update from sparkleup

writing/hand-of-god.html

@@ -65,11 +65,11 @@
 <p>Hands.</p>
 <p>Hands.</p>
 <p>Always hands.</p>
-<p>Jude had tuned out, and some distant part of her was surprised to find that she had stood, that she had been pacing, that she had stopped and hunched and tensed, once more facing the outcropping. The outcropping of pale and dead rock, new and uncharted, and its surrounding forest, growing now these last few months. The rock that resisted study and comprehension. Resisted humanity, pushed it away with some dark sense of unwelcome.</p>
+<p>Jude had tuned out, and some distant part of her was surprised to find that she had stood, that she had been pacing, that she had stopped and hunched and tensed, once more facing the outcropping. The outcropping of pale and dead rock, new and uncharted, and its surrounding forest, growing now these last few months. The rock that resisted study and comprehension. Resisted humanity, pushed it away with some dark sense of unwelcome, and yet drew the eye.</p>
 <p>That finger pointing toward God.</p>
 <p>Elanna&rsquo;s voice broke through the compulsion. &ldquo;You okay?&rdquo;</p>
 <p>The botanist frowned, the tension draining from her as a blanket settled over her unsettled mind. Turned, abashed, back toward camp. &ldquo;No. Maybe. I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;</p>
-<p>The hand of God had loosened its grip around her mind and here she was, back at camp, back beneath the trees, back by the tall reeds, back by the ferns fingering the air and the fronds like hands reaching out to them.</p>
+<p>The hand of God had loosened its grip around her mind and here she was, back at camp, back by the barrel cactus and saguaro, back beyond the trees, where ferns fingered the air and fronds like hands reached out to touch them.</p>
 <p>It did not last.</p>
 <p>The camp grew quiet once more. Sarai handed her bookmark back and she fingered it, book forgotten. She felt the letters etched into the thin brass, felt the words there, proven now to be incorrect, felt the shapes telling lies against her skin. She felt the weight of that hand, at once comforting and threatening, settle once more against her brain-stem, compressing, caressing, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing&hellip;</p>
 <p>The quiet grew thick. The air grew heavy. The light failed.</p>
@@ -82,14 +82,14 @@
 <p>And her cheek was as cool as her own felt, and those tiny hairs that lent to the softness of her skin were beyond familiar: known in a way that proved the relationship beyond a doubt.</p>
 <p>And while the dreamy confusion was mirrored on her face, there was also curiosity, also a detached fondness, an understanding, however inexact, of oneself. And these, too, were inexact, for she did not understand, did not feel fond. Did not feel anything.</p>
 <p>And she had stopped thinking of this dream-scented Doppelgänger as something other than herself. She was not it. She was she. She was <em>she</em>.</p>
-<p>And her hands were her own. She had a hand in their making. Her hand was forced hand in hand with blood on her hands washing her hands of the matter. After all, was a bird in the hand not worth two in the clearing, there beside the outcropping where, written on the stone, were the words the linguist toiled over day after day?</p>
-<p>And there she was, and if there had been a transition from her being in her tent to her standing in the clearing, to her moving toward where those dead rocks climbing stolidly up from earth, she missed it, just as she had missed that transition between waking and sleeping.</p>
+<p>And her hands were her own. She had a hand in their making. Her hand was forced hand in hand with blood on her hands washing her hands of the matter. After all, was a bird in the hand not worth two in the forest, there beside the outcropping where, written on the stone, were the words the linguist toiled over day after day?</p>
+<p>And there she was, and if there had been a transition from her being in her tent to her standing in the woods, to her moving toward where those dead rocks climbing stolidly up from earth, she missed it, just as she had missed that transition between waking and sleeping.</p>
 <p>And yet was she asleep? She must be. Was she? She was here, and the air was heavy, and the light had failed, and the quiet was absolute aside from the sounds of the night. No words, no words.</p>
 <p>And there she was in front of her. There was her. There was <em>her</em>. There was her mirror image, her perfectly imperfect self.</p>
 <p>And they crouched toward each other, feral, as if in preparation for flight. </p>
 <p>And they reached out toward each other and their fingertips touched and the touch was warm and the callouses were real.</p>
 <p>And they relaxed, and Jude felt that even as the darkness deepened, the light within her grew, and they both settled down to their knees.</p>
-<p>And finally, the mirroring was broken as the <em>her</em> that was not her slid <em>her</em> fingers up over her wrist and gently guided her hand down toward the soil, loamy and damp, and she knew then that she must spread her fingers and dig them down into the earth, there by the outcropping which was a finger pointing at God such that she was in turn pointing at&hellip;at what? At the owner of that hand? At the owner of that finger?</p>
+<p>And finally, the mirroring was broken as the <em>her</em> that was not her slid <em>her</em> fingers up over her wrist and gently guided her hand down toward the soil, strangely loamy, strangely damp, and she knew then that she must spread her fingers and dig them down into the earth, there by the outcropping which was a finger pointing at God such that she was in turn pointing at&hellip;at what? At the owner of that hand? At the owner of that finger?</p>
 <p>And as she did so, she felt that the dirt beneath her fingernails took root, that her nails themselves must have been rootlets and that her arm a stolon, that her whole body was the runner for some tree, some entity other than herself, for at that point, she took root.</p>
 <p>And her fingers crawled beneath the soil, and drank of the water there, and tasted the nutrients, and found purchase beneath the layer of loam and humus.</p>
 <p>And there, her fingers curled around the God-stone, and indeed, she knew it as she felt it, amber with a seed of pain embedded within.</p>
@@ -97,7 +97,7 @@
 <p>And all doubt fled her then. All was racing toward what it should be.</p>
 <p>And she felt growth accelerate as, bound now to the earth, her bones became wood and her muscles loosened, unwound, and thus unbound began to lengthen, to strengthen, to arch skyward, seeking stars, seeking God.</p>
 <p>And when Aaron awoke, he was the first to notice Jude was gone. </p>
-<p>And when Elanna awoke, she was the first to notice the new tree, there by the numinous outcropping, where ferns fingered the air and fronds like hands reached out to touch them.</p>
+<p>And when Elanna awoke, she was the first to notice the new tree, there by the numinous outcropping and its attendant forest, where ferns fingered the air and fronds like hands reached out to touch them.</p>
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                 <p>Page generated on 2021-02-16</p>