Chương 1039: Day One Thousand And Thirty-Seven

Dear Diary, I really don't know what to say about that whole assed revelation yesterday. I don't know what to think about it, either. I mean, I'm gonna. Say shit. Think about shit. I'm not sure whether I could avoid doing either one if I tried.

Okay, I know I can keep my mouth shut on occasion when I'm fully in control of all of my faculties and I'm at my most mature and one of my ladies has applied some form of covering to my mouth in the form of one of their important body parts that I'm unlikely to nom off and swallow.

I can't tell whether to find it really touching that they enjoy my word salad so much they'll leave my mouth free even now that I've figured out how to turn things up to eleven with that 'Gift Ecstasy' Skill or to feel super smug about the fact that they'll forgo word salad to let me get to Gifting some Ecstasy. As for not thinking about shit, that pretty much requires similar input.

Okay, it requires me to have some kind of stressor, because eustress is still stress, that completely overrides my inevitable penchant for chewing over every fuckin' thing that happens to me. Weird, I can sorta remember that I didn't do that nearly so much right after I arrived. I mean, I still did it, but I was mostly just, I dunno, cataloging the new place I found myself in. Focusing on keeping my head down and not looking like a target. Surviving.

Yeah, I think something about the Battle of the Bay is what really knocked me out of that.

Yeah, that shitty self-help book full of stupid quotes is what I attributed it to at the time, but the thought that I had summoned up one of my own personal icons of power from back in the day and used it to obliterate something that the Gods themselves had to focus on bowel control when they heard about it definitely showed me without too much doubt that I am no longer constantly on the raggedy edge of dying from being expendable. I am well aware of how much ass I'd kicked before that, but that one was kinda big.

I set up the whole endgame scenario, it went to shit because the Mother of Hole Spawn was, as noted, something the Gods themselves feared, and I won anyway. To be fair, Dragons and Undead are the two things we Deities have trouble enforcing our will upon. Yeah, well. The latter can be cured, and the former might be able to learn manners. I caught the oddest sensation from Dad at that. Worry, mixed with guilt, mixed with ever so tentative Hope. I do dearly hope you learn to do so, Daughter.

Why do I think you have a particular Dragon in mind? He sighed, that little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar sigh. Fafnir. I had to think a little to remember. Wasn't that the dude who got so greedy he turned into a Dragon? Stories differ. Origins aside, he is currently the eldest, largest Dragon in Europa. I heard the subtle fear in his voice, and thought, you stole something from him, didn't you? Guilty little boy mode in full effect, he replied, not exactly?

Putting on my best mom voice, I thought, what, exactly, did you do? Well, you see, what had happened was... I cut him off, laughing too hard to force out more than, why don't you save it for next Sunday. As you wish. Love you too, Dad. Because you're the best. I know. At any rate, amnesia aside, I can't really think of a moment since then where I really felt any sense of personal danger. Shit, I'd thrown down with Kaiju and felt injury and pain, but never a thought of 'this is it, this is how I die again'.

All kinds of worries about the mortality of my loved ones, but never really for myself. Shit, I think prior to that I wasn't admitting to it anyhow, but it was lurking there somewhere under the surface. That's yet another reason Yule hit me so hard, I think. I'd been riding that high of 'I am eternal' so long that the clear indication that I am in fact metaphorically two farts and half a sigh from dead shook a deep certainty that I hadn't even realized I had.

Because at the end of the day, we're not lumps of meat, metaphoric or otherwise. We're thoughts and dreams and memories. People, I mean. Not even talking exclusively about Human Adjacent people here, either, because my Kraken dreamed so hard of a Deity that they brought one into being. Twice, if you count getting me out of that fuckin' box.

Then again, I'm not sure whether I should define them as 'Human Adjacent' or not, because while they're totally a different body form with alien minds, or maybe even mind with different facets, because I suspect they've got some kind off cultural distributed intelligence thing going on, they're still clearly 'people', and I use Human Adjacent to mean People a lot. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Eh.

I guess I can use 'people' to talk about sophont beings and Human Adjacent to talk about the people who are, for lack of a better term, mostly humanoid. Because sure as shit there are gonna be both Human Adjacent folks who are less humanoid, like maybe Centaurs or Naga or shit like that, and other non-Human Adjacent sophont beings. Shit, I think Dragons qualify for that latter, what with the Mother of Water Panthers being a whole assed sophont being. Yeah, that's fun to say.

'Sophont being'. Anyhow, I just remembered, some of the Fae aren't human. I met that one, Cat Sith. Shit, now I'm wondering if maybe Lucas got the name from the Cat. Because it sure as shit predates his ancient ass. As you can probably tell, I do not like thinking about exactly how disabled I am. I mean yeah, from the perspective of most Human Adjacent people, I am stunningly abled. I'm including most Deities when I say that, too. But compared to what I ought to be, I am...

