update from sparkleup
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<p>“I lost In The Wind, she lost Should We Forget.” The Blue Fairy averted her gaze. “I changed because of that loss. I got back into being a systech, yes?”</p>
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<p>I sat back in my chair, holding my mug in both paws to draw from the warmth. “Do you think, then, that she is seeking this change because of the loss from the Century Attack? That of Should We Forget?”</p>
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<p>“That is what I came to ask you about, actually. I have visited with all of these people, heard all of what they have had to tell me about End Of Endings’s last few weeks, and now I want to hear how you would write the end of this story, and how you imagine she would justify it.”</p>
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<p>Now <em>this</em> was a thought, dear readers. This was a thought that danced up along my nape and left a tingle in my scalp, it is a thought that danced down along my arms and gave an inch in my paws that invited the picking up of a pen. It is a thought that has circled around my head like a halo, lighting all that I see, for some years now, for nearly six years! I thought to write this story then, and I thought to write this story after, and I thought to write this story in the intervening years, but something was not quite right, not quite right, not quite right about the time or about myself or about the world around me, and so I did not. I did not write the story perhaps because I was still living in that haste to experience all that I could before our world risked once more coiling around and eating some more billions of us and our lives were turned off like some simple light switch. I did not write the story because I was writing only the small things, that I might spend the rest of my time loving those around me, hugging my beloved up-tree, eating picnics out on the lawn with my stanza, simply <em>living.</em></p>
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<p>Now <em>this</em> was a thought, dear readers. This was a thought that danced up along my nape and left a tingle in my scalp, it is a thought that danced down along my arms and gave an inch in my paws that invited the picking up of a pen. It is a thought that has circled around my head like a halo, lighting all that I see, for some years now, for nearly six years! I thought to write this story then, and I thought to write this story after, and I thought to write this story in the intervening years, but something was not quite right, not quite right, not quite right about the time or about myself or about the world around me, and so I did not. I did not write the story perhaps because I was still living in that haste to experience all that I could before our world risked once more coiling around and eating some more billions of us and our lives were turned off like some simple light switch. I did not write the story because I was writing only the small things, that I might spend the rest of my time loving those around me, hugging my beloved up-tree, eating picnics out on the lawn with my stanza, simply <em>living.</em> Ah, I am trying to–</p>
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<p>Some of you, perhaps some of my newer uploads, or my littler readers, or maybe some of those who have lived for centuries, might wonder at this. They might wonder: “Rye, it seems to me like The Woman is asking to be absolved of all those except the barest responsibilities of living.” They might wonder: “Rye, it seems to me like The Woman is abdicating on life in a way that she can deny is suicide.” Perhaps they might wonder: “Rye, The Woman has chosen for herself a next step, a beautiful exploration.” And all of them might wonder: “Rye, why is it that you are being asked this in particular? Why is Dry Grass not asking for your opinion on whether The Woman should or should not do this thing?”</p>
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<p>And I think that, to these musings, I might reply: “My friends, my lovely friends, a beautiful consequence of cladistics is that this is simply not my role. Yes, I had feelings on the thought of The Woman existing within perpetual stillness — of course I did! How then would I be blessed once more by her smile? — and I did indeed tell those to The Blue Fairy, as you shall see, but that is the easy part. The hard part and the valuable thing that I might have to offer is that aspect that I have focused my life around, which is the telling of stories. There are others who might offer predictions for the future, those such as Slow Hours who live their life in prophecies, but it is my life to write the stories of the now, of the present, of the lives we are living and breathing pinned at the forefront of time’s inevitable arrow. The Blue Fairy came to me with all of this research that I might have done myself when it comes to writing a story and asked me to build up a sense of The Woman’s life that we may better understand.”</p>
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<p>And so, I agreed, and The Blue Fairy and I agreed that I would sleep on it for one night, and then talked of other things for a few minutes longer before she quit to merge back down, while I bathed in this research already done, and told within myself a story.</p>
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<p>“No, no, that is quite alright. It is sweet, actually, that she found something meaningful like that. But yes, one ending is that she does as she says and that she finds her happiness there, but we are all left with complicated feelings. We will all have lost her, in a way, yes? For, though she has said that she is not aiming to <em>die,</em> she will have <em>effectively</em> died to us, yes? We will have to process her loss.</p>
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<p>“The other ending is that we help her try to find happiness that does not involve another loss within our clade. In this she may find herself confronted with frustration, not just at the denial of her request, but at the fact that, if there does remain some joy that is not stillness, she may encounter more pain in the process of getting there.”</p>
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<p>She frowned, lingering in silence, and then nodded. “And I worry that that, too, will be uncomfortable for us. We will see her still among us, but will we see her happy? If she is miserable, I do not think I would like that, either.”</p>
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<p>“Yes. When we spoke yesterday, I was quite against the idea. I know that, if she does continue living, if she does not quit, she can always come back to us, but it still came with a sense of wanting to do everything</p>
