Chương 712: Day Seven Hundred And Ten

Dear Diary, I'm really glad for the whole 'High Clergy can't get sick' thing now more than ever. While I'm fully aware that germs cause illness, not sudden temperature changes, I can't count the number of times I wound up getting sick when the power got cut off in the middle of winter, which left me going to sleep warm and toasty and waking up a meat popsicle. Each and every one of those times I wound up sick. Fever, stuffed up head, retching. Vomiting, if I'd gotten any decent amount of food that day.

So I am definitely glad that I can't get sick, what with going from summer jungle heat to winter mountain cold. Of course, I am also an idiot who forgets that I am in fact a Goddess on surprisingly regular occasions. Then again, I'm not sure if Deities share that whole 'immunity to illness' thing with their High Clergy. Like, okay, yeah, I get it, most of the powers of High Clergy are things their Deities can do, just Shaped onto the Clergy as Boons. But 'not getting sick' seems to be a general purpose one.

Ares isn't a Healing Deity or a Deity of Disease, but Garland still managed to do his Typhoid Mary bullshit with the plague. And now I'm remembering that I am also specifically a Deity of Healing and Disease. Look, I am not a clever woman. I've never said I was a genius. Okay, one time, ONE TIME, and the very next Day I realized that my moment of 'genius' wasn't anything of the sort, because actions have consequences, and I was not prepared for those particular consequences.

Okay, I was looking forward to the first tier of consequences, but those consequences, all at once, had consequences, and I should have remembered that two of my three intimate partners put the Sadism in Sadomasochism. Long story short (too late, I know), I'm glad I can't get sick because I'm a dumbass who would be perpetually ill otherwise. One moment I stood in Johnny's place, my tentacle resting along Adrienne's spine, full of Mana and ready to support her.

Jack made his wish, Adrienne's Blessing kicked in, and shit smeared sideways across time. I forced something approaching coherent causality out of reality fragments coalescing across the side of normal space-time like frost spontaneously forming in the freezer. I know I'd mentioned the setting sun, but there's this thing about really damp places; they tend to hold the heat even after sunset. That did not happen.

My skin crackled as the unheeded ubiquitous sweat from sitting in a shack in Jackville in June turned to a fine lace of frost, with tiny beads of ice instead of pearls. I blinked the bits of frost out of my eyes, and my gaze snapped to Adrienne as she whined, a kind of sound I'd heard my mom make after her final rounds of chemo. Not a petulant sound, but the one someone makes when they're clamping their jaw shut, teeth almost cracking with the effort of holding back screams.

I stepped to where she stood, her arms around nothing at all, forearms covered in white frost. I stared in horror as her pinky crackled and cracked like it was about to fall off. Without thinking about it I hammered her with Stabilize and Heal Injury. Then did both again and followed them with a Cure Disease as her teeth chattered. Finally, finally, with one final shudder, she shook herself free of her mourning keen.

"Thank you, Tabitha."

"What, not 'Mama'?" She snorted.

"Please. I'm not averse to being your friend, but," She shook her head.

"I suppose you're short-lived enough that you might be... but no, I think you're still younger than me, on balance." I don't know why, but somehow that greater part of Mimic felt closer here, with Time all fucked up, white girl wasted and shit.

"Are you sure about that?" I asked. We asked. I asked. Adrienne blinked, then gazed deep into my eyes, at first curious, then surprised, then as frozen with fear as she had been with pain earlier.

"No," she breathed. I chuckled.

"Okay then. Where'd Jack go?" She pointed across the slow moving, narrow stream we stood near. A stripe of ice led across it, frost leading up the far bank, then uphill toward the mountaintop in the distance.

"That way."

"You still up for chasing him down?" She nodded, although she still clutched her arms around herself and shivered. I realized right then that she'd dressed for June in Jackville, not... Winter in the mountains. Not Rockies, but the Appalachians still got frosty mid-Winter.

"You want some help?" The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Please?" I moved to step over to her, then decided to keep things as separate as I could. I did not want to wind up permanently tied into whatever Adrienne and Jack were weaving here in our little fucked up causality somewhere to the left of normal space time. I mean, more than being step-mom and mother-in-law. Shit, I guess I was more into Tallulah than I thought. Kitten? I nearly fuckin' panicked when no response came back. Then... emotion.

Relief, frustration, faith vindicated, and surrounding and suffusing it all, love. No thoughts, but... we were way the fuck off in the hinterlands of 'not now, not then, but neverwhere, and someotherwhen'. Shit, I'd have to remember to talk with her about Tallulah when we got this shit straightened out and I got back to something resembling normal. Shit, that meant I had to remember something. Not my strong suit.

