Chương 1029: Day One Thousand And Twenty-Seven

Dear Diary, So weird to realize that I'm growing up. Even weirder, maybe, that there are like half a dozen different ways that I could be meaning that, and while I'm referring to all of them, both as individuals and a gestalt of all of them, I'm also talking about a weird vibe that is both that gestalt and somehow separate from all of them. Like yesterday night Marie made it really clear to me that I'm no longer some kind of helpless female version of a perpetual manchild.

I don't enjoy laundry, but I've done enough of it by now that I know I can do it, that living in squalor is a choice I'm making not a hell I'm doomed to. Which, to be clear, I am not making that choice, because I'm not the only one living here. My ladies and my kids live here with me, and I want them to have a nice place to live. I want to live with them in a comfortable house. I mean, she did that by having me make dinner starting from raw materials.

Okay, I didn't technically butcher the animals or harvest the vegetables, but all joking aside, my domestic Skill set is more 'suburban housewife' than 'tradwife'. I clean, I cook, I take care of the kids, whether that means teaching them how to become better versions of themselves, celebrating with them when they inevitably do, or comforting them when they face some temporary setback. Shit... That's another of my Skills. Comfort. I didn't even really grok that might be part and parcel of what that means.

It's not just about wiping away tears, either. Sometimes it's about holding somebody while the tears pour out. Sometimes it's about coming up with the right words to let them know they're loved. Cared for. Valued, not for what they can do, but because they're a person and worthy of love and care and valuable just because of that. Shit, I wish that was one of those Skills I could point at myself. Sorta funny how few Skills or Shapes or Spells wind up being usable on myself and other people, when I think about it.

Like, even some of the ones that technically are really shouldn't be. Healing is a great example. Heal Injury is just a great general purpose 'correct damage to a body' Spell, but alongside the fact that when it comes to really persnickety bits like bones in the wrist or sensitive skin where scars are discommended, it's also pulling from the caster's Mana to do it's work. Thing is, Mana is just energy, some kind of biological energy that lets living things live more.

It's how Stabilize works, giving the target more energy to keep themselves from kicking off. But if I stabilize myself, while I get a kind of muscle cramp wherever I tag myself, I'm not actually giving myself more Mana. If anything, I'm losing a little bit because entropy is a bitch and if I find her I'm gonna do really awesome things to her until she agrees that I am correct and she ought stop being such a bitch.

Bet you thought I was gonna be all 'ooh, I'll hurt her' or 'ooh, I'll simulate consent violations on her', but yeah, that's another whole assed way I think I'm growing up. While I will still absolutely end a motherfucker who desperately deserves it, I think that whole emotion overflow thing wound up flushing away a lot of the formless pit of constant rage I had brewing in the pit of my Soul since long before I got isekaied.

Okay, that's my current thought, because there's no way I could just have gotten mature enough to have that rage without it leaking out into every negative interaction I ever have, not to mention a lot of the positive ones. Kinda funny, I just realized that the thing that prompted this whole list hasn't even been mentioned yet. The whole sex thing. Back in the day I talked about it non stop and engaged with it like an addict. Which I'm not sure I wasn't, frankly.

Then again, people go on about how somebody with chronic pain is 'addicted' to painkillers because they haven't missed a dose in years, even though they also haven't upped their dosage in years. Medication is medication, and my self-medication of choice for depression, whether chronic or induced by my shitty life or the shitty state of the world, was orgasm induced dopamine release.

When I got here, I'm pretty sure I was no less chronically depressed, and definitely had an extra layer of trauma, this one that special sticky crunchy kind you get from slightly melted caramel or skull fragments coated in gray matter. Yeah, for a little bit I was too on edge and legitimately nervous about my very tenuous status as a wannabe Hero to do anything other than intermittently self-service for soporific effects. But then... Then my forty-seventh day here and now, Saffron. Saffron. Always Saffron.

She rolled into my life like a grenade into a trench, and I curled around her like I was Steve Rogers. Then shit went sideways with Bill, and Marie entered the picture. I wound up terrified at that point, thinking that I'd screwed up the best thing that ever happened to me. When that turned out not to be the case, I went a little nuts. Okay, all three of us did. Then we got physically separated during the Plague, and any time we could get some privacy we made up for lost time.

After I Cured New Amsterdam, we wound up spending most of our days together again, and discovered ways to use Co-Location for on demand privacy along with that. Not only did we go at it like it was going out of style, like we might lose the ability to indulge ourselves at any moment, so we wanted to fill our memories to bursting with good memories, Saffron started using my libido to steer me toward or away from carnage. That's not a complaint, by the way.

