update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/toledot/launch/launch/Codrin-green/002.md

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+# Codrin Balan#Green --- 2325
+
+The sim in which Dear's house squatted low, that short-grass prairie filled with buffalo grass and dotted with yucca and hardy dandelions, ran to the horizons in ceaseless waves, and often, when eir mind was too tangled up in itself to get anything done, Codrin would hunt those horizons.
+
+When ey had first moved in years ago, ey had asked Dear what else was on the prairie, and it had laughed. *"I do not know."*
+
+"Did Serene not leave you a map?"
+
+It shook its head again and repeated. *"I do not know. She does not know. It is just a prairie that never ends. You can walk as far as you want and there will always be more prairie before you. There are no mountains on the horizon, there are no rivers or creeks, and while there are a few rock outcroppings, they are largely uninspiring."*
+
+"So, just an empty prairie?"
+
+*"You say 'just', but Serene assures me that it is more complicated than that. The prairie is generated out to the horizon, and as long as you walk, it will continue to be generated out to the horizon. Only the places that we have seen are locked down, as it were, and remain after we have left."*
+
+"That sounds like it would just continue generating prairie."
+
+It had shrugged at that. *"All I have seen is prairie, and I have walked for days out there. Serene is no less a trickster than I, however, and I would not be surprised if there is something out there, perhaps triggered by a mood or a word."*
+
+And so when eir mind was too tangled up in itself to get anything done, Codrin would walk and walk and walk, always with the idea at the back of eir mind that perhaps ey would stumble across a creek or a cave that ey could bring Dear out to see.
+
+The endless prairie also provided an outlet to seek solitude.
+
+Moving in with Dear and its parter had been decided on a whim, originally as a way to complete the project ey had undertaken, and then when their relationship began to encompass em as well, ey had found emself suddenly surrounded by those other than emself.
+
+This had had its ups and downs. Ey did not realize that a not insubstantial portion of what ey had previously labeled boredom or listlessness had been loneliness. That feeling of becoming a part of something that required emotional investment and paid back emotional dividends had fulfilled em in a way that ey had not expected. Ey had talked about this with Ioan a year or so after ey had noticed it, and eir down-tree instance had agreed far more readily than ey had expected, saying that the Ode clade project had led to something of a sea change within em, and then reminded Codrin that ey had merged before moving in with Dear and had both perspectives within em now, solitary and social.
+
+However, it had meant that that part of em which was built up of things solitary now required conscious intervention to satisfy. Ioan had needed to seek out the social, and now Codrin needed to seek out the solitary.
+
+Ey needed to be away from Dear.
+
+It wasn't that the fox was hurting em. It was a delightful partner, kind and considerate, and it knew how to apologize when it had made a misstep. It wasn't even particularly loud, as its partner had long ago kicked it out of the house for working on anything that would be noisy.
+
+It was just a lot.
+
+The first time that Codrin had stepped away from the house when Dear was being a lot, the fox had gone into a small sulk, sending Codrin a curt apology via sensorium message and not responding when Codrin said that ey'd be back in a bit. They had soothed ruffled fur over dinner now, when Codrin stepped out to take a break from a very intense fennec, ey would leave with a reassurance and still take comfort in the loneliness of the prairie.
+
+Dear had been a lot today. Codrin had suggested that they do an interview together after Ioan had sent both launches --- Green and Blue --- a note asking that Codrin include the trio's reasons for leaving as well as those ey would be interviewing.
+
+*"We already told em that our fireside stories would be the only reasons we would send."*
+
+"Well, yes," Codrin said. "But from the sound of it, the Blue launch didn't do fireside stories."
+
+*"Then why not send that request only to Blue?"*
+
+"There was more to the message than that, Dear. Maybe ey just wrote the same thing for both launches and sent it in one go."
+
+The fox had stared down into eir wide mug of coffee, a series of emotions crossing its face, before nodding. *"Yes, of course. I apologize, Codrin. I have been thinking about those stories since launch night, and the more I do, the less I want the actual reasons to wind up in some history book."*
+
+Codrin had laughed, sipping eir own coffee. "I understand the impulse, believe me. I'm not even sure *I* know your reasons."
+
+*"That is by design, Codrin."*
+
+Ey could not place why that had bugged em so at the moment, but as it continued to snowball in eir mind over the next hour, picking up emotions as it went until it was an outsized lump tumbling around within em, ey had walked over to where the fox was blocking out stage diagrams of some sort, kissed the fox between the ears, and said that ey would be back soon.
+
+During eir previous expeditions, ey had placed cairns at regularly spaced intervals with rocks pointing directions where ey had split off this way or that, so as ey walked from cairn to cairn, looking for new ways to explore, ey thought about the conversation.
