Chương 22: Day Twenty-Two

Dear Diary, Last night after I got back from dinner, after I'd stripped down for bed, Marie knocked on my door, her cart loaded with bath stuff. I opened the door sans clothes, for the same reasons as I'd done in the morning, with one added reason; I'd spent the day going full out for Squadball, and my uniform not only reeked of my body odor, sweat soaked it so much it squished.

Just like my old body, I didn't notice my own scent much, but when I noticed with this one my brain filled with visions of Wawa coffee in the fall. I can just hear you asking 'what the fuck is a Wawa', so imagine if Starbucks had a love child with Seven Eleven. An unpretentious love child with better, cheaper coffee, food, and cheap milk by the gallon. Anyhow, my coffee shop preferences aside, the smell made me realize I hadn't had caffeine since I arrived here in Phileo City.

I hadn't seen or smelled coffee or chocolate since then either; since I hadn't gone into caffeine withdrawal, I could do without the coffee, but in another week or so the lack of chocolate might endanger people doing stupid things like 'talking to me', 'interacting with me', or 'being anywhere I could see or hear them'. I'd need Marie's bath time TLC as often as I could convince her to dispense it, too.

When I opened the door sans clothes, her eyes did the same double take pop open thing that Saffron's had, but instead of getting red in the face, she just smiled. Extra creepy when coming from a seven foot albino with inch long claws and a mouth full of fangs. Creepy or not, I needed a bath, so I pulled the door open and let her in. She closed it gently behind her, then turned and set the bath tub down in the middle of the room.

I remembered last week, so I climbed in and sat down, leaning forward when she approached with the first kettle. This time I knew what to expect, and while near scalding water is still near scalding, it felt good on muscles I'd used and used hard over the past two days. This time she ran the soapy cloth over my shoulders before starting on my hair.

She'd picked a new soap, too, one I tried to place as she alternated between scrubbing my hair, massaging my scalp with her fingertips, and skritching my head and combing her claws through my hair. I think I might have fallen asleep for a bit, because the second kettle of steaming water surprised me and had me spluttering a little. I placed the scent of the soap as she massaged my scalp a second time; honey. I supposed it ought to go well with my natural scent.

Leave it to creepy darling Marie to pay attention to details like that. She scrubbed my back down with her pumice stone, massaging my shoulders with her other hand.

"Hard." she murmured.

"I've been working out. Please don't stop, that feels heavenly." As she massaged away tension I hadn't realized I had, I slumped over my knees, mind drifting with the heat and relaxation. Another kettle of water rinsed away the current round of suds, Marie's other hand on my forehead sheltering my face from the deluge. I didn't even flinch when she gently pulled me back and reached around with the washcloth to wash my front. She started with my arms and the front of my shoulders.

By the time she reached my breasts I didn't even twitch, I couldn't bring myself to break whatever spell Marie had cast with her magic soap and water. A question floated to mind, and as she washed away the sweat from under my tits I muttered, "Hey Marie, if it's not too much to ask, who's your Patron?" She froze for the tiniest of moments before resuming her gentle cleaning and quietly answering, "Dionysus."

That knowledge trickled back into my brain, and just before she moved below my belly my subconscious fired off every alarm bell in my being; my eyes snapped open and I barely refrained from making any sudden movements. Moving slowly to avoid startling her, I touched Marie's soapy wrist and said, "I'll take care of the rest, Marie."

Some of you might not get it, but back at Eastside the library held a few relics from Camden's heyday, big old tomes printed in the fifties and sixties about anything considered 'academic' at the time. That included an absolute doorstop about mythology, and the biggest section focused on the Greek gods, with every single deity worshipped in Greece having their own chapter in that section. Most people hear 'Dionysus' and think booze and parties. That's not wrong, but it's in no way complete.

Dionysus Bacchus, God of Revels, Dionysus Orpheus God of Reincarnation, Dionysus Zagreus God of mostly-female Orgies, Dionysus Sparagmos God of ripping people the fuck apart while they're still alive. Sort of a lady-boner-killer, that last one, especially paired up with Marie white of tooth and claw. Marie knelt behind me while I washed my legs, stood with me as I rose to scrub between my legs, and dumped the last kettle of water over me after I handed her the pumice stone and washcloth.

I turned to face her, smiling sheepishly to avoid giving her too much encouragement.

