Chương 370: Day Three Hundred And Sixty-Eight

Dear Diary,"It doesn't stop being magic just because you know how it works." Terry Pratchett - The Wee Free Men Y'know, I think at some point over the past year I lost sight of that. Weirdest thing, getting reminded of it by shit I would never have thought of as 'magic'. Then again, I remember one of my teachers, the Gaming Club sponsor, talking about a quote from an old as shit game about 'the magic of orbital bombardment', which... I've actually used magic to do in the here and now.

Magic that I'd stopped thinking of as magic and just... did. How the fuck can I stop thinking about being in two places at once, or moving instantly from Calverton to Lancaster to Phileo to wherever the fuck Loki's cave is as magic? Beneath the mountains in the land of the Norse, Daughter. Also, I suspect that is part of why humans strive. Huh? To capture that sense of magic, of wonder, once more. Huh. You really think so? Just an idle thought, Daughter. But not a flippant one. When you have a moment today? Yes?

Stare at your wife. Oh, shit, that's the kind of Divine quest I can get behind. Thanks, Boss. You're the best. I know. So yesterday was stupid boring. I'm not complaining at all, mind you. Somehow I've become an old woman before I'm even technically an adult, because I've come to associate 'boring' with 'good'. Maybe it's having kids. Maybe it's being married. Maybe it's all the deaths I cause when things aren't boring.

Marie and I sat on the mast watching while the Undead Killer squads carefully pushed forward through more empty space. On the one hand, it's kinda creepy, with there being Undead in sight down some of the longer, straighter roads, and past some of the inlets. On the other hand, I'll take a creepy boring day over an exciting high casualty one every fuckin' time at this point. Probably because fuckin' is now an option to liven up boring days.

Wait, would I have been less of a self-destructive hellspawn back in the day if I'd just, I dunno, snagged some hot chick and kept her in my basement for mutual sexual gratification purposes? On the one hand, that would have been way less stupid than some of the shit I pulled. On the other hand, instead of 'nice finished mini-apartment suitable for banging our brains out', my brain went to 'chained to the bed with a bucket in the corner', which does not say good things about my natural impulses.

Thankfully my Saffron understands that my needs do not include a bucket, and that fulfilling the things I do need chain me to her tighter than fuckin' Gleipnir. Also, our bed is really nice and soft and comfy. Hell, both... wait, no, all... holy shit, we have four beds, and that's not including Menace's toddler bed. How do we have four beds? We've got two fuckin' rooms. Okay, three if you count the one that we stole from the library.

Wait, seven, because the Alliance is a Community Property state and Bonnie gave Saffron our suite. Okay, Larry signed the papers, but let's face it, Bonnie is just Larry's hotter, hornier Wormtongue. Only instead of corrupting him for some Dark Lord somewhere, she's... corrupting him for a Dark Lady... who is me, which makes me Saruman? And I guess that makes Saffron Sauron? Oh, fuck, I'm fuckin' Morgoth. My brain ran in circles, chasing it's own tail, until Saffron's voice seeped into my mind. Deep breaths.

Kitten? Yes, love? I grasped at something, anything to ask her, to keep her talking to me. The Alliance is a Community Property state, right? Meaning... Oh, yeah. Spouses like, co-own everything. Unless they specifically have something they don't. But mostly. Tabitha? Yeah? Are you okay? No. Come here. For the rest of the day I Co-Located one of me to the Love Shack, where I lay with my head on a Saffron's lap while she stroked my hair and sang to me.

Lullabies, I think, but I wasn't in any kind of headspace to understand anything but her caring for me. It wasn't anywhere near perfect, because I still had to keep myself on the fuckin' mast, and keep scanning for fuckin' flares and flags. Vigilance is what the Army needed me for, and vigilance was absolutely not what I needed just then, but sometimes you've got to pull on your big girl panties and get the fuckin' job done.

When the sun finally set and we all collapsed into the four of us in the Imperator's Suite, I snuggled into Saffron on the sofa.

"Are you hungry, love?"

