Chương 635: Day Six Hundred And Thirty-Three

Dear Diary, I don't really know whether there was anything I should have done differently over the past couple days. Could have? Sure. I could have Revived Grandma. She might have died again right after, but it's not like I've got any lack of Mana or stubborn or stupid. Since I'd have to be an idiot to try to out-stubborn Grandma Aetos about something like that.

I could have refused to take her to my Maw, or even done shit to try and keep her out of it, but much like with Reviving her, it'd wind up being a question of stubborn, and I sure as shit wouldn't want to get into that particular flavor of pissing contest. I'm not into that kind of thing. Of course, it's not just about whether something was dumb. It...

holy fuck on a stick, but my reconditioned two year old cereal box prize moral compass has actually pointed to something as 'not right', although if I manage to read the faded printing I think it reads 'not me'. As in 'not the Deity or Person I want to be'. Chain Reviving somebody just to keep them technically 'alive' feels a lot like the 'heroic measures' I saw a couple doctors take to keep someone's heart beating when I was sitting watching my mom die in the hospital.

So long as they still had money or insurance, they'd put any poor bitch without a DNR through hell just to keep them technically 'alive' enough to keep the bills flowing. Okay, I'm sure some of them were really doing it to try and give their patients maybe one more day with their loved ones, just a little more time to find a cure for whatever was killing them, or whatever, but the me sitting there watching my mom die wasn't exactly me at my most charitable. Or mature.

If I'd had some kind of moral problem with putting somebody in my Maw, it ought to have started with Garde. I should have hesitated before I ate that Dragon.

Okay, I'm definitely sure that taunting that poor Draconic bitch, letting her think I might not end her, just to add a little extra despair flavoring to her head cheese was somewhere in the direction of 'not who I want to be', but I think 'fighting an ancient evil that literally ate empires worth of sentient beings' is one of those situations where I can cut myself a little slack for making mistakes.

Like, yeah, still a mistake, still want to try and avoid that in the future, even if a tingle in my belly that's threatening to spread to my crotch and mouth in equal measure says 'no, no, it was fine, you should try making the Mortals despair some!' I'm really not sure whether it's better or worse that thinking about that bittersweet, pungent, mind-alteringly intense flavor settles that appetite right down. Of course, now it's more 'can we save a few like that up and do them all at once'. Seriously.

The Dragon was the world's biggest tub of chocolate frosting. Hit my metaphoric hips like a freight train, and definitely something I'd nom the fuck out of again if the mood hit and the situation was right, but... I could not do it, too. Grandma Aetos, on the other hand, was a flavor experience. Which feels like it ought to be a terrible thing to say, but some part of me, amazingly some part of me that isn't an enormous hyperchromatic orange tabby, thinks that might be wrong.

Like incorrect wrong, not morally bad wrong. If someone decides for whatever reason to check out, and their chosen method for that is one last soak in my Maw, maybe the least I can do is pay attention. Savor them. Experience them, not as I want them to be or as other people saw them, maybe not even as they wanted to be seen, but as they are. Were? No, in that final moment, they are, I think.

If you consider they're having a serious gustatory and sensation impact on a Primordial that's covering a decent portion of a tectonic plate, they might be more real in that moment than they ever were before. Or maybe that's just me thinking backwards under the influence of Her Dark Fatassness. Or maybe my Chuuni phase is creeping back out in preparation for guiding my daughters through that shit, since some of them are gonna hit it eventually.

So yeah, I don't have any moral qualms about how I handled Grandma's death, or her Soul. The rest of it though... Maybe I could have told the kids more gently. Broken it to them better. Maybe I should have let Siobhan talk to Ria while I held the girls. Or kept everybody together. So many ors it seems like a sea lion convention. I felt like I was stumbling through the whole fuckin' day yesterday. I think maybe I'm gonna need to visit Loki and Sigyn at some point in the near future. Or we could come visit you.

You've no present need for Soul Realignment, and we could speak in your office as easily as my cave. Yeah, my office gets cold as shit at night. Doesn't warm up until around noon maybe. Oh no. Not cold. Whatever shall I do. Fuckin' Jotnar smart ass. You just wanna watch Mom's nips get hard without having to work for it. Nonsense. It also means I can watch without my hands obscuring the view. That got a belly laugh out of me, which I definitely needed. Thanks, Dad. You're the best. I know. Shall we come to the wake?

