Chương 1118: Day One Thousand One Hundred And Sixteen

Dear Diary, Y'know, now and then I feel things from my larger... I guess I can't call her a 'half'. I'm barely a tentacle tip, really. But yeah, despite all evidence to the contrary, once in a while I feel like there's impulses from there. Not anything coherent, let alone communication, just... Simple things. Things that I might be fooling myself about, might be blaming on that part of me because I don't want to admit to them. Hunger. Lust, in the most basic animal sense of a desire to rut.

Anger, when someone I've claimed as my own is threatened, even when I know the threat is neither intentional nor meaningful. Occasionally, and this is one of the things that makes me feel like either I do not know myself or there's something out there, like there might be the faintest hint of neural activity in the continent spanning mass that is my M-Space ass, something that feels like... Greed, maybe? A desire to acquire, although not at any kind of scale that would really wind up with anyone else having less.

Okay, maybe Zeus, or Odin, or... I think they said The Dagda is the head honcho of the Dan Pantheon, maybe. Because I've been feeling that kind of acquisitive feeling, and it's not 'oh, I want to boink somebody', or 'I want to adopt them'. Wait, maybe it's close to that last. I have this urge to claim the pirates we've been talking to, not unlike that big fuckin' M-Space roar I let off after eating the Mother of Water Panthers.

I mean, the rational thinking part of me figures that if my whole thing is making the world a better place for me and mine, and because I don't want to start being the whole 'kill everybody else' kind of asshole, the other option is to kind of claim everybody who's not dead set against it as 'mine'.

Yeah, the rational part of me wants that to be in the sense of 'under my protection', but let's face it, when I'm talking about weird impulses that don't seem to be part of what I know about myself, I'm not talking about the rational part of me. I guess the long and the short of the thing is that if some part of the Big Black part of me is healing, or waking up, or whatever, I need to maybe treat it like I do the kids.

Nurture it, make sure it doesn't get scared or angry and lash out, teach it to be better than the general level of shitdickery seen in Deities hereabouts.

If, on the other hand, I'm getting impulses and blaming them on the 'other part of me', I need to cut that shit out, but I also need to know what the impulses are and whether to indulge them, restrain them, or most likely put some kind of rules around them, maybe put in some kind of pressure release valve, because 'just say no' doesn't fucking work for anybody who really needs it.

At any rate, after spending the night reaping the natural rewards of letting that 'Saffron, Always Saffron' slip out of my mouth with the woman herself in my arms, I didn't get much sleep. Didn't need much, either. Spent all day yesterday with the Captains asking really boring procedural questions.

I'm not sure whether they were trying to ferret out information to take back and sell to somebody, or just tryna make sure that if they do make some kind of contract with the Alliance in general or one of us in specific, they know where they stand. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! Went home, got dinner, tried not to get too worked up about how Saffron was too beat to do anything but sleep.

Okay, I didn't really get worked up about it, I just kind of felt bad about shorting her sleep the night before. So I slipped Aisling in between us and crooned lullabies to her. Aisling, that is. Saffron's an adult woman and doesn't need lullabies. Really she doesn't. Dreamt of my ladies slowly walking around the edge of my Maw, singing quiet melodies to Saffron, who floated in the middle oozing soup like she couldn't keep it all inside. Woke to find her forehead against mine, her eyes open and smiling.

"That was lovely."

"Aw, c'mon... I remember the lullabies back in the cell. You and Marie were the ones who could carry a tune, not me. Not even with a bucket." She chuckled.

"I think someone has forgotten she ate Apollo." She laughed out loud as my mouth dropped open. Thing is, I wasn't sure whether it was because I'd forgotten, or if I'd thought I'd passed that on to my musical daughters, or if there was some secret third thing that nibbled at my hindbrain and told me that neither of those was completely wrong, but they were absolutely not correct, either.

"Think of something, love?" I shrugged.

"I dunno. Something's itching at me. Something about what you just said, but I can't figure out what it is." She just smiled serenely.

"is one of our daughters now a Sun Deity, perhaps?" I gave that serious thought for a moment, amused when I saw the tiniest bit of doubt leak into her eyes before I shook my head.

"Nah, I've done Sun Goddess things since the kits were born. I mean, there's definitely more than one Sun Deity, so I'm not gonna say none of them are, but I'm thinking at least four of them are clearly some kind of Deity of Music or Poetry. Muses... Maybe...?" She'd gotten a confused look on her face.

"Muse?" I took a deep breath.

"Fuck." She giggled, low and throaty.

"But the children are all here. Not to mention the newest littlest one between us." I smiled and shook my head.

"Nah. The Muse thing. Remember Hephaestus? Vulcan's namesake?" She nodded.

"Yeah, the Muses were... Well, I guess the myth about them was that they were Goddesses of... Inspiration, maybe? Yeah, that sounds about right. Each one covered a different area, like poetry, or singing, or sculpture. A different Art. There was a lot of overlap in some of them though, I think." She just smiled at me.

"So you say you've used our Marie to birth a whole litter of Goddesses into the world whose shared Domain is inspiring Mortals?"

"I mean, it sounds kinda, I dunno, bad when you say it like that." At which point Marie settled her chin on my shoulder and announced, "Does Not."

"I meant the part about using you, you big tigress nerd." I lost a little while to utter brain shutdown when she breathed into my ear, "Use. Me." I came back to myself with Saffron's hand on my face, the rest of the family slowly rousing themselves around us.

"Our Wife has made her desires known, love. Although..."

"Hmm?"

"Perhaps not just now, with the negotiations ongoing, and so much left undone." I felt Marie's pout next to my ear.

"Why Not?" Saffron's hand slipped off of my check to cradle Marie's.

"Because you asked for company last time, and Siobhan's unlikely to join you next time. So one or more of the rest of us needs to be available." I blinked.

"Did you just say that next time we put buns in Murder Mittens' muffin oven one of us will be joining her?" Saffron leaned up to nuzzle her face between mine and Marie's, then whispered into our ears, "all, not one." When she pulled back, chuckling at our purrs, she said, "Siobhan will have her hands full caring for all of us." The look on Siobhan's face as she popped up from sleeping to awake and said, "I'm going to what now?" was adorable.