On the other hand, I replied to that wave of emotion with love and longing to rejoin with my Kitten and our kids and our pregnant ladies. And the other ones maybe too. Without thinking about it, I slipped the Jotnar Boon of fuck being cold into Adrienne, and she stopped shivering.

"That's unpleasant," she muttered.

"Yeah, I know. You won't freeze though."

"You couldn't think to do that before Jack nearly froze my arms off?" I rolled my eyes and stepped across the river.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch."

"Yes, that describes the three of us fairly well," she said, taking a running jump over the narrow stream and both of its questionably icy banks. Then she looked down at the glittering path of frost.

"Time and past time to pursue." With that she set off into a jog. I followed along behind her, stepping from vantage point to vantage point. Jack's trail wandered through the forest, going from stream to tree to cliff face. As we followed, I realized that his path wasn't just 'disturbed ground' or even just frozen ground. Everywhere he passed, he left lacy traceries of frost. I fully grokked it when Adrienne stood there, tears freezing on her face, as she stared at the cliff face.

"You gonna have problems climbing that?" She shook her head. Then nodded. Then shook her head again.

"I might have a problem climbing an icy cliff, certainly. But I could. I would. I will." She turned, sorrow in her eyes when she said, "but to do so I must destroy the beauty my love has created." I snorted.

"Jump." She just looked at me, looked at the thirty foot high cliff, then looked at me again.

"Really?" I channeled my best Grandma and snarked out, "Didn't think one word was too much for you to understand." I paused until she opened her mouth to reply, then barked out, "JUMP!" She skipped backward at that, and I boosted that a little with my Blended tentacle. She looked at me.

"Are you doing that?" I rolled my eyes.

"Of course not," I lied.

"That might wind up with me ruining your wooing. Just jump." She shook her head, eyes wide, then jogged back a few paces, then leapt. I yeeted her upward, stepping to the top of the cliff myself to yoink her the rest of the way up. She landed next to me, eyes wide.

"How?"

"Love makes you stupid, but I've heard it can make you feel like you're walking on air and shit like that. You really want to overthink this, or do you want to chase your guy?" She laughed, then took off running. She ran through the woods, leaping across Jack's trail without ever touching it, spinning in place or running in circles to see when we came across a tree, a rock, even once a little cabin where he'd left more of his little frosty artwork.

I'm not sure how long we ran, but where we started the stream still flowed, but by the time we left trees behind, we'd hit the point where the air had almost no water in it. Air so cold it had to be dry. The ground, mostly rock with bits of lichen across it, had so much frost, so many interwoven patterns, it looked like one of those bridges where the side had so many layers of graffiti none of it made sense any more. Somehow Adrienne made sense of it, followed his trail.

Still she leapt from open space to open space, avoiding his trail and doing as little damage as possible to his 'artwork'. With every step, every hop, every boosted jump, she went upwards, until no more upward remained. There, at the top of the tallest mountaintop around, a man-shaped flicker of air stood, spinning gently, visible only through the frost falling from it, falling frozen stars.

"Jack," Adrienne whispered. He didn't respond.

"Love," she said quietly. The sparkling frostfall twitched.

"Husband," she stated, and the falling frost slowed, some of it settling over a humanoid form.

"Heart," she called, stepping within arm's reach of the figure formed of Power and Air and Cold. Something like a laugh made of ice across ice echoed across the mountaintop.

"Heart? Husband? Love?" The mocking tone was one I recognized. The one I used when I wasn't really mocking the person I spoke to, but myself, because I knew I was the problem.

"Jack Frost cannot love. Jack Frost cannot take a Wife. For Jack Frost has no Heart."

"Jack does love." She stepped forward, and one of those invisible hands rose.

"Jack is my Husband, and I am his Wife." She took another short step closer, her hands going around that upraised hand, pulling it to her breast, her fingers and chest going white wherever she touched him.

"For I am Jack's Heart." She stepped forward, and I froze, horrified, as she collapsed into dust. Into powdered snow that swirled into the androgynous shape at the top of the mountain. All of her but her heart, white and cold yet still beating in Jack Frost's grip. That kept beating, never slowing, as he cradled it, brought it into his own chest, where the powdered snow that had been... still was Adrienne whipped around inside him, giving him form and shape and substance.

They turned to me, Jack Frost and his powdered bride, and said, "I think it's time you take us home."