Chương 641: Day Six Hundred And Thirty-Nine

Dear Diary, Now that I've got things back to something resembling a routine, I can maybe start planning for the next big upcoming event. Shit, I've got routine 'events' now, just like a real adult! Okay, yeah, I need to stop thinking of myself as some kind of 'fake adult' at this point. I'm probably never going to stop making that joke, if only because I lived on my own for so long, with so many adult responsibilities, while I was still legitimately a kid.

But joking around is one thing, actually believing it is something else entirely. Seriously, though, there's this whole societal checklist that I guess I absorbed by osmosis back in the day, one that folks from my generation had more or less given up on. Hell, the generation before me and the generation before them had given up on them too. Okay, I'm not sure on that.

Nobody knows what the fuck Gen X thought, although betting on them 'giving up on something' was usually a pretty good bet, 'cause according to some of my teachers they were the ones who got to see everything go from headed for the stars to blowing up halfway there in real time.

But Millennials and Gen Z got handed this checklist of 'these are the markers of adulthood', and even if we looked and said, 'yeah, right, not a chance in hell', that shit and assumptions about it were so fuckin' ubiquitous there was no way to avoid some of it seeping in. Adults have jobs. Fuck, wait, no, adults have careers. Adults get married. Not just shacking up, but bare minimum going down to the courthouse and signing the Holy Bedlock paperwork.

Weird, back then I kind of assumed I'd tie the knot with some dude, even though it was legal for me to marry a woman if I found one I wanted to. Social pressure at work again. Adults have kids, and not accidental 'oops, I did a pregnant' kids, but legit 'we wanted to pass on our potentially fucked up genes, because our partners' genes make us too giddy to resist the biological imperative' kids. Adults have their own homes. Wait, no that's another of those little subtle differences, adults own houses.

Forget about the fact that by the time my generation was old enough to get a job, minimum wage wasn't enough to pay for rent, let alone qualify for a mortgage. As for 'not minimum wage', ain't nobody from the hood except maybe a few lucky ones qualified for a full ride, and half of astronomically out of my price range was still out of my fuckin' price range. Yeah, some people did it.

Some of them won the birth lottery and had parents who set them on the right course, or set them up for success, or just handed them the win conditions and a participation trophy along with it. Some of them got lucky. Some of them worked their asses off and got lucky. But most of the cohort in front of me was already working their asses off, desperately hoping that they'd have enough saved up to deal with whatever crisis or catastrophe hit next. But here I am, here and now. I've got a job. A career even.

Fuck, it goes beyond 'job' or 'career' and even hits... there's a word for it, not 'position', although I've got one and found several I like, but a Title. Like, one of those old school ones like 'King' or 'Earl' or 'Duke'. Fuck on toast, I actually gave up being a Queen, and it wasn't even really a demotion.

Seriously, I've got two different things that might be Titles, and if Champion doesn't absolutely outrank Queen, Champion of the Alliance, which has both a Queen and an Overlord reigning over two of our Cities, really ought to formally, and certainly does if we got into any kind of pissing contest. Patron Goddess sure as shit does. So I've got myself a whole assed career being the Imperator's Attack Dog and Defender of the Alliance. Check one box. I'm married, too.

Not just to Saffron, although saying I'm 'just' married to Saffron is like saying Mimic in M-Space is 'just' a little on the large size for a Human Adjacent person. Not even gonna go into whether or not she's really Human Adjacent, because if I say she is, she's gonna fuckin' be, whether I like it or not. Yeah, I may have some identity issues. Fuck off, I had a point here.

I'm not only super extra mega married to Saffron, what with us having two different wedding ceremonies right now, but the second one, the one where we married Marie, was, three brides notwithstanding, full on classic traditional wedding. Altar, Clergy officiant, big crowd attending, Marie in that awesome fuckin' dress which I still can't believe I shredded, but don't think I had any real choice about, ring bearers, flower girls, everything. Shit, her sort-of-father walked her down the aisle.

Yeah, I don't think about that much, because it is a total squick beaver dam. But at the same time, everybody involved is an adult, and as far as I'm aware all the Maenads were adults when they became Maenads. But I'm married. Check box two. I've got kids. I've got seven kids, and not a single one of them was because I miscounted days or forgot to take a pill or couldn't understand the basic function of a lube sock.

I mean, technically Saffron didn't go into the encounter that produced Isnomi with the intent to procreate, but I knew Saffron came with a kid when I said yes to marrying her. I Fostered Ria on purpose, and married Marie knowing she too came with kids. The crotch goblins in progress are both, or maybe I should say all if Marie's correct about her carrying more than one, were all instigated deliberately. So that's a third box check checkity checked. Finally, a house. We've got a house.

I mean, yeah, technically the land belongs to Saffron, but we're married, and I'm pretty sure that means it's our land. I sure as hell worked my ass off building the house, and even if the women living with us made the fancy interior stuff that makes it nicer than a stone box, I still made the outer walls. So we own a house. I mean, if you want to get all pedantic about it, we call the three component buildings North House, South House, and East House, so I own houses, multiple.

