Chương 653: Day Six Hundred And Fifty-One

Dear Diary, I haven't really had too many chances to surprise my loved ones with stuff since I arrived here and now. Some of that, of course, is because despite it seeming like an eternity, it hasn't even been two years yet.

Hell, I didn't hook up with Saffron for at least a month and a half, and if Marie only adds another half month to that, we didn't get the kids until some time after I'd been here for a year already, and if I don't include the torturously long time between deciding to ask her out and actually taking her out on a date that turned into a four woman gang bang slash orgy, Siobhan's only been part of our family for like six or seven months.

But even during that time so much shit has continuously gone down that I'm surprised I even managed to do as much as I did for Saffron and Isnomi's birthdays. Like, Isnomi's first I didn't even really do anything, just showed up and participated. Even my self-flagellating ass understands that at the time, I was in charge of the relief effort to Lancaster, which kinda takes precedence over planning a kid's birthday party.

Then again, Saffron was running the whole Alliance at the time, and she managed to plan that birthday, so maybe I do have some room for a bit of auto-flogging. Which sounded way funnier and less potentially hot before I remembered that I do now own an actual flogger. In the edgiest of fashions, it's even made out of my own tanned hide. Yeah, my life is kinda weird. I love it, though. Especially my family. Thing is, shit hasn't exactly slowed down.

It's gotten maybe the tiniest bit more predictable, what with me having something approaching a schedule for the first time since... Y'know, the only time I didn't have a schedule was when I had amnesia. Prior to that, it was all classes, albeit those kinda faded into the background as I led the campaign to free Calverton. Since then I've been teaching.

Yeah, I kinda had some classes too, but let's face it, I've never been great at learning without some kind of motivation, and the motivations that finally got me to be a half decent student were 'Saffron gets Creative' and 'Power Makes Me Wet'. Which really fuckin' explains why my problems with my new weekly Friday engagement are 'are my Worshippers getting something valuable from this' and 'am I really doing this in a semi-public venue' rather than 'am I really DTF'.

My first week here, reading Law and Custom, I realized that the idea of having some kind of real power ground my gears, got me hot under the collar, made me want all the sexy times. Within a week after Liberating Calverton, I wound up Champion and Patron Demigoddess of the Alliance. I think the fact that I wound a 'love goddess' might well have been unavoidable, even if I hadn't had Bloodlust, Passion, and Ecstasy in my Portfolio. Then again, maybe that's one of those chicken and egg things.

'Which one came first', which is a silly question, because it's usually been me. Okay, that's got to be the weirdest fuckin' thing, because for most of my time here it hasn't been. Like, don't get me wrong, my bell rings on the regular, but it's reliably been reciprocal ringing, or even just kinda 'the sight and sound and smell and feel of theirs sets me off in turn'. Anyway, today's the first of those days that's so important for me, even if the rest of the fuckin' Alliance couldn't give a shit.

Which, honestly, is fine by me. I already feel kinda bad about putting the kind of pressure being a fuckin' Mor Primordial on Menace when she's barely two years old, and something tells me that without the vague Damocles' Sword of potentially inheriting the Overlord's Keep from her mom if shit goes wrong in just the right way Ria would be a lot less uptight. I mean, not entirely loosey goosey, but that can't be easy, knowing that you're Important well before you've done anything to Be Important For.

So yeah, I'm perfectly okay with my girls just being my girls. Maybe someday in the future Isnomi will wind up with a Temple, and Ria a Keep, and Maze will have her own, I dunno, sea somewhere, Alex will be a Hero and Daya will be a Princess and Lindsey... a different kind of Hero, maybe. Funny, the first thing to spring to mind for David is being a mom, and somehow that would be the biggest, most important thing out of any of them. Yeah, I'm a Goddess who keeps other Gods from screwing with my people.

Yeah, I'm the Champion who makes sure other Cities mind their Ps and Qs, but sometimes I think the most important thing I am is a Mom. At the end of marching Cadets in circles yesterday, I left them with Lachlan to finish up the day, collected the kids from school, and headed home. At dinner I pulled a recipe from way back on my first birthday here, the one when I forgot my own fucking birthday. But my Murder Mittens, and I have no clue how she knew, remembered.

After making sure all the kids had their dinner, I brought her a small plate with a cupcake with an almond baked into it. Trooper that she is, she smiled and said, "Thanks, Papa." Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! I couldn't help myself, I gave her a big hug and whispered.

"Love you, Mazikeen." We all slept in the Bath overnight, and if she maybe went invisible being the center of attention, I noticed that Ria's hand never left hers, nor did Lindsey's. In the morning we got the kids ready, then I took them to school, carried Saffron and Siobhan to their spots for the day, and left one of me hanging with Marie in the kitchen while I met Lachlan in the Practice Yard.

