update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/idumea/008.md

@@ -46,7 +46,41 @@ They loved each other, and then, as has been the theme throughout, the world coi
 
 And so here she was, no longer just a cocladist of mine, just a woman who wandered sims and drank mochas and loved the world, but once more a systech, once more a fairy, once more The Blue Fairy.
 
+And so here she was, *here,* Standing before my door, my second visitor in a week, bowing to me and greeting me with such kindness as I have ever seen from her, whenever we have had cause to meet — not infrequently, for she was also fond of my beloved up-tree.
 
+"Tell me, Dry Grass, how you have been," I said once we were settled around the table in my house, that dining table which so easily expanded to fit all who would join and yet now was small and intimate.
+
+"Oh, well enough, I suppose. I think I am starting to find my away out of that phase where everything feels new about systech stuff. It was easy enough for me to jump right in at first, but so much has changed in the intervening years."
+
+"I can imagine, yes."
+
+"It is not all on me, at least. We are learning the ins and outs of the new tech they have given us while bringing Lagrange back up from the Century Attack. So many crashes after long-diverged forks merged cross-tree out of fun, so many instances of people accidentally messing up their new ACLs and locking themselves out of their own rooms." She laughed, sipped her mocha, and added, "The world feels strange and new."
+
+"It does, at that," I said, smiling. "I do not think I am at risk of either of those, at least. I have little interest in cross-tree merging, beyond providing an instance for Ashes Denote That Fire Was."
+
+"Same, on both counts. I believe they have picked up nearly twenty Odists now. They look...well, they certainly have plenty going on, yes?"
+
+I laughed. "Twenty of us, even if we had never forked, would be, what, six thousand years of memory? And we are not exactly known for never forking, yes? I would say that is plenty."
+
+The Blue Fairy nodded and looked out the window for some time, simply resting her cheek on her fist and her elbow on the table, watching the way the leaves flittered and flickered in the gentle breeze of the day. There is a comfortably jittery quality to such flitting and flickering that reminds me that no one thing in the world is still, and certainly not trees.
+
+Eventually, she replied: "That is actually part of why I came here, Rye."
+
+"Oh?"
+
+"I came to speak with you about End Of Endings."
+
+I sat up straighter. My friends, you will surely understand when I say that The Woman had been on my mind much in the intervening days, in that week between when I last saw her and this lovely afternoon with The Blue Fairy. Her loveliness shined bright in my thoughts, and I still felt blessed — still *feel* blessed! — by each and every one of her smiles and quiet laughs. "Yes, I have spoken with her recently. Warmth and I have both, I mean."
+
+"Yes, she mentioned such to me. She mentioned you two, Motes, Slow Hours, Beholden, No Hesitation, Ever Dream, Rejoice, Farai — a woman with whom she has at times dated — and a few incidental friends she has made in the last month or so. I have been meeting up with each of them to get a better sense of what is happening. You are the last on my list."
+
+I thought this through — and even thinking through it now, I wonder at it. The Blue Fairy gave me her reason — "I am asking you last of all because I think your experience with stories may help me make better sense of everything," she said when I asked why me — and yet even now I linger on this thought that The Woman wove between us all — between all of those that The Blue Fairy mentioned — a gossamer web of connections. She was the strands — perhaps she still remains those strands! — and along those spider-silk-thin lines flow connections built on the blessings she bestowed upon us all. We do not feel stuck, I do not think. We are not bugs in someone absent spider's web. But what are we? Are we the nodes? Are we the sticky radial lines capturing ideas of her, or are we the unsticky spiral that allows us to pick apart our understanding?
+
+I spoke then at length with The Blue Fairy, hearing all that she had to say, all that I have told you, dear readers, already, and so much more. So, *so* much more! For The Woman had sat with The Blue Fairy for nearly ten hours, expressing all of this and slowly making for her an argument. 
+
+Her argument was thus: The Woman knew that there was suffering in her as she was. She knew that she was, in some integral way, defined by her un-joy. She knew that this suffering was bound up in her ongoing process of becoming, of this ever-increasing entropy of the self as time wrought its cruel machinations on her soul. 
+
+((Rye doubts until Dry Grass mentions the bit about the perisystem))
 
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