update from sparkleup
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@ -228,7 +228,7 @@ This was bullshit, patented and trademarked, registered as a copyright and servi
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<p>An end to a friendship with a person is not the end of knowing that person. An end to a friendship can be sudden or gradual. It can be the type of thing that happens in one fell swoop: an argument, perhaps, or a disappearance. It can be the type of thing that takes months and years and decades: a drifting apart, perhaps, or a series of slow decisions. It can be both: an inflection point is reached and neither realizes it until down the line and, oh, perhaps it had ended long ago.</p>
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<p>A Finger Pointing was not sure when it was that her friendship with Hammered Silver <em>actually</em> ended, because there were so many points at which it <em>could have</em> ended that it was hard to pick just one. There were so many letters, now all stored in a single exo so that they would not simply live within her actual memory at all times, and each of those could have been the end of a friendship as easily as any other.</p>
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<p>There was still that point of realization, though. There was that point when she realized that she had long ago ceased to be Hammered Silver’s friend, had long ago become merely her cocladist, some obligation to be followed up upon out of a tired sense of formality or information gathering over friendship-colored lunches.</p>
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<p>They were friendship colored because that was the tinted glass that A Finger Pointing held before her eyes. She viewed the world with friendship, with the joy of joy itself. She looked at all times through a gel — one of those transparent, colored sheets used to tint a stage-light — colored friendship, colored joy.</p>
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<p>They were friendship colored because that was the tinted glass that A Finger Pointing held before her eyes. She viewed the world with friendship, with the joy of joy itself. She looked at all times through a gel — one of those transparent, colored sheets used to tint a stage-light — colored with friendship, colored by joy.</p>
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<p>It was not a pair of rose-colored glasses. She was not burying her head in the sand to avoid some unpleasant facts. She was as realistic as ever she had been, as Sasha/Michelle had been before her and Michelle Hadje before that.</p>
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<p>It was an expectation of herself and others. It was a standard to which herself and others were held. It was a trust that others would aim for joy and friendship as she did.</p>
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<p>And thus it was an expectation one might fall short of. It was a standard one might not reach. It was a trust that could be breached.</p>
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@ -240,18 +240,18 @@ This was bullshit, patented and trademarked, registered as a copyright and servi
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<p>At some point back in the late 2100s, Motes had begun exploring this form of childhood — no one’s child in particular, sure, but a being built entirely out of play. A note arrived.</p>
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<p>And at some point back in the mid 2200s, Motes had begun exploring the concept of family. She had since moved in with A Finger Pointing and Beholden, and the longer she stayed, the more she fell in love with them as her guardians and the more they fell in love with her as their charge.</p>
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<p>For this was true of all of her up-trees, and for much of Au Lieu Du Rêve besides. Going years back, back even to the late 2100s, this reveling in play that Motes brought to the fifth stanza had built in A Finger Pointing a sense of her place in the order: her role was a maternal one. A reveling in care, in the type of friendship that flowered in a particular dynamic.</p>
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<p>She was their matron, in a way. She was their protector. She shielded them as best she could from the politics that so much of their cocladists were engaging in throughout the rest of the System. “But that is my job,” she reasoned allowed when she became more open about this protection. “That is why we have an administrator for Au Lieu Du Rêve, yes? Someone has to deal with the politics of running a theatre, yes?”</p>
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<p>The first time she called A Finger Pointing ‘ma’, there had been a conversation, full of various confusions and inquiries and boundaries. Both came to an agreement that this was not comfortable. Not now, not yet.</p>
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<p>She was their matron, in a way. She was their protector. She shielded them as best she could from the politics that so much of their cocladists were engaging in throughout the rest of the System. “But that is my job,” she reasoned aloud when she became more open about this protection. “That is why we have an administrator for Au Lieu Du Rêve, yes? Someone has to deal with the politics of running a theatre, yes?”</p>
