<p>She played in paint and color. She painted the backdrops for the productions. She painted the props that sat on the stage or rested in the actors’ hands. She painted the stage itself, the matte black of so many past productions long abandoned. She painted her nails, her claws, herself. She got it on her fur. She got it on her clothes. She got polka-dots on her nose and stripes over her ears. She painted her dreams, those serene and idyllic landscapes interrupted by hyperblack squares, unnerving holes in the world that depicted a nothing-ness, a missing-ness, a not-there-ness that slid easily between the border of absurd and unnerving. She painted the holes in the world that she dreamed about, afraid to touch and yet which would not stop touching her mind in turn.</p>
<p>She played in her free time, such as it was — after all, her work, such as it was, was a joy beyond joys, but everything is a sometimes food. She played hide-and-seek in the auditorium. She played tag with the performers and techs. She played pretend. She played horses and kitties and mousies. She played with Warmth In Fire, endless forks dotting Serene’s countless landscapes, leapfrogging each other over fields and between trees, bouncing off the walls of canyons, colliding with force enough to knock them spinning and send them dizzy. She hunted down her friends and played hide-and-seek, yes, and tag and horses and kitties and mousies. She hunted down What Gifts and played puzzle games and rhythm games and stealth games and real life platformers and turn-based sims that locked her in place when it was not her turn.</p>
<p>She played with her form. She played with her fur. She played with her mane. She played with her claws and with her tail. She played with her size. She played with her age. She played when she presented as twenty. She played when she presented as twelve. She plays when she presented as five. She played always, even when she was as old as the rest of her clade — what was it, now? 275? 276? She played with identity. She played with fire.</p>
<p>She played with life, enjoying and enjoying and enjoying. </p>
<p>She played with death. She had died countless times — to knives, to falls, to drowning, to games, to those who said they loved her, to those who said they hated her.</p>
<p>She played because she was a kid.</p>
<p>She played because she <em>was</em> play. Play incarnate.</p>
<p>Motes was a kid because she played. She was a kid because kids are resilient. She was a kid because kids bounced, because they fell, cried, and then picked themselves up once more and went back to playing. She was a kid because she liked being small. She was a kid because she liked it when others played, too, she liked when others fell into enjoyment and laughter along with her. She liked the way that it brought out the best in those in her life. She was a kid because a life would not truly be complete without kids, and she believed with all of her heart that life should be complete.</p>
<p>And so Motes played. She sat atop her stool, one of her feet perched up there with her so that she could rest her chin somewhere while she painted. A palette sat on an infinitely positionable nothing beside her. A canvas sat on an easel, rickety and well-loved, before her. A brush sat in her paw, and paint sat on the brush. A thin, black rectangle sat on that canvas, as does a mountainous landscape. Music sat in her ears, chirpy and glitchy to offset the serenity of the landscape in a new way.</p>
<p>She hummed, her tail fwipped this way, flopped that, and she painted until the painting was finished — there was no guarantee of when that would be: the painting would be finished when it was finished.</p>
<p>Slipping off her stool, she stumbled clumsily to the side, laughing at the sudden rush of pins-and-needles to her backside and the base of her tail. She inserted a step in her list of things to do: before cleaning, she plopped down onto her belly and used the remainder of the ochre paint in the brush to doodle the face of a fennec fox on the hardboard floor of her studio. It was one of thousands by now, and they had long since started to overlap.</p>
<p>Once feeling returned to her rump, she pushed herself back to her feet and started the process of cleaning up.</p>
<p>She had used to just wave away her supplies, either letting them dissipate back into her memories or float back to their proper locations in her studio, but some decades prior, she had started using the process of putting things away by hand to unwind from the context of painting.</p>