My family owns a house and it's our home. Final check box checked. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Checklist complete. Your girl Tabitha is officially an adult. Now I just kinda wish I felt more like one. So yesterday when I got done with all my various duties, I gradually collapsed back into the one of me in the Homestead kitchen, plus the one sitting with Marie on her lap waiting for dinner.

I stepped Siobhan and Saffron home, set Saffron in her chair, then set Siobhan on her lap. At which point Saffron kinda barked out, "hey! Why do you have the big one?" I smirked at her as I collapsed back down to two of me and said, "genetics?" She stood up, princess carried Siobhan over to me, set her on her feet next to me, and lifted Marie off my lap.

"Sit!" she ordered Siobhan, who plonked her cute little behind into my lap.

"Good girls." Then she sat back down and dug into the food I'd brought out. I turned to Siobhan, grinned, and asked, "so... you want me to feed you like this, or baby bird style?" She laughed, hiccoughed, and snorted before saying, "like this, please." Kinda glad she did. When I'm in the right mood sharing food straight out of somebody's mouth might not be too bad, but I just wasn't feeling it. So I fed her steak bite by bite, alternating it with bites of cubed up veggies.

Finally I tore off chunk after chunk of bread and fed them to her. Maybe a third of the way through the loaf she burped a bit and held up a hand.

"Sorry, Mistress. I'm, ah, a touch overfull." I set the bread down immediately.

"I'm sorry, Darling. I didn't mean to stuff you tonight." She smiled even through the look of concentration somebody got when they were trying to not vomit. After a few moments she got herself under control and said, "not your fault. I think I overate a bit, wanting to make sure I'm not underfeeding our little one." She accompanied those last two words by putting both hands on her belly, which was still pretty much flat despite the almost entirely faded sigil.

"I think I overdid it."

"Hey, no worries. Maybe we ought to go a little slower in the future?"

"That sounds like a good plan. Perhaps..." She looked over at Marie and Saffron, then froze. I looked over and started laughing, because I swear based on the plates in front of her, Saffron had stuffed at least three steaks and two loaves of bread into Marie already, and was in the middle of feeding her another steak as we watched. None of it had been done very neatly, either.

"Hungry, Mittens?"

"Yes!" I snorted out a laugh.

"You want me to just bring out some raw meat?" I'd meant it as a joke, but her eyes got wide and she nodded, swallowed the next hunk of meat Saffron had fed her, then said, "Yes!" So for the next little while another of me hopped back and forth, laying raw meat on the table for Saffron to feed to Marie. After the first round, Siobhan turned to the me whose lap she sat in and said, "could... could we go up to the Bath now?"

"Sure," I said, a little worried.

"You guys join us when you're done. Kids, head up when you're done eating." Up in the Bath, I asked, "you okay?"

"It's the overeating. Left me just a touch nauseous, and seeing lovely Marie eating raw meat..." I shrugged. Didn't bother me, but then I haven't felt really nauseous since I got here, except that one time I swallowed too much of my own blood after Karen went to town stabbing me. Okay, I didn't remember any other times. I guess I might have been queasy at Hole Spawn stench or the Baby Pit in Calverton, but those times I think I wound up too pissed off to notice nausea.

"No worries, Siobhan. Lemme sponge you down, then we'll go soak." By the time Saffron carried Marie up, all the kids were already in the Bath. When I got a good look at her once Saffron stripped her down for showering, I laughed.

"Oh, man. Being full of babies you're baking wasn't enough, you needed a food baby too?" I wasn't kidding, her belly had distended from eating so much. Not enough for me to worry about her rupturing anything, especially since I remembered reading that as apex predators, tigers in the wild tended to binge when they got a big enough kill. Still, her belly sticking out like that made it clear her sigil had started fading as well, which definitely made me feel something. I'm not sure.

Affection, anticipation, anxiety, all wrapped up in a gooey coating of need to keep her safe. She laid her hands across her own belly and said, "Yes." As we lay there soaking, Saffron Co-Locating to play with the kids, I snuggled them all close to me, enjoying the closeness more than the heat of the water.

"Is it weird that I'm looking forward to decanting day?" Siobhan giggled.

"What a stilly way to refer to it. But no, I don't think it's silly at all. I think it's sweet." After we had the kids in bed, we spent a little time in the Bedroom, mostly just lazing there, idly necking and musing on names. Mostly. Siobhan thought it was very sweet, apparently. Dreamt of my ladies swanning around my Maw, dissolving as slowly as they ever had. New normal was normal today, although I finally got a rush of brains to the head.

Not only did I have Marie show me how to put a few stitches in the kids' clothes as further identification so I could dump their laundry into the Academy laundry tubs along with the rest of it I was doing, my brain finally kicked in about food. I hopped a few armloads of bear meat over to the Academy and had the Maids help me turn it into roast bear slices for lunch for the kids. Even brought over some of our serving platters to load up with Academy food for the Homestead.

Good stuff, the properly spiced stuff that I'd loved so much during my first Season here. Now I just gotta remember that tomorrow for breakfast.