Chương 1074: Day One Thousand And Seventy-Two

Dear Diary, Kinda proud of myself right now, for more than one reason. First, I realized after talking things out yesterday that whatever reason I had that low the day after the Maenad Rescue, that while figuring out what caused it, what causes my ongoing struggles with chronic depression, is important, what might be more important is realizing that they're just another cyclic part of life. They're not some kind of Divine punishment for me being awful. They're not proof or cause that no one will ever love me.

They're just part of my very Human Adjacent experience, and even while it sucks to be in the middle of one, realizing that life is not and will not always be awful does provide some small comfort. That's entirely different than somebody else saying that shit about 'this too shall pass'. I mean, yeah, that's kind of what I need to tell myself at those times, but... It's like gallows humor. If the person on the gallows is joking about being hanged, that's a way of fighting back against the darkness.

If somebody in the crowd is, that's part of the spectacle. Totally different, and the former is understandable while the latter is just encouraging the bully. Reminds me, public executions really aren't a great idea, because people always wind up taking away the wrong lesson. Instead of 'that asshole did some serious asshole shit, and we all saw him Find Out', it's always 'the Bad Guy Lost and the Good Guys Won' or 'glad I'm not stupid enough to get caught', or something else other than 'actions have consequences'.

At any rate, that's the first thing, that while in the throes of my worst moods, it will help if I remind myself that sooner or later the Black Dog will lose his grip on me, and I will once again be surrounded by the love and comfort of my ladies. Of my kids. Of my parents. Of my family. That no matter how dark it gets, there's light if I look hard enough.

There's another thing; I realized that I am in fact in a world where looking hard enough, willing something into being with enough Passion, 'manifesting' shit is something that actually works. I mean, yeah, it takes a trained Will and Shaping Skills and a fuckton of Mana. Yeah, Divine Woo helps amplify all of those things. But I'm in a world where if you want it bad enough, you can make it happen.

Thing is, that's the second thing I realized, but I managed to do a kick flip hop over the pit trap into the oubliette that all the woo peddlers back in the day eventually got stuck in. Just because it is possible to will something into existence does not mean that if you want it and don't get it, you didn't 'envision it hard enough'. Thing is, those woo peddlers would all eventually fall into the same trap as the Prosperity Doctrine, because that's what that whole shit was. If you 'want it bad enough'.

'Envision it thoroughly enough'. All of that is just 'pray hard enough' with the Divine serial numbers filed off. Eventually, you get back around to 'those who have more are inherently better people'. Yeah, Saffron and Tallulah both are Tyrants and have no noticeable moral qualms about that. Marie on her best day is a thoroughly amoral force of nature who just happens to be mystically genetically programmed to like kids, and personally enjoys housework. I'm literally an eldritch horror destined to consume reality.

We are not, by anything inherent to us, 'better people'. Yeah, we work to make better choices, to make the world a better place, to be better people, but that's something we work to do for various reasons. In at least two out of those three cases, I'm pretty sure most of it is because they think it's what I want. Which don't get me wrong, I do, but we're rich and powerful mostly because we stumbled into it, with a side of feudal bullshit that we're trying to be worthy of. Okay, I am, and I think they all are.

So yeah, the third thing is that I realized that even if I'm now living in a world where 'manifesting' works, it does not make the people who can do that shit morally better in any way. More powerful, yeah. Better, no. Speaking of people who seem to be inherently 'better' in a moral sense, Siobhan... Yeah, got home last night, nommed a bunch of popcorn everything. Marie decided to see how many things she could puree, chill, bread, and fry.

Potatoes, carrots, some kind of sweet something that might have been peas, chicken, fish, some kind of red meat that I think was maybe moose, shellfish... I kinda lost track. Dreamt of the ladies treating me to an old school bean and super chibi chef jamboree. Midway through the careful traffic control by Karen, Tallulah, and Saffron got a bit frantic, and shortly thereafter mass yeeting into my Maw occurred and didn't stop until I woke up.

Siobhan, Aoibh slipping off of her nipple and snoring, sat up and stretched. Turning to me, she quietly asked, "what are my goals today?" I remembered what I'd promised. I really was a little worried about her, but she was the Healer, and she'd gone without getting railed into a state of utter catatonia for over a year.

Yeah, I know, that sounds bad, but there's a certain absolute release in somebody finding my buttons, pressing them, and then pressing them again before I fully recover, then repeating that until my brain melts. I cannot be depressed during or after that. During I'm overwhelmed, and after there's no me to be depressed. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Yeah, when I say it like that it sounds bad, but it's not. I think I need to think on why, maybe talk with Mom about it.

Maybe even Dad if he can discuss it without getting all red in the face. Okay, I've just decided I'm gonna insist on him taking part in the discussion. At any rate, I looked at her and said, "You'll need to run ten miles, bench five sets of five reps of half your body weight, squats of your body weight, and leg presses of double your body weight, and finish the obstacle course once." She blanched, but nodded.

