Chương 740: Day Seven Hundred And Thirty-Eight

Dear Diary,"Redemption must go both ways, Forgive to be forgiven, Allow others to repent." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Redemption In this Verse Tabitha makes clear another requirement to earn Redemption. Specifically, in order to be worthy of Redemption, we must allow others to Redeem themselves as well. In addition, in this Verse, Tabitha brings up two more aspects of Redemption: forgiveness and repentance.

To be Redeemed, one must earnestly desire to make amends, to set right what we have made wrong. This is not the same as guilt, the feeling that what we have done is wrong; it instead pushes past that, accepting that right or wrong, our actions caused harm to others. Even if we don't believe our actions were wrong in and of themselves, Redemption requires us to regret the consequences of those actions enough to motivate undoing them.

In addition, when one has adequately Redeemed themselves, our Goddess enjoins us to forgive their past actions. Not forget them, but accept that their wrongs have been righted, that they have completed the tasks required of them. That their trespasses are now in the past. This is not to say that they are not accountable for those actions, but that they have been held accountable, the ledger has been paid in full, and their debt has been discharged.

She makes it clear in this verse that the reason we are to do this is not out of generosity, or even truly from empathy, but from the sure and certain knowledge that none of us are infallible, and each of us, in due time, may need Redemption. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha Wow. I mean, yeah, that's what I meant. At least I think it's what I meant.

I might have just been looking for a way to slip that double entendre into the first line. Because if I know anything about me, it's that the thought of somehow tricking my Worshippers into delivering ninety consecutive orgasms in just under ten minutes is not nearly enough to prevent me from slipping sex jokes into the mix as well. Funny, I'm absolutely certain that my Kitten is on the path to becoming a living incarnation of Hunger, but my appetite isn't exactly small, either.

Shit, I'm suddenly filled with unpleasant existential doubt, what with not knowing whether that hunger is mine or Mimic's. Seriously, she's the one prophesied to eat everything. I'm just some bitch from Camden who got double teamed by both ends of the Karma stick. Yeah, I liked me some food. That's how I wound up with the junk in my trunk back there. But that was more 'crappy diet and no exercise', not 'competitive eating intakes for every meal'. Although really, I haven't done that in a while. Not since...

Not since people started Worshipping me openly. Hey Dad? Yes, Daughter? If you didn't get Worship, could you run off of, like, normal food? Loki took a long fuckin' time to reply to that, and when he did, the gobsmacked tone in his voice told me why. I don't know. It's okay, Dad. I really don't expect you to know everything. He chuckled into my brain, warm and fuzzy like my faint memories of my childhood blanket. It's not that, Daughter. Then why you sound so, I dunno, boggled?

When his reply trickled back to me, I could tell how much he'd had to fight his own embarrassment, and did so only because his daughter asked him to. I could relate. I never thought of it. I lay there, starving, for I'm not sure how long, and not once did I think to ask Sigyn to bring me ordinary Mortal food. Couldn't you have just Co-Located yourself out and gotten something? Wait, no, I know I saw you eat once or twice back when we were first hanging. His chuckled echoed through my brain.

And now you make it clear I was an even greater fool than I realized. Although to be fair, the Mana expended to maintain my Co-Located self might have been offset by those snacks. I Co-Locate all the time, though. Did it before I even had Worshippers. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. And your appetite before then was legendary, and now you have an entire... nation, he hesitated on that word, like it tasted odd and new in his brain, of worshippers.

Huh. Well. Good to know. Makes me feel a little less like a glutton. Thanks, Dad. You're the best. I know. So yesterday for dinner I decided on burgers. Well, sort of. Inspired by the last time Saffron got drunk, I made a whole bunch of fluffy toasted buns, then cooked up a whole bunch of different patties to put inside them. Lots of ground beef, ground bear, and even some mixed bear, beef, and pork. Just as many fried fish patties, not to mention an even split of fried and grilled chicken breasts.

Finally, because I'd never tasted the real thing and figured I'd give it a shot, one of me hit the docks at each City until I found somebody selling crabs, and I minced that up and made a couple burger patties out of it. They were, sadly, not as good as I'd hoped. The crab patty burgers, that is. I mean, I didn't like them. Maze loved them. No idea why, but after dinner she made me promise to make at least a couple for her when I made burgers.

