Ioan Bălan — 2346

Convergence T-plus 33 days, 15 hours, 39 minutes
(Castor–Lagrange transmission delay: 30 days, 14 hours, 36 minutes)

Depression, Ioan had long known but struggled to internalize, was fundamentally different from sadness, just as it was different from May’s overwhelming waves of emotions.

Ey was confronted with it now, forced to see the way the emotion — or non-emotion, as May put it — affected one on a more fundamental level than anything so simple as sadness could hope to. Those overwhelming waves, as the one she’d just recovered from, were fundamental in their own way, but far, far less existential.

It was bound by the cycle of the day, and so Ioan and May would spend their mornings strategizing their evenings, ensuring that they were able to have as pleasant a time as that ashen feeling May described would allow, to work as well as they could manage through that fog.

“We are not unfamiliar with it, Ioan,” A Finger Pointing had said when, after watching Death Itself and I Do Not Know quit, May’s countenance grew duller and duller, and the skunk spoke less and less. “We know depression from the embodied world, and it comes up every now and then for each of us here, too.”

“Even True Name, I suppose,” ey had said, describing the conversation ey’d had with her.

She had nodded. “It will pass, and we will make the shows work, my dear. Keep her company and be good to her, and you need not worry.”

Some dark look must have crossed eir face at which A Finger Pointing had shaken her head and hugged em. “Do not worry about that, Ioan. There is no death in her, I am sure of that. I am sorry that there are no easy ways to explain it, but I promise that what I expect she is feeling is separate from what our cocladists felt.”

When presented with this along with eir anxious expression, May had laughed and tousled eir hair. “She is right, my dear. It feels uncomfortable at best, bad at worst, but only ever bad. I am simply a bit crashy after a little too much all at once.”

So for the last few days, they’d strategized in the mornings and then done what they could in the evenings. Scenes in plays were reworked for understudies, dinner menus shifted towards comfort foods, temperatures and weather adjusted, old comfort-hobbies dredged up from the past — the skunk had been littering the house with origami figures. Ey’d even tried reading aloud to her, her with her head parked on eir chest and em with a book held above them. This had gone over well, and ey had that on the menu for later in the evening after dinner.

Today still held the first meeting with Sarah Genet, however, so ey focused on making a good breakfast, and spending a bit of time relaxing on the porch swing with May, giving her pets and quiet company.

“How are you feeling about this?” ey asked, voice muffled. May had requested a brushing of her tail, which meant a face full of fluff.

“I do not know. I am anxious. I am trying to keep up that sense of hopefulness that I had when we began planning this, but the anxiety is getting in the way.”

Ey tamped down the urge to ask what the anxiety was over, knowing that the answer would likely be I do not know or nothing — rightly so, for eir own anxiety often seemed to have no basis in reality. Instead, ey asked, “Do you want me to be there with you?”

May scooted down a little on the swing, enough to get her arms around eir middle. “Please. It is just an initial meeting, I do not imagine there will be any need for privacy.”

“No deep, dark secrets, then?”

There was a muffled laugh from where the skunk had planted her face against eir belly. “I do not know that I have any of those from you, my dear.”

“Other than the obvious.”

May stayed quiet, releasing her hug and shifting so that she could lay her head on eir lap, looking off into the yard. Finally, she murmured, “We will need to talk about that at some point, Sarah and I. The pressure surrounding it is building.”

This did not seem to be an open conversation, so ey nodded, settling into silence with eir partner.

Sarah arrived an hour later, a quiet knock at the door accompanying the sensorium ping of her arrival.

May had melted into a beanbag when they’d come back inside and was folding paper crane after paper crane from a bottomless stack of origami paper, so Ioan capped eir pen and slid eir project into a drawer of eir desk. The skunk studiously avoided eir gaze, the tightness of her expression showing anxiety with tears near at hand.

“Mx. Bălan?” Sarah said, bowing. “Nice to meet you.”

“And you, Ms. Genet.” Ey stood aside, gesturing toward the hall. “Please, come inside.”

“Just Sarah is fine.” Smiling kindly to em, she nodded and stepped inside. She seemed to be taking the sight of their home in with some deeper understanding than ey could grasp. Ey wondered just how much she could tell by how clean or messy a place might be, and thanked past-Ioan for cleaning up quite well after breakfast.

The skunk had finished her crane and levered herself out of her beanbag by the time they made it to the den. She was standing by the table, paws folded before her and ears perked up, looking polite and attentive, though Ioan could still read the exhaustion in her face.