Shit, I ought to be, I dunno, Steve Rogers or Kal El or Jonathan Osterman or some shit, and compared to what I ought to be, I'm fuckin' Stephen Hawking. One fingertip interacting with the world and shit.

Okay, I'm not quite that bad, I can make the rest of me do what I want sometimes, but if I'm not absolutely emotionally committed to the point where thought isn't really an option any longer, which is when the rest of my body starts doing right alongside tentacle tip me, I wind up like one of those pilots in Pacific Rim when they try to run the whole mech by their lonesome, or like that Eleven chick when she tries to make her psychic powers go without a bathtub full of ice. No, I do not get nosebleeds.

Yes, I kinda wish I did, because that would be so much better than that sense of, I dunno, un-becoming. It's like falling asleep, maybe, except I'm not actually losing consciousness. It's almost like if I fully gave in to it, I'd totally cease to exist. I kinda wonder if I ever let go that far, the rest of me would wake up. Yeah, that's a bit of a laugh. Am I a Mortal dreaming that she's Mimic, or Mimic dreaming that she's a Mortal? Yes, I read stupid assed western books on Zen and shit.

I learned to read before kindergarten, by the time I hit Eastside I read shit at a rate normally only surpassed by those fuckin' AI things.

'Raccoon in a dumpster' kind of consumption. Shit, I read at a rate that made my eating back in my Academy days seem normal. Funny, I'm back at the Academy on the regular now, and while I do stop in for breakfast and lunch most days, just to keep an eye on my Cadets, I don't really do more than eating enough to taste everything. Yeah, in case it's not obvious, I really don't want to think about that whole 'Souls that go into my Maw may return to the Mortal Coil' thing. Marie had to come get us all.

Okay, I'm pretty sure Tallulah could have stepped home on her own, but both Saffron and I were still reeling. Siobhan looked shook. Not weeping and otherwise shut down like Saffron and I, but still not fully capable. Again, not sure why Tallulah didn't, but then maybe she's... No, fuck, she's totally into her role of Concubine and all the perks, bennies, and above all limitations of that role, especially when we're not in Rich Man's Port. Or aboard ship. Or in a Temple.

Oh, fuck, she does the Concubine thing whenever she's not got another role to play. I'm not sure how that makes me feel, really. On the one hand, there's that whole 'somebody who is playing a role doesn't really mean it' thing going on. At the same time, while I'm not sure if, like, all Sidhe are somewhere on the Autism Spectrum or if their Sidhe nature just emulates that or whatever, 'playing a role' seems a lot like what I read about masking back in the day.

She's wearing whatever mask is appropriate for the situation. In her Court, she wears the Overlord mask. Aboard ship, she wears the Captain mask, which has a lot of overlap with the High Priestess mask she wears in the Temple. Whenever she's not in one of those places, whenever she's around Saffron, Marie, or I, she wears the Concubine mask.

I'd feel guilty about that, and I can feel the guilt reaching for me, but the thing that's telling that guilt to take all the fuckin' seats in the world, is that she practically demanded I let her put that mask on, and she seems genuinely happy while she's wearing it. Fuck, I can't tell if pretending to be happy because you're doing the thing you wanted to do that makes you happy is real happiness or not. I'd ask her, but I don't want to ruin it for her. At any rate, Marie took us home.

Straight to the Bath, because none of us except maybe Tallulah felt up to eating dinner, and frankly I think Sidhe have super efficient metabolisms or something. We all soaked in the Bath, Saffron clinging to me and occasionally taking surreptitious glances at Anise, who for her part was playing some kind of bath game with Lyman and most of the girls. Meanwhile I watched Garde as she and the musicians three sang quietly with Sigyn. Thanks, Dad.

I think he thought he was slick, glancing at me without moving his head. Think nothing of it, Daughter. I did have a question, though. I very carefully didn't sigh. What did you need? Oh, no. I wondered if you wanted me to fill in for you tomorrow. I thought about that. I really did. I kept thinking about it until I fell asleep there in the Bath. Dreamt of my ladies all peering into the depths of my Maw. Diving in, dissolving as they searched, as they explored, as they examined each and every crevice and crack.

Okay, not sure how many crevices and cracks there are in a Metaphoric Maw that seems more full of liquid dissolution rather than actual fluid, but none of them seemed put off, or horrified, or any other kind of negative thing. Just curious and maybe a little awed. Worshipful even. Woke up late. Stepped to the Phileo Academy Practice Yard fully Blended, watched Dad running the Cadets around for a bit Shapeshifted into me.

Kinda weird, I think some of them maybe realized something was off, but none of them said anything. Then again, that might just have been me. I let him keep playing the role until Lunch, 'cause he seemed to enjoy it.