<p>Tonight, she played hard. It was a big Motes night. It was a human night. It was a night for hovering somewhere between twenty and twenty-five. It was a night for standing as tall as Beholden, as tall as so many of the other Odists, yet far more lithe. Tonight, she dressed up in her finest crepe-cotton blouse and gauzy skirt, and she braided for herself a fresh crown of flowers — marigolds, this time — grown by A Finger Curled and Beholden To The Music Of The Spheres.</p>
<p>Tonight, Motes played in hedonism. A night at a restaurant out on the town, where she stuffed herself with two Chicago-style hot dogs. “Drag them through the garden!” she laughed — and she was always laughing — “Everything but the ketchup!” A night when she ate all of her fries, and even mopped up the last of the fry sauce with a fingertip.</p>
<p>Tonight, she played drunk: a beer with the dogs, drinks made fizzy with champagne and sweet with floral liqueurs at a pop-up bar, then fruity drinks served in tall glasses with taller straws at the venue before the headliner started, the thump of the bass from the opener echoing up through her feet, pressing at her chest, leaving a warmth in her belly that verged on sensual. Tonight, between sets or whenever she felt like she needed a break, she would waft back to the bar and order a vodka soda or some other ridiculous drink meant more to hydrate than taste good.</p>
<p>Tonight, Motes played as hard as ever, letting that warmth that was building low in her belly be her guide as she latched onto a dancing partner, a solidly built mustelid — an otter? A fisher? — of some sort who wound his way through the crowd in a fluid motion that was dancelike even when the music had stopped. It was a night for letting him dance closer and closer as the sets progressed, a night for letting him press a pill to her lips and beneath her tongue. It was a night for letting him push his whiskery muzzle up beneath her chin, letting him show her just how sharp his teeth were against her throat, for pressing close enough to feel just how thoroughly he shared in her excitement.</p>
<p>Tonight, she let him take her home. Tonight she let him pin her to the bed, paw on her shoulder and teeth on her throat. Tonight, she let him draw blood.</p>
<p>And then it was a night for sitting on his balcony and talking while the waves of whatever drug he’d given her continued to roll through her in languid pulses. “It is like someone is brushing the underside of my skin with satin in the best possible way,” she said, and he laughed.</p>
<p>They sat and talked, legs dangling through the bars of the balcony’s railing over an impossibly high drop, her ears filled with the chatter of an impossible myriad of monkeys, startled from their slumber by their arrival, her eyes filled with the black and gold of an impossible city built into a cylinder. He pointed to a building in the distance down the length of the cylinder, told her how that one was all gardens, all flowers like those in her hair, now crushed lopsidedly from her forgetting to remove the crown when they’d fucked. He pointed up to the gentle golden glow in the sky, told her that the sun here was in a long, thin line, that it turned on from one end to the other so that one could see dawn coming from down the tube, could hear birdsong come on like a wave. He pointed from one end of the cylinder to another, the bounding walls marked by arcane symbols in neon, and explained that nearly half a billion people called this home, then laughed as she asked, “How many do you think are fucking right now?”</p>
<p>And in the morning, she woke pressed against him, limbs all wrapped together and the satiny subdermal waves of sensation still lingering. She dismissed it easily and slowly disentangled herself from the still sleeping otter-or-fisher-or-mink and started to pull stuff from the exchange for breakfast. Cold sliced meats and fish. Cold cheeses. Cold vegetables, fresh and pickled. Dense, nutty bread. Small pastries.</p>
<p>They sat on the balcony once more, out in the bright sun, and ate their breakfast together, talking of only the small things.</p>
<p>“Is this the type of thing where I get to know your name?” he asked at one point.</p>
<p>She leaned over to kiss his cheek and smiled dreamily. “Nope.”</p>