“May Then My Name Die With Me,” Sarah said, bowing once more. “A pleasure to meet you at last. Thank you for helping to organize this project.”

“Please, just May Then My Name.” She returned the bow, cleared her throat. “Thank you for going along with it. It will be a large one, and I– we appreciate all the help we can get.”

They sat down around three sides of the dining table. The skunk surprised em by ensuring that ey, rather than her, sat across from Sarah, perhaps to have someone kind on either side.

“So, there’s no real agenda today other than to just get to know each other. No hard topics or anything, just chatting. Stuff like that helps me get used to how you communicate.” Sarah nodded toward May. “Though I would like to know how you’re feeling.”

“Tired.” The skunk looked down at the table where her claw-tips traced wood-grain. “Quite tired. I am not feeling myself currently, forgive me.”

“That’s alright. There’s been an awful lot going on, from the sounds of it.” Sarah shifted gears smoothly away from the topic of current events, asking instead, “I know you two are in theatre, from what you’ve said. What all does that entail, though? I haven’t been to a play or anything since university before uploading.”

May smiled weakly. “Lots of work. We share jobs from start to finish. There are more of us working as stage hands and crew than there are working as actors. Ioan even writes many of our plays.”

“I guess that means you both know your way around the craft better than most, since you have to keep all of that in your heads. Is that common?”

“It is these days. It is something that A Finger Pointing pioneered long ago and has refined over the years.”

“Every role, though; I’m curious, what all goes into the crew side? Are you also…what’s the term. Stage managers? Techs?” Sarah shrugged, looking almost embarrassed at her lack of knowledge. “Lights? Sound?”

At the word ‘sound’, a stricken look washed over the skunk’s face. She sat, rigid, in her chair for a moment before shaking her head, the movement jerky and uneven. “I…I will leave…I will leave Ioan to answer that.”

Alarmed at the sudden change in her demeanor, Ioan looked between May and Sarah, the latter’s face set in an expression of concern.

“May?” ey asked quietly.

“You must…you must forgive me. I have to…lay down. Or something.” She swallowed several times in a row, as she always seemed to do when holding back tears.

The skunk stood and swayed, clutching at the edge of the table hard enough for claws to dent the wood.

“Of course, May Then My Name. Would you like to meet another–”

“Please discuss with Ioan,” she whispered, eyes clenched shut.

Ioan forked quickly, the new instance taking May by the elbow and guiding her carefully toward the bedroom, leaving #Tracker and Sarah to sit in stunned silence, watching them leave.

There was a brief sensorium message, a few quiet words from eir fork and May, which ey passed on. “She panicked for a moment but is just going to disengage for a bit. She says to carry on since you and I might as well get to know each other, too. She’ll reschedule for the near future.”

“Alright,” Sarah said, still frowning. “I know I said just chat, but I don’t think I can just let that go. Can you explain what happened?”

Ey sighed, nodded, and rubbed eir palms against eir slacks. “She will wind up getting overwhelmed by emotion sometimes, once every six months or so. It’ll take her out for a few days then pass. She just got through one not too long ago — I think she contacted you the day after she got back.”

“So this is another bout?”

“No, I don’t think so. She’s been kind of depressed over the last few days, which is different than when she overflows. She says it’s not uncommon for her to ‘crash’ after really big events. She slows down and has a hard time enjoying things, which I suspect is common with depression. But also, little things will trigger large emotional reactions.”

Sarah nodded. “That makes sense, at least. ‘Trigger’ is probably the right word, there. That certainly looked like a trauma response. One she was trying very hard to control, of course, but I could almost see the adrenaline rush through her.”

“There’s been quite a bit of trauma of late, with her cocladists quitting.”

“Very much so, yes.”

Ey rubbed at eir eyes. They were burning, though whether from exhaustion or eir own emotions, ey couldn’t tell. “I have no clue what was the trigger there, though.”

Sarah waved her hand. “She and I will talk that through, it’s alright. How are you doing, though?”

“Me?” Ey frowned. Talking with a therapist had never been on the table for em through this whole endeavor, but ey was so wrapped up in it now… “I’m stressed. I’m tired and stressed and feeling like I’m just fumbling in the dark to find something that will keep May safe.”

“I’d be surprised if you weren’t stressed, honestly,” she said. A blink, a cone of silence fell around them. “Aliens visit one of the LVs and both your clades get wrapped up in it almost immediately, and then her cocladists quit in the midst of all those overwhelming emotions. There’s a lot on the table here. Do you worry she won’t be safe?”