I have commented more than once on my completely unmedicated ADHD, which leaves my executive with plenty of dysfunction. As far as I know, while there are all kinds of workarounds and hacks for that, it's not something that 'goes away', even with all the therapy and maturation in the world. So when my fuckin' executive needed to function, her baiting the hook with my own personal favorite bait was just our way of making that happen.

Yeah, we played around with the whole 'Mistress and Servant' thing now and then, and maybe at times I even got a little too into it, but frankly nobody got hurt, so haters can just fuck off. Okay, nobody I cared about got hurt. Karlson, Ericson, and Gormsson might disagree. Yeah, I might have gotten hurt too. See previous statement. Which is what I'm having to deal with now in therapy, I guess. Caring about myself. But I'm making progress with that.

If nothing else, I think Saffron using me the way she did gave me the first step in that. The shitty piece of plywood you put under your wheel when you're stuck in the mud; nothing you want to use as a foundation for something stable, but something to get you started. Because Bonnie and I have that in common, the fact that our families made us feel useless, and sacrificing ourselves to be useful was just... I dunno, step one in feeling like we had value.

Because if you really don't feel like you have value, you're not going to buy the whole 'people have value because they're human beings and deserve lives of dignity'. Maybe for other people, but not for themselves. At any rate, right as we maybe hit some kind of freaky equilibrium with one Bipedal Siberian Tiger, one Tentacled Eldritch Horror, and one Short Stack who defines Supremacy in every way, Siobhan. Sister Siobhan 'My innocence has gotten too big, please surgically remove this portion over here' Darling.

Even when I lost my memory she kept embodying the kind of thirst that normally only occurred in folks who took regular grippy sock vacations. No hate on those folks, by the way. I think that really was my eventual fate until some dude put a bullet bigger than his cock through my skull.

Thing is, while I can recite that whole long assed series of escalations, which eventually wound up with the ultimate escalation of spending intimate time of whatever variety they needed with my most faithful Worshippers, I couldn't really tell you how things de-escalated. Because they kinda have. Don't get me wrong, this isn't an 'oh, we're married and stable and we no longer engage in shenanigans because we're married now' situation. That's just so many kinds of stupid I don't want to even begin describing them.

That kind of stupid you could drown in unpleasantly. No, this is more of a... Fuck, I think I finally understand the times Murder Mittens sat and knitted while she watched Saffron and I. She wanted to spend time near us, but didn't have any super urgent need to exchange bodily fluids with one or both of us. Her serotonin and dopamine levels were good, and she had no immediate itch in need of scratching.

I dunno if I've matured, or this is some side effect of my Soul damage making my emotions leak out, or something else I'm not thinking of, but I'm no longer constantly feeling a need to have one or more of me engaged in conjugal activities with one or more of my ladies. Again, don't get me wrong. I don't think I could ever see one of my ladies engaged in said activities and not want to join in, or do some single player mode while observing at the very least.

I also frequently see one of them do something, I dunno, cute or hot or... Touching? Yeah, touching. Something that touches me emotionally, and that flips the libido switch, and if they're not tired or distracted, wooing commences. Given that we have by now fully wooed one another in a strategic sense, tactical wooing will often wind up rapidly successful, at which point antics ensue.

In short, I'm still engaging in amorous activities of varying intensities with my ladies on the regular, but, and this is the thing I'm thinking is a sign of the maturation that started this whole long-assed rant, I'm not longer obsessed with it. I'm no longer... Fuck, I was kinda trying too hard sometimes before. Yeah, for special occasions I'm still gonna go over the top.

Even if most dinners are paninis or tendies with sauce, I'm gonna go full on individual whipped veggie crusted pot pies in a variety of flavors on occasion. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. Hmm... Now that I think about it I need to plan out an occasion after Siobhan decants to make her pupils do that oscillation vibration thing again.

But that's for some time in the future, and here's the change, the maturation I can see in myself, I'm not upset about not being able to do it now. I'm not contemplating doing that to Marie, Saffron, or Tallulah because I can't safely do it to Siobhan right now. I mean, I'm contemplating doing it to them, but as 'in addition to', not as replacements.

I'm also kinda wondering what would happen if one or more of them did that to me, what with that whole 'the cosmos sparkling in my eyes' thing I've got going on sometimes. Hey, Kitten? Ledger Day. Yeah, like I said. Saffron. Always Saffron. So, my newfound maturity may have found me with an entirely new level of competence at properly expressing and channeling emotions, but I'm still shit at things like maintaining a complex set schedule.

