Chương 655: Day Six Hundred And Fifty-Three

Dear Diary, Y'know, it's probably weird as fuck for me to say this, especially with how I've gone on about how I fuckin' idolize my own mom, but I think I may have actually done a better job of momming than my own mom. Yeah, I know, right? But seriously, the whole deal with the girls standing up and defending themselves, then deciding to take a fuckin' Dragon home as a pet threw me for a hell of a loop.

Thinking about it afterward I realized that my own mom would have lost her fuckin' shit over that, and not just a little bit. If I saw an alligator or mountain lion on the street and decided not just to fight it, but to trap it and bring it home to live with us, I'm pretty sure my ass would have glowed, and I might have suffered a chancla related concussion before she was done. If she didn't beat the thing to death with aforementioned chancla, she'd definitely have called animal control or something.

I get it, she might have been right, at least about me not being an actual monster hunter able to stop a genuine dangerous animal. But I probably would have gotten similar treatment if I caught a feral cat. Again, she might not have been objectively wrong about our ability to properly care for it, but my mom wasn't really an advocate of 'gentle parenting'. Not too many people living that close to the raggedy edge are, and it's not because they're bad people.

It's because they live their lives reeling from crisis to crisis, and that shit eats at you. It traumatizes the parts that let you be patient with a small human who is just doing the best that they can. So when those small humans do something that might wind up with them needing medical care they know they can't provide, they freak out and fall back on fear.

Because fear may not be good or right, but it's easy and effective, for a value of effective that means 'keeps a dumbass kid from getting rabies playing with feral cats'. So maybe part of why I'm able to be a better mom than my own mom, able to do the gentle parenting thing, able to talk to my small humans like small humans rather than misbehaving animals or broken machines, is because I'm wealthy and powerful.

Even back at the Academy, before the Battle of the Walls, when we weren't wealthy or powerful, we still had all our basic needs met. So when our little Menace pulled shit, it wasn't the final straw sending me over the edge into flight or fight survival panic mode. Even when I wound up gut shot, I could react more or less rationally. Yeah, if she did something that might cause a problem I'd scoop her up and stop her, but I didn't scream, or vent, or any of that shit.

I had the time and energy to explain things to her, to phrase them in ways she understood. I wasn't worried about the discussion cutting into my four hour nightly sleep allotment, or using up the spoons I needed to get myself to work later. So yeah, I'm not gonna say that my mom was a bad mom. I'm not gonna say I'm an awesome mom. But I am gonna say that in the case of my daughters trapping a fuckin' Dragon and wanting to keep it as a pet, I think I did a better job of momming than my own mom would have.

Which is really just wild to me. I... I think I'm proud of myself? Is this what that feels like? At any rate, got the Dragon home after our brief mid-journey conversation, only to find the girls waiting for me at the entrance to the stable under the Courtyard.

The Dragon tensed when I followed the girls underground, and maybe got a little squirmy when I slipped him into the open slot at one end of the huge glass terrarium opposite the Nightmares' stalls, but at no point did it do that nasty tentacle shredding thing. Fuck, it didn't even hiss when it landed and whipped itself around to look at my tentacle, to look at me. Really not sure how Conrad got sunlight to shine through the top of the enclosure, because I hadn't seen any windows from above.

Some kind of one way transparency, maybe. Not gonna lie, that was kinda cool. The terrarium had one end full of water, with some rocks and dirt making a nice sunning spot at the other end. It also had a bit of an interaction area at the far end from the opening I'd put it through, which Saffron slid closed once the Dragon made it entirely inside. The girls had already dashed down to that end, where they had big chunks of bear meat they tried to coax it down to them with. The Dragon did not coax.

It dove into the water and sunk down to the bottom. If I didn't know any better I'd swear it was pouting.

"Okay, girls. Let's leave her to get used to her new home. She's had a rough day." Saffron took my arm and leaned into me.

"I still can't believe we've taken a Dragon as a pet," she muttered. The girls, who'd headed toward us, crouched down to see Maze's new pet as they passed it. Alex reached out, and I snagged her elbow with a tentacle, gently but firmly.

"No tapping on the glass, girls. That's rude and mean."

"But... but I just wanted her to react." I nodded.

"I know, but right now she's all alone in a new place. She's probably a little scared, probably a little mad. Put yourself in her shoes. Er, her place. Would you want somebody to poke at you 'just to get you to react'?" She pouted a little, but said, "No." I nodded.

"That goes for any other interactions with your friends here. Or Mister Slither, although he's completely housebroken and safe to hang with, I guess." If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Menace shot me the worst booger look I'd ever gotten from her.

"Vai nad ped. Vai ith family." I crouched down, pulling Saffron with me, and waved the girls over. When they'd all circled around, I pulled Menace to sit on my knee.

"That's kinda the point here, Menace. Girls. Pets are family. Whether they're smart enough to understand language or not, whether they're gonna die before us or outlive us, if you take a living thing into your home, you either treat it... Them as a guest, or as family. And if they're not going home after their visit, if they're gonna be living with you permanently? That's family." That got a round of 'oh' and nods from the girls.

