update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/motes/007.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 A Finger Pointing was not playing.
 
-She was not fucking around. She was not putting up with this. She would never put up with this, never should have put up with this. Seven years of silence, five decades of barely concealed spying, a century of awkward attempts to maintain a friendship, a cohesion, a sense of community with someone who clearly loathed some integral part of her life.
+She was not fucking around. She was not putting up with this. She would never put up with this, never *should* have put up with this. Seven years of silence, five decades of barely concealed spying, a century of awkward attempts to maintain a friendship, a cohesion, a sense of community with someone who clearly loathed some integral part of her life.
 
 She was not going to play around, here. She was not going to play soft. She was not even going to play hard: she was not going to play at all. Not with Hammered Silver. Not anymore.
 
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ She was not going to play around, here. She was not going to play soft. She was
 
 -----
 
-Some treacherously sunny afternoon some centuries back, Sasha/Michelle Hadje sat tiredly on the edge of a fountain in the middle of a brick-paved pedestrian mall. Just a woman or a skunk or perhaps both sitting on the rough stone in classical white, head bowed in concentration as the sun warmed the back of her neck. Beside her sat a man, a politician, watching as she drained her reserves of reputation to bring into being ten more instances of herself, each blissfully unafflicted by the restlessness-of-shape and in many ways less affected by the restlessness-of-mind that plagued her, though never completely without.
+Some treacherously sunny afternoon some centuries back, Sasha/Michelle Hadje sat tiredly on the edge of a fountain in the middle of a brick-paved pedestrian mall. Just a woman or a skunk or perhaps both sitting on the rough stone in classical white, head bowed in exhaustion and concentration as the sun warmed the back of her neck. Beside her sat a man, a politician, watching as she drained her reserves of reputation to bring into being ten more instances of herself, each blissfully unafflicted by the restlessness-of-shape and in many ways less affected by the restlessness-of-mind that plagued her, though never completely without.
 
 "So, what next?" the man asked.
 
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ She was forked smiling.
 
 And so when this man, this politician, this Jonas asked who wanted an assignment, she had decided instead to linger in that joy, to remember that lovely day instead of searching for some way to reengage with politics. That was left to The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream, the first line of the eighth stanza. She did not know what compelled True Name to lean into politics as she had been forked after A Finger Pointing, but she wished her all the best.
 
-When Michelle/Sasha stood at last, swaying, and tottered towards the remainder of her newly-formed clade, each bearing in their heart some secret, individual joy bestowed upon them by their tired creator, they had all welcomed her into their presence as a first-among-equals and bore her away to home, to her field of grass and dandelions.
+When Michelle/Sasha stood at last, swaying, and tottered towards the remainder of her newly-formed clade, these ten emanations  bearing in their heart some secret, individual joy bestowed upon them by their tired creator, they had all welcomed her into their presence as a first-among-equals and bore her away to home, to her field of grass and dandelions.
 
 What followed was a conversation that lasted until dusk. Each of them minus True Name, already at work, talked about the experience of coming into being, the experience of being settled firmly into one shape unlike their root instance, about the things that they loved and what they might do with that love.
 
@@ -106,7 +106,7 @@ Sasha laughed.
 
 Her two cocladists tensed. Neither wished to contend with the thought that Hammered Silver might have it in her to kill anyone in the only way the System knew how, some object loaded up with a contraproprioceptive virus to pierce their very being and crash them entire. However, though neither wished to, they both had to, and so they both nodded.
 
-Sasha smiled reassuringly. "I do not believe you need worry about *that.* She is mad, yes, and perhaps feeling betrayed, but she is not feeling murderous. She does not have that within her, I do not think. Would you like me to check all the same?"
+Sasha smiled reassuringly. "I do not believe you need worry about *that.* Making your name anathema would taint her own reputation, would it not? She is mad, yes, and perhaps feeling betrayed, but she is not feeling murderous. She does not have that within her, I do not think. Would you like me to check all the same?"
 
 Dry Grass nodded.
 
@@ -126,7 +126,7 @@ Sasha smiled and patted the back of that hand. "Of course. If I am able to sooth
 
 -----
 
-To fall in love with a cocladist is to engage in a radical form of self-love. To fall in love with a cocladist is to find a way that perhaps you *are* your type. To fall in love with a cocladist is to accept that you are large; you contain multitudes. To fall in love with your cocladist is to recognize that your hyperfixations define, in part, your sense of self, and that if you expand beyond one, then perhaps you are more than just one self.
+To fall in love with a cocladist is to engage in a radical form of self-love. To fall in love with a cocladist is to find the ways in which perhaps you *are* your type. To fall in love with a cocladist is to accept that you are large; you contain multitudes. To fall in love with your cocladist is to recognize that your hyperfixations define, in part, your sense of self, and that if you expand beyond one, then perhaps you are more than just one self.
 
