Chương 447: Day Four Hundred And Forty-Five

Dear Diary,"Agency is not boundless, Your right to move your own fist, Ends at someone else's nose." - Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Agency Yeah, that's gonna be a bit of a balancing act. But then, that's been my big hangup for most of my time in the here and now. I just want to play with my kid, fuck around with my partners, and maybe do something useful.

Back where I'm from I thought maybe I'd be a writer, but with the lack of universal literacy and an economy that gives people reliably disposable income, that hasn't really been an option. Okay, I dreamed about being a writer back then. I mostly thought I'd start out with 'you want fries with that' and maybe, after a long, hard, completely non-illustrious career, wind up as a bank teller or some shit. That might have been one of the big subconscious drivers of why I jumped at the chance to be a Hero.

Along with the whole 'power makes my nethers twitch' part of things, the title itself didn't miss me. The idea that dipshit useless me could wind up being a first responder that folks cheered when they saw me come on the scene was absolutely absurd, but still kinda hot. I still haven't managed to get in just the right situation to drop the 'it's fine! Why? I am here!' line. Really hoping I can do that while Siobhan or maybe Maze and Menace are watching.

Like, seriously, Marie is more badass than I am, and Saffron... shit, Saffron's actually the full on real deal. She's a legit Hero according to the world and everything that matters. At best I'm a Hero-in-waiting. Like yeah, I get it, I'm a Goddess. A Primordial even. Force of nature and all that good shit. But a lot of that has that grain of sand problem. Scaling Mimic's power, my power, to something that has an effect on the world other than 'simulate carpet bombing' is nigh impossible.

So I'm gonna keep training, keep working, keep trying, keep my eyes open for times when I can make a difference. Something tells me I'm never gonna get that lofty title. Maybe it's my ROTC training.

'Heroes are what happen when somebody fucks up'. I think the Principal back at Eastside would have pissed himself knowing our ROTC Sergeant said 'fuck', but the idea made so much sense to those of us from Camden. On a day when everything goes right, nobody's a hero. Everybody just does what they gotta do, gets whatever they need, everybody goes home safe. It's boring, but it's a kind of boring the past year has taught me to appreciate.

Like, 'if some asshole deliberately disrupts my family's boredom, I'm bringing several Cat Five tentacles down on them until they resemble scrapple' appreciate. Heroes happen when something gets fucked up, and everything is going directly to hell in a hand basket, shit is burning, bleeding, falling, sinking, on and under fire. At that point, either everything turns to absolute shit for everybody, or some brave stupid motherfucker steps up and says 'fuck it, I got this'. I've got the stupid.

I do, in fact, fuck my favorite mother on every occasion I can connive some privacy with her. I'm... not sure I've got the bravery. Hard to say whether I'll be able to do whatever it is that scares me when I don't even know what the fuck it is yet. But... I just wanna play with my kids, fuck around with my partners, and maybe leave the place a little better than it was when I got here. But shit keeps going sideways, and I wind up wrecking shit. At what point am I the solution, and at what point am I the problem?

I really don't know. I mean, shit, I think about it whenever I realize I'm doing some shit that will have an impact on anybody other than my own asshole after I've consumed my weight in five alarm chili. But that's what I want people doing, I guess, not just making choices by flipping coins or following their gonads, but actually watching where they're swinging. Also, it has not escaped my notice that I am, in fact, trying to leave the place a little better than it was when I got here by writing a book.

So as the sun bid fuck you to the sky, my Son looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

"Architecture?" I nodded.

"Yeah, son. Like, buildings and shit. I know you know everything about Mana Shaping, and if you're not the greatest Artist in the world I haven't met them yet, and the shit you build is functional beyond any reasonable or even unreasonable expectation. But everything I've seen you make is, I dunno, on a personal scale. Tools and clothing." He smiled and raised an eyebrow.

"Your darts? Your blades?" I smiled at him.

"Beautiful and deadly tools of warfare." His smile got a little more mocking, but nothing outside of what I as a mom was prepared to tolerate from my favorite son. Which although I'd never say that shit, he absolutely was. The fact that his competition was an epic troll masquerading as a WMD had nothing to do with it.

