From 79967690982930595f4b3c146e09dcf1155457a3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Madison Scott-Clary Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2024 21:00:17 -0800 Subject: [PATCH] update from sparkleup --- writing/post-self/motes/005.html | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/writing/post-self/motes/005.html b/writing/post-self/motes/005.html index 8514321cc..e5b78a04b 100644 --- a/writing/post-self/motes/005.html +++ b/writing/post-self/motes/005.html @@ -56,7 +56,7 @@

Her mind became a mire, a marsh, a crowded bog full of unpleasant smells and tangled reeds and matted rushes and wilting lilies and sickeningly green watercress and spiky sedge and…

Her muscles clenched and bunched and tensed and pulled her down into a ball so that her feet were flat on the ground and her butt hovered some inches above and her face was buried in her arms where they crossed over her knees and in her ears was the rushing of so much blood and her vision was black and red and full of phosphenes and all she felt was the pain of her skinned paws and bloodied nose echoed in repeating waves radiating throughout her body.

“Oh, Dot,” she heard above the din, Beholden’s anxious and aching voice barely audible. “How long have you been here, my dear? You never came to dinner and– oh shit, are you okay, Motes?”

-

She felt, muffled by those waves of stinging and soreness, the pair of paws that had helped to gently unfold her now touching gingerly around her snout, blood all dried. She saw Beholden’s face as though it was one she herself might bear in some thirty years, and that anxiety ratcheted up several notches. I am an adult, I should put away childish things, I am an adult…

+

She felt, muffled by those waves of stinging and soreness, the pair of paws that had helped to gently unfold her now touching gingerly around her snout, blood all dried. She saw Beholden’s face as though it was one she herself might bear in some thirty years, and that anxiety ratcheted up several notches. Any hope she had of staving off that overflow was now long, long gone. I am an adult, I should put away childish things, I am an adult…

“Whoa, whoa! Hey, come here,” Beholden murmured, and Motes realized from some few feet above herself that she had started to thrash and wail. She looked down with distant concern. She should stop that. She watched her body slowly relax, watched her face screw up and the tears once more start to flow.

Interesting, she thought. Yet I acted like a child when I was a child. I am an adult…

Her sense of self lagged behind — an idea of a mote of a Motes tethered like a helium balloon — as Beholden carefully lifted her unsouled-yet-still-living body and hoisted her up to carry her from her studio — the lights, she left the lights on — to her bedroom. A place of soft things. A soft mattress, a too-thick duvet, stuffed animals and yet more stuffed animals. I should put away childish things, I am…