 A Finger Pointing forked all nine of her up-tree instances in systime 3, back in the early days when it still cost to fork. She had plans, though, and she had a way around those costs. She forked once, leaving her and her new instance with half of her original reputation, less than it would cost to fork again, and then her new instance simply granted the reputation back to her, enough to fork once more. She had a way around those costs, for in those days, back before the reputation market had patched out that particular glitch, her up-tree instances did not need reputation beyond hers. She had plans. She had ideas for her particular joy. She would lean into theatre, build a troupe made up of just herself, for surely there were ten roles that needed to be filled in running a theatre.
 
@@ -158,7 +158,7 @@ At some point, though they disagreed on when — was it five years later? Ten? E
 
 There was sense of aromancy in A Finger Pointing that grew after she forked. She never could say where from; perhaps it was simply that she would rather have been friends with anyone than foster a particular friendship with one person. And yet there was something about Beholden. Something fulfilling, perhaps, or complementary, or a self-love that rose above all others.
 
-And so they fell in love, each in their own way. They fell in love and, for the most part, reveled. Yes, they had their spats. Yes, they had their flings besides, and the occasional relationship, all negotiated and cherished and bound up in compersion. But yes, they had each other.
+And so they fell in love, each in their own way. They fell in love and, for the most part, reveled. Yes, they had their spats. Yes, they had their flings besides, and the occasional relationship, all negotiated and cherished and bound up in compersion. But always they had each other.
 
 There was, of course, the social implications to consider, the taboo around intraclade relationships, the implications of narcissism and other, far more crass terms. Suggestions were made from on high, such as it were, from across the clade.
 
@@ -168,9 +168,9 @@ Hers were the kind suggestions. The comprehensible suggestions. The ones based i
 
 Other suggestions: not so kind.
 
-For there was Hammered Silver, strangely quiet during one of A Finger Pointing's many lunch dates with her. Quiet and distant, all conversation polite and full of nothing comments about the sim, the salad, the coffee, all gazes cast upon everything but her.
+For there was Hammered Silver, strangely quiet during one of A Finger Pointing's many lunch dates with her. Quiet and distant, all conversation polite and full of nothing comments about the sim, the soup, the coffee, all gazes cast upon everything but her.
 
-When pressed, she had simply shrugged and offered some plainly false words about being distracted. 
+When pressed, she had simply shrugged and offered some plainly false words about being distracted and begged an end to the meal. 
 
 A Finger Pointing hardly needed to wait for some explanation more true, for when she arrived home — home to that apartment building, home to the simple and cozy unit that Beholden had only moved into a few weeks prior — there was an envelope waiting for her, taped unceremoniously to her door. In it were words of scorn, a sense of a nose pointed snootily up into the air as though to escape some rancid smell.
 
@@ -182,7 +182,7 @@ It was the first letter of several. It was the first time of many that she stood
 
 A Weapon Against The Waking World, it turned out, was perfectly happy to meet with them.
 
-Waking World had long ago taken up the mantle of 'dad'. Not father, not guardian, but specifically dad. Where Hammered Silver reveled in feelings of motherhood, of caring and cherishing and clinging tight, such as they might be sys-side, he had reveled in all the glorious humor of fatherhood, of protecting and uplifting and letting go. He was a being of idle quips and truly terrible dad jokes. He was a man who might call you 'sport' or 'champ' as easily as 'friend'. He was, in all ways except physical, *your* dad, whoever you might be.
+Waking World had long ago taken up the mantle of 'dad'. Not father, not guardian, but specifically *dad.* Where Hammered Silver reveled in feelings of motherhood, of caring and cherishing and clinging tight, such as they might be sys-side, he had reveled in all the glorious humor of fatherhood, of protecting and uplifting and letting go. He was a being of idle quips and truly terrible dad jokes. He was a man who might call you 'sport' or 'champ' as easily as 'friend'. He was, in all ways except physical, *your* dad, whoever you might be.
 
 He had long ago taken the form of a stocky man, hairline receding, tall enough, looking just enough like an Odist that one could see that he might belong to the clade — his name aside, of course — and yet the resemblance was slight enough that seeing him beside Hammered Silver would not inspire comments of "siblings...?"
 