"No," I muttered into the panel of her dress covering her belly. I think she waved at the other two. Something with her hands, anyhow.

"Go on, you two. We'll see you at bedtime."

"I'm sorry." She stroked my hair more. It hit different with only one of me, only one of her.

"Don't be, My Goddess. I am here for you."

"But you've got all that political shit you do every day. And your research. And... shit, all I do is stare through some binocs and fuck shit up when the Army can't handle it. Which they pretty much fuckin' have for the past few days." Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. She waited until I'd run down, then said, "are you done?"

"Maybe?" A smile in her voice, she said, "you're done." When I tried to argue, she mushed my face into her stomach so nothing came out except muffled murmurs. When I stopped trying to talk she let me up. I didn't up, I put my arms around her and burrowed my face into her belly.

"Would sex help?" I shrugged.

"Oh. My Goddess. My batshit, brave, beautiful Goddess, do not underestimate what you do for us. Ever." I pulled back just far enough to speak.

"Tell me?"

"Even if you did nothing else? Your very existence brings us Hope. Our children, our elders, our weak, and our wounded, they all know that if they are threatened, you will save them." I opened my mouth to argue and got a mouthful of Saffron belly for my troubles. Okay, a mouthful of Glowing Midnight. Annoyed, I banished her dress, her lingerie, and slapped a skirt and her tee shirt on her. Pulled up so my face mashed into the skin of her belly.

"Are you sure you don't want sex?"

"Not yet. Contact. Skin." She stroked me and pulled my face tighter to her, her breasts resting on my head, warm through her shirt.

"They know that if you do not? That the vengeance for their deaths will be the kind of vengeance bards sing of for generations. Our fighters? They charge into battle knowing that it matters not if the foe they face overcomes them, because even if they fall, even if all their fellows fall, there is no force in Heaven or Earth that can stand against you."

"Undead are doing a good job." I muttered. Her fingers laced themselves through my hair, then lifted my head until I looked her in the eye. It hurt, but some part of me craved that. A part she pile drove into the ground when she said, "How many fatalities?"

"But..."

"How. Many?" she snapped at me.

"One." She frowned.

"The Undead killed someone?" I shook my head.

"Construction accident." She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and shoved my face back into her belly.

"There you go. Because you've told them to be cautious, to grind the Undead to powder, they can be cautious."

"Huh?"

"So my Goof. You fear nothing." I tried to say something about being the Bad Guy, but all that came out were raspberry noises against her belly that made her giggle.

"Which means that when you tell them to be cautious against the Undead? Since it cannot be from fear, it must be from wisdom." Not stupidity?

"Shh... let's keep that between us, okay?" So you do think I'm stupid? She yanked me back sorta upright by the hair.

"Do we need to have that discussion again?" My eyes slipped closed.

"Harder." My beautiful Kitten squeezed her fist closed and forced my back to arch. It hurt, but... In the absolute best way, that I needed right then.

"Sweetheart?"

"Yes, love?"

"Can I take you somewhere?" She smiled at me, "always." I yanked my head forward against her grip for the motion needed to Translocate, dropping us both on the mast of the Black Dragon, leaving our clothes behind with a thought as I did. Before I could say or do anything, a sphere of darkness surrounded us. As I watched her Grin in wireframe, I whispered, "stars." Her Grin got wicked. Wickeder.

"Stars what?" I spun her around, pushing her against the upright metal, forcing my face closer to hers until we stood so close I felt her breath against my lips.

"Stars. Now. Bitch... Please?" She laughed aloud, her smile getting even wickederer.

"I want to watch you while we take you."

"We?" I ran a hand along the upright behind her.

"Yeah." Her laughter ringing out over the water, and a wire thin Mana Blade and a moment later, and we stood in a bowl of impenetrable blackness, the stars shining down on us.

"Take me, love." I smiled as, even as she said that, she pulled my face away from hers.

"Gonna be a little rough with you fighting me like that."

"Yes. I hope so, anyway." I froze. Not because I wasn't exactly copacetic about this, but because the tiny bit of sanity I clung to was the only part that wasn't screaming at me to follow the fucking clear as fuck instruction she'd given me.