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<p>((Rye doubts until Dry Grass mentions the bit about the perisystem))</p>
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<p>“Yes. When we spoke yesterday, I was quite against the idea. I know that, if she does continue living, if she does not quit, she can always come back to us, but it still came with a sense of wanting to do everything I could to prevent that.” I sighed — I remember that well, I sighed as though I was breathing out my complicated feelings in a way that speaking them would not quite do justice — and continued. “And yet now, having done as you suggested. I feel perhaps more the opposite. If she is, as she has suggested via her various conversations, as Rejoice has suggested, suffering, then who are we to suggest she linger there? Even if it is not a kind of suffering that we do not understand, it would be rather cruel of us, would it not? And yet is life not hard? And yet decisions ought to be respected, yes?” I laughed and waggled my paw back and forth. “This is difficult, and that, in and of itself, is a good story.”</p>
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<p>The Blue Fairy groaned and covered her face in her hands. “Fuck. Rye, why is this so hard? Why did she ask me?”</p>
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<p>“Because you are a good person. She respects you, yes? And you are a cocladist. You <em>are</em> her, in a way,” I said, squeezing her upper arm kindly. “She is looking to someone she respects and someone she <em>is</em> to either give her blessings by helping, or to talk her out of it. The decision is not whether or not she should, but whether or not we should. It is not a judgment on her, if it is a judgment at all, but it is a judgment on us.”</p>
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<p>I, dear readers, dear, <em>dear</em> friends, I am trying to believe this. I am trying to live into this. I am trying to feel that I have been judged for making that decision, the decision that I did, the decision to let go — for I am sure that you see now just where this is going; have I not written so much in the past tense? — and been judged worthy. I hope that, if God exists, that They will smile and brush my mane out of my eyes and rest their paw — for am I not made in their image? Am I not <em>b’tzelem Elohim?</em> — and say to me, “It is okay, Rye. To let go is difficult, but it is okay. Sometimes one must let go.”</p>
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<p>But here is the point where my mind was made up, and I will admit to being somewhat ashamed that it was something so simple as this, but I am a simple skunk. One might call me a one-dimensional person and not be wrong. This is the point in the story where I made that decision.</p>
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<p>“I do not think we would ever know, is all. You are right in that she has said that this is not a death, but we would not ever know. The reason she came to me is not necessarily to help her turn into a tree — though I will also help her with that — but to modify her record in the perisystem clade listing to be grayed out.”</p>
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<p>I sat up straighter, hearing this! How intriguing! “As in when one has locked down their visibility?”</p>
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<p>“Yes. She requested an exception that, whether or not she quits, her entry remain in some in-between state so that we will never know.”</p>
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<p>“Has she said why?”</p>
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<p>She snorted, raising her face from her hands. “She said that each of us will have to make up our own reason. It was all very Odist.”</p>
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<p>“It really is,” I said, chuckling. Readers, it is so much easier to write like this, to tell of concrete things. I am trying not to rush, as I do not have much time left, I think but— ah, I am interrupting myself. I chuckled and said, “It really is. Did you mention this to the others?”</p>
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<p>“I did. Reactions were mixed. Farai cried quite hard. No Hesitation was left in a whirlwind of doubts. Slow Hours agreed immediately that we grant her this change.”</p>
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<p>“That is very Slow Hours of her.”</p>
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<p>The Blue Fairy laughed. “I suppose it is.”</p>
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<p>I struggled for a minute, and it was not for want of words, for I knew the words I needed, but it was for want of courage. I did not know how to say this to her without sounding cruel, perhaps, or uncaring, or self-centered, but I could not be anything other than honest in that moment, not for something so important as this.</p>
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<p>“I want that, too,” I said.</p>
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<p>“Pardon?”</p>
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<p>“I want that for her. I want that she be able tell this story for herself. That is my decision.”</p>
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<p>Her shoulders slumped, and she looked at me with tired eyes, searching eyes. “What is your reason for her request of an exception, then?”</p>
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<p>“She is keeping her last bit of agency for herself,” I said — slowly, for I was not so rehearsed with these words, and I have a habit of rehearsing much of what I say. “She is saying, “This final decision is mine. You may decide whether or not to help me, but if you do, I will make the final decision.” She tells the end of her story alone, and we will have to tell ours for ourselves.”</p>
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<p>We spent some minutes then in silence — a comfortable silence, friends; I did not feel like we were waiting for the other to speak — simply drinking our mochas and looking out the window together.</p>
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<p>At last, The Blue Fairy smiled to me. “Alright. I will do as she has asked. It kills me, Rye. It hurts, but I will do as she has asked.”</p>
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<p>And all of this makes me wonder and makes me tremble. </p>
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<p>It makes me tremble and it makes my fur stand on end and my paws shake and my pen skitter anxiously across the page like those leaves that danced before the feet of The Woman I told you about so, so long ago, perhaps like those leaves that skitter within the city, that unreal city, that city full of dreams, where ghosts in broad daylight cling to passers-by.</p>
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