Chương 1155: Day One Thousand One Hundred And Fifty-Three

Dear Diary, Yeah, I am not okay. I'm really not sure how often I've said that here. I guess... I guess it's something that shows another facet of my maturation. I'm able to say that about myself without being snarky, or self-abusive, or in any other fashion than acknowledging that I am hurting. I've been traumatized, and I'm processing the trauma.

I'm not sure how long this one is going to take to recover from, because I've realized why I've been so functional for the past couple weeks, and if it's not something I want to overindulge in, because numbing the pain of trauma doesn't heal it, doesn't let me process it, it's still something I have available. Something I can use when shit needs to get done, and frankly it's a lot less self-abusive or likely to backfire than the blinding rage that's seemed to be the other thing that works. I guess...

I guess I'll see. I'll keep working with my ladies to see if this is something I need to do away with, or set aside for emergencies, or maybe slowly, gradually work into the rest of me. But I think that's something I've learned over the past couple weeks. Over the past couple months, even. That some things, most things even, don't need to be done all at once or even in a single session, a single day. Progress takes time and consistency. I'm not sure how that works with Change.

I was gonna say 'if', but I'm pretty sure it does. Shit, erosion. That's Change, but it's not immediate and sudden. Not usually, although it often sets up big massive changes. It's slow, persistent, and with Mom's Domain added to my own, now definitely part of me. I just need to learn how to keep it in check, do it deliberately when I do it, and not accidentally fuck shit up with it. Fingers crossed.

So yesterday after we dealt with the launch full of ensorcelled Pirates, and Tallulah spat out the name 'Leanan', I figured I might have at least a temporary solution.

"Is she Fae?" She worked her mouth a little, like she had half a dozen answers fighting to be expressed, then finally shook her head and hissed out, "yes." I nodded. Orla? Yes, Goddess? Kinda functioning as Champion and maybe Captain at the moment, but... What happened to those Cold Iron helmets you guys used aboard the Black Dragon at Calverton? After a moment she replied, one moment please.

I waited, pulling Tallulah to me and stroking her hair, letting her know that no matter how much she needed to let her rage out, I understood, while also making sure she didn't do a War Crime on our prisoners. After a minute Orla thought, Admiral Swanson has them in storage aboard the Black Dragon, Champion. I thought for a second. Okay, can you get... Not a prize crew. I don't want to take their boat away, but somebody needs to look after it. I'll have Furtim bring a station keeping crew across. Cool.

I turned to Tallulah.

"Okay, we're gonna take them back to the Black Dragon, put them in protective custody, including Cold Iron helmets. Will that keep whatever mojo is fucking with them to a dull roar?" She got a booger look at the mention of Cold Iron, but that faded when I mentioned interrupting the ensorcellment.

"It will indeed. It might even break the enchantment entirely." She frowned.

"Which will be problematic if we must prove that they were, in fact, influenced."

"Subtle?" She nodded.

"Indeed."

"Okay," I hefted the guy who'd been spokesidiot for the launch over my shoulder, then picked up everybody else in my tentacles.

"This dude and the three musicians will go in the cells, at least until we get some Shapers they trust to confirm the whammy to the rest of the crew's satisfaction. The rest will get Cold Iron beanies until we're sure they're no longer being controlled."

"Godd... Cha... Tabitha. I..." She stuttered to a stop. I hugged her.

"It's okay. You've got some bad blood with this bitch?" She shrugged and nodded.

"We'll need to talk about that. Maybe Sunday?" She nodded, then frowned.

"Perhaps some today? Before... I'd like to clear the air a bit before tonight's Revel." I looked around.

"You sure we ought to be doing that?" She shot me a smile that belonged on a particularly annoyed shark.

"Leanan is... Are..." She shook her head.

"Not the sort to leap forward."

"So we've got time?"

"Very likely." I nodded.

"Okay. Let's move." We stepped over to the helipad on the back of the Black Dragon, where I laid most of the crew down with a few Trolls guarding them. As I carried the other four to the brig, I passed Orla, who had a few Sailors and a few Trolls each carrying crates that looked to be big enough to hold like eight of the helmets I'd distributed during the siege of Calverton. Once I had them in the brig, I stepped Tallulah and I to my cabin.

"Okay. What do I need to know? Or what do you need to tell me? I'm listening." She nodded, then held up a hand for patience. I hopped onto my chair, leaned back, and just watched as she did a little pacing. I got the impression that she really was trying to sort things from Sidhe Fae alien fuckery into something comprehensible by normal Human and Human Adjacent folks like the rest of us. After a bit, she nodded and turned to me.

