Chương 426: Day Four Hundred And Twenty-Four

Dear Diary,"Passion can quickly slip to jealousy, or even hatred." - Arthur Golden I have no idea if that's true or not. I'm not sure I want to find out. I am definitely fuckin' sure that above all I do not want to fuck up what I've got with Saffron and Marie because I get stupid about it. If it is true, that Passion can become Jealousy or Hatred? I've got to be extra careful about that shit, because I've never had a lack of that shit.

I mean, yeah, I had my edgy phase, where I had to pretend nothing mattered, but even then I wasn't really very good at it. One of my teachers once pulled me aside and said, "I can tell you care, because nobody who actually didn't care would spend so much time proclaiming how much they don't care." I guess that's something else I've got to worry about. Focusing so much on not being jealous and thinking about jealousy that I wind up making myself jealous.

Oddly, I don't think Saffron or Marie would leave me, or even give me too much shit if I was, though. They'd both seen me at my darkest, or at least at my darkest so far, and they hadn't flinched. I think if I got all greedy and said they were mine and all mine they'd... maybe not take it in stride, but they'd live with it. For me. Which boggles my fuckin' brain, but there it is. Thing is? That wouldn't be fair to them. It wouldn't be right.

I wouldn't be loving them right, and I sure as shit want to make sure that even if I'm clumsy, inexperienced, and more than a little bit of a dumbass, I'm not on-purpose doing it wrong. So I've got to make sure none of that passion I've got for them turns to jealousy. Oddly enough I don't think I need to worry about it turning to hate. I'd sooner hate myself than hate either of them.

So last night I demonstrated that my sociopathic Ace son is somehow a master of making erotic shit, what with upsized Glowing Midnight making Marie just tall enough that Saffron in OG Glowing Midnight was just under waist high on her. I might have muttered something about being envious of their height difference. I'm not sure, I was too busy concentrating on the visions of loveliness in front of me to really have any brain power left to run my mouth. Well, to filter it.

My mouth is super efficient, it can keep going for hours with barely any input from me. Of course when Marie went to have a sit down on the divan, Saffron rounded on me, stalked over, and poked me in the chest.

"What was that, Miss 'I'm the reason the two of us can shapeshift?"

"Uh... that's Mrs. Reason?" I started trying to get Marie-sized, but a certain tiny tyrant reached out, grabbed me by the shapeshifting, and all of a sudden my feet dangled over the edge of the bed. She pulled me off the bed, pushed me back to a wall while I looked her right in the eyes, and kicked one foot up onto the wall above my shoulder, not unlike Marie had done to D the day before.

"I believe this is what Marie ought to be able to do in our house, don't you?" The warmth of her knee over my shoulder distracting me, it took me a moment to realize that I wasn't in my uniform any more. I was, in fact, in a copy of Glowing Midnight. Weird being exactly Saffron sized, but not bad weird. Shit, this was fun weird.

"Uh... yes?"

"Good answer. Now, since I think you were complaining not about size, but about relative size..." She grabbed my shapeshifting again, and a few moments later I'm not sure how short I was, but Saffron towered over me just as much as Marie did over her. Weird night. Fun, but really weird. This morning as the women went through the bath, both Anna and Devorah stopped to talk with me.

First Anna thanked me for helping find some of the Maenads a new home, not to mention helping D find his footing with the whole Dad thing. It's not like I'd done anything, really, but she seemed really appreciative, so I took a hug as thanks and sent her on to Marie. Devorah, on the other hand, sashayed up dripping wet and full of intent. When I whipped the towel around her and made with the drying, her eyes never left mine.

"So, Champion. After." I chuckled nervously.

"It's not after yet." Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. She frowned.

"Why not? I've found a place."

"Yeah, that's a place that isn't even built yet. Hell, the foundations aren't even in place. Definitely not after enough yet." She pouted more.

"How long must I wait? Will you ever be making 'after' later and later until I'm a withered crone?" I laughed, and she pouted even more.

"Yeah, no, you're right, I don't want to do anything like that to you. Tell you what. When your place is built, and I mean four walls and a roof, furnished, and your first batch of mead is done? That's after enough." Her pout evaporated, and I knew I'd been played.

"Oh, so you plan on getting me drunk first?"

