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<p><em>“What is this about?”</em> she asked If I Dream via sensorium message.</p>
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<p><em>“What is this about?”</em> she asked If I Dream via sensorium message.</p>
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<p><em>“A hunch,”</em> the panther sent back. <em>“Apparently a correct one, for which I am glad. Sometimes compression helps, yes?”</em></p>
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<p><em>“A hunch,”</em> the panther sent back. <em>“Apparently a correct one, for which I am glad. Sometimes compression helps, yes?”</em></p>
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<p><em>“If you say so.”</em></p>
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<p><em>“If you say so.”</em></p>
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<p>“Are you alright, my dear?” If I Dream murmured loud enough for Slow Hours to hear as well. “Will you join us for coffee? It is not a demand, just an offer.”</p>
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<p>“Are you alright, my dear?” If I Dream murmured loud enough for Slow Hours to hear as well. </p>
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<p>“Y-yes. <em>Tizkeh l’mitzvos.</em>“</p>
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<p>“Will you join us for coffee? It is not a demand, just an offer.”</p>
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<p>What Right Have I nodded slowly. “Is the…ah, is the couch free in The Bean Cycle?”</p>
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<p>If I Dream hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “The creatures have left. There is a person sitting on one corner, but if you are comfortable, the rest is free.”</p>
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<p>“If we…I mean, if I may set up a cone of silence, that will be fine, yes.”</p>
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<p>Slow Hours watched as the panther gently released her grip on the skunk, the two monochromatic animals — one in baggy, colorful linen and the other in black form-fitting shirt and legging — separating cautiously, as though to move faster might once more send What Right Have I into manic pacing.</p>
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<p>“Shall we?” Slow Hours asked, smiling reassuringly to her cocladists.</p>
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<p>The couch was indeed free, though there was no other instance of If I Dream visible. Slow Hours put this out of mind as best she could; the first stanza was well known for just how easily they slid about unseen, unbeknownst to others as they simply watched, observed.</p>
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<p>They sat in the crook of the couch, set up as it was as a right angle. What Right Have I requested one of the corner vertices of their little triangle so that she could get up and pace should she need, nudging the low table that sat before her aside to help assist in this endeavor, before setting up the cone of silence and nudging it to obscure them as occupants. The din of the coffee shop fell to a low murmur. </p>
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<p>The three of them set their coffee cups on small coasters set in the air just within reach, and waited in silence.</p>
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<p>“What Right Have I,” Slow Hours began gently once the silence seemed to open up. “From Whence messaged the first stanza a few days ago to see if any of them knew where you were.”</p>
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<p>“She messaged Speaking, in particular,” If I Dream added quietly. “She is the instance hunter of our stanza, yes? But she is feeling perhaps a little burnt by recent events and requested some space, for which I am glad. She deserves that.”</p>
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<p>“I know,” the skunk said. “She has messaged me several times. I have…ah, I mean, I always endeavor to let her know when I am okay. And I am! I promise.”</p>
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<p>Slow Hours laughed, holding up her hands. “I believe you, my dear. This is a meeting between friends, not an interrogation. We wanted to see whether you are okay, yes, but it has also been some time, yes? And I have been checking in with much of the clade in the last few weeks. There are several of me about.”</p>
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<p>She nodded. “She told me she just wanted…ah, she requested “a bit more proof than gentle rebuffs.” I told her that I am okay. I told her that I was walking and meditating.”</p>
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<p>“Is that what you have been doing during the day?”</p>
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<p>“I…” She trailed off, scrubbing her paws against her thighs. “Some, perhaps. A little.”</p>
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<p>“You will have to forgive me for being a bit blunt,” Slow Hours said gently. “But are you overflowing?”</p>
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<p>What Right Have I’s expression dropped, the skunk quickly going from attentive to panicked to miserable.</p>
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<p>If I Dream held out her paw, an offer for reassurance. “I do not know what your overflow looks like, What Right Have I. I trust that it is not pleasant, though. It rarely is, yes?”</p>
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<p>“It is sometimes,” she admitted, shaking her head at the offer of touch. “It is…ah, it comes in two flavors. It shows itself as religious ecstasy sometimes, of a sense of spirit, a feeling of <em>HaShem</em> existing in the world, in the System. Those who reach out to RJ, who reach out to our friend, they are reaching out to <em>HaShem!</em> Ey may be our personal <em>HaShem,</em> yes? But ey is an abstract manifestation of the world!” Despite the sudden animation in her words, the sudden fluency in her otherwise stuttering speech, her expression remained dire, anxious.</p>
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<p>Slow Hours smiled faintly, taking a moment to think back. The skunk’s choice of words triggered a memory of a report written for the clade decades back. “Codrin said that, yes? Or rather reported that Answers Will Not Help said that. “Our own personal <em>HaShem.</em>” She said that she could not feel em on Artemis, yes?”</p>
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<p>What Right Have I nodded, subsiding back into the couch. “Yes. I…ah, I mean, I would not have joined them for that reason, never mind the other difficulties faced.”</p>
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<p>Both Slow Hours and If I Dream nodded. No Odist had joined Artemis for its ongoing voyage.</p>
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<p>“But ey is still <em>b’tzelem Elohim,</em> yes? Ey is still in the image of Adonai, yes? Ey is still human, even if ey is our world. Our world is <em>b’tzelem Elohim,</em> and we, <em>b’tzelem Elohim,</em> reside within em.” She smiled weakly. “Rav From Whence does not like it when I say these things, but that is what I feel when I am overflowing.”</p>
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<p>“And that is what you are feeling now?” Slow Hours asked.</p>
