Chương 1006: Day One Thousand And Four

Dear Diary, Y'know, while I'm not sure why I'm like this, and by 'like this' I mean the whole 'the only tiny fragment of a massive being with anything resembling conscious thought', but I think I've finally remembered what the whole situation reminds me of. That dude, the English astrophysicist turned gangster rapper, the one stuck in a wheelchair. Like, couldn't move anything but one tiny part of his body; his hand, I think. Or I guess it'd be more accurate to say he couldn't reliably move anything.

Okay, maybe he couldn't move anything else, but I can. Mostly, sort of. When I pay attention to some other part of me, I can make those parts go. Honestly, to some degree I can do it without thinking about it, if we're talking about either lots of little bits of me like a swarm of tentacles, or a few really big tentacles doing what amount to big clumsy movements.

I can also control those big tentacles with enough fine control to Shape shit, even if the Shapes aren't gonna have a lot of granularity in their implementation. Ooh, yeah, big fancy words, because I did actually pass both Basic and Advanced Mana Shaping, and even if my temperament doesn't lend itself to sitting in a tower pondering my orb, I do apparently remember both the basics and the advanced concepts. I can actually learn shit, despite Franklin's Inspect insisting that Juveniles can't do so.

Fuck, I just remembered that according to Saffron's Status, which I trust way more than Franklin's Inspect, I am in fact a Young Adult. I guess I really ought to take a closer look at what Saffron's Inspect says about that, since it gave me a whole lot of fuckin' insight into what Child meant when I pointed it at Isnomi. I'm not sure when I'm gonna do that, though. I think I'm a little gunshy about it, what with my massive crash last time I fired it at myself repeatedly.

Weird, I can't remember if I've done it since then, but I guess if I did, it was a spur of the moment thing, not something I had time to think about. Saffron? Yes, love? With my Memory where it is, shouldn't I be able to remember, like, whether or not I've done something in the last three months? She sent me a tooth sucking noise. That depends. Is the thing you're trying to remember in some way emotional in nature? Or something likely to have an emotional impact? Status.

Suddenly I had an armful of her there, making the kids in my Math class ooh and ah, as she looked absolutely regal in Glowing Midnight. I'd taken to wearing my Phileo Academy Uniform to teach Cadets, but stuck to civvies while teaching in my Temple. Wearing Loki's Garb to teach seemed somehow disrespectful, Glowing Midnight was just way too classy for me, and I hadn't actually undergone the Trials, so I definitely felt some kinda way about wearing the Yandere Shobitch Wedding Gown on the regular.

I would not be disrespected in the slightest to have my Holy Garb associated with education. As Dad's thought entered my brain, The Dress replaced my civvies, which got even more oohs and ahs. Thanks, Dad, you're the best. I know. Funniest part of the whole deal had to be one kid in the back of the class, who whispered, "who's that?" The first response was another of the kids, who whispered back, "the Advanced Maths teacher." Then one of the older kids hissed back, "that's the Imperator!"

Before I could do or say anything to reassure the assorted tots through teens in my class that there would be no executions for Lèse-majesté, Isnomi intervened with a longsuffering, "dath juth Ma." With that, those of our kids who'd been too engrossed in practicing times tables wound up looking up, then moving toward the pair of us.

"Put everything away for the evening, kids." While they put their stuff away, I dispensed hugs to the kids who would be staying behind, which was well over half my class. Most of the kits had been in Reading class. I still needed to get them some primers or something, because the only commonly available texts were the Doctrine and the mass produced erotic romance novels the Temple gave out. Sold.

Honestly I'm not sure how they distributed them, but I'd seen some of the adult looking congregation walking reading them. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. On the one hand, fuck it, reading is reading, and the more educated people there were in the world, the better the world got, but on the other hand I didn't really think kids needed to be reading about the kind of shit their parents did at Revels until they were, y'know, old enough to go to the Revels themselves.

Once all the kids coming with us had their stuff put away, with the kits and other kids not in my class joining us, and all the kids staying at the Temple or going home to their parents looked ready for us to leave, I stepped us all home. Kinda strange that whatever I'd done to my Soul this time, it hadn't left me incapable of Shaping. Like, the first time I noticed it was Shaping all the Mana to end the Spartans in the Temple of Storms, but that was an emotional moment.

