update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/mitzvot/017.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ May wasn't the only one, either. At one point, Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itse
 
 Ey'd only met Slow Hours once prior and, while she was just as friendly as her down-tree instance, she also seemed somewhat removed from the world as a whole, as though seeing just a little more than everyone around her. "Clairvoyance," A Finger Pointing had whispered to em after that first introduction. "She has the outline of the world."
 
-They talked for nearly three hours that afternoon, breaking only to get more water part way through. When they were finished, True Name looked wrung out, though not unhappy. A Finger Pointing mostly looked confused and concerned while Slow Hours kept her faraway, nearly delphic smile.
+They talked for nearly three hours that afternoon, breaking only to get more water part way through. When they were finished, True Name looked wrung out, though not unhappy. A Finger Pointing mostly looked confused and concerned while Slow Hours kept her faraway, nearly delphic smile. Both were patterned after the human Michelle rather than the skunk Sasha, lending an additional layer of uncanniness in their similarities to May and True Name, even across species.
 
 Curiouser and curiouser. Ey'd always pictured A Finger Pointing's stanza as one of the more liberal ones, and had early on noticed that the liberal Odists had largely distanced themselves from the more conservative ones. To have two of them specifically drop by to visit True Name was quite surprising.
 
@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ They stayed quiet until they worked their way under the covers again, cozying up
 
 Ey kissed the back of her ears and shushed her to sleep.
 
-What kept coming back again and again was the feeling of just how small this project --- if ey'd been assigned to it as amanuensis, might as well call it what it was --- felt. There were so few people involved. True Name and Jonas, then em, May, and End Waking on the periphery. Five people, three clades. It was intimate, in that sense. True Name and Jonas were larger-than-life most of the time, but having been forced into sharing space with her, ey was far more able to see the True Name of today as just someone in over her head and Jonas as a power-hungry asshole.
+What kept coming back again and again was the feeling of just how small this project felt --- if ey'd been assigned to it as amanuensis, might as well call it what it was. There were so few people involved. True Name and Jonas, then em, May, and End Waking on the periphery. Five people, three clades. It was intimate, in that sense. True Name and Jonas were larger-than-life most of the time, but having been forced into sharing space with her, ey was far more able to see the True Name of today as just someone in over her head and Jonas as a power-hungry asshole.
 
 And then there was emself, caught in the middle as Codrin#Castor had felt almost four years back.
 
@@ -104,11 +104,11 @@ Wrong footed, True Name frowned. "What? Why? I do not--"
 
 May held up her paw, a brief glance at the ceiling hinting at a sensorium message elsewhere.
 
-Ioan frowned as well. Intuition told him the discussion they'd had earlier was quickly moving beyond hypothetical. "May, are you sure--"
+Ioan frowned as well. Intuition told em the discussion they'd had earlier was quickly moving beyond hypothetical. "May, are you sure--"
 
 True Name jolted upright in her seat on the couch. "What the fuck is--"
 
-"Accept it," May said, and ey could see the full force of all her centuries of earnestness focused her cocladist; earnestness, kindness, the right tone, the perfect cant of ears and bristle of whiskers, all of it fine tuned to show her just what she needed to see. "It will only help, True Name."
+"Accept it," May said, and ey could see the full force of all her centuries of earnestness focused on her cocladist; earnestness, kindness, the right tone, the perfect cant of ears and bristle of whiskers, all of it fine tuned to show her just what she needed to see. "It will only help, True Name."
 
 Her face contorting with the strain of holding what must be a very large high priority merge at bay without either remembering or forgetting it, True Name gasped. "May... May Then... Why..."
 
@@ -152,7 +152,7 @@ She nodded, swallowing down that wave of tears as best she could. "We are good a
 
 "Did something go wrong, then?"
 
-"End Waking has not merged down in more than a century and a half, even when Michelle quit, all she had to do was let the memories fall onto her and then quit herself. He has diverged quite far in that time, as is to be expected, which means the potential for conflicts."
+"End Waking has not merged down in more than a century and a half; even when Michelle quit, all she had to do was let the memories fall onto her and then quit herself. He has diverged quite far in that time, as is to be expected, which means the potential for conflicts."
 
 Eir frown deepened. Ey thought ey could tell where this was going. "Aren't those usually just when memories don't line up, though?"
 

writing/post-self/mitzvot/018.md

@@ -4,9 +4,9 @@ It took about six hours for True Name to recover from the merge to where she cou
 
 May spent much of that time by her side. Ey wasn't sure what it was that the two did while in her room, if it was just May sitting by the skunk's side, if she was just being present, if the two were having their own quiet conversations, or sharing what affection she was comfortable sharing with a down-tree instance she had resented enough to shock.
 
-All three, ey suspected. Ey checked in on them a few times, knocking and listening for permission to enter. Each time, True Name remained curled in bed with May sat nearby, whether on a chair beside it or sitting up on the bed itself. Ey'd ask if they needed anything, they'd both decline, and then ey'd go back to pacing holes in the rug or the yard or around Arrowhead Lake.
+All three, ey suspected. Ey checked in on them a few times, knocking and listening for permission to enter. Each time, True Name remained curled in bed with May seated nearby, whether on a chair beside it or sitting up on the bed itself. Ey'd ask if they needed anything, they'd both decline, and then ey'd go back to pacing holes in the rug or the yard or around Arrowhead Lake.
 
-The rest of the time, May was out with em, almost always as close as she could be, whether that was tucked in against eir side on the beanbag, hugging around eir middle from behind while ey cooked, or, at one point, requesting that ey to sit on the floor outside the bathroom while she showered, just so that she could talk and, in her words, feel eir presence.
+The rest of the time, May was out with em, almost always as close as she could be, whether that was tucked in against eir side on the beanbag, hugging around eir middle from behind while ey cooked, or, at one point, requesting that ey sit on the floor outside the bathroom while she showered, just so that she could talk and, in her words, feel eir presence.
 
 The mood throughout remained somewhere between anxious and remorseful.
 
@@ -88,9 +88,9 @@ May only nodded, swallowing back tears.
 
 "I remember a few days ago, too. I remember when you came to the forest, remember watching, awkwardly, while you cried on Debarre's shoulder after I told you about...well, after we spoke. I remember hearing about all of your hatred over the years, about the resentment that you still have for me. I remember how it was you talked me into this, how helpless I was before it. I remember all of it."
 
-There was no more holding back the tears, at that, though she did her best to cry silently.
+There was no more holding back the tears at that, though she did her best to cry silently.
 
-True Name smiled more kindly than she had yet that night. "But you still thought of me. "I do not want her to die," you said. You said that you do not know why you still care about me, and you said that to your cocladist perhaps not yet knowing that I would have that memory as well. You two are both meddlesome brats, but thank you for thinking of me."
+True Name smiled more kindly than she had yet that night. "But you still thought of me. 'I do not want her to die', you said. You said that you do not know why you still care about me, and you said that to your cocladist perhaps not yet knowing that I would have that memory as well. You two are both meddlesome brats, but thank you for thinking of me."
 
 May tucked closer against Ioan's side and buried her face in eir shirt to cry, making a rude gesture at her down-tree instance before hugging her arms around eir waist.