So after wandering around my classroom with a kind of goofy grin for the first half of the day, then watching my students have post-food bliss goofy looks on their little faces the second half of the day, that being after the lunch I put together in the Academy kitchens with the help of the Maenads, I came home with my tentacles full of kids and pizza, deposited both in appropriate spots in the Dining Room, and saw to it that all four of my ladies were seated at the head table, littler ones ensconced in the bigger one's laps, before broadcasting, where to tonight?

New Amsterdam, love. Maybe blushing a little at how that had been a chorus of at least Saffron and Siobhan, I stepped to my New Amsterdam Altar and dropped my Blend. Dana stood there by the Altar, and when they noticed me called out, "Welcome, Goddess! Shall we begin?" I nodded, and just for anybody who couldn't see me, said, "let's get this Revel started!"

I maybe might have been a little confused by the fully clothed nature of most of the Revelers, not to mention the lack of immediate exchange of gratification, mutual or otherwise, but then my first Worshipper of the night skipped up to my Altar, her Kid's Bop Dress fluttering as she did.

"Hi Priestess Diaz!" I held out my arms and scooped Ora up into a hug as she leapt into them.

"Hey, Kiddo. Everything okay?" She had on the bravest of faces, but I could tell that everything was not, in fact, okay.

"Yeah. Well, mostly." She frowned.

"Antony is helping me with things that aren't. He's really helpful. And Loki says I shouldn't feel guilty about him helping me. But..."

"Antony or Loki? Helping you?" She shrugged.

"Either. Both. But, y'know..." I looked inside her as she trailed off, more confirming what I suspected than anything else.

"Yeah. You want to do it yourself. Do for yourself."

"I'm not a little kid any more." She folded her arms across her lack of a chest, making her look even more like a little kid than aforementioned lack of a chest.

"Even if everyone treats me like one." I gave her the tiniest squeeze, rocking her equally gently.

"You're not a little kid. That's true. But," here I spoke as gently as i could.

"You're still a kid." She got a little bit of a pout.

"If I pointed an Inspect at you, it'd come back 'Juvenile' or maybe even 'Child'. Which, complete transparency, it did for me for a long time too. So believe me, I get it. I get that whole 'people treating you like a kid being frustrating' thing."

"I want to help. No, no, I don't want to help, I want to be the one doing things. Good things! But right now Anthony still practically babysits me every time I do anything even a little bit responsible, and Ophelia still treats me like I'm in diapers." I glanced pointedly down at the crimson boy-shorts under her Dress.

"Nope. You're not in diapers." She gave me a look, but her annoyance had part transformed into amusement already.

"Okay, here's the thing. Your sister is obviously just being a b... Mean person who wants to either use you for stuff or ignore you. Amirite?"

"She's a bitch. I know the words. I can even say them when they're appropriate."

"How do you know when they're appropriate?" She shrugged, and I noted that her Dress was way less prone to wardrobe malfunction than the original.

"Loki tells me so." I chewed air for a second at that, then thought, Thanks, Dad. You're the best. Spluttered a little when the kid in my arms replied, "he knows." I chuckled as Dad spluttered inside my head a little at being cut off, then said, "fair point, but here's the thing. Do you think Antony really thinks you're a baby?"

"No?"

"Okay, is he doing anything that would hurt you? Putting you in bad positions because you're 'too young' to be in the ones you should be in?" She frowned.

"Most High Clergy don't have other High Clergy attending to them." I shrugged.

"Eh. If I were gonna do some ceremony of Loki's, like as his High Priestess, I'd want one or more of you guys with me. I sure as heck wouldn't know what I'm doing." After she whispered, "really?" and I nodded, she got thoughtful for a bit. While she did, I pulled her up, snuggled her in, and said, "I know you're not as young as you sometimes look, but you still miss her, don't you?" She nodded and whispered, "yeah."

"You won't take it the wrong way if I fill in for her tonight?" She shook her head, tears sparkling from the corners of her eyes as she closed them and burrowed into me. I cradled her in my arms, rocked her gently, and sang to her until she fell asleep. As Dana carried her away, I kinda oofed as a dense little missile in an Academy uniform landed in my lap. Her hair had been trimmed just over her shoulders, but it hadn't darkened in the slightest.

When I rolled her over and away from me, I saw her uniform had the name 'Pesce' on it now.

"Hey, Hilde." I looked into that dark place inside her Mind, and raised an eyebrow at the guilt that spiked as she breathily whispered, "guess what, Goddess?"

"You cut your hair?" She snorted.

"No. I mean, yes, but no, that's not it." I made a fake little moue.

"Y'know, Saffron likes long hair."

"Do you?" I put on a big show of thinking about it, then nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"Good thing my Senior Shaping Project was a hair growth Spell then." I blinked at that.