Or it should have been, and it wasn't, which is what I noticed. But that didn't stop me from Shaping enough Mana to turn an entire platoon's worth of Cold Iron into so much slag, not to mention turning that platoon into sloppy meat chunks. While the kids darted off to help Marie dish out dinner, not to mention maybe steal some food because we had enough that at least one of them was always going through some kind of growth spurt, Saffron pulled me aside. Then pulled me down and embraced me.

"Yes, love. Strong emotions can interfere with Memory in a variety of ways. Sometimes they will prevent access to a memory entirely, sometimes they will fog or shade that memory. Sometimes they may even change that memory in ways to make it unrecognizable to others who experienced the same events."

"Well. Shit. What's it good for then?" She chuckled.

"Did you ever need to write down the numbers in Norfolk's Order of Battle. Or that of the Calverton Liberation Forces? Did you need me to show you the anti-Translocation Ward more than once?" I just sat there, staring at her.

"Uh... Fuck. Am I not an idiot or something?" She just laughed. I might have felt some kinda way, but I realized that she thought I was joking. Then I realized that I'd just said something so remarkably divorced from reality that I might as well have been, and chose the path of laughing along with her, both because it made us both happy and because the harder she laughed the more her physics jiggled. I may not be stupid, but I am still a simple woman. Boobies bounce, I smile.

After I got some reasonable amount of food into Saffron and we got the kids up to the Bath, I realized and asked, "are we out of the bedroom, then?" She nodded.

"The entire Homestead and an increasing spiral around it have been cleared. The same goes for the area around each of our Cities." Some part of me I hadn't realized was tense loosened. Before I could tense back up, I asked, "how's Siobhan?"

"Still being examined."

"Fuck. It does not bode well that it's taking this long, does it?" She shrugged, but I could tell how much it cost her to be nonchalant for me.

"Canta himself watches over her. Not to mention Marie watching over both of them. I cannot think that he will allow any harm to come to her, nor she to either of them."

"Would it fuck things up if I, y'know," I tapped my head. She frowned.

"I'm not certain." I could tell she wanted to check herself, but couldn't for pretty much the same reason I couldn't visit. Then we looked at one another in one of those moments of spousal telepathy, no Divine woo required.

"Karen!" We laughed a little at both of us saying it at the same time, and a moment later the woman herself showed up.

"Yes, Goddess? Imperator?" I sighed.

"Yeah, hoping you could do something just as, y'know, 'trustworthy friend'." She just smiled at us.

"Isn't that what your High Clergy are, though?" When Saffron chuckled and I tried to recover from that particular revelation, she added, "with benefits, even. What did you need?"

"Could you check on Siobhan? Maybe ask Canta what the prognosis is?" Saffron cut in with, "avoid contacting us directly until you leave the Bedroom, please. We'd ask her directly if we weren't worried such things might interfere." Karen head tilted.

"And my presence won't?" Saffron sighed.

"You are neither a Deity nor an Archmage." Karen winked, said, "yet," and stepped away, presumably to the Bedroom. A while later, as we all lay there soaking in the bath, she returned, slipping her dress off, showering quickly, then joining the fam in the Bath. On one hand, I wanted news. On the other, I knew she wouldn't take her time if something was urgent.

Once she slipped into the Bath near us, before we could ask, she quietly announced, "Lord Canta presently works to mitigate the side effects of the Goddess' Healing." My stomach dropped.

"Shit. I fucked up?" She frowned, shaking her head.

"Not as such. Your healing of the child's Soul... You focused more on that, did you not?"

"I had to," I whispered. She nodded, reaching out and taking Saffron's hand.

"Her Soul is strong. Her Body is less so. Canta feels the imbalance could cause problems, so he works to restore balance, or to allow her Soul to reinforce her Body." Tallulah had slipped in behind us while we listened to Karen. At that point she chimed in and said, "it sounds almost like he seeks to make her Fae." Karen paused, and I think we all kind of thought about that for a bit. Eventually Saffron sighed, a rueful chuckle in her voice as she said, "well.

It's not like we don't already share three Fae daughters. A fourth would be unexpected, but not in any way unwelcome."

"Sorry." Saffron turned to me, frowning.

"For what? For giving us a Fae daughter rather than another gravestone? No, love. No. In this, you once again hammer the greatest part of your legacy into the world." She reached up and laid her fingers across my mouth before I could ask. Didn't matter. Tallulah heard the question before it even left my brain, and if Saffron was busy keeping my lips busy, Tallulah's mouth was free to say what Saffron was thinking.

"Children Live."