"You are aware that Mortals normally sort the Fae, the Sidhe most especially, into two Courts, yes?" I nodded, "Seelie and Unseelie?" She winced.

"Your pronunciation is atrocious, but understandable." After shaking her head, probably to erase my mangling of her native tongue like an etch a sketch, she continued.

"That distinction is all at the same time historically accurate, contemporarily meaningless, and yet still functionally useful." I thought about that for a second, oddly reminded of the whole 'Left versus Right' thing from back in the day.

"So, it had a real meaning at one point, but that meaning is basically obsolete for some reason, but the distinction still can be helpful sometimes?" She nodded.

"So long as one doesn't get too tied up in it." She smirked.

"Which Fae, Sidhe especially, are wont to do, which is why the more intelligent of us remember that the original definitions are the only ones with a granularly objective definition, whereas the modern ones are... Fuzzy." Yeah, she'd looked like that last word was like she'd just had something fuzzy with mold in her mouth.

"Okay, so... What's the original definition?" She nodded.

"There were two competing schools of thought when I was younger. Well, to be quite honest, long before I was born, although given the lifespan of the Sidhe, there were many who'd experienced the division among my tutors. Those two schools, which eventually solidified into Courts around their most powerful proponents, were the Shaylee..." At that point she paused, looked me square in the eyes, and thought, Seeleigh.

"who believed that there was value to be had in peaceful coexistence with Mortals, and the Unshaylee," Unseeleigh, "who felt Mortals were little better than animals." She snorted.

"Given that many of the Fae are themselves animalistic in outlook and behavior, less than that, even."

"Okay, Seeleigh and Unseeleigh. Pro-Mortal and Anti-Mortal, more or less?" She tried to hide a pained look, sighed, and said, "more or less, especially given... But I get ahead of myself. The Seeleigh were lead by Queen Titania, wife of Oberon, King of Underhill. The Unseeleigh were ruled over by Queen Mab, also wife of Oberon."

"Uh..." She smiled at me.

"Much more like Pyevatar and Ilmatar." I nodded.

"So, no love lost between them?"

"Their ancient enmity only became worse with their dispute over Mortals. Their hatred for each other was such that it blinded them entirely to the machinations of The Morrigan, as each blamed the other for each of my greatmother's actions." She sighed.

"As a child she regaled me with stories of how she tricked them into wasting most of their power against one another in that way. For most of my time in Rich Man's Port, that was my modus operandi. Playing the other Sidhe against one another, the Sidhe against the rest of the Fae, the Fae against the Mortals. Even now I seek to undo centuries of that, but without disruptions the cost of which would inevitably be paid by those least advantaged." I pulled her in, hugged her.

"Hey, you're doing what you can. You've learned better, and you're putting that into action. All you can do is all you can do." She smiled wryly at me.

"But I could spend myself recklessly in that pursuit, perhaps finish it sooner." I shook my head.

"Take it from me, that's not always better. Especially if you don't get the job completely done. Pace yourself." She sighed, nodded, and returned the hug before pulling away and pacing again.

"So eventually The Morrigan seduced the King, engineered the deaths of both his Queens in such a way that he believed they'd killed one another. With no Queen, he accepted her, the Dan Deity of Death, as his new bride, one who would 'put an end to the endless petty squabbles of Seeleigh and Unseeleigh'. Which I suppose in a very technical sense she did. Then she killed Oberon, at which point she was the sole royal Sidhe, the undisputed ruler of the 'united' Fae Courts."

"Sounds like you don't really think they're all that united." She shook her head.

"Not now that I have seen something approaching a true union." At my questioning look, she explained, "your Alliance." She blushed a little, then corrected herself.

"Our Alliance. Even though I've only been part of it for such a fleeting moment, it is still... I would still be part of it. It is worthy of my allegiance." She looked me in the eyes again.

"Even should we fall out, or tire of one another, I would remain loyal to the Alliance, for it is. Worthy. And I think far more of the citizens of the Alliance believe as I do." She paused, then once again corrected herself.

"Or perhaps they agree with my judgement, even if they come to it by different paths. It is a true union, forged by bonds of mutual interest, empathy, and solidarity, not a constantly bickering nest of vipers who have chosen to nest together to protect against foreign vipers." Funny, I'd never really seen Tallulah hold forth like this. I'd also never seen her pace.

"Do you do that while you're teaching at the Academy?" The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. She jerked to a stop, turning to look at me with wide eyes.

"Do what?"

"Pace." She blushed, every freckle flaring as much as the silvery traceries between them.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be! It's..." I Grinned at her.