+
+"That was such a dramatic thing to say," ey said, sorting through eir reasoning aloud. "If it simply didn't want to talk about it, it would equivocate or tell me to fuck off. So why be so obviously sly about it?"
+
+The rocks did not reply. Ey set down another stone atop the cairn and walked off into the grass perpendicular from eir trail.
+
+"If it had told me to fuck off, I would've just written that in a note back to Ioan, and we would've had our private laugh about it. If it had equivocated, it knows that I probably would have kicked it way down the priority list and likely not bugged it again. Was it something about the stories themselves?"
+
+The grass did not answer, only rustled and tugged at the hem of eir sarong.
+
+"It prides itself on deliberate, and it *knows* that I know that, so why did it say that in particular? Am I supposed to ask it? Am I supposed to feel curious or chagrined or envious?"
+
+The wind only murmured to em.
+
+Ey walked out into the grass and focused on letting the litany of questions go, counting eir steps up to one hundred, where ey paused to build a new cairn out of flat clods of dirt and stones dug up from between the tussocks of grass. The sensation of the dirt gritting against eir palms, of the way it got trapped beneath eir fingernails, anchored em to a moment in time, rather than spinning off into abstract thought.
+
+"I won't push it, not yet," ey murmured to the pile when it had reached above the thin stalks of grass. "But that does sound like an invitation, doesn't it? *That is by design.* Like an invitation to play, or tease the reasons out of it."
+
+Ey frowned and pushed emself up to standing again. "Or maybe not."
+
+As ey continued to walk out into the prairie, a small portion of eir mind kept an eye out for a break in the scenery, anything other than that endless, rolling sea of grass.
+
+The rest of eir mind, though, continued to prowl through conversations that ey had had with Dear over the last few years as the prospect of the launch became more and more real. The fox had often talked about irreversibility, about how some things that one thought of as irreversible weren't, and many that one thought weren't could be turned back in one way or another. It had talked about having a drive to leave, and how there were some decisions that came from the head and some that came from the heart, but never what drove that drive, those decisions.
+
+"Does it feel guilt? Or regret or something?"
+
+Ey held onto that thought as ey walked another hundred paces to where ey would plant the next cairn. Soon enough, however many decades or centuries in the future, the prairie would be dotted with regularly spaced piles of rocks and dirt for miles spreading out from the house, and they would become as much a regular part of the landscape as the prairie itself, rather than this new thing that Codrin had introduced.
+
+As ey worked, digging up rocks and roots, ey tried to think of what all Dear might have to feel guilty about or regret over. Ey knew that that business with Qoheleth had come with some regret. It had mentioned more than once while Codrin worked on the story that had come out of that experience that it wished it had pushed harder to learn more before trying to pull the whole clade together.
+
+But it had stopped talking about regrets once the project had been completed. It had been happy with that, and it had giggled and clapped its paws at the spike in reputation it had gained the newly-formed Balan clade.
+
+*"See what I corrupting influence I have had on you?"* it had said.
+
+"I'm a ways off from having a clade listing like you, Dear." Ey had pulled up the reputation listing for Dear, and then for the entirety of the Ode clade, and they had both marveled at the numbers.
+
+*"Well, okay, yes. But still! The Balan clade! How delightful!"*
+
+Was it something to do with the clade? The Odists had been around long enough --- what had Dear said? After Secession? 2130 something? Still almost two centuries --- that there was certainly enmity between the various factions, perhaps there was some regret there.
+
+Ey sat before the cairn so that it came up to eye level, and the long, slow sunset begin.
+
+Perhaps it was regret or guilt, perhaps not. The fox had attacked the idea of leaving, of truly leaving the L<sub>5</sub> System and leaving no fork behind, with a ferocity that even Dear's partner admitted was somewhat unusual, as though it had *needed* to leave, to escape something.
+
+And then it's story, building a ascetic cult until it had been killed by its followers. Did some of that ring true to the fox? Did it feel that it had a cult following? Did it feel as though there were some risk of being destroyed by the thing that it had built up? Did it feel like an ascetic who had taken too many liberties?
+
+"I'm overthinking this," ey mumbled.
+
+All the same, eir frustration had burned itself out, and all that remained was exhaustion and worry. Ey would forever worry about Dear, seeing how brightly the fox flared, that some of the madness that it had said plagued the Odists, whether from age or from something before uploading, surely dwelt within it as well.
+
+As the sky purpled, Codrin sighed and stood up once more, stretching and beginning the long walk home. Ey could just arrive there, but the walk felt necessary to process so many strangely-shaped thoughts.