"Sorry, I think I kinda fell asleep there for a moment. I really needed that. Thanks." She stared into my eyes long enough to make it weird, then nodded and said, "De Nada." before pulling out a towel and rubbing me dry just like she'd done last week. Once she'd dried me to her satisfaction, she gestured to the chair, and I sat while she combed out my hair. That done, she packed up her cart and left. Just before the door closed, she turned her face to me and smiled, a gentle, quiet, reassuring smile.

It would have been a lot more reassuring had she not turned her neck almost a hundred eighty degrees to do it. I needed a lot of help getting to sleep after all that. I woke to Marie knocking on my door with a cart of food not unlike the one she'd brought on my first Monday. After she left, I tore into it, devouring everything edible on the cart over the course of about thirty minutes.

Food taken care of, I dressed in my good underthings and my best, most comfortable uniform; the one where the tailoring matched my shape the best. I walked over to the door, put my hand on the handle, took a deep breath, turned the knob and pushed. Instead of the faint 'click' I remembered from two weeks ago, the door made a sickeningly organic crunching noise, but the handle turned and the door opened. I strode to the front doors trying to look like I owned the place.

It seemed to work, because nobody stopped me until I hit the door guards.

"Good Morning, Cadet Diaz. Headed out?" I nodded.

"Heading to South Street, then the market down on South Ninth." He nodded in response, noting down my destination on his clipboard.

"Will you be requiring an escort?"

"No, I'm good. I'll be sure to stop by or send a message if I decide to go somewhere else."

"Very good, Cadet. Have a nice walk." I nodded and headed out the door. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Right before I left the park in front of the school, a guy sitting on a bench reading a paper stood and turned to walk beside me.

"So, how was your week?" he asked. I struggled to hold back my more biting comments about startling me, then replied with a simple, "had a few questions for you that I saved for today." He laughed, his form shimmering as we walked until he became the same Loki I'd seen last week.

"Okay, first question, before we get anywhere populated. What's a Mimic?" I almost didn't notice his twitch, but his answer came slower than I'd become accustomed to, especially since he'd answered questions I hadn't even spoken aloud.

"That... Depends on who you're asking," he held up one hand before I could call him out on being evasive.

"I mean that literally. For the bulk of the local pantheon, Mimic is an apocalyptic legend. You're familiar with Jormungandr and Fenrir, correct?" Who knew I'd get so much use out of an out of date textbook I read to kill time back at Eastside.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Okay, what about Nemesis?" That took a moment as I cudgeled my brain into giving up the info.

"Greek goddess, uh... Don't remember much about her."

"Fair. The Greeks don't advertise her Portfolio, which is retribution against those who have mucked about with the Divine balance of the world." I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye as we walked.

"Isn't 'divine balance' just another way of saying 'the way the gods want it'?" He nodded, but smiled when he replied, "believe it or not, no. The Patriarch of any given pantheon rarely wants what the Trickster wants, for example. At any rate, the Gods themselves can disturb the balance worse than any Mortal, which is one of the reasons for the Pact preventing any of us from incarnating here on Earth." I just stared at him, not even bothering to hide my disbelief nor think about the reason for it.

He broke out into giggles.

"Trickster. Also, I'm really careful about what I do while I'm here."

"If you don't follow the Pact, why do you care about what you do down here?"

"Well, not only might it sully my already shitty reputation amongst my fellows, I don't want to find out what it feels like to get punched in the nuts by Nemesis." I nodded, "fair point. What's this got to do with Mimic?" We'd reached the Boulevard proper by this point, and given the later hour of the day, weren't the only foot traffic.

"Please watch your phraseology, Tabitha. Not only is that word likely to provoke unfortunate responses from random passersby, you might actually garner their notice."

"The passersby?" He rolled his eyes, "No. The M word. I feel stupid referring to them that way like a superstitious Mortal, but better to feel stupid than feel an abundance of pain."

"Why are you afraid they'll notice?"

"Do you know what Nemesis, Jormungandr, and Fenris all have in common?" I thought about it for a bit before replying, "They can hurt Gods?" A rueful smile accompanied his next words.

"They can kill gods."

"Didn't you kill Baldr?"

"Gods have weaknesses, yes, and some of them can be killed by those weaknesses. In most cases, they can be brought back given the right circumstances as well. A God struck down by Nemesis' blade, Jormungandr's poison, or Fenrir' digestive tract is just dead; weaknesses don't matter, revivification isn't possible, they're just dead and gone, their power dispersed according to the nature of the killer." We walked a bit more while I chewed over what he'd said so far.

When we'd made it most of the way to South Street I said, "since I doubt you'd bring up something completely irrelevant, I'm guessing the M word can kill gods as well?" Loki nodded.

