update from sparkleup
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<p>She thought of play and, as she levered herself out of her bed, looked wearily around her room, the toys and art, the stuffed animals and silly prints on clothing, and then she forked into Big Motes.</p>
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<p>She forked into Big Motes and straightened her hair and blouse, set a well-remembered dandelion flower crown atop her head, and made her way out to the rest of the house.</p>
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<p>There was silence there, and emptiness. There was the place to herself in the warm sunlight of a late morning, some three days after first she fell on the playground. There was the comfort of familiarity set beside a hollow feeling in her chest.</p>
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<p>Adjusting to a view of the world a few feet higher than it had been some seconds ago, she made her way to the kitchen and poked around. It did not feel like a day for some sugary cereal, nor the cinnamon-sugar toast that she had always loved. It was a day for coffee and something savory and filling. Perhaps a day for a mimosa.</p>
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<p>Adjusting to a view of the world a few feet higher than it had been some seconds ago, a view without a snout, movement without a tail, she made her way to the kitchen and poked around. It did not feel like a day for some sugary cereal, nor the cinnamon-sugar toast that she had always loved. It was a day for coffee and something savory and filling and hot. Perhaps a day for a mimosa.</p>
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<p><em>An adult breakfast,</em> a part of her whispered. <em>Setting aside childish things…</em></p>
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<p>She shook her head to dispel the lingering thought, one based in overflow rather than her current mood.</p>
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<p>And so she pulled out a couple of eggs, a few links of chicken sausage, and a dish of frozen hash browns. On a whim, she also pulled out a few large tortillas and some green chili salsa that she — that much of the clade — remembered fondly from her time back phys-side, back when she lived in the central corridor. She may as well go all out, yes?</p>
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<p>The answer was a long time coming, the silence filled with the gentle tink of glasses as Beholden mixed their late lunch cocktails, carrying them carefully back to the couch and handing them out so that she could rejoin.</p>
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<p>“Yeah,” Motes said at last. “At least, I think so. It was something that I did almost on a whim. I knew I wanted to be Big Motes, or at least that I was not ready to be Little Motes yet. Been thinking about that all morning.”</p>
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<p>Beholden tasted her drink, nodded appreciatively, then asked, “Have you come to any conclusions?”</p>
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<p>“I think so,” she said, looking down at her mimosa. Beholden had topped it with a maraschino cherry poked through with a cocktail umbrella. There was a warmth of adoration starting to fill hat hollow space in her chest. “I am not going to stop playing, not going to stop being her, but…but that really fucking hurt, and I need to know what to do with that pain before I reengage with that, you know?”</p>
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<p>Letting her free arm dangle over the arm of the couch, glass held by the rim, A Finger Pointing tucked her own cocktail umbrella into Motes’s hair, adding a wheel of bright pink to the yellow of the dandelions before draping her arm around her cocladist’s shoulder. “That does make sense, yes. That was one of my worries, even: that this would leave you too wounded to reengage with that part of you that has been so important over the years.”</p>
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<p>“I think so,” she said, looking down at her mimosa. Beholden had topped it with a maraschino cherry poked through with a cocktail umbrella. There was a warmth of adoration starting to fill that hollow space in her chest. “I am not going to stop playing, not going to stop being her, but…but that really fucking hurt, and I need to know what to do with that pain before I reengage with that, you know?”</p>
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<p>Letting her free arm dangle over the arm of the couch, glass held by the rim, A Finger Pointing tucked her own cocktail umbrella into Motes’s hair behind her ear, adding a wheel of bright pink to the yellow of the dandelions before draping her arm around her cocladist’s shoulder. “That does make sense, yes. That was one of my worries, even: that this would leave you too wounded to reengage with that part of you that has been so important over the years.”</p>
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<p>Motes shook her head gently so as not to dislodge crown or umbrella.</p>
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<p>“Good. You are allowed to be Big Motes for a bit while you process this. You are allowed to hold back on all sorts of interactions. I have noticed a lack of ‘Ma’ or ‘Bee’– no, no. No need to explain, just an observation. These are things that we will miss and then rejoice when they return.”</p>
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<p>She slouched against A Finger Pointing and hugged around her middle, careful not to spill her drink. “Thank you, my dear. I really do appreciate it. I will get there, too, for all of that. Just…not yet. Not quite yet.”</p>
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<p>“I am so dreadfully busy, Beholden. You know that.”</p>
