesirables, so most of the Founders were loud, opinionated, politically obnoxious people."
 
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ I listened, rapt, as she grew more animated and eloquent; watched as she sent ou
 
 "We all played our part. I dove into tech, Warmth coaxed the System into letting em make weirder and weirder objects and more and more delicious foods, True Name and her stanza guided it as might any parent. Even if her methods came off as unsavory, I believe her — believe Sasha, I mean, who she became — when she says that her goal was only ever the security of our existence.
 
-"I feel like my baby has stumbled. The System stumbled and fell, knocked its head, forgotten some of what it knew. I feel like our existence stumbled, as some group or another got so frustrated as to trip it up. When I dump my energy into all of this work, I am doing my best to nurse it back to health. We all are. I am working the tech angle. The eighth is working the political angle — I think even Sasha has poked her nose in once or twice. Even the third stanza is there with us, sitting *shiva* and praying as they will."
+"I feel like my baby has stumbled. The System stumbled and fell, knocked its head, forgotten some of what it knew. I feel like our existence stumbled, as some group or another got so frustrated as to trip it up. When I dump my energy into all of this work, I am doing my best to nurse it back to health. We all are. I am working the tech angle. The eighth is working the political angle — you have seen Sasha has poke her nose in once or twice, yes? She is still striving." She smiled fondly, adding, "Even the third stanza is there with us, sitting *shiva* and praying as they will."
 
 We sat back as her ephemeral instance set down a few pot pies and a plate piled high with hash browns in front of us before quitting. Dry Grass sectioned off a large portion of the hash browns to start dousing it in hot sauce.
 
@@ -62,9 +62,9 @@ She laughed, fork of heavily spiced potato already on its way to her mouth. "Yes
 
 I nodded, getting a few bites of my own (less heavily spiced) share in. Horn & Hardart's hash browns were quite good, but only while warm.
 
-"You use a lot of family language when you talk," I said once I'd washed the hash browns down with coffee. "Which makes sense from what you've said, of course, but it got me thinking last night about what Marsh was to us. Couldn't decide whether they were a parent or a sibling of some sort."
+"You use a lot of family language when you talk," I said once I'd washed the hash browns down with coffee. "Which makes sense from what you've said, of course, but it got me thinking last night about what Marsh was to us. Couldn't decide whether they were a parent or a cousin of some sort."
 
-She nodded, already starting in on her pot pie, breaking open the lid to let the steam escape. "It is not a dynamic that works for everyone. Even within our own clade, it does not make sense in some cases. Motes and Warmth are my little ones, but while A Finger Pointing and Beholden — Motes's guardians — feel like siblings to me, Dear, Rye, and Praiseworthy — Warmth's down-trees — definitely do not. They are friends, Rye especially, perhaps, but little else."
+She nodded, already starting in on her pot pie, breaking open the lid to let the steam escape. "It is not a dynamic that works for everyone. Even within our own clade, it is complicated. Hammered Silver, my down-tree, *hates* that. She disowned me for some time over these thoughts. Tt does not make sense in some cases. Motes and Warmth are my little ones, but while A Finger Pointing and Beholden — Motes's guardians — feel like siblings to me, Dear, Rye, and Praiseworthy — Warmth's down-trees — definitely do not. They are friends, Rye especially, perhaps, but little else."
 
 "Yeah, and I guess that's been coloring my feelings on the whole idea of cross-tree merging."