I'll check with Saffron, but I'd like you two there. Then we'll be there. So yesterday after the funeral, once we watched the fire burn the corpse down to nothing but ash and the ash blow away in the wind until nothing remained, we all trooped back inside. By that point Daya, David, and Menace were all three mostly asleep.

The after effects of the emotional avalanche of Grandma's death and the associated traumas had Alex and Ria both nearly that fatigued, and if Maze and Lindsey had each held up remarkably well, they were still kids who'd had a full fuckin' day.

"Dining room?" Saffron nodded, and I scooped everyone together and stepped them downstairs. We managed to get some food into all of the kids; all of it 'funeral feast' stuff, which here and now wound up being leftovers and cold cuts and stuff the women from the North and South Houses brought to share with us. All of it also cold. Didn't turn my stomach or anything, but it seemed like a nice warm soup or some other kind of comfort food might make us all feel better.

Unfortunately, with Marie not really up to cooking, my own cooking having advanced to 'firmly not disgusting in any particular way', and the girls firmly stuck at 'we can make hardtack', we were stuck with what we had. So we all ate cold stuff, then bundled the kids in our laps while the women came through delivering condolences and cold cuts. Most of which were some form of bear. Roast bear. Bear salami. Bear sausage. Bear jerky. Bear braunschweiger. Even some weird jellied bear pie.

I've realized that savory gelatin dishes are just a thing that exists here and now, but I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to them. Even Marie's, which are objectively incredibly delicious, still hit me from a direction I'm not expecting. A couple of women did bring a few spring vegetables as well, although for some reason Saffron went out of her way to reassure the women who brought those that we appreciated them. What am I missing, Kitten? Cold, preserved meats are traditional.

Other preserved foods might be acceptable. Fresh vegetables... are a sign that those women don't have enough to spare. What? How the fuck don't they have bear meat? Both of them are pregnant, and have been since we had menfolk visitors, explained Siobhan. I've been encouraging them to get plenty of protein and vegetables in their diets. The former means they've gone through their bear faster than most, the latter that they've been foraging for vegetables to supplement the small gardens some ladies have started.

Uh, first, gardens? Where? On their roofs, in the corners of the upper valley around the Courtyard, and they'd opened plenty of ground down in the wider valley, although the early crops were lost when the Dragon attacked. Better the crops than the women. Agreed. Okay, second, we're getting them more bear meat, right? Absolutely. From our stores directly or from the next shipment from Erie. Holding court still felt... weird. But I got that it made the women feel better.

It's almost like the whole 'phatic communication' thing. Talking you do that basically boils down to 'hello fellow person, I am a person like you, we can communicate with mouth noises, and do not need to prepare to kill one another with fire and extreme prejudice'. The shit some a lot of people on the spectrum have problems with, although once it's explained like that, that it's basically like a carrier tone for real communication, or maybe an IFF, some of them get better at it. Not, like, great, but better.

So I sat my ass there, accepted condolences, didn't flinch away or read anything into it when Devorah's hugs were a little long. Not like I'm the only one she did that to, either. Apparently she's a hugger. Like, yeah, obviously she hasn't given up on 'after', but her hugs this time were just her being platonic her. I let them all express themselves, and acknowledged them and recognized them as people living under a roof we technically owned.

People who belonged here, making their homes in our houses, for as long as they needed or wanted to stay. By the time they stopped coming through it was time for dinner and bath, although the kids were one and all stuffed from noshing on the funeral food as it came in and fast asleep. So Saffron, Siobhan, and I carted them to the Bath, scrubbed them down quickly and gently, then toted them back down to our big round bed, where Marie waited with the covers already toasty warm.

They all drifted off to sleep, and I almost had as well, when Saffron slipped us all to the Bedroom.

"What's up, Kitten?" Before she answered, Siobhan tilted her head and asked, "you want to begin the Wake privately?" Saffron just looked at me with the kind of intensity that had me taking a deep breath. At which point the leftover funk in the room hit me.

"Yes, Siobhan. For this, I want to be sober and private."

"Uh, guys?" They all looked at me, and I said, "what do you guys do at Wakes around here?"

"What are they like where you're from?" Saffron asked. I shrugged.

"Mostly it's a really loud party where people get stupid drunk. I heard it was supposed to be a party to 'wake the dead'. Like, in case they weren't really dead or something." Siobhan giggled a little at that, but Saffron shook her head and said, "there are parallels, but here a Wake is a celebration of life. Waking up after the funeral, after the acknowledgement of death and loss, and saying, no, screaming to the world that we who remain are alive and awake and will continue on." She paused.