"Before and after lunch." She whined, "have I displeased you, Mistress?" I shook my head.

"Nope. But I'm really not sure you're recovered enough to be up to the kind of railing you're asking for." I glanced around, but nobody else was awake yet. I looked back, put one finger under her chin to guide her gaze to mine.

"No matter how much I desperately want to do that." Her eyes slipped closed as she inhaled.

"A request?"

"Within reason."

"After you do unto me, drop me, and collect me, should you resist the urge to consume me utterly?" I took a deep breath, let it out, and said, "yeah?"

"Take me. I mean, use me. Let me see the look in your eyes as you use my limp body and shreds of sanity to finish yourself." Another deep breath.

"Hoo. Somebody's thirsty."

"Parched. Please?" I realized that what she was asking for wasn't really all that much more strenuous than what I'd already promised.

"Okay. If you finish all that. Before sunset." She looked down.

"Will... Will you think less of me if I cannot?"

"What? No!" I snorted.

"Hell, if you even come close to finishing I might be convinced to do that last little part anyway." She looked confused, not by what I'd said, but by her own emotions.

"Look, Darling, the fact that you're pushing yourself for this is awesome. I'm not sure I'd be able to after what you went through. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to so soon after." I pulled her to me, lifting Aoibh out of the way, cradling her snoozing form in my tentacles.

"I love you both for who you are, who you've been, who you're trying to become, and whoever you wind up as." She kissed me. And Aoibh dropped an enormous load in her diaper. Still super glad smell had not entered the poo poo. Today was the final time I'd see this group of Cadets for their first Season of PT, which is why I'd set them up with the basics of Strength, Agility, and Endurance training, both to judge their progress and to let them see how far they'd come.

The weakest of them were benching their own body weight, squatting twice that, and pressing double that on the sled. The clumsiest of them moved through the obstacle course like greased lightning, and if any of them had problems with the twenty-five mile run to start and finish the day, I couldn't tell. Yeah, I insisted on twenty five miles in two hours. That's a brutal pace. Most of them wound up doing enough extra laps to cover the extra mile and a half. On one hand, they were showing off.

On the other, they weren't looking down on anybody to do so, so I let them. Seriously, it was super heartening to watch them shouting encouragement to Siobhan as they passed her. At the end of their morning run, they lined the course and cheered for her, lifting her onto their shoulders and carrying her through a cheering victory lap when she finished. It took her until halfway through what was nominally the obstacle course time to finish her first sets, but she finished them.

When she joined the Cadets on the course, they cheered again, and started in on the encouraging comments as she... Okay, her Agility was probably her highest Attribute to start, and she'd been working on that too, but compared to the Cadets, she kinda toddled through the course. At each obstacle, she had at least one Cadet say something like 'watch how I do it', then demonstrate some trick they'd picked up. She was a little late to lunch, but she finished.

Her lunch wasn't the massive feast most of the Cadets vacuumed up, but when I pressed her, she just shook her head and said, "just water. I'm a little nauseous already."

"You sure you want to go through with this? No shame in your game either way." She frowned and butchered one of my favorite phrases.

"I want the stupid prizes, so I'm playing the stupid games."

"Okay then." Oddly enough, after chugging down so much water I was sure she'd start pissing like a race horse before she got to the Practice Yard, she did way better on the obstacle course. Guess she really had been dehydrated a little.

Her lifting didn't improve as much, but it did improve, and she finished right around the same time as the Cadets, since she'd only done the one obstacle course lap while they'd all been going for personal best numbers of laps without setting off the buzzers, or in some cases best times. Then the afternoon run. She looked at me before starting and said, "May I have some more water?" I rocked my head back and forth.

"You sure?" She nodded, so I stepped to the kitchen and brought her back one of our glasses from home. She smiled at that, chugged it down, and said, "thank you, love." Then she ran. She started out a little ragged after a day of working hard, but she pushed. Oh, holy fuck did she push. As the sun neared the horizon and all the Cadets gathered around the end of her final lap to cheer for her, she literally staggered through the final lap.

She wasn't 'running' by any stretch of the imagination, but she was upright and never stopped moving. Midway through she pulled her headdress off. It went splat when it hit the pavers, her hair streaming out lank behind her. That picked up her pace for a dozen yards, at which point she shrugged off her robes. They just slithered off of her sweat soaked shoulders to lie there in an expanding puddle of sweat, and she sort of jog staggered the final steps to where I waited just beyond the finish line.

Yeah, not a single wolf whistle or anything like out of the Cadets. Yeah, their cheering redoubled, but it was absolutely the kind of cheering Anime Club kids did when Rock Lee dropped his fuckin' weights. She took the final step across the finish line, and I glanced up to see the last sliver of the sun slip behind the roof. The Cadets surged forward, but she lifted her arms, palms outward. They froze, suddenly silent.

She took the final step to me and flopped onto me, hands clinging to the refractory fabric of my jacket.

"My. Prize." she panted.

"Kinda thought you'd want to rest up fi..."

"NOW."