"Are you sure?" She nodded.

"I... Tell me why." Burying her hand in my hair, wrapping it around her fist even as she lay a hand on my belly, she whispered, "I'm stronger than I ever imagined, love. Lancaster is terrified of me. You've told any who would listen that you're the nice one of us, and everyone believes you." I waited, let her speak.

"Which they probably should. You're so much kinder than me." Her eyes slid shut, then open again as she looked at me, pleading.

"Show me that my guardian, my Goddess, my Goof, is that much stronger than I am still." I took a deep breath.

"You're sure about this?" One eyebrow went up.

"Yes?" Something came over me, and I just fuckin' rolled with it.

"I ask you a third time, and will not ask again, nor will aught in the world save you from me should you say yes but one more time. Are you sure?" She smiled as she took a deep breath, braced herself, and sighed out, "yes." Later, as we lay under a purring pile of pygmy Lancasterites, Saffron whispered into my chest, "best we don't tell Olga about that."

"Huh?"

"After you turned her down with all those size jokes, she'll certainly, as you would say, feel some kind of way about you including Black Dragon in our troika this evening." I didn't quite snort loud enough to wake all of our houseguests. I did snort loud enough to get a response from Marie, who squirmed around, put an arm around Saffron and I, and pulled us in until Saffron was a squishy buffer between Marie's muscles and mine. You okay, Kitten? I wouldn't move if I could, entirely because I cannot.

She responded to my silent confusion with, I feel safe. Tell us if you need to, y'know, breathe or shit, okay? I'm fine, Goof. I was almost asleep when her final thought before drifting off to sleep reached me. Almost as fine as you. Mimic danced with her Kraken again, bracing herself against the docks while she did. She was very polite about chibi Chef Marie consumption. Like, 'refusing to chew' polite. So fuckin' weird.

I woke surrounded by kids needing diapers, kids needing baths, kids needing toweling and dressing. I think maybe I missed this part of family. Not, like, nostalgia, but I never had this part; I was always the kid, always the one getting manhandled into being vaguely socially presentable. Not sure how much the kids being so eager for me to dry them off helped, but I loved every minute of it. Overwatch duty today didn't seem to flick any of my sadness switches.

Might have been Marie being extra snuggly as we stood there in the breeze across the Bay. Might have been the new imperfections on the mast; a slightly bowed bit of steel here, a discoloration there, but each and every one made me smile. Probably didn't hurt that shortly after noon a very cuddly Marie very pointedly ran her claws over a few of those discolorations, then looked me in the eye and said, "Next." I smiled up at her and said, "with me? With Saffron?"

"Yes." I put my arms around her and leaned back, enjoying how I could trust her to hold me up while I dangled above the deck dozens of feet below me.

"Both at once? Or taking turns?"

"Yes." I laughed, looking through my binoculars at the Calverton skyline.

"So greedy!" She let me slip just the slightest bit, and I gloried in how my body thrilled with adrenaline even as my Soul knew I was utterly safe in her claws.

"Maenad."

"I love it, and you know it." She pulled me up into a kiss. As we listened to the cheers from below, I said, "I love you."

"Same." Right before sunset, a pair of flags flew from the building Swanson had coopted for his offices. I Co-Located there, Marie by my side.

"Good Evening, Seneschal! What's up?"

"Good Evening, Majesty. We've cleared to the next inlet, and I'd intended for us to move our perimeter up in the morning." I nodded, figuring if he had a plan it was better than my lack of one.

"Sounds good. Do it?" He nodded, then shook his head.

"Unfortunately, it appears we've hit a snag."

"Something you need me for?"

"Perhaps. We've discovered a fairly well maintained dry dock; we took it to be empty, although it had some... Dust? Mud? Muck? Down in the base that we didn't like the look of, so we had some crossbowmen fire into it to see if there was anything hiding in it."

"What popped out?" He sighed.

"Hole Spawn."

"Well. Fuck."