Ioan shrugged helplessly. “I trust her when she says she’s not in any danger of anything like that and that she’s doing her best to stay grounded, but that doesn’t stop me from worrying.”

“That’s part of being in love, I think.”

A pang of that love tugged at em. Sarah must have seen it on eir face, as she smiled sympathetically to em.

“I don’t do well with loss. That’s why I’m here, really. On the System, I mean,” ey said, then recounted eir and May’s previous conversations about the death of eir parents and how that factored into eir anxieties.

The conversation wound around from there. Ey could tell that Sarah was guiding it gently, giving careful nudges toward positive topics when the heavier ones began to loom too near, but always keeping it productive, substantive. It was, ey realized, the sort of mirror image of what ey’d seen from much of May’s stanza. Subtle influencing borne out of years of reading and responding to the actions, words, and expressions of another. Rather than aiming to control, however, Sarah seemed to be doing all she could to keep the control in eir hands, acting almost as a tool for em to use to examine emself, though far more human than that made it sound.

It was refreshing. Too many Odists over the last twenty years, perhaps.

“Well,” Sarah said when they’d reached a lull in the conversation. “I should probably get going so that I can give you guys some space. I’ll be in touch though, okay? I’ll make sure to catch up with May Then My Name when she’s feeling a bit better.”

Ey nodded gratefully. “Thank you. This has been good for me, as well, so hopefully we can have the chance to talk again, too.”

“Of course. Some of my appointments with her will involve you as well, but I’m also happy working with just you, too. Scheduling is certainly less of a constraint here on the System.” She hesitated before adding, “Though for that, I may keep a separate fork for privacy’s sake.”

“Right, of course.” Ey stood when she did, walking with her down the hall to the door. “By the way, have you been in touch with True Name? The Only Time I Know My True Name Is When I Dream?”

“Yes. She got in touch with me yesterday, and we have our own appointment scheduled. Why do you ask?”

Ey hesitated a moment, unsure of whether to divulge the fact that In Dreams seemed to have decided not to connect the two. “I’m worried about her,” ey said eventually. “I just wanted to make sure she’s also working with someone.”

Sarah turned in the entryway, looking at em searchingly. “You know, back phys-side, I was your cocladist’s partner’s therapist, and we’ve stayed friends since uploading. They all but forced me to read the History. From what I could tell, your relationship with True Name did not seem to be one that included you worrying about her.”

“She’s changed a lot,” ey said, speaking slowly as ey tried to puzzle out eir growing empathy for the other skunk — along with the fact that this was a thing that needed puzzling out. “She’s been looking rough, lately, and even for someone I have a complicated relationship with, it’s tough to watch.”

“That I can understand. Does she look like May Then My Name? A furry?”

Ey nodded.

“That probably helps, too.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I should be going for real, now. I’ll be in touch to see about talking with you more soon, alright?”

“Of course,” ey said, bowing. “Thanks again. I think I needed that more than I knew.”

Back in their room, May and eir other instance were sitting cross-legged on the bed, the skunk trying for the dozenth time to teach em how to fold a paper crane.

Both looked up when ey entered and, though her cheeks still showed the marks of tears, ey was pleased to see May smiling.

Eir fork quit and as ey let the memories of the last hour settle into place, ey climbed into bed to take eir spot.

“I am sorry, my dear,” the skunk said, leaning forward to dot her nose against eirs. “Thank you for all of your help through that, both in here and out there.”

“Of course, May. Feeling better?”

She nodded, held up her paper crane, the bottom pinched between fingers, and tugged at its tail, making the wings flap. “I have been making things.”

“Other than a mess, you mean?”

Ey winced and laughed as the origami bird hit em in the face.

“I will have you know that all of the messy ones are your doing, Mx. Ioan Bălan,” she said primly. “Mine are perfectly neat and orderly.”

Still grinning, ey ruffled a hand through her headfur, tugging affectionately at an ear. “Right, right. Just like you.”

She chirped and tilted her head toward eir hand. “Did you have a good therapy session, my dear?”

Ey nodded. “I did. I wasn’t expecting it, but it was helpful. Sarah says she’ll be in touch to meet again soon.”

“Alright. I will not apologize again, but I do still feel bad for how I acted.”

“Shush, you’re fine. I think she, of all people, understands a reaction like that.” Ey picked up another square of paper from the stack and began trying to fold again. “But that’s enough talk of that for now. If you want dinner, you have to help me get at least one of these made.”