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<p>“You spent yesterday afternoon lounging in the auditorium trying every kind of kettle corn you could find on the exchange.”</p>
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<p>She sat up straight, staring at her partner like she was some alien creature, something too dense to understand the importance of kettle corn. “Yes. Busy.”</p>
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<p>As A Finger Pointing and Beholden finally got around to whipping up lunch for themselves, the conversation once more fell into comfortable chatter, the sort of banter that so often filed the house, and while, by the time her appointment arrived, Motes had not yet felt comfortable enough to refer to them as ‘Ma’ and ‘Bee’, that welcoming sense of family had returned in force, and she felt once more in her comforting role as their Dot, their <em>dóttir</em>.</p>
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<p>As A Finger Pointing and Beholden finally got around to whipping up lunch for themselves, the conversation once more fell into comfortable chatter, the sort of banter that so often filed the house, and while, by the time her appointment arrived, Motes had not yet felt comfortable enough to refer to them as ‘Ma’ and ‘Bee’, that welcoming sense of family had returned in force, and she felt once more in her comfortable role as their Dot, their <em>dóttir</em>.</p>
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<p>As the afternoon threatened to slide right into evening, Motes took her leave and left A Finger Pointing and Beholden on the couch, canoodling. Clearly that had taken precedence over whatever they had had planned at the auditorium for the rest of the day. That they had come home for her, for Motes, was the base of that warmth that had grown within her.</p>
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<p>She made her way out of the house and wandered to the center of the neighborhood. She left the automatic chalk lines going, letting them be the fuel that propelled her forward, let their flowering shapes fit into this perception of herself as a flower child rather than simply a child, a careful reframing that allowed her to have this thing, this gentle goodness.</p>
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<p>The neighborhood formed a lazy semicircle, a ‘U’ that butted up against an avenue that petered out into the nature of the sim in either direction. Across the street — inaccessible to anyone who was unwelcome — sat the back entrance of the theatre Au Lieu Du Rêve most commonly performed at. Just homes and a beloved workplace dropped together into an endless landscape like sugar into so much tea.</p>
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<p>In the bowl of the ‘U’ sat all of the common areas. A pool — one with seats and jets, one that could be a hot tub seating a hundred as easily as it could be an Olympic pool — a few tennis courts for the few — who? — who actually enjoyed the game, a liberal dotting of grills — everyone had a favorite — for cook outs, a “community center” which had long ago turned into a movie-theater-<em>cum</em>-cuddlepit…</p>
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<p>And there, right at the very lowest point of the bowl of the ‘U’ sat a playground. What was initially intended to be Motes’s haunt, hers and her friends, had long ago turned into a place for late-night musings. Thousands and thousands of times over the years, couples or small groups or lone individuals would converge on the swings or the slide and sit in the dark, staring up on the star-speckled sky, the Milky Way glowing bright enough to light one’s face beyond even the Moon, even the gold-and-black of the rest of the neighborhood with its sodium vapor lamps and countless darknesses. It was a place for play, yes, and it was often used for such, but it was also a place for couples to work out their problems or groups to chat about everything and nothing or for one to sit alone, drunk, beneath the stars, looking up and feeling good or bad or simply introspective.</p>
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<p>And there, right at the very lowest point of the bowl of the ‘U’ sat the playground. What was initially intended to be Motes’s haunt, hers and her friends, had long ago turned into a place for late-night musings. Thousands and thousands of times over the years, couples or small groups or lone individuals would converge on the swings or the slide and sit in the dark, staring up on the star-speckled sky, the Milky Way glowing bright enough to light one’s face beyond even the Moon, even the gold-and-black of the rest of the neighborhood with its sodium vapor lamps and countless darknesses. It was a place for play, yes, and it was often used for such, but it was also a place for couples to work out their problems or groups to chat about everything and nothing or for one to sit alone, drunk, beneath the stars, looking up and feeling good or bad or simply introspective.</p>
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<p>It was not dark now.</p>
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<p>There, on the swings, sat a child, a girl, looking to be perhaps twelve or thirteen with brown hair cut into an unruly bob, pale skin shining in the sun, swaying lazily back and forth as she faced away from Motes. She looked mostly down, skidding the heels of her shoes through the gravel beneath the swings, scooping the pebbles out of the way and then smoothing them back into place with her toes.</p>
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<p>There, on the swings, sat a child, a girl, looking to be perhaps twelve or thirteen with black hair tied in an unruly ponytail, coppery skin shining in the sun, swaying lazily back and forth as she faced away from Motes. She looked mostly down, skidding the heels of her shoes through the gravel beneath the swings, scooping the pebbles out of the way and then smoothing them back into place with her toes.</p>
