Chương 1156: Day One Thousand One Hundred And Fifty-Four

Dear Diary, As I might have mentioned, I am not okay. I know my ladies meant well. Honestly, I can't even objectively say they did anything wrong. At some point in the future, when they've recovered from feeding me half of themselves and I've actually recovered from killing my mother, I might even let them do that again. In the moment, it was... Incredible. Sublime. Intense. Intimate, in ways that are easy to describe, yet somehow fail to do the entire experience justice.

Each of my High Clergy capable of doing so Co-Locating into my Maw, sharing their perceptions with me as they dissolved into me. As their essence suffused me, scouring away the coherent nothing that was my mother, her flavor and power that had filled my Maw for weeks. It had also damped down every one of my impulses and emotional reactions. The moment the joy died down, the loss hit me again. The guilt hit me again. The betrayal...

I didn't want to think about how she'd betrayed me, at how I'd betrayed her not just by ending her, by eating her, but by realizing that she had, in fact, betrayed me and mine by threatening to end my family. Even with most of it pushed aside, with the power and pleasure and flavor of my High Clergy filling me, I could still feel her, still taste the edges of her.

Now that I knew what I'd been tasting for the past weeks I could force it to the side, kind of like shoving something between my cheek and my gums so I didn't taste it as much, so it wouldn't overwhelm me like it had been doing. That also meant it didn't keep me from breaking down. I cried. I wept all day yesterday, my ladies holding me as I did. I might have lashed out, not in a physical way, but just by screaming and pounding my fists against the mattress of the Bed. But mostly...

Mostly I think I'd outgrown that. I realized two things midway through the day, as Furtim Cauda held me and Marie poured pitcher after pitcher of water into me, that I wasn't just mourning the mother I'd killed. Or the mother I'd killed three weeks ago Tuesday. Back in the day I'd never really mourned my mother. Not really. I realized as I sobbed and muttered incoherent fragments about mother, about guilt, about murder, that I still blamed myself for my mother's death, even though cancer had killed her.

But I can't count the number of times I've said it, that she worked herself to death for me. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. Back then I'd raged, I'd pouted, I'd thrown every kind of tantrum, but I'd never acknowledged the hurt. Never really let myself cry. Never confronted my own guilt. Maybe that's why I still felt it, even though intellectually I knew that was utter bullshit, that I hadn't had a damn fucking thing to do with her dying that way.

Of course, here and now, I did kill my mother. Held her under the surface in my Maw until she dissolved. Ate her alive, until she wasn't any more. Furtim and Marie rehydrated me again not long before sunset. I didn't join the fam for dinner, but the two of them carried me to the Bath room, where they held me while Tallulah scrubbed me down. By the time Saffron, Siobhan, and all the kids wandered in, they had me in the Bath soaking. When my littler ladies settled in next to me, I muttered, "missed you."

When they just snuggled into me and murmured contentedly, I asked, "where have you been today?" Saffron snorted, but Siobhan replied, "the merely Mortal among us required a day of rest after last night." I opened my mouth to make some kind of snarky remark, but before I could a sob escaped me. The two of them held me gently, kissing my tears away. At one point I heard Maze ask, "is Papa okay?" Hailee, who'd as usual been floating around near the Mom Collective, quietly replied, "she's mourning. Her mother."

A few moments later my little pony girl's arms wrapped around me from underneath. One gentle hug later, she swept away. Some of the other kids came over as well. Eventually Aisling wormed her way between Saffron and I, paralleling Aoibh, who'd fallen asleep nursing. Menace followed her, shrinking to her smallest size, curling up and settling down on my belly.

"I lub you, Mama." I couldn't sob. Not like that. So I wept.

"I love you too, Menace." Dreamt... Of pushing my tentacles around my Maw, feeling out the edges of that great mushy nothing. Pushing it around, spreading it out, hating how that damped everything, finally shoving it all to one side, a mushy lump of soft black sand, utterly without color, without flavor, without texture. Maybe at some point I'd need it, but for now, I wanted to feel. I needed to feel. Needed to taste my ladies slowly dissolving in my Maw as they sang gentle lullabies.

In the morning Saffron, Siobhan, Marie, and Tallulah all hovered around me when I woke. At which point I realized it wasn't morning. More like lunch time.

"Are you well, love?" I nodded, sniffled, then shook my head.

"Are you ready to talk about it?" I opened my mouth. At first nothing came out. Then a sob. I shook my head.

"Tomorrow?" I nodded, then pulled them all to me. I... I didn't pull the kids. After lashing out at the fuckin' Bed, I didn't trust myself. They piled themselves atop us anyhow, one and two at a time, until I fell back to sleep. I woke to the smell of baked goods and the feel of the sun touching the western horizon.