"Your room, and the furniture and toys that came with it?" I smiled at him. If he wanted to up the ante I'd play along. I definitely let some of the memories from last Saturday leak onto my face. Especially the perfectly fuzzy awesome ones from the end.

"Perfectly crafted tools of wonderful intimate pleasure." I swear he beamed like a kindergartner seeing mom wearing the macaroni necklace he'd made to work.

"Thank you, Mother! It is wonderful to have someone appreciate my art!" He looked a little sly before he asked, "tell me, the saddle?"

"Perfectly. Crafted." My face heated a little.

"I kinda liked watching Marie and your Mom on that one more than holy shit I have got to tie Siobhan to that until I have to Revive her thrice." He laughed, and I surrendered the point to him, what with me utterly losing track of what I was saying midsentence.

"So, Mother, architecture?" I nodded.

"I've got a Temple now." He nodded back solemnly.

"Several, from what I'm given to understand. All disguised in one way or another. Although Mom tells me she's claimed your portion of the Temple of Wisdom?"

"Uh... several? Oh, yeah, Temple of Wisdom. I snagged Loki's portion the same day she claimed mine. Er, Mimic's mine. Not Tabitha's mine." His mouth pursed.

"There is a meaningful difference?" I shrugged.

"You know how you said 'disguised'?" He nodded.

"The Temple of Love now belongs exclusively, for now, to Tabitha Diaz, Demigoddess of Children, Passion, Ecstasy, Bloodlust, Vengeance, and Justified Homicide, Patron Goddess of the Alliance." Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Conrad heard all that and froze. The tiniest of cracks raced across the mask over his emotions that was his face before a single snerk slipped out of him.

"Seriously?"

"Yep." He barked out a laugh, then grabbed at my arms and danced me across the floor. What he surprisingly lacked in finesse he made up for in sheer manic energy and joy. I remembered just then what Loki had described when he went to ask The Smith about Mimic, and realized I was seeing the same thing now. Rolling on instinct, I went with it, smiling a mother's warm, loving smile at her son's rapturous joy as we pranced around his Workshop.

After a moment, a minute, an hour, a day, we slowed to a giggling, smiling, still prancing stop.

"I take it you want me to redecorate?" With a sheepish smile I said, "Uh... Mom and I kinda broke it."

"Broke..." He paused, understanding flashing across his face.

"The Temple of Love?"

"Yeah. Karen's got work crews clearing the rubble now."

"Did Aphrodite displease you so?" He had a very 'Mother Tabitha might be getting Venus flavored Anal Beads for Yule' look on his face right then, which not only skeeved me a little, but wasn't what I wanted him focused on. I shook my head, shrugging and smiling.

"Nah. I mean, she's a bitch, but at this point not really worth your time." I stopped, gave him a serious look, and said, "I'll let you know if that changes." He nodded, and I blushed a little again.

"Yeah, Karen chased her off, and then there was a bed throne thing she was sitting on, and then Mom got really, uh... oh, she took me right there and by the time we were done so was the Temple." He snorted.

"Are you telling me you and your beloved wife fornicated not only Aphrodite's throne, but her entire Temple, to pieces?"

"Oh, we fucked, son. Definitely 'fucked', not 'fornicated'." His face showed that not only had I made my point, he agreed.

"Fair. So you need me to design and construct a new Temple?" His voice had gotten a little iffy at 'construct', so I explained, "Design, yeah. As for construct, I'm absolutely down for you doing as much as you feel the need to, but I was gonna have Karen supervise an actual construction crew. You design it and explain to her how it needs to go, she does all the field work." I looked around, nodding.

"I know you're not really fond of leaving your Workshop except on special occasions." He made a little throwing away gesture, as if whether that was true or not, it was unimportant.

"If I am to do this thing for you, Mother... might I make a request?" I lay a hand on his cheek, and he pretended to lean into it.

"Son, you know I'll do my best to grant any reasonable request you make. Whether or not you're feeling like doing me a new Temple." His eyes lit up a little at that.

"As a favor, a test, a point of pride, could you and Mom do whatever you did upon Aphrodite's throne, but upon the bed I crafted for you?" Seemed like this was 'Conrad makes Tabitha blush' night. My face hot enough to light shit on fire, I nodded, "Yeah. Uh, yeah, we can do that?" Then I realized.