"You've got the legs for it." She blushed more, but with a tiny smile on her face.

"Seriously, T, don't be embarrassed. You pace when you're instructing. Helps you talk, not hurting anybody, and like I said, it's easy on the eyes." She kept blushing, but her smile eclipsed her former frown.

"Okay, so Seeleigh and Unseeleigh Courts technically aren't a thing any more, but they're still relevant because...?" She nodded, then very conspicuously stopped herself from pacing. I looked pointedly at her hips and pouted until she hunched her shoulders the tiniest bit, that smile on her face flickering back into existence, then turned back to pacing, her gaze still on me as I smiled and stared at the way her pacing made her hips sway.

"Go on, T. I'm listening." She chuckled.

"There might be a quiz."

"I hope there are prizes for right answers?"

"Maybe." She squared her shoulders, shook her head, and focused on what she was saying.

"While the Courts themselves are no more, the underlying philosophies still exist. I am, as you might guess by my rule of Rich Man's Port, of the Seeleigh variety. My greatmother and all those close to her, with few exceptions, leaned toward the Unseeleigh side. The Morrigan herself saw Mortals as useful only in their deaths, as their deaths fed her Domain, a steady source of Power."

"Okay. So we've got philanthropes and misanthropes." She shot me a look of surprise.

"Hey, I like words. Might not track one hundred percent, but it fits in general, right?"

"Yes..." She drew that word out to three full syllables, then shook her head and sighed.

"I do not see how the differences might become problematic at this juncture."

"Yeah, but I get that they're approximations. We'll burn those problem bridges when we come to them." She chuckled.

"So what's this got to do with... Leanan? I swear I've heard that name somewhere. Just can't remember where."

"The Leanan... She is both a person and not." Tallulah paused, arguing with herself for a moment, then continued.

"This is hard to explain to one not Fae, but there is a type of being, type of Fae, known as 'Leanan Sidhe', and there is one such being who has claimed those words as her Unique Title, claiming the meaning as her identity. As such, all of that type are fundamentally linked to her."

"Like... High Clergy and Deities?" She shook her head, shrugged, then said, "the mechanism may be similar. It is an approximation at best. But again, given that you understand that?" I nodded.

"It is not entirely inappropriate. At any rate, the one who claimed that Title has suffused her identity with it, so much so that the Title has become her Name."

"Hoo. Like, True Name kind of thing?" She nodded.

"Doesn't putting her shit out there like that make her kinda vulnerable?" Tallulah heaved a sigh.

"Not as much as you might think, not when it is also effectively the True Name of that entire class of beings. Trying to bind her with that name would be like trying to bind one of your tentacles with the name 'Mimic'." I whistled.

"Okay. Yeah. So not only does she have the kind of mojo an old... She's old?" Tallulah shrugged.

"By Mortal reckoning, ancient. As Sidhe measure such things, she is in the ascendant portion of her life." I didn't quite follow that, and Tallulah realized immediately. She paused, then explained, "she is fully adult, come to the fullness of her power, and has selected a... The closest word might be Purpose."

"Or Domain?" She nodded again, her eyes going wide.

"Perhaps, perhaps. I am also in my Ascendancy, although unlike most, my Purpose has..." She smiled, a look of unaccustomed rapturous joy filling her face.

"Changed."

"Really?" She nodded.

"From what to what?"

"Before you entered my life so dramatically, breaking my Threshold, saving my daughter, and beginning my long, slow slide into your orbit, my Purpose was, all things speaking, relatively minor. I was the Overlord of Rich Man's Port," she shrugged, "some would say the living symbol and proof of the Seeleigh philosophy."

"Some?"

"My greatmother and her ilk would call it a desperate, failing attempt to prove that the Seeleigh were other than fools." I snorted.

"Yeah, which of you is my tentacle bling again?" She stopped her pacing in front of me, spun to face me, leaned in until we were nose to nose, and said, "both of us." Then she smiled that predator's smile of hers and breathed out, "but I enjoy it, my Goddess... My Tabitha." Things definitely got a little warm in my cabin at that, and I suddenly became aware both that my bed was, like, right there, and that my tentacles couldn't penetrate the hull. Or anything else they suddenly desperately wanted to penetrate.

"Uh... And now?" Her smile dissolved into a chuckle as she spun to pace again.

"Now I am burdened with the Glorious Purpose of replacing my greatmother." I opened my mouth, but she was already shaking her head.

"Not to sit upon her throne. I am not powerful enough or old enough, albeit age would likely only qualify me by granting me more power." She shook her head again, turned to face me.