<p>After breakfast: a shared shower, a few minutes of comfortable silence, a promise to never see each other again, a kiss, and one last bite to the shoulder “for luck”, leaving fresh stains of red on her blouse to join the ones from the night before.</p>
<p>With that, she stepped back to the theatre. It was early yet and there were no performances, and she hoped that there would be someone there to greet her, someone there to witness her coming home, disheveled and bloodied, rumpled with bent crown, looking pleased and sated. Play is magnified by being shared, yes, and witnessed. She wanted to be seen, marveled over or doted upon. She wanted her joy to be acknowledged.</p>
<p>Empty foyer.</p>
<p>Empty ticket booths.</p>
<p>Empty auditorium.</p>
<p>Empty stage, but for one skunk, kneeling in the center with a clipboard and script laid out before her in a neat arc, a bank of three different colored highlighters resting in her lap.</p>
<p>Where so many of the clade had the stark contrast of black and white fur, hers was the warm brown of cinnamon with the pale cream of white chocolate. Where so many of the other skunks had black noses, black fur fading all but seamlessly before them, hers was far more pink, more easily seen twitching this way or that at some scent or another. Where so many of her family had long, poetic names, hers remained simple.</p>
<p>Motes traipsed down the long, shallow steps of the auditorium aisles, all but skipping in that long-running afterglow. “Sasha!”</p>
<p>Sasha lifted her head and squinted out into the relative darkness of the rows of seats, grinned, then sat up straighter, brow furrowing. “Motes, Jesus. What the hell happened to you?”</p>
<p>Hiking herself up onto the stage, undignified, she plopped down into a cross-legged sit before Sasha. “A fun night out is what. There was an otter.”</p>
<p>“An otter did that?” Sasha asked, raising a brow.</p>
<p>“Sharp!” she explained, miming fangs with two fingers.</p>
<p>She laughed. “Right, right. I didn’t know you were into the slinky types,” she said, leaning forward to gently probe at the side of Motes’s neck and shoulder, investigating the shallow puncture wounds that had been left behind. “One of those ‘looks worse than it is’ things, seems like.”</p>
<p>Motes sighed dreamily. “Yeah.”</p>
<p>Sasha snorted. “We are of a type, are we not, dear?”</p>
<p>“Mm? How do you mean?”</p>
<p>“A little bit of pain to spice things up.”</p>
<p>“Or a lot.</p>
<p>“Yes. I believe that might well run in the clade, even if it was not exactly Michelle’s thing.”</p>
<p>Motes nodded. “I do not remember that from phys-side, no.” She paused, head tilted and grin slowly growing on her face as she leaned closer. “Does that mean that you like that too?”</p>
<p>Sasha looked back down to her papers, picking up an already neat stack and racking it against the stage, a transparent attempt to hide a blush or hint of a smile. “It has come up once or twice, yes.”</p>
<p>“Oooh, Sashaaaa,” Motes said, laughing. “But wait, does that come from May, True Name, or E.W.?”</p>
<p>She looked up once more, rolled her eyes. “Can you really picture May being into such pain?”</p>
<p>“Not at all. What about E.W., though?”</p>
<p>“Perhaps,” she replied, thoughtful expression on her face. “There were some times in the past.”</p>
<p>“Well, <em>huh!</em>” she said, grinning still. She could feel the limerence for the form starting to fade, so she waved her hand. “But we can talk about that later! I need to re-skunk. I want to keep this shirt, though.”</p>
<p>“Alright, dear. I shall look away.”</p>
<p>Motes shimmied out of the blouse and folded it neatly, setting it on the stage before forking into her usual, smaller, soft-furred self once more. Younger, as well, back to that comfortable, comforting expression of youth. “Okay!” she said once she was done once more, rolling around to lay on her belly and poke her snout at one of the piles of paper. “What are you working on, anyway?”</p>
<p>Sasha smiled, tipped her clipboard forward to let the skunk see the stage diagram. “Blocking. Planning. Memorization.”</p>
<p>“Scheming!”</p>
<p>She laughed. “Well, perhaps that as well. Scheming about dinner. Scheming about coming home to Aurel.”</p>