"Yes, although that's just the first bit of why they're so feared and reviled. When I said 'the power is dispersed', the power of those dying by Nemesis' blade reinforces the balance, making it that much harder to tip it. For those dying by Fenrir's maw, their power fertilizes the soil when he shits it back out. When one dies to Jormungandr's poison, their power is destroyed. Nobody likes that one, let me tell you. Wanna guess what the M word does with it?" I only had one guess, "just like Jormungandr?

That's a hell of a name to stick a kid with, you know."

"Tell his mother. Also, no. They take it." I blinked.

"You mean, like, 'anything you can do I can do better' kind of taking it?"

"I'm not sure. Much like my children, they were bound long before they might have done anything of the sort. For much the same reason, and that's the third reason M is so hated. Prophecies from multiple pantheons point to M as the one who will end them. In the case of the Dan and the Mor, the words used were 'cast them down from on high'."

"Yeah, I can see where they'd want to avoid that. What about the Norns?"

"Bring Justice to the Unjust."

"That doesn't sound too bad."

"Do you find the courts Just?" Didn't even have to think about that.

"Not really, no."

"What about Lawyers?" Again, not a brain teaser, "Nope."

"So what about the God of Lawyers?"

"Oh! Yeah, I can see where that might be a problem." I chewed on that information for a bit, then asked, "what about the other reason?"

"M is a shapeshifter. Shapeshifters tend not to be trusted." I stopped and looked him square in the eye.

"Aren't you a shapeshifter?" He shrugged and kept walking, answering as I caught back up, "I didn't say they weren't trustworthy, just that they aren't trusted. I mean, some of the local ones, especially the ones that aren't really worshipped as Gods? Yeah, those sick fucks give the rest of us a bad name." I understood people being prejudiced based on something you had no control over.

Looked like even some of the Gods themselves had to deal with racist bullshit, and god killers and shapeshifters were the divine undesirables. I shook my head at the stupidity of it.

"Yeah, okay, I kinda get it now. Couple other things are itching at me, I could use a hand with."

"Name your woes, and as your Patron I shall do my best to assist you with vanquishing them." I took a second to put my thoughts in order, then said, "in no particular order, I can't see other people's magic the way my classmates seem to be able to, I can't write in Standardized Celtic. I can read it, but I can't write it, and I have no idea why. Oh, I could also use some spending cash for the days I have the afternoons free."

"Should not one with my Patronage be able to take what they like without anyone the wiser?" I rolled my eyes at him, "I mean, if we're talking about somebody who can spare it, sure. But roach coaches barely make a profit as is, I'm not gonna steal something from someone like that. Same goes for most of the people who buy food from them. If they could afford better, they'd be buying it." He smiled at me.

"A noble sentiment indeed." He handed me a small purse that hadn't been there a moment before.

"That should be enough for lunches and knickknacks, if you want something more I'd prefer you acquire it yourself, as one with my Patronage should."

"Oh, I'll go all Robin Hood if some rich asshole really deserves it. What about the magic and the language thing?" He nodded, still smiling as if my Robin Hood reference amused him.

"Just a moment." He reached out and touched my arm. I'm not sure what he intended to do, but a frown crept over his face. I had a hard time seeing it, as a pop up window filled the center of my vision. Mimic? (Y/N) Nope, no, nein, nyet, Īe, negatory even. I'm not enough of an idiot to try to trick the trickster right in front of his face. Really I'm not. Oh, fuck off, I can have a moment of near non-idiocy once in a while. The pop up blinked away just as Loki said, "that's not happened before. Odd."

I tried my best to look confused, as if nothing had happened.

"What do you mean?" He smiled the easy smile of a trickster in his element.

"Oh, nothing. Just call on me when you need either of those things and I will aid you."

"Cool. Can we just shoot the shit and see the sights for the rest of the day?"

"I've nothing pressing."

"Great!" I paused a moment, hoping to sound like I'd just thought of something.

"Hey, do you know any places I can get my dance on tonight?" He laughed and beckoned me down the street. We spent the rest of the day meandering through South Phileo City; half of it I recognized with pangs of homesickness, the other half I stared at in open wonder. In the evening I found out that not only is my Patron the God of Tricksters, he's also the ultimate Fake ID. Momma Diaz' little girl had her drink on when she stumbled back up the steps to PCHA well after dark.

The front door made that same crunching noise as my dorm room door did in the morning, but I barely noticed as I stepped through the door only to come face to face with Marshall duBois and two other people way too old and out of uniform to be Cadets.

"You've got some explaining to do, young woman."