Chương 1080: Day One Thousand And Seventy-Eight

Dear Diary, Y'know, I think I like the way the folks here and now break up the year. By that I mean that there's no real 'holiday season' the way there was back in the day. Yeah, every month had a holiday, more than one I guess, but most of them weren't really serious holidays.

School might close, banks probably would, and stores would raise the prices enough that the 'sale' stickers looked like good deals, but the only times folks wound up visiting relatives or 'feasting' or whatever was Christmas, maybe Thanksgiving. Okay, really religious types might do so on Easter, maybe, but in general all the big holidays were 'winter' holidays. Which happened in the fall.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I realize my birth world was all kinds of fucked up, just not so obviously as the one I'm in now. But for the most part it seemed like it was the kind of fucked up where different groups of people were working at cross purposes, some of them tryna make the world better for everybody, some of them focused on getting over entirely for their own benefit. But I digress.

Back in the day there was a holiday season, but with the exception of school kids everybody else pretty much worked the rest of the year. Here and now, at least once a Season everything just kinda slows down, near enough stopping on the Solstices and Equinoxes. Okay, it doesn't stop for the people doing the cooking, but that's true back in the day on holidays as well. Although now that I think about it, the folks at the Homestead put in extra effort before Yule so that on Yule, everybody got to just chill.

I mean, Marie and I still kinda did some things, but that's more because along with it being part of being Mom and Wife, it's also kinda our kid friendly stress relief hobby. But my point here is that four times a year, especially out here at the Homestead, everything just kinda slows to a stop, and everybody spends a day just, I dunno, contemplating. Celebrating, too, and I think the folks in Phileo, and probably the other Cities as well, maybe focus on that aspect more than the contemplating, but that's fine too.

I mean, it's not just a one day holiday, really. Academies and from what I can tell governments pretty much close down for the whole week. Yeah, individual people still get shit done, and I'm sure if I hopped over to wherever Lenny is, I could get him to do some Alliance shit. Which I absolutely would not and will not do unless there is a genuine, 'people are gonna die if we don't fix it' problem. Anything short of that is just not worth the long term cost. Shit, now I'm thinking about long term costs and shit.

I guess Saffron's Status isn't wrong when it puts the 'Adult' label on me, even if it still has that 'Young' prefix. Then again, I'm still surprised by me thinking about the long term. But yeah, if we never took a day off, it's possible that we might fix something faster, and some person might live who will otherwise die. But what's more likely, to the point of being inevitable, is that if we never slowed down, stopped, took a break, and just contemplated how far we've come we'd burn out. Hard.

And then not only would we stop making progress, we'd slip back, and so much of everything, everywhere, no matter what world somebody's in, is all about momentum. Keeping the inertia going. Yeah, that might seem to contraindicate taking a break, but there's a certain, I dunno, kind of like a flywheel. A metaphoric one, anyhow. Fuck, there might actually be some kind of Metaphoric flywheel of progress somewhere, possibly buried deep under Alliance HQ.

Sure as fuck can't be buried under the Homestead, or I'd have eaten that fucker. At any rate, Taking a break when everybody else is taking a break, one that's sort of culturally mandated, doesn't upset that flywheel. If anything, the fact that it keeps spinning is sort of a testament to how much progress we've made, how much everybody involved can see that progress when we stop and take a look. So yeah, I like the whole cycle of slowing down, breathing, then getting back to it once a Season.

I mean, I've managed to fuck it up more often than not, but I don't think that was ever on purpose. Okay, not on purpose for me. The Spartans tried to fuck our holiday up at the beginning of the year... Fuck, I guess maybe they did, but we still recovered. Kept moving forward, that flywheel of progress pulling us forward, pulling us back to our work of making the world a better place. I did some good shit this year. Taught a new class of Cadets the basics of being a physical paragon.

Redeemed a Goddess, even if I did have to erase her down to next to nothing in order to do so. Rescued five Maenads. Yeah, that one is putting me in my feels, not just because they remind me so much of Marie, but because I see what that imprisonment did to them. Marie, and to some degree her Academy Maid sisters, are all absolutely self-possessed bad asses.

Their sisters from Asia Minor are maybe a little feral, maybe a little raw and on edge, but they still know who they are, and I would definitely rate them as 'alert', not 'afraid'. Shit, even some of that is gone from the octet living in the old Aetos house, since they get to focus on raising D's adopted kids without having to worry about anybody hunting them now. But the five we rescued... Antigone. Medusa. I'm not sure how bad off the two of them are, because I haven't seen them day to day.

But I've seen Arachne, Iphigenia, and Penthesilea. Penthesilea hides it well, but she definitely feels a lot like Bonnie after Larry's shitstain cousins did unto her. Grasping at life because if she doesn't get both hands on it, she'll slowly slide back into death, even if she still has a pulse. Bonnie recovered, so I've got high hopes for Penthesilea, but I'm definitely gonna be keeping an eye on her, and I will get hands on in her recovery if I have to.

Shit, she's had plenty of hands on me, thanks to Marie being eager to show me off. Kinda another bit of evidence I'm recovering from my childhood trauma, or growing out of it, or something, that I do not need to immediately talk about how I don't know why she wants to show me off. I mean, I don't need new panties thinking about scars, but I know some people do. Also, Gift Ecstasy. Comfort too, now that I think about it, which might be helping them recover.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Speaking of, Iphigenia is... I can't tell if she's reverted to her teenaged years, or if she wasn't a Maenad long before she got captured, because from what I remember from that fuckin' Mythology brick, she'd have been turned not much older than I am now. No, honestly, probably a solid chunk younger than I am now, because I am not as young as I think of myself.