"Okay, Cadets. This morning you'll be working with bows again." Hildegarde's hand shot up.

"Why are we stuck learning these when Crossbows are available?" I nodded.

"Fair question. Simple answer. Logistics. As of yet we don't have enough Crossbows to equip every person trained with them. Also, while they make a fully trained Hero a little more dangerous, they make Volunteers and those trained like them, who are taught how to volley their fire by ranks, way more fuckin' dangerous. So for the next little while, more Crossbows are being issued to non-Heroic troops than Heroic ones." Vickerson tilted her head and raised her hand.

"Are Heroes really expected to use bows while our troops are using Crossbows?" I shrugged.

"If you're assigned to a duty where you're with a Volunteer Unit who has them, you'll probably be issued one. If you're not, it's a bit of a toss up at the moment. So knowing how to use a bow of some kind is useful. Also there are a lot of folks who know how to make bows or arrows, both in the Alliance and outside of it. Your bow breaks, you can probably find another one. Or take it off a dead enemy."

"What if my crossbow breaks?" asked Hildegarde. I just stared at her for a little bit.

"You ever use one?"

"No." I shook my head, then stepped away, grabbed Vulcan's case, and stepped back.

"We won't be firing Vulcan today, but," I pulled him out and handed him to Hildegarde, who took him with a look of mixed reverence and eagerness.

"he weighs the same as our regular Crossbows. He's also really not that much more durable. You see any easily breakable parts there?" She shrugged, then looked at Vulcan.

"May I?" I grinned at her.

"He doesn't much like being dry fired. Don't say I didn't warn you. The rest of you can take turns examining him, getting a feel for his weight and balance. If I see anyone putting any of those ballista bolts or anything else near him, I will take it away from you, shove it up your ass, and send you down to Sister Siobhan to explain why it's there before you have it removed. Gentlemen, I'm including you in that. Everyone not taking a turn with Vulcan, get on the firing line and get to practicing."

Not long before lunch, I called Lachlan over and made sure he was good with taking the class for the afternoon. He nodded, so I collected Vulcan, who'd just smugged and gleamed at all the attention, not to mention leaving Hildegarde whimpering on the pavers when she ignored my warning about dry firing. Yeah, my boy can be cruel with that shit, but I did warn her. Put him away, then stepped down to the Temple, where I called my girls together.

"Maze?"

"Yes, Papa?"

"You got any friends who want to come with us for lunch?" She shrugged.

"Not really. Most of the other Novices are a bit older than us." Ria shook her head.

"Taller at least." I snorted and said, "Okay then, everybody join hands." Then I stepped them to Grandmother's Village, where Siobhan and Saffron had been working with Finch, Sparrow, Sunflower, and Dandelion under Grandmother's direction.

"Happy Birthday!" Yeah, my girls were definitely quick on the uptake, shouting and lifting Maze up on their shoulders, parading her around and eventually down to the far end of the village, where some of the houses were within a stone's throw of the river. The ladies had brought stuff to set up a whole assed birthday feast, and Marie and I arrived with a cake big enough for our girls, my ladies, and everybody in the village who joined in.

Midway through the party, I pulled her aside and said, "Hey, I got you a present, but it's a little on the big side. It's back in the bedroom at the Homestead."

"In my bedroom?" I shook my head.

"Not yet. Didn't want to invade your space, and wanted it to be a surprise."

"Thanks, papa!" After a quick hug, the crowd of kids pulled her away from me. Which I had absolutely no problem with. Birthdays for kids ought to be with other kids. Adults are just there to provide the food and nobody here and now had ever heard of that whole 'don't go swimming for half an hour' thing. The village kids and our girls shifted the whole party into the river, despite the cold.

While they played, Panther and Closer set up a big fire, and if it wasn't really super hot by the time the kids got tired and cold enough to climb out for a break, it was still warm enough to dry them out and warm them up enough to refuel, dance around playing kid games, and eventually charge back into the water again. Really funny watching all of the village boys and even some of the girls tryna outswim Maze.

She wasn't bitchy about it or anything, but she had absolutely no compunction about demonstrating her Fae Kelpie water mastery. By the end of the day, she had a dozen new admirers in the village, all wanting her to swim with them. All in all, a perfect birthday afternoon for our Mazikeen.

So of course, right as the sun was going down, as I pushed myself up to call them all in, one of the young men stationed on the shore a few hundred feet down the river as a lifeguard in case somebody got swept downstream had to scream out, "WATER PANTHER!"