"We celebrate the one we've lost. We tell our own stories of them. When we can, we indulge in all of their secret vices and guilty pleasures, the things that made them feel alive when they were. And the things that remind us of them, things we did with them when they were alive." Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. I nodded.

"Oh. Okay. I kinda thought you'd brought us here for some of that old fashioned 'celebration of life' stuff." They all looked at me, and I kinda muttered out, "y'know, fuckin'." They all laughed, although Siobhan's got real husky real fast as she pulled Saffron and Marie to her.

"That's not wrong. Not unexpected at a wake. But... Well... Grandma did always talk to me about something she wanted to do." She blushed a little, but soldiered on.

"She was very envious of me these past several months." I smirked.

"Like, she wanted a threesome? Foursome? Orgy? Tentacles?" I hovered a few into the room.

"I mean, something tells me Grandma partied as hard as we ever did back in the day." Marie snorted, and I nodded.

"Okay, yeah, maybe not quite that hard, but I can't imagine her wanting to get railed from both ends and not finding two dudes to do the deed." I stood there wondering about it, for whatever reason that burst of black licorice flavor filling my brain for a second.

"So what was it she wanted to do that you got to that she didn't?" Siobhan took a deep breath, stepped forward, reached up and buried her hands in my hair.

"You." She pulled me down into a kiss, and while she distracted me Saffron maneuvered me into Marie's reach, and it was all over but the word salad screaming. Three on one is... look, we share a lot. We like sharing a lot. We like partnering up, whether it's separately or together. We'll even watch each other in pairs. But two of us focused on one is a little, I dunno, uncommon, and three of us focusing on the fourth hadn't happened often.

Like, even after my date with Siobhan, we all just kind of took turns with her. But this was all three of them totally focused on me. Yeah, I think some mutual satisfaction happened, but I cannot fuckin' be sure, because I had six hands, three mouths, and three brains all focused on, y'know, me. I dunno if any of it was shit Grandma would have done, but I definitely was. Done, and done well.

As I floated back to something approaching coherence, enjoying the feel of Saffron's breasts pressed against my side, Siobhan's coolness covering my legs, and Marie's fuzzy head lying across my breasts, I snickered.

"Yes, Goof?" Saffron murmured into the side of my breast.

"Just thought of one of the things Grandma and I liked to do when I spent the day in the Infirmary."

"Oh? Do tell." I slipped a few Blended tentacles into the room, sliding them around calves, around arms, around a certain still glowing belly.

"Yeah, we'd sit there tryna surreptitiously ogle the hotness in the Infirmary." I shrugged.

"Couldn't very well ogle the injured. That's just, y'know, not cool when we're supposed to be helping them get better. Didn't get a chance to really drool over many of them as they left. Some of the trainees were a little young for me, and that meant they were way too young for her." Siobhan, her chin propped on her hands, looking up at me from between my legs, furrowed her brow.

"So who did you ogle?" I turned and pulled Saffron up to bring her face up near mine.

"Isn't she adorable?"

"She is." I smirked and let one of my tentacles tickle that sigil on Siobhan's belly.

"So what should we do with our adorable Ice Pop?" Saffron looked down at Siobhan, then back up to me, her face solemn.

"It would only be right if you did each and every thing that Grandma ever suggested." I scrunched up my nose as Siobhan finally realized exactly who Grandma and I had spent most of our time watching, then asked, "like, each thing she suggested once, or each thing she suggested once for every time she suggested it?"

"You kept count?"

"Some things are important." Saffron nodded, and when Siobhan opened her mouth a tentacle slipped in. I absolutely did not shudder when her instinctive response was to lick it and swallow.

"Of course the properly respectful thing to do would be the latter." I pulled Siobhan up to hover over the three of us, spread eagled, her expression going from vexed to overwhelmed as I dropped the Blend on my tentacles.

"So. Siobhan. Ice Pop. Darling. I don't want to, not going to force you into anything. And Consent without being Informed... isn't. So before you say yes to this, know that it's gonna be extensive and very, very spicy. So... knowing that, do you still want to have all the things Grandma suggested done to you?" She furrowed her brow and glanced down at her mouth. I pulled that tentacle out and she whispered, "nothing too rough? I..." she glanced down.

"Nah. Nothing rough. Nothing that will endanger that little girl glowing and growing there. But... we're gonna have to carry you home and tuck you into bed when we're done, I think." She smiled, blushing again.

"Keep me here until the three of you are done for the night? Just... to stay with you while I drift in that wonderful haze?"