Which, honestly, I'm probably gonna do more crab stuff for her if she liked it so much. Apparently here and now crab ranks even lower on the struggle food scale than shrimp, so it's not like it's gonna break our budget. Honestly I think I made the crab fisherman's day when I bought some. Which now makes me realize that I wasn't exactly subtle or surreptitious about my visit or purchase. I mean, I wore my Maid outfit, the actual one, not the slutty lingerie one, but that's not really all that much of a disguise.

Fuck it, if crab becomes the new trendy food item because 'the Goddess likes it', and those crab fishermen get a little boost, I'm down. After dinner I stayed with Marie, watching as her belly did that wacky assed 'moving lumps under the skin' thing. I'm pretty sure most of the ripples extending outward from her were her purring, but I'm not certain some of them weren't, y'know, kitten purrs from the depths of the belly. Which means that they're big enough to purr. Which means they're, like, almost done.

Which I'm not sure on, since I'm not even sure it was them purring, but that's fine. They still all squirmed around in there, and they're gonna be out soon, which kinda made my brain melt even more. The tentacles around my Maw definitely paid an inordinate amount of attention to my Maenad. Or maybe not. Maybe it was an absolutely ordinate amount of attention, since she was about to birth my kids. Our kids. Our kittens. Our spawn.

The rightness of that word settled into me, marred shortly thereafter by the sound of something.. no, someone whispering me from far, far away. My ladies floated beneath Marie, Worshipping her belly as was good and right and proper, and they heard none of the whispers. Woke up more than a little weirded out by that. Then, shortly after breakfast, as I settled all of me into my daily duties at the Homestead, the Grand Council Chambers, the Overlord's Keep, and the Academy, I got a sudden rush of brains to the head.

"Kitten?" I asked as I wrapped my hands and tentacles around her.

"Yes, love?" she answered, leaning into my supporting limbs. Maybe even wriggling a little against my fingers.

"I had a dream last night." She chuckled.

"I know. We all know. And we are all absolutely thrilled, not just that Marie is doing so well and so close to introducing us all to her kittens, but that our Goddess has so clearly accepted them as her own." I smiled.

"Yeah. Yeah, I, uh..." I paused, and she waited, patiently. Okay, she interlaced her fingers with mine, but she didn't say anything.

"I think maybe part of that was me accepting her as, y'know... Me." Saffron purred, the sound reverberating through me.

"I love you, Tabitha."

"I love you too, Kitten." We sat there, still and content, for a while. Until my brain reminded me that wasn't what I wanted to talk to her about.

"Yes, love?"

"How do you do that?"

"Do what?" I snorted.

"Know when I'm about to say something?" She chuckled, wriggled against me.

"Because I listen to you with more than my ears?"

"You're listening with your ass as well?" That got a laugh out of her.

"You. In front of me, now." Obedient to my tiny tyrant, I Co-Located in front of her.

"Kiss." I leaned in and kissed her. We lost some time to that. Well, no. Not lost. Spent doing exactly what we should have been doing at that moment in time. if I'm the ultimate judge at the end of everything, then I'm judging that time spent focused on my Kitten's lips is time well spent. When I pulled away and collapsed into myself, which left her giggling, I said, "yeah, um, have you guys been hearing the voices in those dreams?" She went still.

"Voices?" I nodded, heard the quiet murmur of my ladies using my brain as a glorified signal booster.

"No, we have not. What did they say?" I shrugged.

"No idea. Just... somebody talking. Calling, maybe. From a long distance away. Well, far enough that I could... Y'know how talking sounds different from noise? The pace of it?"

"The cadence?"

"Yeah, thanks Kitten. It had the cadence of somebody talking, calling, but from too far away for me to make out the words." She frowned.

"What direction?" I sat there, mouth open. After a bit, she quietly asked, "Love?" It took me a bit, because I'd never really thought about it before.

"I have no idea what direction anything is like that." She giggled, then said, "well then. I guess you've got your mission for tonight, then, love." When I didn't reply, she said, "Attack Dog?"

"Yeah, Kitten?"

"Tonight, in your dreams, as you feast upon our Worship? Orient yourself." What else was I gonna say?

"Woof."