<p>She split the difference today, and forked quickly into four Moteses: one hauled the stool up above her head and trundled over to plop it down in the corner by the workbench; one ran off with the brush and palette to wash them off in the sink; one brought the easel, painting still clamped to it, over to the corner to dry; one tried to do a handstand in the middle of the room while Motes#root watched. Eventually, she managed for a few seconds before collapsing into a giggling heap.</p>
<p>One by one, the various Moteses quit until #root was the only one remaining. She pushed herself to her feet, stretched, and padded out of the pleasantly cluttered studio.</p>
<p>“Lights, Dot.”</p>
<p>Motes jolted at the sound of A Finger Pointing’s voice from the couch beside the door. “Oh! Yeah!” she said, forking off one more ephemeral instance to go flip the switch in the studio, make some spooky noises, then quit, all while #root climbed up to join her down-tree instance on the couch, slouching against her side.</p>
<p>“All done painting?” Beholden asked, not yet looking up from where she was slicing a lime into wedges at the bar.</p>
<p>“Mmhm!”</p>
<p>A Finger Pointing ruffled a hand lazily through the skunk’s mane. “What were you working on, my dear?”</p>
<p>“Same sort of thing,” she said, squinting her eyes shut lest they be poked by errant strands of that longer fur. “The shapes in my dreams are getting narrower and flatter, now.”</p>
<p>“Are you going to wind up painting thin black lines in another hundred years?” Beholden asked from the bar, a grin audible in her voice. “Just a beautiful landscape cut in half by a hair?”</p>
<p>Motes giggled. “I do not know! Probably. Are you making drinks, Bee?”</p>
<p>The other skunk scoffed, tossing her head back. “Am I making drinks? Am <em>I</em> making drinks? And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights of the Ode clade, what happened to your brain?” She laughed, adding, “Why? Want one too?”</p>
<p>Motes blew a raspberry in response. “Yes please!”</p>
<p>“Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps of the Ode clade, you had best not be feeding the child gin,” A Finger Pointing said.</p>
<p>“Right, virgin gin fizz it is.”</p>
<p>“Maaa,” Motes whined. “I am a grown up!”</p>
<p>“You are seven, my dear,” A Finger Pointing retorted.</p>
<p>Another raspberry.</p>
<p>Beholden poured a tall gin fizz to share with herself and her partner and cocladist, lime muddled with sugar and cardamom bitters, gin, soda water. Then she made a second glass sans gin and turned to lean back against the edge of the bar, finally facing the two cuddled up on the couch. She absentmindedly started to top up the glass with gin. Or, well, ‘absentmindedly’. “Oh, <em>right!</em> You said virgin,” she said, mock surprise in her voice. Gin continued to pour. She winked to the skunklet. “Oh no. <em>Oh no!</em> That is <em>way</em> too much! Motes! You had better not drink this!”</p>
<p>Human and skunk, tall and slender and short and stocky, laughed.</p>
<p>Beholden padded over to join them on the couch. She took a long sip from one of the glasses before passing it over to A Finger Pointing, handing the other glass over to Motes. “We are headed out to a pub tonight with Ioan and May Then My Name, my dear. Jazz and burgers and too much whiskey.”</p>
<p>“Can I come?”</p>
<p>A Finger Pointing shrugged. “I do not see why not. Do you want to?”</p>
<p>Motes grinned. “Not really! I just wanted to see if I could.”</p>
<p>Her up-tree pinched her ear between her fingers. “Very well. Will you be staying here by yourself, then?”</p>
<p>She laughed, tilting her head and taking a lapping sip of her drink. “Maybe! Maybe I will find someone to flop with.”</p>
<p>“Cuddly Dot?” Beholden asked, leaning closer to sandwich her between her two guardians, between Ma and Bee.</p>
<p>Motes cozied right in. “Mmhm. Not tired, just lazy.”</p>
<p>“No, no. Beholden is right. You are absolutely a fusspot,” A Finger Pointing said. “Why is Warmth In Fire feeling fussy?”</p>
<p>“I do not know. Usually that happens when ey gets a letter from one of the Dear-cules.”</p>
<p>“Very well. It has been a while since you pestered Dry Grass, then. You flopped on Slow Hours earlier today and pestered your aunts earlier this week. You tracked soil all over.”</p>
