update from sparkleup
This commit is contained in:
parent
9649201c1d
commit
f499494d96
|
|
@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
|
|||
|
||||
<p>After True Name returned to her room — or, more likely, out to her field to set up camp — May said, “If I may say, that was really fucking weird, and I do not want to talk about it at all.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Ey laughed. “You certainly may. Weird as hell and I need a break.”</p>
|
||||
<p>That last part wasn’t strictly true, ey knew. Ey’d be ruminating over it until they went to sleep, and likely well into tomorrow. Still, ey agreed that it wasn’t a topic for talking about at the moment. The chances they’d just wind up talking in circles, rehashing the same topics over and over again, was too high, and ey could do that mentally just as well.</p>
|
||||
<p>That last part wasn’t strictly true. Ey knew ey’d be ruminating over it until they went to sleep, and likely well into tomorrow. Still, ey agreed that it wasn’t a topic for talking about at the moment. The chances they’d just wind up talking in circles, rehashing the same topics over and over, getting nowhere but frustrated, was too high, and ey could do that mentally just as well.</p>
|
||||
<p>So, instead, they relaxed together on the couch, May with her head in eir lap while ey read and she worked on this or that, or whatever it was that she did when her eyes lost focus and she hummed quietly to herself. She’d once called it ‘going into screen-saver mode’, which didn’t sound totally accurate to what ey knew of her when ey’d looked up the reference, but ey still teased her about it every now and then.</p>
|
||||
<p>Quiet nights were good, though, and ey was pleased to just spend the rest of this one in comfort.</p>
|
||||
<p>Sleep, however, brought restless dreams. Not nightmares, certainly; they weren’t even bad dreams in any common sense of the term. They were, to the last, plagued with a sense of waiting and unease. Ey dreamt of waiting for unspecified news, sitting on uncomfortable benches in weirdly crowded lobbies. Ey dreamt of May being out of the house on some errand longer than she had said she would be. Ey dreamt of not having enough information.</p>
|
||||
|
|
@ -45,7 +45,7 @@
|
|||
<p>“Is this about me merging down, then?”</p>
|
||||
<p>She shrugged. “I do not think that that is a requirement here, though that question was on my docket for the day. I suspect that I have already changed enough with End Waking’s merger. I would just need to prove it to him somehow. That is where my plan ends, however.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Ioan sat back in eir chair, arms crossed as ey mulled it over. If she was right — and ey suspected that she was — then there would likely need to be a change in form and a change in name to go along with the change in attitude. After all, that’s how Zacharias had gotten as far as he had, right?</p>
|
||||
<p>Ey couldn’t picture her as anything other than a skunk or perhaps whatever version of Michelle she remembered, though, and certainly couldn’t picture her named anything other than True Name. Would she also have to change her speech patterns? They weren’t totally identifiable, but now that ey thought about it, even Zacharias had shared many of them. She was an Odist through and through — more so than any other ey’d met — and all of the forking and reinforcing that May had done to grow her sense of empathy didn’t seem like something that she’d willingly undergo, either.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ey couldn’t picture her as anything other than a skunk or perhaps whatever version of Michelle she remembered, though, and certainly couldn’t picture her named anything other than True Name. Would she also have to change her speech patterns? They weren’t totally identifiable, but now that ey thought about it, even Zacharias had shared many of them. She was an Odist through and through — more so than any other ey’d met — and all of the forking and reinforcing that May had done to cement behavior and thought patterns didn’t seem like something that she’d willingly undergo, either.</p>
|
||||
<p>But perhaps that’s what she’d meant by a sliver of a plan. They still had plenty of time to sort that out, at least, and perhaps she’d come up with a way that would actually work without changing herself so much that she’d cease being who she was.</p>
|
||||
<p>All the same, ey wasn’t sure that her simply incorporating End Waking was quite the type of change that Jonas would appreciate. She acted different, spoke different, and ey was sure she felt different about her work than she had, but eir suspicion was that Jonas didn’t want anything left of her that could possibly be of any threat to his power. Her incorporating End Waking’s extreme distaste for the politics of the System might be enough, it might not be, but that was a big risk to take.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ey’d apparently been silent long enough that the two skunks had drifted off into their own conversation. At least ey hadn’t been mumbling.</p>
