update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/motes/007.md

@@ -70,6 +70,7 @@ From that point on, A Finger Pointing made herself the glue of this growing clad
 
 Yes, there were steps that she needed to take. There were ways that she needed to keep herself safe. There were ways that those who above all else she loved might come to harm and she need to keep them safe as well. She needed to ensure their safety even above her own.
 
+Dry Grass was the first she kept safe. A home was provided to her within the fifth stanza's neighborhood.
 ((Sasha and Dry Grass))
 
 -----
@@ -241,12 +242,49 @@ Cutting contact is one hell of a way to end a friendship, yes?
 
 But no, the end of their friendship came far earlier. Decades earlier.
 
-Some time back around systime 176, back around the time the clocks ticked over to 2300, Hammered Silver sent one of her longest letters yet. It was in some ways a screed. It was beyond simply admonition, note, or missive. It was an epistle, some general letter intended to be a point of instruction not just to her but to the world as a whole.
+At some point back in the early 2100s, Motes had begun exploring this role of the babiest Odist of the fifth stanza — in her twenties, sure, but a being built entirely out of play. A note arrived.
+
+At some point back in the late 2100s, Motes had begun exploring this form of childhood — no one's child in particular, sure, but a being built entirely out of play. A note arrived.
+
+And at some point back in the mid 2200s, Motes had begun exploring the concept of family. She had since moved in with A Finger Pointing and Beholden, and the longer she stayed, the more she fell in love with them as her guardians and the more they fell in love with her as their charge.
+
+For this was true of all of her up-trees, and for much of Au Lieu Du Rêve besides. Going years back, back even to the late 2100s, this reveling in play that Motes brought to the fifth stanza had built in A Finger Pointing a sense of her place in the order: her role was a maternal one. A reveling in care, in the type of friendship that flowered in a particular dynamic.
+
+She was their matron, in a way. She was their protector. She shielded them as best she could from the politics that so much of their cocladists were engaging in throughout the rest of the System. "But that is my job," she reasoned allowed when she became more open about this protection. "That is why we have an administrator for Au Lieu Du Rêve, yes? Someone has to deal with the politics of running a theatre, yes?"
+
+The first time she called A Finger Pointing 'ma', there had been a conversation, full of various confusions and inquiries and boundaries. Both came to an agreement that this was not comfortable. Not now, not yet.
+
+A year later — for what is a year to a cladist? — Motes did it again, and this time she asked first, and permission was granted to see how it felt. It was still uncomfortable, but perhaps there was joy to be found. Perhaps there was expectations and standards and trust that could be built up.
+
+And so, as it had been with each of Motes's tentative explorations and gentle testing of mutable boundaries, this became a thing that was okay at home, okay in limited doses, okay for a trial period. It was worthy of exploration, for if there was the potential for joy and everyone deserved such, then perhaps there was some way Motes could be granted such a thing.
+
+This private setting, this iterative context, this ongoing play allowed for growth and change.
+
+There was soreness, of course. There was soreness that A Finger Pointing and Beholden still had to deal with the taboo of intraclade relationships, that it was still not permissible for this reason or that for them to kiss in public, for them to share their I-love-yous.
+
+This built up a false equivalence within all three of them. It allowed them to consider this taboo as applying to all intraclade relationships beyond simple community, simple friendship. Big-R Relationships like those of A Finger Pointing and her Beholden and little-r relationships like those of Motes with the two of them. This desire for family to be constrained to a private setting must apply to all kinds of family dynamics, yes?
+
+"Beholden and I are still smarting because we must sequester our affection for one another in private. That is why I have been hesitant to take on the caregiver role that you have sought from me," A Finger Pointing had said during a quiet night's conversation, skunklet curled beside her on the couch. "But I do care for you, do I not? I do feel like a sort of matron amidst the fifth stanza, do I not? Perhaps it is time I reconsidered my aversion to familial language. Perhaps it is time I considered reclamation. After all, everything I have done has been so that you can live in peace. Are you living in peace, Motes? Are you at peace when you must restrain your feelings for me for reasons neither of us particularly care for?"
+
+And so it remained largely at home, at home with the three of them and at home in the neighborhood that was slowly building up around them. It remained a secret, but, like A Finger Pointing and Beholden's relationship, it remained an open one. The quiet of the secret allowed them live to their fullest, and the openness allowed them to share joy where they felt safe doing so.
+
+But then, some time back around systime 182, back around the time the clocks ticked over to 2306, back around the time Michelle/Sasha had summoned them all to her field to merge centuries of memory and then quit, Hammered Silver sent one of her longest letters yet. It was in some ways a screed. It was beyond simply admonition, note, or missive. It was an epistle, some general letter intended to be a point of instruction not just to her but to the world as a whole.
 
 The screed, well worth embodying as a physical letter if only to be torn up, ripped to shreds, burnt to ash, soaked with tears to douse the fire, ground into a paint, and used to spell out anger and despair, spelled out in nigh-unintelligible detail all of the ways in which she and hers had fallen short.
 
 Motes had existed. She had tested the limits and found them flexible. She had found the boundaries negotiable. She had poked her nose out into the world and found it largely amenable to her existence. She had lived her life in play. She had played as a child and played as an adult. She had gone down slides and been bitten during sex and died on-stage, all countless times.
-((the past: family))
+
+All of these were unacceptable. All of these had led to letters and notes of their own. All were rehashed through paragraph after paragraph of spiny invective.
+
+But a full half of the letter was devoted to a particular combination of particular topics that had apparently struck Hammered Silver as worthy of ire: Motes had started calling A Finger Pointing 'ma' and A Finger Pointing had started calling Motes 'Dot'. Two syllables worthy of an essay-length diatribe.
+
+How dare she, Hammered Silver cried — and with such a loss as that of Sasha/Michelle, she truly sobbed. How dare she test the clade's position in this most precarious life time and again by doing this awful, awful thing. On and on and on.
+
+And so, at that point, their friendship ended. They went a year without meeting, and when next they scheduled a coffee date, they spoke hardly at all. They made their goodbyes wordless. The next meeting was similarly silent.
+
+There was no more love between them. The trust had been broken. They met to keep tabs on each other. They met to ensure that the other was not living outside the bounds of society in some abhorrent way. They met to spy on each other.
+
+That was the time their friendship died, the moment A Finger Pointing received that letter, the one that she tore up and burned to ash, cried over and then, determined, use the paint of which to spell out renewed love for those who remained in her life.
 
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