Chương 351: Day Three Hundred And Forty-Nine

Dear Diary,"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy It's pretty weird, and probably a little telling about me as a person, that while I totally remembered my whole 'date with Sister Siobhan' thing enough to go visit her the day before Summer Solstice to apologize and reschedule, just in case my latest self-destruction put me down for longer than my last one, I totally forgot why we'd set the date for the Summer Solstice celebration in the first place.

So we spent most of the day yesterday exploring our new ship. Fortress. Space battleship. Our Black Dragon, whatever she winds up being. We found the Admiral's Quarters, I think. They've got more room than any other 'quarters' aboard. Of course, most of the crew of the ship apparently bunked down wherever there was room to throw in a stack of bunks. Like midway through the day Sigyn and Loki showed up with Isnomi, although Loki seemed a little cranky for some reason.

Trying to come directly to you when you were in a Cold Iron clad floating fortress might have had something to do with that. Oh. Yeah. Ouch. Sorry, Boss. Hmph. I shall be less than gentle with you next Monday. You know you won't, 'cause you're still the best. I know. So the three of us spent the rest of the day following her around as she scampered through the ship.

Scariest thing had to be when she decided to scamper into one of the fuckin' sixteen inch gun barrels, because even Saffron is bigger than sixteen inches at her broadest dimension. No, I am totally not going to say whether that is her shoulders, her breasts, her hips, or her ass, because she'd feel some kinda way knowing it's her hips, especially when I compliment her ass so much. Oh, shit.

Anyway, the little Menace refused to come out, hollering something that echoed too much for us to understand, but sounded an awful lot like 'I da buwwit' to me. Which is wrong in so many ways I didn't even have the heart to yell at her when she somehow managed to pop the fuckin' plug off the barrel and jump out onto a couple sleeping Trolls. Well, they had been sleeping until a barrel plug landed on them.

I'm sure I remember the old dudes saying those fuckers had been welded in, but in a competition between Isnomi and any given man made creation, my money's on Menace. At any rate, right around then we all decided to head back to the cabin we'd claimed as our own and spend the night at least once, no matter how uncomfortable it was. Our cabin, we'd sleep in it, fuck anybody who thought different.

Kinda funny, the Karls and Jarls of Norfolk are almost all really big guys; when you're selecting for combatants, and your 'combat traditions' lean heavily toward being stronger and tougher than the other guy, you're selecting for big guys. Which means that almost none of them actually fit on the bunks in the Black Dragon. Marie sure as shit doesn't, although she's flexible enough to make it work. Oh, is she ever.

But right now the crew of the Black Dragon is like sixteen, maybe seventeen hundred Troll Marines who've just bivouacked on the deck, mostly the rear deck, Skasn, who's still recuperating from the heart attack the Mother of all Hole Spawn gave him when she spewed her Miasma all over the Alliance Army, so Olga laid him down with his head right up on the bow pillowed on a bunch of balled up sails she confiscated, and like two thousand mixed Thralls, Volunteers, Soldiers and Levies. Mostly Thralls and Volunteers.

Until we've got a beachhead, all of our Crossbows are aboard the Black Dragon, because she's also so tall that any attacking Undead are gonna have to scale a fucking sheer wall of armored steel. Being shot in the face while doing so ought to put paid to that. Mimic dreams were weird. They felt almost detached, like I was watching Mimic instead of being her.

More shrimp from the sous chefs, and the psychotropic psychedelic tadpoles positively covered the ground under the new puddle Mimic had claimed for her own, despite the big uncomfortable rock right in the middle. That did leave room for a really pretty light show around the rock, as the tadpoles went buck wild in celebration of our recent victory. Yeah. Mimic dreams or not, they're still dreams, and that means they're not gonna make a whole lot of fuckin' sense.

Woke up all piled into a single bunk barely big enough to be comfortable for a single middle aged dude, let alone two young women, an anthropomorphic tigress, and a toddler. Admittedly, the toddler didn't add much in terms of taking up space, but she did mean I couldn't flop around much, even if Saffron tells me I'm not prone to that anyhow. I woke up to my hip aching where Isnomi had curled herself up atop it.

I might have groaned just a little bit, prompting Saffron and Isnomi both to start their wake up sequences. Still cute to watch them do that synchronized, because they definitely are synchronized. Wrinkle nose, sniff. Open mouth, taste test the air. Yawn, blep. Open eyes.

"Good morning, love."

"Ga mana mama!" I dunno how long she's gonna keep up the nightmare dentition, but if she's still got that shit when she gets her first serious boyfriend, I dunno if I'm gonna high five him, offer him a medal for bravery, offer my condolences, or just point and laugh when they get to the oral examination part of the test.

"Ow." Yeah, my morning conversation isn't great at the best of times, and just now my hips did not like difficult tasks like existing.

"What's wrong, love?"

"Not sure. Think my pelvisn't." She frowned a little, "if you'd told me it hurt that much I would have Healed you already." I waved her down.

"No, no, I can hang on until tomorrow." She just stared at me, confused.

"Why... what's tomorrow. No, wait, what do you think happens tomorrow?"