Seriously, I think of myself as a teenager, but let's face it, that's only barely true in terms of actual years of experience, and it's definitely not true in any kind of maturity sense. Thing is, there's one possibility that I don't like thinking, one that wouldn't just affect Iphigenia, but I think a lot of the Maenads have a kind of arrested development thing going on.

When they become Maenads, especially if they live, or lived, the way Marie describes her pre-Phileo life, just fucking and fighting and feasting, there's not a whole lot of, I dunno, living going on. So I worry about that, even as I hope being part of our big weird family helps her move forward, not unlike Marie has done. Then the elephant in the room. Or really, the one who acts like there's an elephant about to engage in some spontaneous un-fun Sparagmos at any minute. Arachne.

She's practically the poster child for trauma induced paranoia. Okay, I guess it's not really paranoia if they're really out to get her, but the 'they' in question are currently recovering from having their shit wrecked as thoroughly as I could do in sixty seconds or less with minimum collateral damage. I really hope that in time she'll realize that we're not... No, she doesn't feel that way about the kids. Or her sisters, not really. Just, from what I can tell, men and Deities of the non-Maenad variety.

Maybe D can help her out of that. Maybe not, and I really don't want to think about what's gonna happen if she reacts to him more like a dude or a Deity than a Maenad or lover of Maenads. But I have to. Think about it. Because like it or not, I'm the Matriarch. The Deity in charge of all this happy horseshit. Which I really shouldn't call it that, but old habits die hard, and it's a bit of a bitch of a job. But then, I'm a bit of a bitch, so I guess it suits me.

At any rate, after spending yesterday preparing all the food the rest of the Homestead brought in, Marie and I carried it all out to set on some simple trestle tables at the very edges of the Courtyard. I worried a little about shit wilting in the summer heat, but fortunately the Homestead is high enough in the mountains that it cools down from 'hot as balls' at noon to 'sleepy warm' shortly after sunset. Maybe even cool, if you stepped from one to the other.

Kinda funny, back in the day I totally would have been one of the kids tryna get me a piece of the feast before it officially started, but here and now as part of the Mom Collective I wound up being one of the people fending them off. I mean, I didn't really blame them, everything tasted fantastic. No, I didn't steal any of it off the tables. But it would have been irresponsible not to taste test bits while Marie and I were making it all.

The sun dipped below the horizon, and Saffron called out, "everyone back away from the bonfire, please." Once she was satisfied with that, she turned to me and nodded to the fire.

"Would you please, love?" Dad? He answered as he reached out to grip my shoulder from beside me.

"Sigyn and I would love to join your celebration, Daughter. Thank you for the invitation." But I think your people would prefer you light their Summer Solstice fire, oh, Goddess of the Sun. Heh. No pressure. I have complete faith in you, Daughter. Thanks, Dad. You're the best. I know. So I turned and focused on the towering, unlit bonfire. I didn't Shape anything. Not really. Just focused my will, until I knew, somewhere deep in my Soul, that the bonfire should be lit.

Should be burning, from top to bottom, not in any kind of explosion or violent way, just with the steady heat that would turn wood into ash over time. And it was. People cheered. My people cheered. They cheered for me, they cheered for the bonfire, they cheered for each other and another Season survived. Hell, we'd done better than survive, I realized, as I looked around and saw that little Aoibh, attached to Siobhan at the tit, was far from the only baby in the Courtyard.

I mean, it's not like we had a one Homestead baby boom, but there were at least four other kids small enough it wouldn't be weird to see them attached at the tit.

"Clear a path!" Saffron called, and I remembered what came next. She turned to me and asked, "so, which of us will go first?" I smiled at her.

"Yes." As she head tilted, I pulled them all to me, with hands and tentacles both, gently handing Aoibh over to Sigyn. Who wound up with a cranky baby desiring a tit and a clean diaper, but I wasn't about to let that stop me; I'm sure Mom had dealt with both before. We all lined up at one end of the courtyard, Saffron to my right, Marie to my left, Siobhan holding to Marie and Tallulah to Saffron. My tentacles embraced all of them as I looked back and forth.

"You guys ready?" Siobhan looked at the fire, craning her neck back too look at the tips of the flames.

"This is terrifying." Before I could say anything to reassure her, Marie declared, "Later, Amolydos." Tallulah looked down at Saffron's hand, then swept her gaze across the rest of us.

"Are you..."

"Sure you belong here?" Saffron interrupted whatever she'd been about to ask.

"Yes. Absolutely, Elle. Do you want to be here?" Tallulah, self-assured, self-reliant, composed Tallulah, worked her mouth like she didn't know what to say, couldn't speak, couldn't answer. So she simply nodded.

"Well then. Shall we?" We took a couple steps at a walk, then a jog, then a run. By the time we jumped, I was half carrying Saffron, and completely carrying Siobhan and Tallulah. She's the Overlord and an Archmage, not a Hero, nor a Deity of any stripe, really. We leapt over the bonfire in defiance of the flames licking at our feet, and I scooped them all to me midway down, setting them gently on their feet when we came to a stop.

"I love you. I love you all." Amongst affectionate murmurs from the others, Saffron pulled me down, whispered, "and we love you, my Goof," then kissed me. Good start to the Summer.