@@ -198,7 +198,7 @@ Beholden, leaning back with her arms crossed over her chest, snorted. "Great," s
 
 He held up his hands and shook his head. "No, no, I do not think you do. She hit me because that is the relationship that we have. Despite how often we say 'I love you' or the fact that we share a bed, despite the fact that I *do* earnestly love her, she remains staunchly of the opinion that we are in no way in a relationship."
 
-"Okay, but how can you love her after all she has done?" the skunk snapped. A Finger pointing rested a hand on her paw, but, even as she rested her free paw atop that hand, she continued regardless. "Motes is fucking catatonic in bed now. She cut us all off, cut off whole stanzas, cut off the Bălans. Now she has cut off Dry Grass — one of her own — and here you are, skulking into the library because you know that she cannot track you here."
+"Okay, but how can you love her after all she has done?" the skunk snapped. A Finger pointing rested a hand on her paw, but she continued regardless. "Motes is fucking catatonic in bed now. She cut us all off, cut off whole stanzas, cut off the Bălans. Now she has cut off Dry Grass — one of her own — and here you are, skulking into the library because you know that she cannot track you here."
 
 Waking World averted his gaze. "That is not how love works, Beholden. I do not like what she has done. I *hate* what she has done. I wish that I could get to know Motes better, even, but I do love her, and my position in our little game is...precarious. I must be careful."
 
@@ -206,7 +206,7 @@ Waking World averted his gaze. "That is not how love works, Beholden. I do not l
 
 "My muse," A Finger Pointing murmured. "I know that you are angry. We are all angry. Hell, I am *livid,* but this needs to be a conversation for another time. Right now, there are too many pieces in play."
 
-Beholden subsided, lips still curled in a snarl. After a moment's silence, her shoulders slumped and she looked away. "Yes, of course. I am sorry, Waking World. I was the one who found Motes overflowing and she was covered in blood from getting hit in the nose or something, and was all scraped up. It was...hard on me, is all."
+Beholden subsided, lips still curled in a snarl. After a moment's silence, her shoulders slumped and she looked away, resting her paw atop A Finger Pointing's hand. "Yes, of course. I am sorry, Waking World. I was the one who found Motes overflowing. She was covered in blood from getting hit in the nose or something, and was all scraped up. It was...hard on me, is all."
 
 Waking World blanched. "Wait, shit, really? Uh..." He folded his hands in his lap and frowned down to them. "Shit. I am sorry, Beholden. I did not know."
 
@@ -238,7 +238,7 @@ Waking World laughed weakly. "Please do not do that, my dear. That is not what a
 
 "She needs to feel like she has hurt you," he said, speaking slowly. "She needs to know that her words had the power to do that. She needs to feel like she accomplished something through them."
 
-"She did hurt us, though," A Finger Pointing said flatly. She could feel a wave of dissociation, of vertigo. She pushed it down so that she could continue. "She hurt Motes and Dry Grass, and she re-traumatized us all all over again. I would say that she succeeded admirably."
+"She did hurt us, though," A Finger Pointing said flatly. She could feel a wave of dissociation, of vertigo. She pushed it down so that she could continue. "She hurt Motes — quite literally. She hurt Dry Grass, and she re-traumatized us all all over again. I would say that she succeeded admirably."
 
 He shrugged helplessly.
 
@@ -252,7 +252,7 @@ They sat in silence for nearly a minute while Waking World thought. A Finger Poi
 
 A Finger Pointing snorted. "You are not wrong, my love. Motes at her youngest has never thrown a tantrum quite like this. Do we just drop it, then? Let her feel superior?"
 
-"That would certainly work," he said, shrugging. "I do not know how how much it would accomplish for your feelings, but she would leave you alone. She really does just want to feel like she is in the right, and no amount of argument will make her feel anything but justified."
+"That would certainly work," he said, shrugging. "I do not know how much it would accomplish for your feelings, but she would leave you alone. She really does just want to feel like she is in the right, and no amount of argument will make her feel anything but justified."
 
 "Yeah, fuck that," Beholden said, to which Dry Grass nodded emphatically.
 
@@ -335,7 +335,7 @@ And so she did. She laid out several points about what she felt described Motes'
 
 They all boiled down to yet more of the same. Optics and optics and optics. Even True Name thought less about optics than Hammered Silver. Even the politician.
 