"No, Tabitha. My Glorious Purpose is to be dam and mother to our Child, who will be the Sidhe Goddess of Fae, Undisputable Queen of Underhill." I shuddered at the sheer certainty in her voice.

"Uh... Isn't that 'indisputable'?" She shook her head.

"Indisputable means everyone agrees. Undisputable means disagreement will not matter." She shook her head again, something I realized she did when she was trying to fit things into Mortal terms.

"Her Purpose is already known to me."

"Which is?"

"As I said, to be Queen of Underhill, Sidhe Goddess whose Domain is the Fae. All of them, no matter their breed or philosophy." That shook me. Left me sitting there for a minute until I literally shook myself and asked, "okay, so what's the Leanan Sidhe's Purpose?"

"She is the Sidhe Lover. The Lover of Mortals."

"That... Doesn't sound very Unseelie?" Tallulah raised an eyebrow.

"You are a lover of food, are you not?"

"Huh?" Images of my epic eating sessions went through my head, followed by my nightly dreams of Ladies and Worshippers alike.

"Oh. Uh..."

"Unlike you, she does not care for those whom she consumes." She stopped, shrugged.

"Perhaps some of her type do form attachments, savoring those they consume, but in the end, those Mortals still wind up gone. Minds shattered, Souls consumed, Bodies... Sometimes consumed, sometimes left to rot, the way one might leave the husk of a fruit."

"Oh, shit. Yeah, I can see that. Uh... So she's the type who just noms whoever?" Tallulah sighed, shrugged.

"Loathe though I am to attribute any potential positive qualities to her, she prefers the most beautiful, the most 'exquisite tastes, as befitting her cultured palate'." As I digested that bit of information, I thought about the tone of her voice.

"Uh, I don't mean to pry, but it seems kinda personal between you two?" Tallulah took a deep, centering breath, her eyes sliding closed.

"Beyond the fact that my greatmother perpetually compared me to her, to my detriment? She is the reason you need not concern yourself with... What is that Mortal term? Oh, yes, 'my exes'."

"What, this bitch licks your plate?" Tallulah took a moment to figure that idiom out, and when she did something between a snicker and a sob forced its way from her.

"While I might not have cared for any past Lindsey's father in the way I've allowed myself to care for you, I did enjoy their company. I also thought them to be potential fathers rather than just sires." After a pause, she whispered, "at least until she stole the second one away, then delivered his corpse to me when she was done with him." After a pause where I just held her and she very carefully did not weep, she shook her head.

"No, she does not 'lick my plate'. She steals it away the moment I show enough enjoyment to bear a Child, then drops those self same shattered plates at my setting when she's eaten her fill."

"T, I..." She looked at me, a savage, open mouthed cousin to a smile on her face.

"Oh, yes. She will try, if we do not end her first. Should you get me with child, and she finds out, she will try to consume you as well."

"Uh... Didn't we...?" That smile, if anything, got broader, and I realized that Tallulah's face could be just as predatory as her daughters', as her son's.

"We did. If she has found out, she will come for you. She will not be able to resist. Should she somehow steal you away from me, from us, she will gorge herself on you. She will fill herself," I swear at that point Tallulah's smile got broad enough to rival Nimble Jack's, reminding me that no matter what else, my long tall Sidhe Lady was not, in fact, Human, "to bursting." Yeah. I might have picked up some tendencies from Siobhan. Threats to my own personal life made me not so much terrified as horny.

We maybe pre-gamed before the Revel. Just a little. Got a report not long before sunset that the Pirates who got new headgear came to almost immediately, and wound up wondering why and how they'd wound up aboard the Black Dragon. I told her that I'd talk to them tomorrow, but to tell them they'd been compelled to belligerence by a hostile Fae, and would be treated as guests until we could confirm the compulsion was gone.

They all seemed a little put out by that, but took the wise course of not arguing with Furtim or her Troll Marines. Once they got to the mess hall and got themselves some decent food, they actually looked like they were settling in for a mini-vacation. Stepped Tallulah and I home, got the kids eating, at which point Karen showed up.

"What's up?" She glanced at the rest of the Mom Collective, gave them one of those knowing smiles, then looked back to me.

"Some of your other High Clergy asked me to babysit for the evening." I looked around, and not a single one of my Homestead ladies would meet my eyes. So I just sighed, chuckled, and muttered, "trust the process." And your ladies, they all chorused into my brain hole. At that point they all smoothly stood, Saffron pulling me to my feet as well.

"Children, be good for Karen."

