Chương 177: Day One Hundred And Seventy-Five

Dear Diary, Y'know, I got used to the whole 'a day starts at sunset' thing way better than I thought I would. Way faster than I thought I would, too. I still think of daybreak as the 'start of the day', but I've gotten used to the idea that 'last night' and 'yesterday night' aren't the same thing. Also gotten used to the fact that 'tomorrow night' is when the sun goes down, not, like, the night after the following day. Maybe it's because it happens, y'know, every day.

The year thing is gonna take some getting used to, though. So I've been sleeping a lot lately. That's a bit of an understatement, I know, but I was kinda up for five days straight, more or less, exerting myself the whole time. I once read somewhere that humans don't really go into 'sleep debt', that your body doesn't really 'sleep until you've made up for the sleep you missed', but I'm not buying it.

Then again, when we're injured or sick we sleep more, the body shutting down those high-energy-expenditure higher brain functions while it directs all available resources to, y'know, being as far from dead as possible. Woke up to my head in Saffron's lap again. I don't think I'll ever get tired of that, or any other form of 'waking up with her watching over me'. She smiled down at me.

"Good Evening, sleepyhead."

"How many days have I slept through this time?" She laughed a little, "Marie tells me you were up for a bit yesterday. From the excessively smug look on her face when she told me, I can even guess what you were doing." Heat blossomed in my cheeks as I gabbled out something like, "you see, what had happened was..." Her laughter, full throated this time, cut me off mid-excuse. After a bit, she settled down enough to say, "Oh, oh, Goddess. You should see your face. Wait, wait, wait."

She Mimicked me, and my pillow got a lot less cushy. Then she put on this perfect deer-caught-in-headlights face. After a moment she couldn't keep up the face; she broke down laughing and went back to being herself. Of course, I couldn't really blame her, because I was snickering myself. Also, the fact that my head was in her lap and her laughter made her double over forward? Kinda made up for a lot. Or made me forget about a lot.

You'd think being the panini in a press wouldn't be a good kind of distracting, but when the upper half has boobs? Much less bad, and much more distracting. When she finally got enough control over herself to straighten up a bit, I cut in with, "okay, yeah, I guess I did look a little bit like a kid with their hand caught in the cookie jar."

"Or the cat who'd just been caught licking up the cream?" she asked, one eyebrow arching.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, cat, cream, licking. Ha." I couldn't help it, leftover guilt and a weird little bit of frustration made me oddly grumpy. She stroked my hair and said, "why so grumpy about it? Normally you'd be laughing. Or attempting to lick something." I grumped and folded my arms across my chest, knowing how irrational it was as I did it, but unable to stop.

"Because I can't help but feel guilty. And I'd have to roll over. And the angle's bad anyhow." She smiled a bit at that, then gently said, "two out of three of those are eminently correctable, although if you're too tired to roll over it's possible you really do need more sleep." I shifted my shoulders in a lame shrug, and she continued.

"On the other hand, you have absolutely no reason to feel guilty." She frowned a little.

"As I've told you, repeatedly." I sighed.

"I know. I know. I... I just can't..." my hands waggled in the air as I tried to force the vague idea in my head into words. She waited, patiently, stroking my hair.

"My whole life I've lived with people where sex was never, y'know, just sex. Or that's all it was." She nodded when I paused.

"Did you have sex a lot back there? Was it a big part of your life?"

"Eh. Some. I wasn't a virgin. Hooked up once or twice. Had a fuck buddy for a while. Talked about it constantly, because inside my head I'm a twelve year old boy." Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. She leaned down and kissed me. When we stopped to breathe, she whispered, "twelve year old girls can be just as bad, you realize?" I snorted, "you talk like I don't know that. I'm well aware of my default plumbing. Even if, y'know, it's now hot swappable."

I sighed again.

"That's another holdover from back then. Guys are the ones into sex; if they want it a dozen times a day they're virile examples of manhood. A woman wanting it a dozen times a day? Or once? Or, y'know, admitting she wants it, separate from wanting a particular person? Totally a slut, and most people still use that as a slur, no matter how many of us try to take it back." Saffron took a deep breath, let it out slowly.

"That's less different here than you might think." She made a throwing away gesture with the hand that wasn't petting me.