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<p>Motes moved quietly through the grass — quietly enough that the girl did not notice her — and sat down on the free swing within that segment.</p>
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<p>“Hi, Sarah,” she said.</p>
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<p>“Motes! Hi!” the girl said, then hesitated. “You’re Big Motes today. Do you want me to Big Sarah?”</p>
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<p>Motes held onto the chains of the swing and gave herself a push with her feet, testing the way she glided through the air for a few feet back, then a few feet forward.</p>
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<p>“Motes?”</p>
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<p>“Yeah, actually, I think I would like Big Sarah today.”</p>
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<p>Nodding, Sarah Genet stepped off the swing and summarily disappeared, leaving behind a fork still sitting down. This new instance was far older, looking to be sixty or so years old with silvery-gray hair in a similar bob, her skin just as pale and yet fraught with wrinkles, her smile kind and gaze always attentive.</p>
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<p>Nodding, Sarah Genet stepped off the swing and summarily disappeared, leaving behind a fork still sitting down. This new instance was far older, looking to be sixty or so years old with salt-and-pepper hair in a much neater ponytail, her skin just as brown and yet fraught with wrinkles, her smile kind and gaze always attentive.</p>
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<p>“Is this better?” she asked.</p>
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<p>Motes smiled, nodded and gave herself another gentle kick, keeping the same back-and-forth going, the same few feet of earth wafting beneath her feet. “Thanks.”</p>
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<p>“Of course, Motes. Would you like me to prompt or wait?”</p>
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<p>“Well, obviously I hate it,” she said, laughing. “But if I am going to get shit on like this, then I guess all I can do–”</p>
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<p>“‘All’?”</p>
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<p>Motes snorted. “<em>One</em> thing I can do is reclaim it and turn it into a family spat, right?”</p>
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<p>Sarah laughed and pushed herself to start swinging in earnest. “That’s what I was getting at, yeah. But tell me more about being Big Motes. You’ve talked about the family aspect of it, but it sounds like you were thinking about this even before Hammered Silver sent you her letter.”</p>
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<p>Sarah laughed and pushed herself to start swinging. “That’s what I was getting at, yeah. But tell me more about being Big Motes. You’ve talked about the family aspect of it, but it sounds like you were thinking about this even before Hammered Silver sent you her letter.”</p>
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<p>Before she realized what she was doing, Motes was already starting to swing along with Sarah. Back to that movement, back to that little twinge of play. <em>This</em> was why she appreciated her therapist, all of these little nudges, all of this meeting her on her terms. After all, had she not appeared at first as a girl a few years older than her, as she had so many times before? One of those girls who seems infinitely wise to someone younger?</p>
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<p>Motes smiled faintly out to the world as it swung beneath and around her. “I do not know that there was anything that spurred on all of the discussions or the dream — though I imagine the dream was a result of all of the thinking that I had been doing leading up to it. It was just on my mind. Maybe I have been doubting myself more of late.”</p>
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<p>“Doubting how? The last time we talked, you didn’t sound like you were doubting yourself. You talked about how everyone had a different nickname for you.”</p>
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<p>“Yeah!”</p>
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<p>“What does that change?”</p>
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<p>“Nothing!” Motes said, laughing joyously. “It changes nothing. In fact, I hope that <em>is</em> the case! At that point, Hammered Silver really <em>is</em> just a bitch.”</p>
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<p>Sarah laughed, and Motes felt the sound in the air as she breezed past.</p>
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<p>Sarah laughed, and Motes felt the sound in the air as she breezed past, felt her flower crown flutter away in the wind of her passage and fall to the ground in a lazy shower of dandelions, felt the little pink cocktail umbrella A Finger Pointing had tucked behind her ear, by her ma, tug this way and that on her hair.</p>
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<p><em>I respect her as a person, but I do not like her,</em> Dry Grass had said. <em>And I certainly do not respect her authority.</em></p>
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<p><em>Do not worry, my dear,</em> Dry Grass had said. <em>You are stuck with me for a good while yet.</em></p>
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<p><em>I would rather tell Hammered Silver to go fuck herself,</em> Dry Grass had said in the end.</p>
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<p>Perhaps she ought to hug Dry Grass extra-tight next time she saw her.</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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