update from sparkleup

writing/fanfic/southern-reach.html

@@ -13,33 +13,6 @@
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                 <p><span class="tag">writing</span> <span class="tag">fanfic</span> <span class="tag">fiction</span> <span class="tag">short-story</span></p>
-<ul>
-<li>Earlier expedition</li>
-<li>Botanist, psychologist, physicist, linguist, architect</li>
-<li>Botanist<ul>
-<li>Irish</li>
-<li>carries note from father (complicated relationship) with gaelic blessing &ldquo;may the road rise up to meet you&rdquo;</li>
-<li>linguist talks about translation, offers original</li>
-<li>starts focusing on last line &ldquo;may god hold you in the palm of his hand&rdquo;<ul>
-<li>Where lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner</li>
-<li>Physicist, christian, chimes in Isaiah 49:16 - &ldquo;See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands&rdquo;</li>
-<li>just an obsession with hands all around</li>
-<li>A hand in your making, a bird in the hand, hands forced, hand in hand, blood on your hands, washing one&rsquo;s hands of the matter</li>
-</ul>
-</li>
-<li>First one to go</li>
-<li>One night, outside the clearing where the tower is, meets clone</li>
-<li>Clone guides her hand into the soil where it takes root, muscles loosened, unwound, thus unbound began to lengthen, strengthen, arch skyward, seeking stars.</li>
-</ul>
-</li>
-</ul>
-<div class="verse">Go n-éirí an bóthar leat
-Go raibh an ghaoth go brách ag do chúl
-Go lonraí an ghrian go te ar d&rsquo;aghaidh
-Go dtite an bháisteach go mín ar do pháirceanna
-Agus go mbuailimid le chéile arís,
-Go gcoinní Dia i mbos A láimhe thú. </div>
-<h2 id="story">Story</h2>
 <p>The day began with the botanist giving the physicist a hand in setting up countless contraptions around the rim of the clearing, describing an invisible net of arcane geometries held five feet above the ground. She lugged the total station while he placed the equipment. He prattled on as he went, describing what he was doing, what tools he was using, what equipment she was carrying. She largely lost track after the word &lsquo;theodolite&rsquo;, though.</p>
 <p>Theodolite.</p>
 <p><em>Theo</em>-dolite?</p>
@@ -101,7 +74,19 @@ Go gcoinní Dia i mbos A láimhe thú. </div>
 <p>And when she reached out her hand to touch its face, it reached out its own to return the gesture, and very specifically moved its arm above her own so that they would not collide. Was that something that a reflection could do?</p>
 <p>And the touch was real. It was palpable. It was warm. It was present. There was the softness of her palm. There were the callouses on her fingers. There was the dirt beneath her nails.</p>
 <p>And she had stopped thinking of this Doppelgänger as something other than herself. She was not it. She was she. She was she.</p>
-<p>Her hands were her own</p>
+<p>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, their beside the stairs where, written on the wall, were the words, &ldquo;Were lies the strangling fruit that came from the hand of the sinner&rdquo;?</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 stairs bored down into the earth, she missed it, just as she had missed that transition between waking and sleeping.</p>
+<p>And yet was she asleep? 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.</p>
+<p>And there she was in front of her. There was her. There was her mirror image, her perfectly imperfect self.</p>
+<p>And they crouched toward each other, 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 the botanist 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 her that was not her slid her 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 stairs which were 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 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 even as the bark crawled up her arm, she saw her Doppelgänger stand and smile to her.</p>
+<p>And she felt herself take root as her bones became wood and her muscles loosened, unwound, and thus unbound began to lengthen, to strengthen, to arch skyward, seeking stars.</p>
+<p>And when the physicist awoke, he was the first to notice the botanist was gone. And when the psychologist awoke, she was the first to notice the new tree.</p>
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                 <p>Page generated on 2020-05-29</p>