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@ -323,7 +323,7 @@ Something about the ephemerality of the sand and the permanence of the tile spea
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<p>Page generated on 2023-09-25</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2023-11-08</p>
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@ -47,6 +47,56 @@
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<p>She snorted. “No. I love you, but you’ll just wind up reminding me of it. Any friends you want to bring over? Or cocladists, I’m starting to remember that I love all of your clade, not just you.”</p>
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<p>“Good to hear,” I said, smiling. “After last night, I was afraid you were about to write us all off.”</p>
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<p>“I may yet,” she said, grinning tiredly. “But yeah, sure, feel free to invite them, too. I’ll ask around, as well.”</p>
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<p>We both spent a few minutes puttering about, getting ourselves some water and poking through the exchange for a bottle of wine to have ready for when others arrived.</p>
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<p><em>If</em> others arrived, it turned out. There were a few maybes, with Sedge saying that she wanted to focus just on the work and not split her attention any. Both Pierre and Vos declined, saying they would rather stay together and focus on their own problems — certainly understandable. Few of my friends sounded appealing to have over, which also held true for Hanne, who wound up only pinging Jess and Warmth In Fire out of her circle of construct artistry friends. Both gave a definite maybe.</p>
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<p>Of those I pinged who surprised me by saying yes, Lily was at the top of the list.</p>
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<p><em>“I’m struggling with all of this, and starting to feel kind of lonely or…I don’t know, left out, maybe,”</em> she said over a sensorium message. <em>“I don’t like it, Reed. I don’t like having to just process all of this on my own.”</em></p>
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<p><em>“I mean, you’re more than welcome over, of course,”</em> I replied. <em>“Though I’d be surprised if Cress and Tule didn’t also bring along an instance of Dry Grass.”</em></p>
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<p>There was a long pause, followed by the sense of a sigh. <em>“Okay. I’ll probably still come along. Maybe I’ll find some way to get over my shit, at least enough to be around her.”</em></p>
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<p><em>“Well, okay. I trust you, but still, hopefully no snippiness, okay? I think we’re all frazzled, but the goal is just to not deal with difficult stuff for a bit,”</em> I said. <em>“At least, as best we can.”</em></p>
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<p>I could hear the smirk in her voice. <em>“Right. I’ll keep my mouth shut if I start to feel like biting her head off.”</em></p>
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<p>So it was that we cycled the weather outside to a comfortable spring-time evening, set up a table with various small foods and a few different bottles of wine, and waited for everyone to trickle in.</p>
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<p>Cress and Tule were the first to arrive, Dry Grass appearing between them a few seconds later, still wearing her witch’s hat, which she quickly waved away. All three of them looked exhausted, but brightened visibly at the spread laid out for all to snack on, quickly loading up plates of bruschetta and glasses of icy rosé.</p>
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<p>The next to arrive were Warmth In Fire and Jess, both of whom launched themselves at Hanne to wrap her up in a hug. Hold My Name, Warmth In Fire’s partner, arrived a few seconds later.</p>
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<p>((Warmth stuff here))</p>
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<p>Last of all, nearly an hour after we started, most of us a few drinks in, Lily stepped in. She moved stiffly, awkwardly, and only nodded a greeting, wordlessly picking out a few of the <em>hors d’oeuvres</em> and pouring herself an over-full glass of a sweet wine.</p>
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<p>Her silence put a damper on the rest of the conversations, all of us speaking quieter, eventually falling into silence as she sat down at the table.</p>
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<p>A few seconds passed before she smirked and shook her head. “Well? Come on, entertain me.”</p>
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<p>I breathed a pent-up sigh of relief at the chuckles from around the table.</p>
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<p>((Warmth does a thing?))</p>
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<p>“I will tell you a joke, as a way to break the ice,” Dry Grass said.</p>
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<p>Lily laughed, though it sounded somewhat forced. “Alright. I want to hear what counts as a joke to your clade.”</p>
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<p>Dry Grass bowed. “I assure you, it is appropriately atrocious. It comes straight from Waking World, who has set himself up as a father figure, complete with dad jokes.”</p>
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<p>Lily rolled her eyes, nodded.</p>