"Uh... Advanced Healing Studies? Doc Z will love showing the class what happens when an idiot tries to ram a sixteen inch gun up her hoo hah, I'm sure." I'll credit my loving wife for trying to not laugh, but a giggle still slipped out.

"You are aware the Solstice was two days ago."

"And?"

"The seasons' classes are officially over. Were we both not already Heroes, or Heroes-in-waiting, I guess, we'd be signing up for classes today." I groaned, then said, "wait, we had a Hero in class with us, didn't we?" She shrugged.

"Heroes can sign up for classes. Either to learn Skills they've realized they need, or to improve ones that aren't progressing as fast as they'd like. Some of them take Advanced Mana Shaping again to get support working on a modification to an existing Spell. But once you're officially a Hero, there's no real need for classes any longer."

"Didn't we get promoted like that before last Season?"

"Yes, we did, but... honestly? I wanted us to finish those few courses all Cadets are required to take before officially becoming Senior Cadets. Less grounds for any cry of 'favoritism'. Not that I'd let that kind of thing stand, but it's better to avoid giving that fire any fuel in the first place." I drew in a deep breath.

"Yeah. I get that. Makes sense. But..." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"You want to go back to class." I nodded.

"Yeah. I mean, I've probably got more Combat experience than any of the Senior Cadets at this point. I sure as shit would be willing to take any of them one on one, with my only worry being hurting them in a way I couldn't put right after. Shit, maybe I need some practice at that."

"At what?"

"Less-than-lethal combat." She snickered.

"You just want an excuse to do more research in your sex manual."

"Yes." Marie's pronouncement cut me off and set all three of us to laughing. Even Menace joined in, although I'm pretty sure she had no idea what exactly we were laughing about. Okay, I really hoped she didn't. How fucking young did I need to have the Birds and Bees talk with her, anyhow?

"Maybe, yeah, but I could do that anyhow if I had nothing to do but sit around reading. Speaking of which, I've got a bunch of books from my old world you might want to read." She nodded.

"The operations manuals seemed a little, I'm not sure, old? But yes, I'll want to read through all of them. I don't think they're a complete set?" I shook my head.

"Nope. Not gonna be. I think they just collected all the ones they could get their hands on for the museum. There are probably some that weren't on display, but I don't think they had anything like a complete set. If I'm not wrong, there's probably a bunch of, like, institutional knowledge we're missing, too. But no, I was talking about the novels."

"... news? Like, broadsheets? I doubt any of those would apply to us here."

"No. Shit. Holy shit." I lay there, mouth open, my brain struggling with a massive fundamental missing piece of culture in the here and now. Like, something they didn't have, that I'd missed, been looking for, only to just now realize it just plain wasn't something that existed here.

"Hang on a minute, I need to wrap my head around this." She'd tensed when I started swearing, but at my request for patience relaxed, running her fingers over me in a very distracting way while Marie slithered her way free and started dressing the Menace.

"In your own time, then."

"Okay. You've got stories, right?"

"Of course."

"But they're all, like, shit that happened. The stories might be maybe a little fucked up by time and interpretation and bragging and holy shit I just realized, you've got Gods for this."

"I... You're not wrong that I can tell, but what?"

"Gods. Immortal beings who remember who did what when, especially anything that fucking mattered enough to earn Glory for anybody." Saffron just nodded.

"That's not how they'd self describe, but it is accurate."

"Okay, back where I'm from, people tell stories all the time, but they're not about shit that happened." She frowned.

"They tell lies?" I sort of worked my mouth soundlessly for a minute.

"Shit. One of the books I... stole? Borrowed? Copied! Yeah, one of the books I copied goes into that. Shit, a couple did. All by the same guy, and there's one that you'll love, but yeah. Technically, they're lies. But mostly, they're about... what people want to be. What they think the world should be, or could be, or might be. Stories. It's, like, one of our major art forms. But... yeah... Huh. I can totally see why... OH, SHIT."

"Another moment of enlightenment, love?"

"Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, um... Divine Secret, here?" Marie closed the fuckin' hatch, which put us as 'really fuckin' secure', what with the absence of anything resembling modern listening devices, and the Cold Iron hull lining making Scrying of any kind a non-starter.

"Okay, the only time I've heard Stories referenced in the here and now is from Loki. Tricksters and Storytellers kinda overlap, God-wise. And Tricksters are more or less Divine Pariahs. Nobody likes them, and I think the only reason anybody tolerates them is that the Tricksters are the ones who can and will talk with the other Pantheons." I paused a moment, realization hitting yet again.

"Probably to trade Stories, now that I think about it. But the more Stories there are, the more they know, the more powerful the Trickster. Which is probably why they like making them happen. But Stories are about shit changing, and the Gods in charge here and now don't like things changing." Saffron had gone quiet, but she replied, "yes. They are, in fact, not big fans of Change."

"Yeah, well. Stories. Novels are long-form stories."

"About?"

"Fuck, what aren't they about? The future, the past, shit that happened, shit that didn't. Worlds like ours, worlds totally unlike ours. Worlds of magic, worlds of super high tech, worlds with both and worlds with neither. Action. Adventure. Politics. People living their lives. People struggling. People succeeding, oh, yeah, that's a big one, of course. People..." I looked to where Menace stared at me, wide eyed.