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<p>The first time Motes called A Finger Pointing ‘ma’, there had been a conversation, full of various confusions and inquiries and boundaries. Both came to an agreement that this was not comfortable. Not now, not yet.</p>
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<p>A year later — for what is a year to a cladist? — Motes did it again, and this time she asked first, and permission was granted to see how it felt. It was still uncomfortable, but perhaps there was joy to be found. Perhaps there was expectations and standards and trust that could be built up.</p>
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<p>And so, as it had been with each of Motes’s tentative explorations and gentle testing of mutable boundaries, this became a thing that was okay at home, okay in limited doses, okay for a trial period. It was worthy of exploration, for if there was the potential for joy and everyone deserved such, then perhaps there was some way Motes could be granted such a thing.</p>
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<p>This private setting, this iterative context, this ongoing play allowed for growth and change.</p>
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<p>There was soreness, of course. There was soreness that A Finger Pointing and Beholden still had to deal with the taboo of intraclade relationships, that it was still not permissible for this reason or that for them to kiss in public, for them to share their I-love-yous.</p>
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<p>This built up a false equivalence within all three of them. It allowed them to consider this taboo as applying to all intraclade relationships beyond simple community, simple friendship. Big-R Relationships like those of A Finger Pointing and her Beholden and little-r relationships like those of Motes with the two of them. This desire for family to be constrained to a private setting must apply to all kinds of family dynamics, yes?</p>
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<p>“Beholden and I are still smarting because we must sequester our affection for one another in private. That is why I have been hesitant to take on the caregiver role that you have sought from me,” A Finger Pointing had said during a quiet night’s conversation, skunklet curled beside her on the couch. “But I do care for you, do I not? I do feel like a sort of matron amidst the fifth stanza, do I not? Perhaps it is time I reconsidered my aversion to familial language. Perhaps it is time I considered reclamation. After all, everything I have done has been so that you can live in peace. Are you living in peace, Motes? Are you at peace when you must restrain your feelings for me for reasons neither of us particularly care for?”</p>
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<p>There was soreness, of course. There was soreness that A Finger Pointing and Beholden still had to deal with the taboo of intraclade relationships, that it was still not permissible for this reason or that for them to kiss in public, for them to share their I-love-yous where others might witness that joy.</p>
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<p>This built up a false equivalence within all three of them. It allowed them to consider this taboo as applying to all intraclade relationships beyond simple community, simple friendship. Big-R Relationships like those of A Finger Pointing and her Beholden and like those of Motes with the two of them. This desire for family to be constrained to a private setting must apply to all kinds of family dynamics, yes?</p>
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<p>“Beholden and I are still smarting because we must sequester our affection for one another in private. That is why I have been hesitant to take on the caregiver role that you have sought from me,” A Finger Pointing had said during a quiet night’s conversation, skunklet curled beside her on the couch, getting pets. “But I do care for you, do I not? I do feel like a sort of matron amidst the fifth stanza, do I not? Perhaps it is time I reconsidered my aversion to familial language. Perhaps it is time I considered reclamation. After all, everything I have done has been so that you can live in peace. Are you living in peace, Motes? Are you at peace when you must restrain your feelings for me for reasons neither of us particularly care for?”</p>
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<p>And so it remained largely at home, at home with the three of them and at home in the neighborhood that was slowly building up around them. It remained a secret, but, like A Finger Pointing and Beholden’s relationship, it remained an open one. The quiet of the secret allowed them live to their fullest, and the openness allowed them to share joy where they felt safe doing so.</p>
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<p>But then, some time back around systime 182, back around the time the clocks ticked over to 2306, back around the time Michelle/Sasha had summoned them all to her field to merge centuries of memory and then quit, Hammered Silver sent one of her longest letters yet. It was in some ways a screed. It was beyond simply admonition, note, or missive. It was an epistle, some general letter intended to be a point of instruction not just to her but to the world as a whole.</p>