"Oh, Goddesses like Artemis encourage women loving women, even carnally. Aphrodite is, in some ways, the literal incarnation of women's desires. Even Hera has been known to take a lover now and again. But even there the price is so much steeper for women than men." I caught on to that reference, and quietly interjected, "I think Hephaestus paid a bigger price for that than she did." She snorted.

"Oh, I agree, but at the same time? At that age they haven't even really begun to manifest anything like a personality yet. They're a bundle of need. Need for food, need for comfort, need for care. Their only communication is a scream for help."

"How old was he?"

"From the story we're told? Nearly newborn. Barely old enough to sleep in a cradle rather than on his mother's breast. Hera hadn't recovered from childbirth, even, or she might have done more to protect him."

"Sick fucker, killing a kid because your wife fucked around. Worse, since he's done it so many times himself." Saffron nodded, "although it's not like she left the products of his indiscretions unharmed." I made a face at that.

"How the hell did she wind up with the whole 'Goddess of Wives' thing, anyhow, when Hestia and Persephone are, y'know, right there?" She made a clearly fake pompous face and matched it with her voice when she said, "Hestia? The Virgin Goddess? How could she possibly be a Wife? Since the whole point of being a Wife is to satisfy her spouse's carnal desires."

"What about Persephone? She giving Hades blue balls for keeping her underground all winter?" She openly laughed at that.

"Oh. Oh, my. Oh, my Goddess, no. While the Greeks credit the Earthshaker for earthquakes, do you know what most Bag call them?" I thought about it a little, then shrugged, "Loki trying to get free?" She snickered, "okay, they might start blaming that. Now. If they catch wind of his new situation, and Sigyn's completely rational response to it." She paused for breath, trying to keep her giggles from breaking through.

"When the earth quakes, Bag usually say 'Persephone's gone riding again'." It took me a minute, because I am an idiot. When the clue finally impacted my frontal lobes, I giggled, which started her giggling, which, well, kinda set us both off. She fell over backwards, and despite my earlier complaints I rolled over until I lay propped up on my elbows, my lips hovering over hers.

"So, I'm the Hades in our little troika, huh?"

"You said it, not me."

"Last time I mentioned it, I seem to recall you agreeing with me."

"I didn't say you were wro..." I interrupted her with a kiss, which turned hungrier and more intense by the moment, gradually prompting hands to wander. Some time later, we lay there, spent. I mean, I was still pretty clearly recovering from my whole 'kill every tenth person in the region, then Cure the rest' escapades, which meant nothing really acrobatic happened, but while acrobatics weren't involved, happening pretty clearly was. I snuggled up to her, laying my head on her chest.

She went back to stroking my hair.

"I think I'd like to lie here like this forever."

"Sadly, I can't fall asleep right now."

"Fuck." I muttered without any real heat to it.

"Didn't we just do that? I mean, I'm up for it again if you are, but you seem a little winded." I blinked sleepily and replied, "Yeah, no. Sorry if I'm a little underpowered at the moment. Give me a minute to catch my breath?"

"Shhh...." she stroked my hair, then gently stroked a hand across my face to close my eyes. It felt really nice, and the extra darkness from her hand left me completely vision-free, in a good way. I left my eyes closed, but asked, "didn't this whole thing start with me feeling guilty about, y'know, not being up for you because I'd played around with Marie?" She made soothing shush noises and quietly said, "oh, you were certainly up enough for me.

Honestly, I hadn't expected you to be up for anything for at least a week. Your efforts to Cure the Plague from every man, woman, and child in Phileo and the Yards made Pheidippides seem rather a piker, and he dropped dead the moment he finished."

"Pheidippides?"

"The original Marathon run?"

"Oh, him. Knew the story, didn't remember his name." She made soothing noises and stroked me some more.

"We'll talk more on this later; it seems you need it. Some time when Grandma has Isnomi, so Marie and I can both focus on the conversation." I fought to stay awake, but barely managed to murmur, "nah. Let her stay. Good for her. See us talking things through." Her soothing noises gave way to a brief, yet heated, chortle.

"It's not the talking I don't want to be doing in front of her."

"B..." I cut myself off with a huge yawn.

"Sleep now. I'll be here to watch over you until Marie returns. You are safe, and loved, and tired from fighting a fight beyond any mortal. Sleep, my Goddess, as long as you need." My fading senses suffused with my wife, I drifted off to sleep.