"People doing Adult things to and with other Adults, enthusiastically." I laughed.

"Y'know, I read somewhere that last one is like the most popular form of literature." Saffron looked wistful.

"I almost wish I could visit one of your Libraries."

"That's just it! I don't know if it was a library, or somebody's personal at-work book collection, or just like a lost-and-found of books, but I found a whole little bookshelf full of paperbacks."

"Paperbacks?"

"Paperback books. Sorta flimsy, but little books maybe," I held up my hands.

"This big, with a whole novel printed in them. Okay, I think one or two in the pile are anthologies, and some of them are pretty obviously self-help books or reference books, and there's one there that just taint-punches not only the idea of genre, but the concept of dividing 'fiction' from 'non-fiction', and that's one I really want you to read, but yeah. Books. Novels. Lots of 'em." By the time I finished talking I swore she was breathing a little heavy.

"Show. Me." I pouted.

"I really did want to sign up for classes today though." She whined at me.

"But... the books..."

"Will be there when we're done." Now she pouted back at me.

"Someone might damage them."

"Marie? If I show you where I found them, can you guard them to make sure nothing happens to them until our little bibliophile gets to them and... happens to them?" Saffron snorted.

"You make it sound like I'm going to be fornicating with the books." I grinned at her.

"Just for that, I'm gonna make you read a Romance novel second, and watch you the whole time you're...

'reading'." She actually blushed a little at that.

"Second?" I nodded sagely.

"Second. There's one in there that you'd be deeply disappointed if you didn't get to read first."

"So much so that you'd put off your own vicarious voyeuristic victory to allow me to read. This I simply must read."

"After?" She disappeared, appearing a moment later with my cane.

"After. Come along, Tabitha, we have classes to sign up for!" We wound up with an eclectic schedule, and a partial one at that, but I wound up pretty satisfied anyway.

Advanced Healing Studies, Advanced Mana Shaping, Intermediate Heroic Skills, which we only signed up for because I wanted a class with Larry, Bonnie, and the rest of the ROTCs and Barbies, and finally we were technically signed up for Physical Training the other three days of the week, but only so we had an excuse to show up in the Practice Yard if we wanted to.

Then I took her back to our suite, returned to the Black Dragon and, with Marie's help, first moved all of the 'non-fiction' to our room aboard, then stole away all of the 'fiction' books, plus the one I'd wanted her to read, carefully setting them on the bookshelf we'd also snatched. She looked at the cover of the first book I handed her. She'd gotten a little miffed when I made her put away her coding windows, and then she stared at the book I'd handed her.

"Discworld? The world is not a Disc. Anyone with a functioning brain knows that. I do not see how it could relate to 'Science' as I've seen it described in my Scrying."

"Trust me?" She rolled her eyes.

"Always." Then she opened the cover.

"Such fine, even woodcuts."

"Not woodcuts. I'll explain later. But the guy credited with that one won 'man of the millennium'. My aunties taped that show. They got so pissed Jesus didn't win, even when I pointed out he wasn't, y'know, part of that millennium." But I'd already lost her. Page after page after page she read, never putting the book down. Oh, she definitely paused. More than once. Hell, practically every few pages.

Every now and then she'd ask me a question, more often than not using me as a sounding board than actually, y'know, asking me shit. Before she was a third of the way through the book, dusk painted our window with the colors of sunset.

I'd spent most of the day Co-Located between our suite and the Black Dragon's bridge, answering questions for the folks reorganizing, restocking, and readying for assaulting Calverton's docks, while the other of me read through the Romance novels I'd picked out, trying to decide which one to inflict on her first. Inflict on her? Violate her with? Somehow 'seduction', although it was probably the word that fit best, just did not seem quite as forceful nor as wicked as the impulses I'd sat on all day.

She sat there, one hand holding the book open, trying to figure out how to mark her place. I snagged my silk panties, which hadn't been worn in quite a while, out of the armoire and lay them in between the pages as an impromptu bookmark. She smiled up at me.

"Only you, Goof."

"Hey, you're the one using me. I mean, using me. I mean, using..." I stopped when she laughed.

"Time for bed then?"

"Eh. Something like that." Marie returned with Isnomi right around then, and together we got Isnomi ready for bed. As she normally did these days, Marie slipped the light shut then collapsed back to the hers on the bed. As we all finished snuggling in together, I grinned and Co-Located Saffron, Marie, and I to the Love Shack. I tossed a surprised Saffron to lie centered on the bed, then scrambled to sit at the corner of the foot where I had a good view, nodding Marie to the other corner.

"Well. This is unexpected, and surprisingly intimidating, what with the two of you just sitting there. Am I to be the evening's entertainment?" I grinned at her, holding out my literary selection for the evening.

"Sort of. But you've got one more book to read tonight." She took it with a great deal of trepidation, eyes going a little wide at the bodice-ripper cover. Honestly, given the contents I'd read within, I was a little surprised the thing hadn't spontaneously combusted in M-Space. Then again, it might have just been too fucking wet to burn. I sure fucking was.