"Shit, you're the one bringing the mead. Doesn't that mean you're gonna be getting me drunk?" She just nodded, squaring her shoulders.

"Mead strong enough to get a Demigoddess drunk. So mote it be, let it be so." I might have coughed a little at that, my throat already envisioning honeyed fire burning my lungs. She laughed and swayed off to accost Marie, who took it as her natural due while still managing to get Devorah dressed with far less difficulty than I'd gotten her dry. The kids played out in the courtyard again, although there were fewer Maenads and almost no babies left in the yard.

I felt some kinda way about that, maybe a weird empty nest thing, but the part of me that doesn't wear my ass as a hat realized that meant almost all of the Maenads had found shelter, and the same held true for the kids as well. Maze continued with Wintersmith, and the remaining women, girls, and quieter kids sat mostly enraptured by the tale. I say 'mostly', because Marie and a few of the women had taught the rest a few basic stitches, and all of them had something they were sewing.

A couple doing mending, a couple making new stuff from cloth, I think, and a couple doing some kind of embroidery. At least I think that's what it's called when you put stitches in things to make decorations. But all of them listened, even as their hands and sometimes eyes were otherwise engaged. In Intermediate Heroics, I asked Doc DeLeon about Alchemy, only to be reminded that Doc Roberts was in fact the Academy's top guy in that field.

At lunch I went to talk to him at the High Table, and after explaining what I was looking for, as well as what I knew about it, he nodded and asked me for a sample. It took a little doing, but by dinner time I'd stolen him his exemplars. Saffron took great delight in adjusting her seat cushion now that she'd reminded herself that she could, in fact, resize me to suit her.

I couldn't even be mad about it, because every time she did it she giggled like she'd just been given a powdered sugar enema or some shit like that. I'd go through actual pain and suffering to hear that noise, my Kitten playing around with my lap and hand size wasn't even noticeable. I'd picked up the binocs today, and Marie managed to get herself behind me while I leaned forward on a crosspiece.

While I focused on both bridges and the unsecured district, taking care to sweep my field of view across the rest of the City at least once every sixty seconds, she worked her way across my back, the pads of her fingers and thumbs working their way across my scars, finding and banishing each and every little painful twinge. By late afternoon, I was so loose I could barely stand up, but I kept my hands on the binocs and my view shifting.

"Marie?"

"Yes?" I'd thought most of the day about what I wanted to ask. Almost as much about how I wanted to ask it.

"The Maenads. All of you. Dionysus made you to protect him, right?"

"Yes."

"He doesn't strike me as the type to hide behind you guys though?" She paused a second.

"Child." I'd thought enough about the conversation that I caught on immediately.

"But, even when he's grown, you still get the impulse to protect him, right? Like when I was gonna throw down that first time he and I met, you grabbed my arm. Heck, you did it again after the rescue mission, when you hadn't quite twigged to the fact that my intent was fucking him, not fucking him up." She twisted me a little at the waist; something went pop and my whole back felt better.

"Yes."

"Thanks, Mittens. You have wonderful hands." She didn't respond to that other than purring and continuing to use those wonderful hands on me.

"So, yeah, barring him getting a very special kind of stupid that he's shown no signs of being, I've got no beef with him, so that's not an issue, but..." I waited, and eventually her hands slowed to a stop.

"But?"

"Would you be mad if I put him in danger? Like, not in a deathtrap or anything, just like if I had him do something that might get him hurt?" Her hands didn't move, but the tension that gripped them when I asked my question slowly drained out of them. Wonder laced her voice when she said, "No?"

"Would your sisters get pissed?" She chuckled.

"Yes."

"Do you want me to join you? I mean you and your sisters?" I paused a moment, and when she didn't respond, clarified, "do you want to make me a Maenad?" That same wonder filled her voice when she whispered, "No." Letting the City take care of itself for thirty seconds, I turned and looked up at her.

"So, do you want to be something different then?" When she frowned, then smiled, then nodded without speaking, I asked, "what?"

"Yours." She bent down and kissed me, and for one endless shining moment in the light of the setting sun, everything in our little world was perfect. Then she sighed, pulled away, and pointed toward the contested district, where the Trolls had signaled 'Enemy Contact'.