"Huh. Really?" She nodded, twisting around in my arms so she could look up at me, her short hair dangling back toward the floor.

"Wanna see?" I smiled down at her.

"Sure. Show me." She returned my smile, then Shaped; I couldn't really see it, but I felt it like a tingle through my arms where I held her. Her hair flowed out of her scalp, long and bone straight and just as pure white as Siobhan or Marie's. She kind of rolled her head as it did, and that made the length of it sway, even as it brushed the floor and kept growing. After a few long moments it had to be longer than she was tall.

"Do you like it?" she breathed as her eyes slipped closed.

"Uh, little long, don't you think?" Her eyes still closed, she smirked and said, "I thought you liked how long hair swayed." I sucked my teeth a little.

"Yeah. Not gonna deny that. Finished all your graduation requirements already?" Her eyes slid half open.

"Every. Single. One." I chuckled at that, because holy shit she was still kinda an amateur, but I saw my own youthful flirtation reflected back at me. At which point I put on a fake speculative look and said, "so, you're a Senior Cadet now?" The guilt in that secret place spiked, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing when she pouted and said, "not yet."

"Thought not." When she opened her eyes all the way and furrowed her brow, I shrugged and said, "no Inspect needed. Don't think you'd be in uniform if you'd already jumped over all the hurdles I set in front of you." She sucked at her teeth a little.

"I dunno, I'm kinda proud of it."

"As you have every right to be. Should be. That thing you want, what you're not getting yet? If it's a reward you're promising yourself once you've earned it, that's fantastic. But it shouldn't ever be some kind of 'proof' that you're 'worthy' or something like that." She frowned. Started to speak, then stopped. That happened a couple times before she rolled herself over toward me, burying her face into the fur of my chest as she muttered, "didn't think of it like that. Not before. But..." She chuckled.

"Sounds stupid saying 'you're right' to a Goddess Incarnate."

"Why? Am I wrong?"

"No."

"Could I be?" She did the chewing air thing a little, this time right into my fur, then pulled back enough to say, "you gonna strike me down if I say 'yes'?" I smiled down at her.

"Not even gonna put you down." I'd been watching that spot in her head, and said, "speaking of," I pushed my Blend back up enough to hide that fine black fur, slipping my Academy uniform on as I did, pulling her into the same kind of embrace as I'd held Ora in. Yeah, she totally pouted.

"I am not a Child." I snugged her in a little.

"Want me to put you down?"

"This jacket is uncomfortable."

"You could take it off." I laughed as her fingers immediately found the buttons of my jacket, then banished both of them, hers and mine.

"Better?" She snuggled into me.

"Better." I started to sing to her, a wordless little melody I half remembered my mom singing to me as a kid, or maybe one Saffron had hummed to me one of the countless times I'd wound up too hurt to move and she just held me.

"I'm still not a Child," she groused.

"Still not an Adult, either." She grumped a little at that, but a kind of quiet thing that I recognized from when my teachers used to call me on my more egregious bullshit and I'd realize they were right and stop. Then she muttered, "still thinking about this later." I chuckled as I kept humming.

"That's fair." It took a while, but she wound up snoring, cute little snores that reminded me of Saffron and Siobhan both. Still so fuckin' weird that I'd put up all kinds of hoops and hurdles for her to navigate, with the clear idea that she'd give up once she wasn't, y'know, a desperate Thrall with no real Skills except shitty erotic dance and likely even shittier bedroom Skills, she'd move on. At this point I almost wound up worried that we'd be a disappointment when she cleared that final hurdle. Almost.

I mean, Murder Mittens is Queen of the Murder Fuck Cult, Saffron has spent multiple years with 'Acts of Intimate Devotion' as a focused area of Zealous Skill-Getting, and I've got all the Mana in the world to dump into 'Gift Ecstasy'. If we didn't live up to whatever fantasy she had in her head, it was very obviously not possible in this or any neighboring reality.

I was still kinda musing over how that should have felt arrogant to think, but somehow didn't, when I set Dana on the Altar at sunrise after an hour or so of gentle cuddling and maybe a little light necking. Stepped to the Newark Academy, watched my Cadets run out into formation, only to notice a seventeenth Cadet standing off to the side.

"Cadet Pesce, pray tell me what you're doing here?" Without falling out of parade rest, she hollered out, "auditing the course, Ma'am! Gotta make sure my basic Attributes are adequately Heroic!"

"Is that so?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" Then, without turning her head or doing anything I could call her on, she followed that with, "I'm especially hoping you'll be able to help me with my Agility and Endurance!" Fuckin' hell. I've already got a Cadet Brat, I don't need another one.