Then Menace hopped off my lap, scampered over to the glass, and without touching it, leaned close and said, "You family now, Dwagon. Be good. We come thee you lader." Pretty sure the Dragon nodded before it looked away. So we all went back to the house and had dinner. I hadn't been able to really do any cooking, because Dragon wrangling is a full focus kind of thing, but the girls had come through. I'm not sure who coached them, although our impending feline octomom is my prime suspect.

They'd sliced up some bear meat kinda thin, grilled it, and put it on toasted split loaves of bread with cheese melted over it. Not exactly a steak sandwich, but not not a steak sandwich either. Nine of ten, would nom again. Spent another night sleeping in the Bath, with the water piping hot for most of the night. Well, piping hot until I fell asleep completely submerged, Maze cradled in my arms, ladies and girls floating around me. Dreamt of all of my ladies drifting through my Maw not unlike the fam in the Bath.

Very peaceful and relaxing. Today I got back to work. Well, 'work'. I watched over Siobhan and both of Saffron, as well as a dozen of me doing Maid work at the Academy. I checked in mentally with Karen, who'd spent the last couple days hammering out an initial agreement with Compton. They weren't ready to join the Alliance yet, but something told me that they weren't averse to being convinced. Mostly, though, I spent the day with the girls.

First thing I did was take them and Mister Slither down to the women who'd been managing our livestock. I absolutely did not let myself, even once, refer to the ones living in couples as 'livestock lesbians'. I didn't need to have that conversation today.

"Hey, ladies. Do you have any curry combs?" The older woman in charge looked at me, a little confused.

"We've no horses. But I suspect Lara the toolsmith knows how to make one." She nodded toward the South House.

"Thanks! We'll go ask her." So the girls, Slither and I trooped from North House to South House via the underground passage, I didn't say anything when Maze, then the rest of the girls, gently ran their fingers along the glass. They weren't tapping or doing anything else distracting or mean. I noticed that each of them stepped away to do the same to one of the Nightmares. Ria did it to two of them. Finally we got down to the smithy under South House, where I called out, "Lara?"

The smaller of the two older women working at the forge looked up. I say 'smaller', and she was physically smaller than me, but not by all that much. She had the kind of build you'd expect from somebody who did hard physical labor on the regular. It made it even weirder when she didn't really meet my eyes after initially greeting me.

"That's me, Ma'am."

"So the ladies in North House tell me you might be able to make curry combs? Oh, we're also looking for a couple soft brushes, if...?" She nodded.

"Aye, I can make both. How many did you need?" I looked over at the girls, then sighed.

"Eight of each, please?" She blinked, but then said, "of course, Ma'am. Was this something you needed right away, or...?" I looked at the girls, then back at Lara.

"Would it interrupt anything you're doing to make one, then do the rest as soon as it won't mess up your schedule?" She nodded, and I said, "thanks. I think it would do the girls some good to watch the effort it takes to make things. If you're okay with that?" She looked a little surprised at that, maybe a little put out at being put on display, but not so much that she didn't say, "of course, Ma'am."

"Where would we be least in your way?" She and the other smith, amusingly named 'Laura', found seats for all eight of us. Mister Slither left headed for the stables, and the rest of us settled down to watch the process of creating a curry comb. When she finished, she presented it to me. I took it, shook her hand, and said, "thank you, Lara." I gave my girls a significant look, at which point they all chorused, "thank you, Lara!" She looked really surprised by that. Not upset though.

I led the girls back to the stables, pulling Ria up next to me as I did.

"Do you know how to comb a Nightmare, Ria?"

"I... I think I do? I learned how to comb out a horse, and though we don't normally with Nightmares, it should be similar." Maze chimed in with, "I saw some of my dad's friends combing their horses. I can help, too."

"Okay then. Could you show the other girls..." I looked into the stables and almost facepalmed with the curry comb in my hand. I stopped myself, handed the comb to Ria, and stepped over to the big glass enclosure.

"Mister Slither, where is Maze's Dragon?" Slither lifted his head from where he'd curled up on the best sunning spot on the rocks in the habitat. After seeing the look on my face, he slithered his coils loose, revealing a somewhat disgruntled looking Dragon. Not injured that I could see, but the moment Slither gave her room, she scampered away and dove into the water. I pointed at the floor next to me, and Slither slumped, then crawled out of the terrarium via one of the air holes and curled up where I'd pointed.

"No terrorizing Maze's Dragon, Slither." He gave me a look as if to say, 'who, me', then curled up in the sunbeam refracting through the glass. I settled in next to him to watch Ria show the other girls how to comb a Nightmare. Nightmares, an Anaconda sized Viper, and now a Dragon. I know I've called our place a menagerie before, but it's definitely gotten a bit on the nose. Most memorable single event of the day wasn't the kids, though.

That goes to Saffron who, when one of me working in the kitchens stepped up to bring her lunch, looked up where she'd been sitting in my lap coding all day and saw me standing there with a tray.

"Why... no, of course you're wearing a Maid's uniform." I smiled at her, settling the tray on her desk and whipping the cover off to let the aroma of something not entirely unlike French onion soup fill the room.

"Your lunch, my lady!" She smiled up at me, slipping off my lap.

"It smells delicious," she said, walking away from it, catching up to me and toppling me onto Marie's old padded floor bed.

"Shame it's going to go cold before I'm done with dessert."