"Is that a yes?" In answer she nodded, closed her eyes, opened her mouth, and stuck out her tongue.

"Ladies?"

"Yes, dear?"

"I'm gonna need you two to help, or we're not gonna be done before dawn." Didn't take that long. Did take a while. Did leave our Darling fully in the grips of la petit mort, a smile etched over her face, one hand on her belly and the other stretched out under her head as she slept.

"So, Kitten, any secret sexy desires from Grandma for you?" She rolled her eyes.

"I'm her granddaughter, Tabitha. Do you plan on telling Isnomi about your potential conquests?"

"Point." I turned to Marie.

"So, do you..." That's when I saw the tears in her eyes.

"Want to tell me about Tina Kae now?"

"Who?" asked Saffron. As Marie got her tears under some semblance of control, we both moved her around so we could snuggle her without moving too far from Siobhan.

"Right... right before the end Grandma told me to tell Marie that Tina Kae said good bye." I turned back to Marie.

"When you're ready, Mittens." She nodded, took a deep breath and said, "Tina Kae." Her pronunciation, the intonation and emphasis, was odd. Almost archaic, although I have no idea how I knew that.

"Sister. Wife?" She paused.

"Sister Wife?"

"Lover?" Saffron suggested. Marie shrugged, then nodded.

"Eventually." Something clicked in my head.

"Wait, Sister wife? You mean you two were married to the same dude?" She nodded.

"King." She snorted.

"Petty King." Saffron piped up then, confusion clear in her voice.

"Grandma never told me she'd had a Maenad lover before. I mean, wait..."

"Wasn't." I thought about a petty King with multiple wives.

"Were you guys wives, or concubines?"

"Then, There?" She shrugged.

"Same Thing." Before I could really grasp the clue that had been floating around, the one I'd only realized was tryna find a brain to land in, Saffron said, "how did a petty King come to have a Maenad concubine, one among many?" Marie rolled her eyes, shook her head, and repeated.

"Wasn't." The clue settled its ponderous ass right in the middle of my brain. I whispered, hoping it wouldn't fly away, hoping it wasn't a delusion.

"You knew her before you were a Maenad." Marie nodded.

"Thousands of years ago." Marie nodded again, smiling softly now.

"You two were concubines of a petty King. Not the only ones I'm guessing?" She shook her head.

"So you two spent time together?" Marie smiled a melancholy smile and words slipped out of her, almost like she didn't realize she was saying them, "loved her""What happened?"

"Father Came."

"Oh. Oh, holy shit, your dad came to rescue you from this petty King?" She shook her head, a bitter frown twisting her features. She placed one claw on her chest.

"Gifted Me." Then she growled out, "Invasion Excuse."

"Your father invaded... you're a Princess?" She rolled her eyes, shook her head.

"Oh. Your dad's a King though?"

"Was." I rolled my eyes right back at her.

"Well, yeah, duh. Three thousand years."

"No." She paused until I shut up.

"Dethroned Him." My mouth kinda dropped open. She put one claw right up to her eye.

"Made Imperfect."

"Oh, shit. He didn't get it healed?" Saffron cut in at that point.

"Thousands of years ago only a few could Heal a lost eye. He wasn't from Athens, was he?" Marie shook her head.

"Need I guess his name?" Marie shook her head, but I said, "I, uh, don't get it."

"One city has bred their Kings to be the greatest fighters in the world for generations. Just because one had a daughter wouldn't make her any less great a fighter. Just a slave rather than a Hero. Slave of a King named Leonidas."

"Wait, wasn't Leonidas the dude at Thermopylae?" Marie fuckin' hissed like scalded cat.

"Holy... holy crap. Really?"

"Grandfather."

"Oh. Oh, shit." Then another thought hit.

"Wait, wasn't that like.. twenty five hundred years ago?"

"Cycles." Saffron nodded.

"Thermopylae has been the battleground between Troy and Greece since antiquity. There have been no less than four 'Battles of Thermopylae', although some scholars posit six. At least three of the four, or four of the six, were Spartans lead by a Leonidas defending against Trojans."

"Wow. Wow, and holy shit." Then I remembered.

"So what happened to Tina Kae?" I realized just before she crumpled, and caught her and held her while she wept, old, long forgotten scars opening.

"Executed." She sobbed.

"Defiling Me."

"Oh, shit. What did you do?"

"Dethroned Him." She shrugged.

"Then Dionysus."

"That feud's been going on a while, huh?" She nodded, and Saffron, who'd snuggled up to her, whispered, "it ends with us, my lovely wife." She purred through her sobs. We carried her back to our bed, where we laid Siobhan atop her, glowing belly resting against glowing belly, then snuggled ourselves around her and fell asleep. Dreamed of Marie hovering over my Maw, my tentacles surrounding her, supporting her... Reveling with her in that most Maenad of ways.

When we finished, as false dawn lit the sky, her belly glowing brightly enough to match it, she reached up, grabbed the end of her hair, and ran a claw across it, lopping off a ragged six inches.

"Goodbye, Love," she whispered as she tossed that hair into my Maw. I sprang clean out of bed as the taste of flaming ouzo hit me. Flaming ouzo and blood and meat and sex and I looked and a smug Marie settled into bed where I'd been laying. A moment later Karen arrived in the room, and as she'd done before elsewhere, she extended the benefits of her Holy Garb to the room. I glanced at Marie.

"Did you?" Karen looked a little sheepish and said, "I have assisted my sister in Mimic with cleanup a time or two. It's not like it requires more than my presence and continued devotion." Was still kinda shook when Saffron woke up and sent me to Drivers'. Apparently Grandma loved Drivers' food. Mister and Mrs.

Driver insisted on coming back with me, and they brought the young men and women working for them, most of whom were way too young to be waiting tables anyplace with child labor laws, but those don't really exist here and now. To be honest, I kinda needed them to help carry everything they'd prepared. Like, full servings of everything on their menu, with armloads and armloads of the popular stuff and Grandma's 'favorites'.

Even my tentacles piled high with stuff, I stepped them back only to find the Homestead starting to fill up with party guests. At that point Saffron sent me back to that little diner on South Street. Ostensibly I went there to pick up ouzo. Another Grandma favorite. Once again I went expecting to come back with a bottle, or a box, or a crate. I came back with Dionysus, Diana, the Maenads from Grandma's House and their kids, not to mention an entire diner full of kids of all sizes.

Each and every one of us carrying as much booze as we could carry. The party... yeah, the party got more than 'a little carried away'. Every kid from the diner, from Lancaster House, from the Homestead, from Drivers, all of them hyped up on Drivers' sugary treats and bottle caps of ouzo because it was a 'special occasion'.

Most of the adults went easy on the liquor until the kids conked out midafternoon, all of them piling up in and around our big assed bed, although I think some of them spilled out into the girls' rooms. Then the ouzo flowed, and that bit about 'celebrating life in the oldest way possible' started happening. Didn't see anybody with fancy glowing belly tattoos, but if there's a baby boom in nine months, I'm declaring them all kids of Grandma's Wake. Yeah, there was a lot of that. I didn't get names.

Okay, I remember one name and face very specifically, because when a sloppy drunk Devorah stumbled up to the four of us, who'd just reconvened our mutual drinking, my Big Gremlin Trickster Energy reared its head.

"Izzit... Izzit after enough?" Devora slurred.

"You got me mead?" She blinked, looked like she was about to cry.

"Ladies?"

"Not After." Marie declared.

"It is not," agreed Saffron with that super serious look people drunk off their ass sometimes got.

"Nope. Need the mead to get her seed, that's the creed!" I swear Siobhan giggled her way through that whole thing.

"Okay, yeah, but," I said, pulling Devorah back into my lap, my hands roaming of their own accord. Okay, there were six more hands kinda doing the same without thinking. Devorah's got a lot of curves for fondling.

"you ladies remember Friday." They all nodded.

"After the wedding? That night, after sunset?" Saffron's grin showed up, and her hands started roaming with a little more intent. Siobhan said, "bedroom? But... not after?" I shook my head as Marie purred and followed Saffron's example.

"No, no, no. Before the Bedroom."

"Oh! But, before that we all OH!" She giggled again, slipped around to sandwich Devorah between us, then kissed her. On the lips. On her face. Then kinda worked her way down. I slipped us all to the Bedroom, "so we didn't get interrupted." Like half an hour later she was a whimpering, begging mess. I felt a little bad, so I grabbed something off the headboard, and as my ladies watched, delivered her back to her own rooms at the Homestead, leaving a little gift in her hands.

"You're going?"

"Not after yet." I said, then leaned down close and breathed into her lips.

"That's gonna be So. Much. More. Than. This." She kinda whimpered and clutched at me, but I was gone. Yeah, I know, that was kinda mean of us, but it's not like we didn't leave the woman my ladies' very favorite headboard toy. The replacement for the one I swallowed.