"Oh, shit, you're gonna make another one of those for the Temple, aren't you?" He smiled serenely.

"No, Mother. Of course not." I almost fell for it, almost relaxed.

"This one will be much, much grander." Yeah, after he dropped that inevitable bombshell, Conrad and I reviewed my needs and nice to haves in my new Temple. Of course, he assured me that everything I'd asked for would be included in one fashion or another. A big public room that was less 'throne room' and more 'public celebration room'. Private rooms. Semi-private rooms, because, like, I was pretty sure no matter what I tried to do the Temple of Love would wind up the Temple of Sex Work alongside everything else.

If they were gonna be dropping their obols and Worship my way, the least I could do was make sure they had a nice place to do business, whether they were prostitutes, strippers, or the here and now version of porn stars. I did not need to know that some people did live action in-person 'vignettes', but I suppose I need to thank Conrad at some point. Because now I knew that as Head Bitch In Charge of the Temple, I'd be expected to show up to premiers and shit like that.

Some tiny disintegrating fragment of my neopuritan upbringing tried to think something cognitively similar to 'but I don't like porn', but I could not fucking bring myself to utter that bald faced an utter heap of steaming horseshit lie even inside the confines of my own brain. But watching it in public had always been the domain of really skeevy guys and Paul Reubens, so the thought that I'd be, like, the secondary focus of everybody watching was something I would definitely need to come to terms with.

Because according to Conrad's offhand comments as we discussed where to put the day care and the restaurant so both could remain 'family friendly' while also letting people get their nom on while they took in the show, as not just a High Priestess, but the fucking Goddess in charge of the place, me not showing up to a premier could break somebody's career, as could me acting like I didn't enjoy it. Which, I'll be clear, I'm not going to fake liking something that sucks, but, y'know, second chances.

Maybe I'd see about some kind of broadsheet where I could do a little column critiquing things. Not, like, offering tips or anything, because I'm not stupid enough to think I'm a professional, but just putting in, 'oh, hey, really nice work on the... fuck, everything I can think of is something that shouldn't really be right out there in public. Or maybe that's just my repressed upbringing speaking? Nah, I don't think 'rimjob' ought to be something in something kids might read.

Oh, hey, maybe some kind of simple star rating system, with a clear legend, like 'one star' is 'dude, much love for trying, but seek another profession', two is 'maybe not actively painful to watch, but clearly in need of more TLC before they go on stage again', three would be 'does the job as intended, worth the time spent watching', four is 'oh, kudos, well done, 8/10, will come again', and five is 'yeah, do not come watch this without a change of panties and a towel to sit on'.

Also, the weirdest fucking thing I have ever heard, even though it made complete sense when Conrad suggested it? I'd mentioned wanting classrooms. His first assumption was for adult education. Like, in every sense of that, like physical intimacy lessons for the nookie impaired.

But I immediately realized that a classroom is a classroom is a classroom, and classrooms have a lot in common with the better class of intimate entertainment venue, so yeah, we'd need some really good janitors to clean up after the vignettes in the evenings so the kids could use the classrooms for learning shit in the mornings.

Yeah, I'm gonna run this all past Saffron, because if any being in the universe could make 'so far beyond the fucked up event horizon that not even light can escape' sound like a completely rational good idea it's The fucking Weyland Smith of legend. But... that doesn't make it not make sense. Stayed up way late talking with Conrad. Hell, wound up Co-Locating to morning bath time, because I wasn't about to miss that family time for all the Temples in the fuckin' world. Then the weirdest blessed thing happened.

I'd vaguely intended to go hit Calverton or the Black Dragon today, but Saffron took one look at me, stepped us both to our Academy suite bedroom, tossed me on the bed and arranged me like a throw pillow, then laid her head and shoulders on me and started coding.

"I'm..." I yawned hugely, because she was warm and purring and I'd just spent a night way longer than it should have been doing all kinds of shit I'm definitely not certified to do.

"I'm gonna fall asleep like this, Kitten." I felt her smile, even without seeing or touching it.

"That's the point, Goof." I muttered out something stupid and incomprehensible. I think maybe, "but book the writing won't do itself." Look, I was trying for a 'not gonna lick itself' joke, but my brain had decided to fuck off to the Bahamas or some shit.

"Get some rest, love. You've earned it."