|
||||
|
|
@ -114,7 +114,7 @@
|
|||
<p>“Well,” True Name said, shrugging. “Fuck it.”</p>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
<footer>
|
||||
<p>Page generated on 2022-09-06</p>
|
||||
<p>Page generated on 2022-09-13</p>
|
||||
</footer>
|
||||
</main>
|
||||
<script type="text/javascript">
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
|
|||
<p>“Given how anxious I’ve been, I’d appreciate that,” ey had said. “But no need to share anything private.”</p>
|
||||
<p>And so now ey got updates on the conversations with sensitive or personal information held back.</p>
|
||||
<p>They spent much of their time discussing various parts of May’s life and how comfortable she’d feel sharing those through a merge, and if not, why not. Surprisingly, they also talked with End Waking several times, the third skunk of the stanza coming out to visit her prairie so that they could discuss the ramifications of their merge and how to be more thoughtful with May’s.</p>
|
||||
<p>That first meeting had been more silence than not, more walking and thinking and not looking at each other than anything. They paced back and forth along the bank of the river, then stared into the oxbow pond, each occasionally failing to start a conversation. They had greater success with subsequent meetings, but they’d never been comfortable.</p>
|
||||
<p>That first meeting had been more silence than not, more walking and thinking and not looking at each other than anything. They paced back and forth along the bank of the river, then stared into the oxbow pond, each occasionally failing to start a conversation. They had greater success with subsequent meetings, but they were never comfortable.</p>
|
||||
<p>This wasn’t to say that ey didn’t have a chance to sit with them at times and discuss eir thoughts on the matter, of course.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Feelings are complex, Ioan,” True Name explained as they sat around a low fire before her tent. “If they are created by memories, then there is little that I can do to completely control how I might feel about something beyond picking and choosing the memories carefully. However, one can never be sure which memories may lead to which feelings. If they come from something more intrinsic to one’s personality and thought patterns, then it is even more difficult to attempt to control them.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Ey nodded. “That much I can certainly understand. I trust that you’ll be built up from your various histories rather than simply May’s feelings tacked onto you.”</p>
|
||||
|
|
@ -68,7 +68,7 @@
|
|||
<p>After another Scandinavian-style breakfast, the three of them re-organized True Name’s room. The bed was set in a corner instead of up against one wall, allowing a collection of pillows to be placed against the walls in case she wanted to lean against them or organize them into a nest.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Are you sure you don’t want to set up something out in the prairie?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I did consider it, but May Then My Name talked me out of it, stating that she would like to be at hand without having to spend all of her time out there, herself. Besides, if I learned one thing from End Waking merging down, it was that the less I have to think about my body, the easier it is to focus on my mind. Comfort will only ever help.”</p>
|
||||
<p>They also supplied her with ready water, coffee, and a few comforting snacks on one of the bedside tables so that she wouldn’t have to get up just to go to the kitchen.</p>
|
||||
<p>They also supplied her with ready water, juice, and a few comforting snacks on one of the bedside tables so that she wouldn’t have to get up just to go to the kitchen.</p>
|
||||
<p>Another beanbag was added by the bed, in case she requested that they stay in there for any length of time, and a more comfortable bench-swing was added to the balcony in case she needed to go outside but wasn’t feeling up to walking down to the prairie itself.</p>
|
||||
<p>It felt like rather a lot of preparations to make just for a merge, but then May had last merged down 83 years before ey had uploaded — nearly 64 before ey’d even been born — and after seeing how intense End Waking’s merge had been, none of them felt up to cutting any corners and having to rush comfort after the fact.</p>
|
||||
<p>Finally, though, there was nothing left to do, no further preparations to be made that weren’t just stalling, so May took eir hand to hold em still so that ey’d quit pacing.</p>
|
||||
|
|
@ -109,7 +109,7 @@
|
|||
<p>The skunk rolled until her face was nearly pressed against eir belly to let em pet. “I do not know,” she mumbled. “I do not think even she knows.”</p>
|
||||
</article>
|
||||
<footer>
|
||||
<p>Page generated on 2022-09-06</p>
|
||||
<p>Page generated on 2022-09-13</p>
|
||||
</footer>
|
||||
</main>
|
||||
<script type="text/javascript">
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue