and I hardly dare to touch for fear the spell might be broken

Pathways to relationship success. The chief lesson: do not savage your mate.

It sounds specious, but in some cases, it's quite literally true. Whether it's the confluence of changes on the grid or the fact that even the spells on my broken Key are starting to degrade...flipping into limbo is happening more and more often. While it's nowhere near my record (thirty-eight crashes in a row, over the course of a day), a dozen crashes over the course of two and a half hours is pretty daunting.

I came back trembling and shaking and wanting to hide, and were it not for wanting to spend time with the statue, later, I would have fled the grid, finding comfort even in hated limbo, rather than the tug-of-war back and forth between bright air and color, and nothingness and grey.

But my neko lad came in, and asked for my presence, and I told him I was no fit company for him...he insisted, and irritated, I gathered myself up and climbed into a travel bubble and...halfway to the ground, I crashed again.

Came back in, crashed once I got into the new tree.

At that point I was shot. I didn't say much, I didn't react much, I know I worried him...he asked to hold me on the new bed I'd bought, and wearily, I agreed, and that's when it happened.

He said something--that in the larger sense of it, matters not a whit--and I. Went. Off.

What saved me, saved us, is I didn't go off to HIM. I went off to the statue, and told him to tell me to relax. The which he did. I called out to the darkened moon, and he turned his light my way, the cold clarity of his glow further washing me clean of killing rage.

And I relaxed. I breathed. In, out, in again, handful of repetitions, until I could speak without screaming. Then I began to talk to him about why I'd gotten upset.

Always remember: even if you're hurt, even if you're angry for good cause, the ones you love are not in your head, and what sounds righteous and pure in there, nine times out of ten, won't outside it.

Always remember, another soul stands across from you. Strip away all the fellow feeling, all the love and adoration, or even all the problems, all the approbations and regrets, and there is still another soul in that body. Try to do your best to treat it with respect.

In other news...I finally have a working AO back. Yarrr. I had to go all the way up to top of the line at Abranimations, in Devil's Moon, but I know I don't want to have the evil experience of all that work editing again, and ending up with yet another nonfunctional device!

Also, I'm starting to miss my kittens. I've been on this human jag of late, it's been oddly freeing...It's good to be able to slip behind a human skin and not want to tear it off, really. It's healing. It means I'm healing. But enough is enough...I want my whiskers back!