<p>Motes nodded, carefully turning around one of the piles to read a few lines from the script before setting it back in place. She kicked her legs lazily in the air above her, feeling her tail brush against them. It was all part of the ritual of settling back into being a skunk, in leaning intentionally back into her presented age — somewhere around twelve, today.</p>
<p>She was startled back to awareness by Sasha’s voice. “What are you thinking about, little skunk?”</p>
<p>“Mm?”</p>
<p>“You seemed deep in thought.” She smiled faintly. “Or perhaps blissfully without.”</p>
<p>Motes stuck her tongue out at her. “I was thinking about how I was talking with Dry Grass yester– the day before yesterday, and how she was telling me about Hammered Silver being a b-word.”</p>
<p>Unexpectedly, Sasha winced, carefully setting down her clipboard with exaggerated care. “Yes. I am sorry, And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights, it was never my intent to create such a schism in the clade.”</p>
<p>Pushing herself to hands and knees and crawling around the piles of script, she knelt beside the other skunk, hugging around her shoulders. “It is okay! I do not blame you,” she said hastily. “Dry Grass also said that that was just a…um, a last straw, not even the biggest thing.”</p>
<p>“What did she say was?” Sasha asked quietly, shifting an arm around to hug Motes in turn.</p>
<p>“Me,” she said, shrugging. “Or, well, she also hates me, but the biggest bit was that I call A Finger Pointing ma, and that she is with Beholden.”</p>
<p>After nearly a minute of silence, Sasha said, “Years back, centuries ago, Jonas started a project of making intraclade relationships taboo. It was a measured process intended to keep <em>something</em> taboo while the rest of the System settled into a comfortable non-normativity — or even queer normativity — on most other relationship and identity fronts.” Another pause, and then, “Well, and because he was setting me up with May in the form of Zacharias to gain leverage.”</p>
<p>“Gross.”</p>
<p>“Very gross. I am glad to be quit of him, even if there are times that I miss the work. All of that to say that Hammered Silver bought into that hook, line, and sinker. She truly believed that it is some horrible taboo to get in a relationship — romantic or familial — within one’s own clade.”</p>
<p>“But she is!” Motes protested. “She is in a relationship with Waking World!”</p>
<p>Sasha snorted. “Do not let her hear you say that. She would say that she is not, that it is a partnership, it is two actors playing their parts: she, the mother; him, the father. Dad jokes and all.” She winked conspiratorially, adding, “Though I am not sure that Waking World would agree with her. I think he very much thinks of himself as her husband, of the both of them as very much in love with each other.”</p>
<p>Motes furrowed her brow in concentration. “She does not make any sense,” she said. “She hates ma and Bee for dating and hates me for being their daughter or whatever, and then she marries Waking World?”</p>
<p>“Perhaps her performance so convincing that she is fooling us all. Perhaps she is simply fooling herself.”</p>
<p>She scoffed. “Probably the second!”</p>
<p>“Almost certainly,” Sasha said, ruffling Motes’s mane affectionately. “But it is fine. I have not spoken with her in more than a decade.”</p>
<p>“I have not in more than a century,” Motes said proudly. “So I win.”</p>
<p>Sasha laughed and turned the ruffling into a noogie. “This is not a competition, Motes,” she chided. “But if it were, then yes, you would win. She has cut off even A Finger Pointing.”</p>
<p>Laughing and pulling herself away from the knuckles grinding against her scalp, the skunk sat up. “I thought they were on better terms, though. Ma met with her once a month, even.”</p>
<p>“When she found out that I had joined Au Lieu Du Rêve, Hammered silver cut all contact with the fifth, yes?”</p>
<p>“Mmhm. Did that include Pointillist?”</p>
<p>“Not at first, but certainly not long after. I think Hammered Silver is more mad with her than any of the rest of the stanza.”</p>
<p>“God,” Motes muttered. “She really does sound like a total b-word.”</p>
<p>“She is a lovely person, in her own way,” Sasha said gently, then added, “Which is a bitch, yes.”</p>