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<p>“Alright. A horse walks into a bar, flumps down onto a stool, says to the bartender, “Whiskey and a beer.”“</p>
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<p>“A bar joke? Really, love?” Cress asked.</p>
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<p>“I told you it was awful,” she said, laughing. “Anyway, the bartender sighs, pours a shot, and sets that and a shitty beer down in front of the horse.</p>
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<p>“”Might as well leave the bottle,” the horse says.</p>
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<p>“The bartender reluctantly sets the bottle down as well, saying, “Hey man, you are in here every day. Every day you mow through a few beers and a few shots. You alright?”</p>
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<p>“”Of course I am fucking alright,” the horse grumbles, downing his shot and chasing it with a glug of beer.</p>
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<p>“”I dunno, man. You think you might be an alcoholic?”</p>
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<p>“The horse says, “I do not think I am,” and then disappears with a <em>poof!</em>“</p>
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<p>There was a pause, during which a few of us smiled, vaguely confused at the apparent punchline.</p>
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<p>“You know, because “I think therefore I am”? And he did not think he…oh, never mind.”</p>
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<p>At this, there were a few dry chuckles. “You’re right, that is atrocious,” Lily said.</p>
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<p>“Well,” Dry Grass countered primly, “I would have said that last bit first, but I did not want to put Descartes before the horse.”</p>
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<p>At that delayed punchline, the rest of us laughed in earnest. Warmth In Fire, halfway through a sip of wine, snorted into its drink and started to cough, which set Hold My Name to laughing in turn, rubbing the skunk’s back.</p>
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<p>“Okay, okay, I’ll give you that one,” Lily said, still grinning. “That was pretty good. Still atrocious, but at least the good kind of atrocious. I’m sorry for the other night.”</p>
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<p>“That was only last night, my dear, though we do seem to be living at a high skew, do we not?” Dry Grass bowed to her. “I appreciate it, Lily. I cannot apologize for my clade, but I will all the same do my best to live as a counterexample to the elements within it that rankle.”</p>
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<p>“Yeah, thanks,” Lily said, more down to her glass of wine than to Dry Grass. “I was thinking, actually, and part of the reason I wanted to come over and see you on…uh, neutral ground, I guess, is that I had a question about your clade.”</p>
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<p>Dry Grass nodded for her to continue.</p>
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<p>“What was it like to get used to being a clade without a root instance?”</p>
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<p>All three of the Odists present stiffened, sitting up straighter.</p>
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<p>“Well,” Dry Grass said after receiving subtle nods from both Warmth In Fire and Hold My Name. “It was different for all of us, I think. Michelle Hadje quit nearly a century ago, now, and at first, I was crushed. My whole stanza was crushed, and although we had long since diverged, many of us going our separate ways, we moved back into the old set of townhouses that we used to inhabit as a stanza for nearly a year. Some of us brought partners, some not, but we needed that company, that familiar association with <em>us,</em> with that commonality that came from her.</p>
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<p>“Memory Is A Mirror Of Hammered Silver, the first line of the stanza, was hit perhaps hardest of all of us. She was the closest to Michelle, after all. Michelle struggled so much over the years, and lived largely in solitude but for a few close friends, many of whom were among the first lines. Hammered Silver was a sort of mother to her, and so to her, it was akin to losing a child. While the rest of us, her up-tree instances, were also saddened to varying degrees, she was a fucking mess.”</p>
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<p>She sighed, taking a sip of wine before continuing. “I was still a systech back then, and I spent nearly a month in my house, most of that either baking or in my room, constantly kicking myself for not doing more to help Michelle. She was…she was so broken, those last few years, and a good chunk of that was based on her engagement with the System itself, so it was difficult for me to hold both that fact and my role in working with the System together in my mind. I kept falling back to those how-could-I questions, to all of those suppositions that I ought to be doing something.”</p>
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<p>I tightened my grip on my fork, leaving it stabbed into a pile of salad. “I’ve been dealing with a lot of that,” I said, voice cracking. “I keep thinking there has to be something more I can do, or wondering how I can do something like this.” I gestured at the table with a forkful of greens. “Having a dinner party while Marsh is gone.”</p>
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<p>Dry Grass nodded. “Precisely that, yes.”</p>
