update from sparkleup
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@ -102,18 +102,20 @@
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<p>“How do you mean?”</p>
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<p>“Well, they cut off Dear, right?” it said. “And I am rather a lot of Dear. I am Dear and Rye and Praiseworthy. I am all of my down-trees. I <em>like</em> being all of my down-trees. I am proud of it.” She grinned. “I think of all of those, they might like Rye okay, but they hate Dear, and I cannot imagine them being too into Praiseworthy after the <em>History</em> named her as the propagandist during Secession.”</p>
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<p>Motes frowned. “Wait, really?”</p>
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<p>“I mean, I have not actually talked to them, but they cut off Dear for less.” Ey laughed bitterly. “But again, I am also a little one, right? My stanza also has our family dynamic, yes? I have dated a cocladist before, have I not? Hell, Rye and Pointillist are <em>plenty</em> chummy, if you know what I mean.”</p>
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<p>She laughed. “They just write each other letters.”</p>
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<p>“I mean, I have not actually talked to them, but they cut off Dear for less.” Ey laughed bitterly. “But again, I am also a little one, right? My stanza also has our family dynamic, yes? I have dated a cocladist before, have I not? And My and I have been getting close again, too.”</p>
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<p>Motes laughed and clapped her paws.</p>
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<p>Grinning, it continued, “Hell, Rye and Pointillist are <em>plenty</em> chummy, if you know what I mean.”</p>
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<p>She scoffed. “They just write each other letters.”</p>
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<p>“Yeah. <em>Sexy</em> letters.”</p>
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<p>“Well, okay,” Motes said, still giggling. “Do you really think they have cut you off? Effectively if not actually, I mean.”</p>
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<p>“I have not talked with them, but neither have they talked with me,” they said. “I think that I am one step away from being in their cross-hairs. I am over here doing my weird stuff, making things and food and whatever. I am not really political, I am not being sneaky or dating a Bălan or whatever. I <em>am</em> part Dear, though, and I <em>am</em> small like you.”</p>
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<p>“I have not talked with them, but neither have they talked with me,” they said. “I think that I am one step away from being in their cross-hairs. I am over here doing my weird stuff, making things and food and such. I am not really political, I am not being sneaky or dating a Bălan or whatever, and My is off doing her own thing now. I <em>am</em> part Dear, though, and I <em>am</em> small like you.”</p>
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<p>“Which do you think would piss them off more?”</p>
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<p>“Fuck if I know,” Warmth said cheerily.</p>
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<p>Motes snorted. “You do not sound like you would mind too much.”</p>
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<p>Ey shrugged. “It would suck, but yeah.” It thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I will amend that somewhat. Even if it would not be any big loss for me, I do not think it would make any of us feel good. No one wants to be an outcast.”</p>
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<p>“Yeah…”</p>
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<p>“Sorry, Mote.” Warmth scooted closer and draped an arm over her front. “I did not mean to rub it in any.”</p>
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<p>She nodded and tugged Warmth’s arm up to hug her own around it. “It is okay, just had not heard it put like that before.”</p>
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<p>She nodded and tugged Warmth’s arm up to own around it. “It is okay, just had not heard it put like that before.”</p>
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<p>“Dear got its fair share of getting cast out as it became more and more of a snotty little shit, and some of that rubbed off onto us. I have a fair few people who dislike me because of that.”</p>
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<p>“People just looking up Dear in the directory, seeing you, and then hating you for no reason?”</p>
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<p>It grinned, nodded.</p>
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@ -39,7 +39,7 @@
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<p>Motes cried. She hung limply and cried before that long-dead version of herself.</p>
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<p>This was not supposed to happen.</p>
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<p>Michelle/Sasha sneered through that omnipresent exhaustion. “Some mote who styles herself Motes. Some grasper-after-fame. Some fetishist who wishes only to taint the Ode with lurid visions of youth.” </p>
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<p>In her free hand/paw, this ghost brought into being a dagger, silver-bladed, wood-hilted, ruby-pommeled. She reached out and slowly, almost tenderly, pressed it into Motes’s paw. Holding her wrist, she brought that paw up so that the tip of the blade was pressed against the skunk’s neck, pricking at the skin over her jugular. When she let go, Motes found her paw remained there, immobile, unresponsive to her efforts to pull it away.</p>
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<p>In her free hand/paw, this ghost brought into being a dagger, silver-bladed, wood-hilted, ruby-pommeled. She reached out and slowly, almost tenderly, pressed it into Motes’s paw. Holding her wrist, she brought that paw up so that the tip of the blade was pressed against the skunk’s neck, pricking at the skin over her carotid. When she let go, Motes found her paw remained there, immobile, unresponsive to her efforts to pull it away.</p>
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<p>“This is your kink, is it not ‘Motes’? Your fetish, ‘Speck’? ‘Skunklet’?” Sasha/Michelle leaned forward, nearly nose to nose, whispered, “<em>‘Dóttir’?</em>“</p>
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<p>Motes sobbed. “Please…” she managed at last.</p>
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<p>None of this was supposed to happen. None of this was right.</p>
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@ -72,7 +72,7 @@
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<p>“Remember, yes,” A Finger Pointing said, yawning dramatically and leaning harder until she was able to push both of the skunks over onto their sides. She held up a hand as though inviting them to picture a tableau. “I remember the maps of the Holy Land,” she bemoaned, quoting from some old production, some old classic. “Colored they were. Very pretty! The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty.”</p>
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<p>Both of the skunks fell into laughter, sprawled awkwardly beneath their down-tree instance on the bed. “That is where we will go, you used to say,” Beholden said, keeping up the act. “That is where we will go for our honeymoon.”</p>
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<p>“We will swim! We will be happy!” Motes chimed in.</p>
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<p>Sighing dreamily, A Finger Pointing nodded. “We should have been poets.”</p>
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<p>Sighing fondly, A Finger Pointing nodded. “We should have been poets.”</p>
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<p>Motes could tell what they were doing. She was as adept at this as they were. The job of an actor is to trick the audience — just for a moment! — that the story playing out before them is more real than the rest of the world, that it is the rest of their lives that is merely a play. A Finger Pointing and Beholden, Ma and Bee, were nudging her to set aside for now this dream-rotted headspace, this mopery.</p>
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<p>She saw their gentle manipulation and loved them all the harder for it.</p>
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<p>The rest of the morning passed in comfort and lazy chatter, but throughout, some portion of Motes was dedicated to thinking back, to remembering. Comfort and lazy chatter and remembering, then, before the three decided to split off to their own tasks — Beholden into two instances, one to work on music, one to the theatre; A Finger Pointing to some planned brunch; Motes to go for a walk, to go and talk.</p>
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@ -85,7 +85,7 @@
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<p>The vines or her feet carried her down through the neighborhood at a contemplative pace, giving her time to think of the conversation she wanted to have before she actually had it. She spoke so often without thinking, letting that be a part of her nature rather than some simple flaw, that to approach something so deliberately as this set her mood from the beginning, and by the time she drifted up one set of steps to a duplex near the far end of the neighborhood, many of her doubts had been set atop well-lit pedestals, and placards beneath each labeled their names, their creators, their provenance.</p>
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<p>No one answered the door when she knocked, so she hesitantly pressed the doorbell. This, she knew — for it was the same throughout the neighborhood — was created to send a sensorium ping to the inhabitant.</p>
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<p><em>Why am I so nervous?</em> one part of her wondered, and then another answered, <em>Perhaps because you are worried she will tell you the truth.</em> Another chimed in, <em>Is that not the goal? Perhaps–</em></p>
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<p>She was startled out of her anxious spiral by a gentle ping in return. <em>“Speck? What is up? I am the ALDR library. Would you like me to cycle the door?”</em></p>
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<p>She was startled out of her anxious spiral by a gentle ping in return. <em>“Speck? What is up? I am at the ALDR library. Would you like me to cycle the door?”</em></p>
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<p>Motes nodded. <em>“Hi Slow Hours. Yes please.”</em></p>
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<p>There was a quiet chime from the door and the letters on the nameplate faded from ‘Slow Hours’ to ‘Au Lieu Du Rêve Library’. This done, there was a quiet click and the door swung lazily open.</p>
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<p>Beyond, rather than the comfortable and comfortably her home that Slow Hours kept, there was a well-lit reading room, a solarium of sorts with glass that looked out over some far distant part of the selfsame prairie that the neighborhood abutted. A table, several chairs, and a small collection of far more comfortable recliners huddled in the middle, while beyond, a room of shelving stretched into dimness.</p>
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@ -96,12 +96,12 @@
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<p>“You are transparent, my dear. It is a strength of yours.” Slow Hours rested her hand atop the skunk’s head. “Now, come. Do you want to go sit outside?”</p>
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<p>“Yes please,” she said, feeling suddenly smaller still.</p>
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<p>She was a long time in opening up, which seemed to suit her cocladist just fine. Slow Hours summoned up a blanket and, disregarding the patio furniture that littered the concrete that ringed the solarium as well as the hard-packed dirt trail, picked her way out into the prairie. Holding two of the corners, she threw the blanket out to spread it over the shin-high grass. It seemed to float there, and for a long moment, neither of them moved. Skunk and woman observed this magic carpet in gingham hovering inches above the ground, bending blades and heads of stiff-stalked grass.</p>
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<p>When Motes remained in place, Slow Hours instead stepped onto the blanket and tramped dutifully around the rim of it, tamping down the grass so that they would not sink so deep into the blanket. That done, she lowered herself to sit cross-legged near the center and patted her lap.</p>
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<p>When Motes hesitated, Slow Hours stepped onto the blanket and tramped dutifully around the rim of it, tamping down the grass so that they would not sink so deep into the blanket. That done, she lowered herself to sit cross-legged near the center and patted her lap.</p>
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<p>At last, the skunk sighed and stepped onto the blanket, lowering herself to all fours and crawling forward to flop down beside her cocladist, resting her head on her thigh.</p>
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<p>“Now,” Slow Hours began. “Tell me what is on your mind. Tell me your second greatest joy and your third greatest fear.”</p>
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<p>Unable to hide a smile, she replied, “You cannot just steal my weirdo questions like that, Slowers.”</p>
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<p>“Can and will.”</p>
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<p>She giggled. “Well, okay. My second greatest joy is that you brought a fricking picnic blanket out here because you knew I would just get all frumpy in one of those stupid chairs, and my third greatest fear iiiis…” She trailed off for a moment, thinking. “I am afraid you are going to just tell me this is nothing.”</p>
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<p>She giggled faintly. “Well, okay. My second greatest joy is that you brought a fricking picnic blanket out here because you knew I would just get all frumpy in one of those stupid chairs, and my third greatest fear iiiis…” She trailed off for a moment, thinking. “I am afraid you are going to just tell me this is nothing.”</p>
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<p>“When have I ever been able to stop myself at “it is nothing”, Speck?” Slow Hours tweaked one of the skunk’s ears gently. “And if I do say that it is nothing, would that be so bad? You may have spent some time worrying, but is that not also time spent thinking through your emotions? We will still have spoken about <em>why</em> it is nothing.”</p>
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<p>Motes pawed up at her cocladist’s hand on her ear. “Well, okay. That is fair. None of us ever seem to be able to shut up.”</p>
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<p>“You see? You do understand. Now. Tell me what is on your little skunk mind.”</p>
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<p>She had often wondered if dreams took any time at all, if perhaps there was nothing while she slept and it was instead the act of waking up when the chaotic firings of her non-neurons from all that time she slept crashed and tumbled into some sense made by her newly-waking mind. Perhaps nothing happened while she slept but crude and natural processes, and it was hypnopompia where a cloud became a duck or a bunny.</p>
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<p>She was not so sure now. The immediacy of the dream felt too bound to time. Sure, the time spent playing the game was a haze of knowing how games work, of knowing what a speed-run was. That was non-time. That was all bunched up in impressions built from however many hundreds of such games she had played in her long, long life. She could not express whether or not the combat was good because it was neither good combat nor bad, it was just Combat™. It was just an idea.</p>
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<p>She was not so sure that dreams were meaningless firings of neurons composed into some semblance of order in the process of waking as she recalled tearfully the way that Michelle had caught her up by the scruff and told her horrible things — such horrible, horrible things — and then bade her drive home the blade to end her own life.</p>
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<p>All throughout, Slow Hours listened in silence, letting her talk while brushing her fingers slowly through the thick fur of her mane. Even after she finished speaking, while she lingered a while in those tears, her cocladist simply sat with her in silence, stroking through her fur. It was a comforting silence. Thoughtful. Patient, with no need of filling.</p>
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<p>All throughout, Slow Hours listened in silence, letting her talk while brushing her fingers slowly through the thick fur of her mane. Even after she finished speaking, while she lingered a while in those tears, her cocladist simply sat with her in silence, stroking through her fur and sharing in those tears. It was a comforting silence. Thoughtful. Patient, with no need of filling.</p>
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<p>Once her tears began to slow and she wiped at her nose with a tissue, Slow Hours leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I am sorry, Motes. You deserve better than what your sleeping mind has told you,” she said gently. “It sounds as though this false vision of your past self was upset with two things: your explorations around age and your explorations around death, yes?”</p>
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<p>Stifling some sniffles, aftershocks of the cry just ended, Motes nodded. “Yeah, though I think more the first,” she said, wincing at the muffled sound of her voice through her congestion. It sounded round, somehow, wrong. “That is what I have been thinking about most, anyway, that would have led to a dream like that.”</p>
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<p>“And you are not sure where these anxieties came from?”</p>
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<p>“Do you want to hear my thoughts on the clade, then?”</p>
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<p>Motes shrugged. “I guess.”</p>
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<p>Slow Hours nodded, letting her paws go. “I will not say “fuck ‘em”, much as either of us might want. You must not hyperfixate on them, but neither must you disregard them.”</p>
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<p>“Why? Do you have a prophecy for me?” Motes asked, grinning faintly. “The last time you gave me a prophecy, it was about whether I should stay friends with someone I met at a club.”</p>
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<p>“Why? Do you have a prophecy for me?” Motes asked, grinning faintly. “The last time you gave me a prophecy, it was about whether I should stay friends with Alexei.”</p>
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<p>She laughed. “I remember that, yes. You were bound to run into someone who was also into kidcore stuff as Big Motes, and we were stifling you.” The mirth faded to something more thoughtful. “But, yes, I have a prediction for you: the clade is not done with you, And We Are The Motes In The Stage-Lights. Even those who have cut you off have not forgotten you, and it is best that you not forget them.”</p>
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<p>The skunk frowned, rubbing her paws over her knees and toying with a rip in the denim of her overalls. “Okay,” she mumbled. “Where do you get all of this, anyway?”</p>
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<p>Slow Hours smirked, tapped at her temple with two fingers. “I have the outline of the world, do I not?”</p>
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<p>“Of course, my dear. I am afraid that I did not do quite the job of comforting you that I might, but I do hope that you take that to heart. Live intentionally, and remember that we love you.”</p>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2024-01-23</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2024-01-27</p>
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</footer>
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</main>
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