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<p>“No,” she said, once more sounding miserable. “If I do not feel ecstasy, I feel anguish. I feel…mm, I feel nullity. I feel nothing. I feel RJ and I think, “Ah my friend, my friend.” I do not see in em Adonai. I do not feel <em>b’tzelem Elohim,</em> I feel stupid. I feel…ah, I feel broken.”</p>
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<p>“Because of the Century Attack?”</p>
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<p>The skunk whimpered and pushed herself quickly to her feet, pacing once more and shaking her paws out as though to dry them off. “I have been dreaming,” she mumbled, then jerked her head to the side with a quiet squeak. She continued more clearly. “I have been dreaming, here on the couch, out there in Infinite Café when…ah, when I fall asleep out there.”</p>
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<p>Slow Hours tilted her head, sitting up straighter.</p>
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<p>What Right Have I smiled faintly. “I have…ah, I am not the oracle that you are, my dear. I am no prophet.”</p>
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<p>She smiled, shaking her head. “Neither am I. I would still like to hear your dream, though.”</p>
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<p>The skunk nodded. “I am disembodied, yes? I am floating and I see a figure, and they begin to weep, and they dissolve into a cloud of black specks, and these specks float away on a breeze, and each one enters the heart of a cladist, and they cry out in agony and dissolve into clouds of their own, and so it ramifies until all are dust. I see you, yes, and I see If I Dream, and I see Querulous and I see No Longer Myself.”</p>
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<p>If I Dream jerked back as though slapped, a sudden move that was nevertheless silent. “Do not–” she said, then shook her head.</p>
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<p>“I am sorry, If I Dream,” What Right Have I said, bowing low and forcing herself to sit once more. “I…ah, my dreaming mind remembered names of those lost, perhaps, and extrapolated.”</p>
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<p>The panther nodded, scrubbed a paw over her face, and sighed. “It is okay, my dear. I am still feeling raw.”</p>
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<p>It was What Right Have I’s turn to offer a paw. If I Dream accepted gratefully, giving a brief squeeze. When this lead to another squeaky tic from the skunk, she let go.</p>
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<p>“Ah…sorry,” the skunk stammered. “I have…I mean, that is to say…ah, I am talking in circles. I am sorry.”</p>
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<p>“It is okay,” Slow Hours said gently. “Do you need some time?”</p>
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<p>She nodded, bowing her head for a moment before retrieving her mocha for a tentative sip. Apparently finding the temperature tolerable, she followed this with a longer drink.</p>
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<p>Both Slow Hours and If I Dream followed suit, simply taking in the ambiance of the shop.</p>
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<p>“Have you had dreams, Slow Hours?” If I Dream asked, breaking the silence with her quiet murmur.</p>
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<p>She startled to awareness, smiling sheepishly. “Since the attack? No, nothing memorable, though I have not been sleeping well. I do not imagine many are.”</p>
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<p>“And before?”</p>
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<p>What Right Have I perked up, setting her coffee aside and scrubbing her paws together, kneading pads against pads. “Do your prophecies only come in dreams?”</p>
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<p>Slow Hours laughed. “My little predictions are not prophecies. They are just that: guesses based on the trajectories of the stories one tells. I may predict that, when we leave today, What Right Have I will linger a while yet because there is something she has yet to tell us– no, it will come in time, you do not need to yet. But that is based on the trajectory of the story I have heard so far.” She hesitated a moment, thinking. “But yes, I have had dreams that may well have been prophecies, but only ever in hindsight.”</p>
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<p>“Tell us…ah, I mean, will you tell us some of what you dreamed?”</p>
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<p>“Yes. It has happened four times. Only those four, though.” She held up her hand with that many fingers raised. “Perhaps Lagrange got hit by a stray cosmic ray or some other fancy particle and it flipped a bit inside the portion that contained me, and I was given some premonition. Smacked upside the head by Apollo, yes? Or, in your terms, visited by the angel of the Lord who gave me a honeyed scroll to eat.”</p>
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<p>She tapped one finger. “The first was about Qoheleth and his little…adventure. Some two decades before, I had the same dream five nights in a row, of him standing in his robes, arms raised to the heavens, and then crumbling down into sand. At the time, I did not even realize that it was him. I had not seen him in more than a century, and when I had, he was dressed like a natty old college professor.”</p>
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<p>The next finger, tapped. “The second was about Michelle’s death, and I will not repeat it.”</p>
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<p>She tapped her ring finger. “The third happened in the midst of a play — one of my yearly performances — and I fell to my knees and cried out, “The knife! At her neck, the knife! And the way out is through, and the way out is through.” I passed out after that, but apparently I mumbled yet more that tallied exactly with Sasha’s experience.”</p>
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<p>There was a moment of silence as she considered the fourth and how best to describe it, not least because of the easy comparison to What Right Have I’s dream as explained. Finally, she tapped her pinkie “The fourth was a dream of a core part of me being removed through the back of my neck, a disappearing from the world and becoming a ghost in the next. There was more that I do not understand, visions of a field, a park, but I had that dream every night on the five nights leading up to New Year’s.”</p>
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<p>What Right Have I listened attentively to Slow Hours’s description of her prophecies, or at least prophetic dreams. As she spoke, her cocladist’s expression darkened, until by the end, she was scowling. “I am no Daniel,” the skunk said once she had finished. “I will not scry your <em>mene, mene, tekel, parsin.</em> But if you had foreknowledge of Michelle’s suicide or the Century Attack, why did you not say anything? Who might we be if Michelle had lived? Might Lagrange be undamaged if we but knew this?” </p>
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<p>By the end, she was nearly growling.</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2024-02-03</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2024-02-04</p>
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