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<p>“I got super angry,” Hold My Name said, her comfortable alto dipping back into a tenor, as though the mood demanded less of her transfemininity. “Like, <em>really</em> angry. I had to move back into my own place for a while after, I was so mad. How could she do that? We were already unmoored by Qoheleth’s assassination, and now Michelle had quit, too. It stranded all the stanzas, leaving behind ten brand new clades.”</p>
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<p>She shrugged, turning her glass of water between fingers. “I slowly calmed down, but that anger hit again after I learned about all of the shit the eighth stanza did, all of that controlling. There were even hints that Michelle had been nudged to quit by True Name, who I’d already suspected of being behind Qoheleth’s assassination. Now I had a target for that anger.”</p>
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<p>I glanced surreptitiously at Lily, who was keeping herself still, tightly under control.</p>
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<p>Another glance at Dry Grass showed her watching Lily warily in turn.</p>
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<p>Then the moment of tension passed, as Warmth In Fire spoke up next.</p>
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</article>
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<p>Page generated on 2023-11-08</p>
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@ -44,12 +44,12 @@
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<li class="done2"> <a href="003.html">003</a> — Dealing with fallout of Marsh being gone, starting later that night when Reed catches up with Vos and Pierre, deals with his own grief</li>
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<li class="done2"> <a href="004.html">004</a> — Exploring other clades throughout Lagrange, meeting up with other Marshans to talk through results, walking sims and seeing how others are reacting</li>
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<li class="done2"> <a href="005.html">005</a> — The perisystem feeds, tallying up the missing, building up percentage of lost personalities, the Marshans wind up leading an effort, Dry Grass working behind the scenes because Odist</li>
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<li class="done0"> <a href="006.html">006</a> — Reconciliation of a sort between Lily and Dry Grass as they meet up for dinner, talking about what it means to be a clade without a root instance.</li>
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<li class="done1"> <a href="006.html">006</a> — Reconciliation of a sort between Lily and Dry Grass as they meet up for dinner, talking about what it means to be a clade without a root instance.</li>
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</ul>
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</li>
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<li class="done1"> Part 2 — Phys-side is being a little sketchy about what happened, turns out there was a reset and a lot of work behind the scenes after a coordinated attack between phys- and sys-side, taking the form of a generalized weapon that wiped out most of the System. Large chunks of it were restored after a lot of work and help from the Artemisians, but not total success — virus loophole was fixed (incl singular attacks), but no guarantee there won’t be another work-around, plans to split the System into smaller pieces, move some of them to Earth/Sun Lagrange points<ul>
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<li class="done0"> <a href="007.html">007</a> — Dry Grass loops Reed & co into discussion with phys-side engineers (halt called to the communication embargo between stanzas) Huddle to talk about why they’re being so cagey</li>
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<li class="done1"> <a href="008.html">008</a> — Talking with Dry Grass, Cress, and Tule about feelings</li>
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<li class="done2"> <a href="008.html">008</a> — Talking with Dry Grass, Cress, and Tule about feelings</li>
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<li class="done0"> <a href="009.html">009</a> — Larger meeting with other representatives of clades with missing members, bit more info (loophole was patched, but no guarantee), introducing concept of splitting the System up, cross-clade merges, turns out someone was left with memories from a few previous attempts</li>
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<li class="done0"> <a href="010.html">010</a> — Clade representatives form a group, start organizing/strategizing/investigating, contacted by chill phys-side syseng, learning even more about both what happened WRT CPV bomb and collectives, plus how phys-side is seeing things</li>
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<li class="done0"> <a href="011.html">011</a> — Finding up-tree (or maybe down?) instance of person who caused the whole thing, seems super upset, promises they’re unable to contact that instance, but whether or not they’re telling the truth left up in the air</li>
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@ -68,7 +68,7 @@
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</ul>
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</article>
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<footer>
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<p>Page generated on 2023-10-28</p>
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<p>Page generated on 2023-11-08</p>
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