Chương 1142: Day One Thousand One Hundred And Forty

Dear Diary, I'm still not okay. That's kind of an understatement, really. Yeah, I tasted the salt in my tears. But honestly I'm not sure I would have if I hadn't tasted nothing at all for days before that. It's like the times back in the day near the end of the summer, when everybody was 'dieting for the beach'. Not like many of us got to go to the beach, except the ones with relatives in PR who would pay to fly us down there. But honestly that wasn't why folks were dieting. Not really.

Not my friends at school, at least. For most of the year, we'd get breakfast and lunch at school, which meant when we dropped a buck or two on bodega food, it was filling in the corners, not tryna stretch one fuckin' pastelillo to feed four people or shit like that. Dinner was dinner, but where for some of us that meant takeout, and for others it meant mom or an auntie cooking something, for most of us it meant tryna figure out how to stretch a couple bucks to feed a whole family.

I mean, I sort of get what some of the old heads and all of the clueless rich six eff folks folks used to say about cooking being a way to stretch stuff. If I were back there with what I knew now, I could probably turn twenty bucks into something good. Flour's cheap, and with flour, yeast, and water I can make bread. Add some butter and I can fry that shit up, and that's some solid filling calories there.

Potatoes are cheap too; quarter those, oil them up, salt them, and shove them in the oven for an hour and boom, potato wedges. I guess protein might be spendy, because I don't think I've really cooked all that many beans here and now. I guess I could figure it out, because no way would I be able to afford meat with twenty bucks. But when I haven't tasted anything in long enough, any kind of flavor hitting my tongue is like a flavor explosion.

Yeah, I'm saying all this because well before the end of the night, when I'd cried myself parched, everybody straight up carried me up to the bar and fed and watered me. Okay, 'watered', and if I know that booze isn't really hydrating, I did have more than liquor. I mean, I had liquor, as did everyone else, but I also got water and juice. No milk, but then I haven't seen a lot of milk here and now.

Not none, it's not like they don't have milk cows, but without refrigeration I think a lot of it gets turned into cheese. Near the end of the night, as everybody shifted over to the restaurant for breakfast, because while the bar had food, it didn't have breakfast, Marie brought Hailee and Aisling up to me.

"Hey girls. Did you sleep?"

"Some."

"... yes..."

"You up for waffles, pancakes, and fried custard?" Hailee smiled, and even Aisling looked intrigued. We settled in to breakfast with my Worshippers around us, and I discovered yet another wonderful feature of the Yandere Shobitch Wedding Gown. Not only will it remove any harm to the wearer and clean them and their surroundings up at sunrise, it'll even make sticky syrup hands unsticky. Stepped everybody home, but before we headed out to a day of reconciliation, I pulled Saffron to the Bedroom.

"You could have summoned me to the Temple, love," she smiled as she said it, letting me know she was mostly kidding. I shook my head.

"Yeah. I wanted to let you know something's still wrong." Her expression shifted to concern, but I shrugged.

"Nothing terrible, but... I can barely taste anything."

"Truly? That's... Disturbing. Did you..." I shook my head.

"If there's one thing whatever this is has done, it's knocked my ADHD for a loop for a bit. Or my executive dysfunction. Whatever the fuck it is that keeps me from getting shit done isn't doing that, so I'm gonna get shit done while I can." This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it She smiled up at me.

"How mature of you." She hopped up, dangling from my neck to give me a peck on the lips, then pulled her mouth next to my ear, "I will definitely be rewarding you when we celebrate completion of negotations."

"So... Autumn Equinox, then?" She laughed aloud.

"No, I suspect we'll finish up at the end of the day tomorrow, then have everything ready to sign on Monday." I nodded, relieved.

"Okay. Um... Once that's done, is there anything else that we need to take care of?" She thought for a second.

"So if you are not back to yourself by then, I've a few ideas we can try."

"Thanks, Kitten."

"You're very welcome, love." So I spent yesterday playing stenographer for the reconciliation, working the Newark Cadets to the bone building up their basic physical attributes, guarding the Grand Council and the Overlord's Keep, as well as one of me working on some spicy, but not too spicy, chili and cornbread. Marie helped, both with the cornbread and with fine tuning the chili, because I could still barely taste anything. Got home, got myself and everyone else fed, then hit the Bath for a nice long soak.

I wasn't anything like all right, but I wasn't dead, I wasn't crashing, I wasn't even hurting more than normal physically. So I soaked and relaxed and tried to let myself heal. I also played with the kids a little. Dreamt of my ladies, the chibi chefs, and even the Kraken pouring ladies and chibi beans and shrimp into my Maw. Oddly enough, the Kraken themselves didn't dive in. No idea why, although if they were there in person I can totally see why not.

Then again, I did reach up and caress their tentacles, their arms, just gently letting them know they were welcome. They responded by dumping even larger loads of shrimp into my Maw. It... It wasn't totally tasteless. But I still could barely taste any of it. Today was more of the same, although instead of teaching Cadets how to be faster, stronger, and tougher, I taught kids how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Okay, I also taught Aisling how to resolve exponents.

I know I learned how to figure out square and cube roots and shit back in the day, but I cannot remember it. I had one of me in the Academy library tryna work out how to do it from first principles all day. I mean, I could just ask Doc Roberts, but I don't know when his day off is, if he has one, and I don't want to interrupt his class for something I can do myself. I figure if I haven't figured it out by Monday I'll ask him then.

Of course, even when I'm being responsible and taking care of shit and getting things done, I still fuck up now and then. Even if this time it might have been a good thing. I realized late in the day that everyone else in the Black Dragon's conference room was staring at me.

"What? Did I fart?" The Captains laughed, Swanson laughed, Tallulah and Saffron both looked affectionately exasperated. The table did not laugh, and nobody felt the need to kill the Mimic. I know, I've told that one before, but unlike some people I have an appreciation for the classics. Saffron shook her head and said, "no, love, but are we done?" I thought about it for a couple seconds.

"We've cross checked each and every item in each contract against all other items in all other contracts, as well as against any items that affect one another in some way. So, y'know, yeah, we've reconciled all possible interactions of all four contracts. Does that mean we're done?" She nodded.

"It does. Now we've only to write down a final copy, sign it, and the contract is sealed."

"On your end, perhaps," said Anne. The other two looked at her.

"I'll have to have my lads sign it as well. It'd take enough dissent to vote me out to nullify it, so I'm certain it'll pass muster, but that will take a day."

"Takes your people that long to make up their minds?" She shook her head.

"Oh, no, but I'll need to go from ship to ship." I chuckled.

"Yeah. I can expedite that. If I get you to each of your ships as fast as you could blink, how long?" She did actually blink then, which made me smile, but then she said, "I guess an hour, at most?" I looked at the other two. Red just snorted and said, "this is why I've complete authority to bargain." When I looked at John, he shrugged.

"Not complete, but I can make the agreement and it takes a near unanimous vote to deny it." That's when I put my foot in my mouth.

"With each of you guys... Nah, each crew, and each little flotilla having their own Articles, maybe we ought to have thought to empower you guys to recruit other Pirates who'll sign on to the same four contracts. Or even just the Privateering and Escort ones." They all stared at me, tired satisfaction transforming to something not quite despairing, but only because these six were made of sterner stuff than that.

They had the same look I'd seen on ROTC Cadets when, at the end of a road march, the DI announced a sprint around the track. Saffron broke the silence.

"So. Shouldn't take more than a day to add one clause and reconcile the rest with it, right?" Yeah, I'm not all right, but I'm still capable of fucking my own shit up.