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<p>But then, some time back around systime 182, back around the time the clocks ticked over to 2306, back around the time Michelle/Sasha had summoned them all to her field to merge centuries of memory and then quit, perished, Hammered Silver sent one of her longest letters yet. It was in some ways a screed. It was beyond simply admonition, note, or missive. It was an epistle, some general letter intended to be a point of instruction not just to her but to the world as a whole.</p>
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<p>The screed, well worth embodying as a physical letter if only to be torn up, ripped to shreds, burnt to ash, soaked with tears to douse the fire, ground into a paint, and used to spell out anger and despair, spelled out in nigh-unintelligible detail all of the ways in which she and hers had fallen short.</p>
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<p>Motes had existed. She had tested the limits and found them flexible. She had found the boundaries negotiable. She had poked her nose out into the world and found it largely amenable to her existence. She had lived her life in play. She had played as a child and played as an adult. She had gone down slides and been bitten during sex and died on-stage, all countless times.</p>
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<p>Motes had existed. She had tested the limits and found them flexible. She had found the boundaries negotiable. She had poked her nose out into the world and found it largely amenable to her existence. She had lived her life in play. She had played as a child and played as an adult. She had gone down slides and been bitten during sex and died on-stage and off, all countless times.</p>
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<p>All of these were unacceptable. All of these had led to letters and notes of their own. All were rehashed through paragraph after paragraph of spiny invective.</p>
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<p>But a full half of the letter was devoted to a particular combination of particular topics that had apparently struck Hammered Silver as worthy of ire: Motes had started calling A Finger Pointing ‘ma’ and A Finger Pointing had started calling Motes ‘Dot’. Two syllables worthy of an essay-length diatribe.</p>
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<p>How dare she, Hammered Silver cried — and with such a loss as that of Sasha/Michelle, she truly sobbed. How dare she test the clade’s position in this most precarious life time and again by doing this awful, awful thing. On and on and on.</p>
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@ -280,12 +280,12 @@ This was bullshit, patented and trademarked, registered as a copyright and servi
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<p>Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver</p>
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</blockquote>
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<p>She read the letter through twice and then committed it to an exocortex and destroyed the original.</p>
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<p>“What a fucking bitch,” she muttered to herself as she turned to return inside. “At least it fucking worked.”</p>
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<p>“What a fucking bitch,” she muttered to herself as she turned to return inside.</p>
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<p>A simple dinner. A few glasses of wine. A quiet evening saying nothing while she lounged with her head on Beholden’s lap while the skunk worked.</p>
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<p>As darkness fell, as they planned on bed, she checked up on Motes for herself.</p>
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<p>The skunk lay tightly curled beneath her covers, a pillow in her arms, eyes clenched tightly shut. She was tempted to stand there for a few minutes, simply watching her charge, her Dot, sleep.</p>
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<p>The skunk lay tightly curled beneath her covers, a pillow held tightly in her arms, eyes clenched tightly shut. She was tempted to stand there for a few minutes, simply watching her charge, her Dot, sleep.</p>
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<p>Or…not sleep, but withdraw from the waking world.</p>
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<p>Better to show what she could without bothering the girl too much, so she stepped quietly into the room and climbed up onto Motes’s bed with her, curling behind her and draping an arm across her.</p>
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<p>Better to show what she could without bothering the girl too much, so she stepped quietly into the room and climbed up onto Motes’s bed with her, curling behind her and draping an arm across the little skunk.</p>
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<p>“I love you, Dot,” she mumbled, burying her face against the back of the skunk’s neck. “I am sorry.”</p>
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<p>There was more she could say — so much more — but for some reason, words failed her after that. Words and will both failed her, and so she simply lay there with Motes, replying to Beholden’s gentle, inquiring ping with a soothing one of her own. She had told Motes that she loved her, as she never tired of doing so, and that was enough.</p>
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<p>She lay there until she felt Motes slowly relax beneath her arm, heard her breathing slow, and then for a while after.</p>
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