-The lunch date ran long and A Finger Pointing grew weary of discussing point after point after point, talking about optics and optics and optics. Even refuting these claims about the optics of the problem led to Hammered Silver admitting in essence that the core of the problem was that she did not like it. Simply did not enjoy it.
+The lunch date ran long and A Finger Pointing grew weary of discussing point after point after point, talking about optics and optics and optics. There were no refutations that made a dent in the argument.
 
 In the end, Hammered Silver let out a frustrated sigh and said, "We may continue to meet, my friend, but only on the condition that we do not speak further of Motes."
 
@@ -387,7 +387,7 @@ She could still comprehend, at least, and could still see Beholden there beside
 
 She shook her head and carefully sipped her water. "Nothing in particular, no, though if you could stay here for a little while, I would appreciate that."
 
-"Do not be ridiculous," Beholden said, grinning wanly. "Like I would ever fucking leave. I *am* going to send a fork to go check on Dot, though."
+"Do not be ridiculous," Beholden said with a wan smile. "Like I would ever fucking leave. I *am* going to send a fork to go check on Dot, though."
 
 "Please do so, yes."
 
@@ -419,11 +419,11 @@ They were friendship colored because that was the tinted glass that A Finger Poi
 
 It was not a pair of rose-colored glasses. She was not burying her head in the sand to avoid some unpleasant facts. She was as realistic as ever she had been, as Sasha/Michelle had been before her and Michelle Hadje before that.
 
-It was an expectation of herself and others. It was a standard to which herself and others were held. It was a trust that others would aim for joy and friendship as she did.
+It was an expectation of herself and others. It was a standard to which she and others were held. It was a trust that others would aim for joy and friendship as she did.
 
 And thus it was an expectation one might fall short of. It was a standard one might not reach. It was a trust that could be breached.
 
-At some point in the past — there were so many admonitions against joy that she could choose from! — A Finger Pointing's friendship with Hammered Silver came to an end. The most visible of these was perhaps when Sasha joined Au Lieu Du Rêve as stage manager in systime 231, five years after she became Sasha. That was when Hammered Silver had moved beyond cutting off Sasha herself and the entirety of the eighth, first, and part of the ninth stanzas, and had included the entirety of the fifth stanza.
+At some point in the past — there were so many admonitions against joy that she could choose from! — A Finger Pointing's friendship with Hammered Silver came to an end. The most visible of these was perhaps when Sasha joined Au Lieu Du Rêve as stage manager in systime 231, five years after she had become Sasha. That was when Hammered Silver had moved beyond cutting off Sasha herself and the entirety of the eighth, first, and part of the ninth stanzas, and had included the entirety of the fifth stanza.
 
 For the rest of the fifth stanza also included this expectation, this standard, this trust that there was within all people something worth friendship, some kernel of joy, and none of them shunned Sasha, either.
 
@@ -469,6 +469,8 @@ But a full half of the letter was devoted to a particular combination of particu
 
 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.
 
+She proved their fears accurate, in her own unkind way.
+
 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.
@@ -477,7 +479,7 @@ That was the time their friendship died, the moment A Finger Pointing received t
 
 -----
 
-Once she had had her water, and then a simple drink mixed by Beholden, and spent an hour resting, A Finger Pointing stood and walked to the back patio, out where the concrete ended in a sharp seam and the wild grass of the field threatened to tickle at her ankles, were it not for socks and slacks.
+Once she had had her water, and then a simple drink mixed by Beholden, and spent an hour resting once the wave of dissociation had started to roll back out, A Finger Pointing stood and walked to the back patio, out where the concrete ended in a sharp seam and the wild grass of the field threatened to tickle at her ankles, were it not for socks and slacks.
 
 She forked, and her new instance moved to stand facing her. When she nodded, the instance opened a simplex sensorium message to Hammered Silver. It was essentially a recording of whatever the instance saw and heard that would be sent when she was finished.
 
@@ -525,7 +527,7 @@ The skunk lay tightly curled beneath her covers, a pillow held tightly in her ar
 
 Or...not sleep, but withdraw from the waking world.
 
-Better to show what she could without bothering the girl too much, so she stepped quietly into the room and climbed up onto Motes's bed with her, curling behind her and draping an arm across the little skunk.
+Better to show what she could. She stepped quietly into the room and climbed up onto Motes's bed with her, curling behind her and draping an arm across the little skunk.
 
 "I love you, Dot," she mumbled, burying her face against the back of the skunk's neck. "I am sorry."