"Yes, Ma!" our kids chorused unevenly. Before I could say anything, each of my ladies laid a hand on me and Translocated. I got a bit of a weird shock as not only did they Co-Locate me to multiple Altars, but Saffron dropped one of me in front of Furtim Cauda in Troll Home. In my Rich Man's Port Temple, with the broad windows behind us, Tallulah straddled my lap, a mischievous grin on her face.

"I was so tempted to tell you of this earlier." I blinked as in each my other Temples, on my other Altars, my other ladies filled my laps. I felt Saffron reaching through them, Shaping something I vaguely recognized as a bit of illusion, the one that would project her perceptions to an audience. Worship surged through me from five different congregations. I realized right then that it was maybe more than that; I spotted a few regulars from the Phileo congregation in the Camden Yards Temple.

"Tell me about what?"

"This." She leaned forward, kissing me. Sharing her perceptions with me, tasting the sweet spice of my own mouth as our tongues danced and played, my other ladies following her lead. I'm not sure how long we did that before I pulled some tentacles in, because some part of me had disconnected from time as thoroughly as I ever had in M-Space. There were places I wanted to fondle that weren't easy to reach with my ladies pressed up against me, and my thinnest tentacles could reach e.

Tallulah's eyes snapped open as I trickled Mana into Gift Ecstasy, and her lips curved as she kept them locked to my own. And this... Without leaving my lap, she fell back away from me, her perceptions suffusing my own. Her toes hit the edge of the West Tower just long enough for her to launch herself backward. From the West Tower in M-Space. My ladies, their perceptions and wills intermingled with my own, held me still as she dove, plunging deep into my Maw.

A moment later she shuddered as pleasure suffused every fiber of her being. And that subtle sweet flavor of angel food cake filled my perceptions, filled my Maw, absorbing... Nothing. The nothing that had suffused my Maw, my very being, since I held my mother under the surface of my Maw. As she shuddered to stillness in my lap, a tsunami of Worship swamping us both, Marie's tail and claws did unto me as my tentacles were doing unto her, and she thought, my turn.

She Co-Located and leapt from the top of the West Tower, roaring as she swan dove into my Maw, plunging even further than Tallulah had done. Umami and ouzo suffused me, washing away more of that nothing, and I stopped struggling against my ladies as the essence of my Maenad's Soul got even my Brobdingnagian M-Space ass tipsy. Also, y'know, Maenad orgasms hit different, and the Worship flowing through the New Amsterdam Temple hit us both hard enough to make our fur sparkle.

Before Marie's roar finished echoing through the Temple, Furtim Cauda growled, Legate, into my brain. Her claws barely touched the tower, and she plunged deeper than either of the two before. I love me some chicken tendies, and Furtim? Just perfect. Crunchy, juicy, savory, salty, bursting deep within. Yeah, Trolls kinda make Maenads seem gentle and tender, but if the Worship at my other temples had been a tsunami, the Worship from Troll Home came in like a power washer, blasting the nothing away like sand.

Before I finished gasping from that, Saffron smirked into my lips and thought, bet you thought I'd be going last. She took a moment to set herself, then fell backwards into my Maw, and if she didn't go as deep as the others, licorice still filled my Maw. Licorice and soup and raw, orgasmic joy as the combined congregations of Phileo and Camden Yards cheered and Worshipped, the power of their faith hitting me like a wall of sound and light.

As I drifted in a haze of Power and pleasure, Siobhan whispered into my lips, "I've always wanted to try this," then thought, ladies? She didn't step off the tower. My tentacles, moving on their own, moving as my other High Clergy directed them, lifted her. Penetrated her as sloppily and far more frantically than I'd ever done. Dangling her upside down, spiking her pleasure and terror with slippery tentacles that moment by moment barely kept her in the air.

Until, right in the middle of an orgasm that left her shaking, they didn't. The others had dissolved once they hit the depths of my Maw. She shattered into motes of sparkling, sweet, cool ice, a smile stretching her mouth as she forced her eyes to stay open, the windows of her Soul open and showing me nothing but pure, unadulterated love and passion, the people of Newark echoing that same sentiment with their Worship.

The Worship and passion and the lips of my ladies kept me whirling, unable to do more than accept their Worship, their love, until sunrise lifted us from the Altars, a final wash of pleasure and joy filling us all, Deity, Priestesses, and Congregation alike. When we landed, when that final wave passed from us and left us lying, spent, on my Altars... For the first time in weeks I really felt the loss of my mother. My Clergy swept me away before my Worshippers realized I'd broken down weeping.