Chương 744: Day Seven Hundred And Forty-Two

Dear Diary,"If you're back on your bullshit, Check yourself, or wreck yourself,'Cause if you don't I will." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Redemption In a departure from her habit of gentle direction and remonstration, in this Verse Tabitha makes it known that her patience is not infinite, and reminds us that she is, in fact, a Goddess of Vengeance as well as Redemption.

Should a Mortal use their Agency in a way designed to bring harm to others, to limit their Agency without cause, and not only do that, but do so as a pattern returned to time after time, she gives directions and a warning. When our Goddess implores us to 'check ourselves', she's telling us to self-examine. To look closely at our motives, at our desires, at our actions an the consequences thereof.

Her implication is that we ought take ourselves in hand and do better, but she makes it clear that should we not, it would be better for us to 'wreck ourselves', to remove our own Agency to make those same harmful decisions that lead to those same harmful consequences, than to continue on in our pattern of harm to others.

For as she makes clear, if a Mortal insists on harming others, on unjustly removing their Agency, she will intervene, and while she will no doubt attempt to do so as gently as possible, she is willing and able to, and here I have the joy of quoting the Goddess' privately shared words, 'end a motherfucker'.

- Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha Okay, yeah, I'm sure I've said that, but I'm not sure how I feel about Saffron spilling the private beans like that. I mean yeah, she's my High Priestess and I'm counting on her to go out and tell folks what I'm about, what I like, what I'll tolerate, and what I'll stop, hard, if I have to. That's a given. But the way she says it makes me sound scarier than I really want to be.

That's kind of a freaky thing for me to realize, that there's an upper limit to how scary I want to be. I mean yeah, I'd like to be able to walk down the street at night without worrying about someone jumping me.

Which, to be clear, I'm not worried about that, but some part of that is because short of Zeus or Ares showing up in person, there are very few people I can't manhandle in such a way that they'll wind up incapable of molesting anybody, not to mention dragging them around like a weeping, sad balloon loudly decrying their former actions in specific and rape culture in general. But I'd rather not be worried about that because nobody has the stones to jump me in the first place.

It'd be even better if I wasn't worried about getting jumped because I lived in a world where nobody got jumped walking down the street at night. She convinces everyone in the fuckin' world that I am the nightmare that hides under their bed, and if they choose to become a serial rapist, I will find them, tie them up, and invoke some kind of equitable penance on them, and that's what makes it safe for everybody to walk down the street at night with no fear of getting jumped, maybe that's worth it.

I could live with that, so long as my ladies still knew I loved them and wasn't some kind of monster. Shit, I'm not sure if me being that kind of monster would be a turn on for Siobhan or not. One part of me really doesn't want to know, but most of me wants to find out, because she's the weirdest, most awesome mix of hot and cute I've ever seen, and it only gets better the harder the finish hits her. And the more frightened she is, the harder it hits her.

You'd think Saffron would be more along those lines, but she's more... I dunno. Tallulah is elegant, almost like some kind of crystal chime that's filling the whole fuckin' room with vibration. Saffron is luscious and beautiful and passionate and... Saffron. Marie is primal lust personified, and when she finishes that's just taken up to eleven.

Speaking of Marie, yes, I spent most of the night in the Bedroom with her, a lot of it reading my copy of the Correspondence, trying to take my mind off of her lying there sweating. I wasn't ignoring her or anything either, but my ADHD just would not let me sit and stare at her without something to keep me from panicking. When I got there, she'd lain down on her side to one side of the middle of the bed. She'd curled her legs up under her belly, and her lips were swollen and kinda throbbing in time to her...

I'd heard her growl, and these weren't that, but it wasn't purring either, exactly. Maybe pained purring, but definitely strained.

"Is there anything I can get you, Mittens?"

"Water." I hopped one of me to the kitchen and brought back a stein of water. It took about zero seconds for me to realize that betwen her position and her dentition, she couldn't really drink it that way. So I knelt with her head in my lap and poured water onto her tongue sip by sip.

"Anything else?"

"Siobhan?" she half whimpered. I realized right then that the room had a different kind of funk to it. Less 'post coital funk' and more 'august period funk', the kind that hits when the AC is down and you're aching too much to shower twice a day. Darling? Use me, so you can maybe not be puking? A moment later I felt Siobhan slip into my head.

"Marie, I'd like to examine you now, just to make sure everything's proceeding normally." When Marie didn't reply, Siobhan leaned me toward Marie's exposed crotch region, reached my hands to separate Mittens' kitten ejection port, and flinched when Marie kicked out, her head coming up as she snarled out an abortive roar.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, but I need to make sure you're dilating properly." If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Sorry, Amolydos." Marie ground out.

"Do you want me to hold you still?" I whispered from the me next to her head.

"Please, Vlickies." I slipped my hands around her face, slipped tentacles around the rest of her, gently holding her still.

"Go ahead, Siobhan." Siobhan used my hands to spread Marie open; I'd never really looked at one of my ladies like a whole OB/Gyn exam, which meant this was a new view for me. I mean, yeah, I'd looked before, but more in a 'pretty orchid, nom' kinda way, not 'omg, overinflated tire tube leaking bloody snot on the sheets, with a greasy saran wrapped six-inch cabbage tryna push its way through a two inch hole'.

After a bit of prodding, everything got a million times worse as Marie's whole body went tense, and the greasy cabbage mooshed outwards, spreading her open just a little further before subsiding back again.

"Well. I'm glad you let me do this, Goddess."

"Yeah, I'm, uh, glad I let you do it too." At her wordless question, I explained, "I would not be copacetic doing what you're doing." She giggled a little, a weird sound coming from me.

"Well, things are coming along nicely, but it will likely be a while. When was your first contraction, Marie?"

"Hours." Siobhan huffed a puff of air out of my mouth.

"How many?"

"Two?" Siobhan nodded.

"You're coming along very nicely then." She slipped out of my body, then thought, please let me know if I'm needed? You got it, Ice Pop. So I sat there with her, cradling her head in my lap, stroking her hair back as it got sweatier and sweatier. Another of me stayed at the foot of the bed, and a third brought water and, after a bit, some hard tack for her to suck on. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea or not, but she was sweating like mad with each contraction.

At dawn, I stepped one of me to the bedroom and gently lifted Saffron out of the pile.

"Hey, Kitten?" After her boot up sequence, she said, "how are things going, love?"

"I'm not gonna be able to come with you today, I don't think. Can you take care of Siobhan? And maybe the kids?" At that point Tallulah pushed herself off the bed and walked over close to us.

"I will help as well, if..." Saffron pulled her into our embrace.

"That would be lovely, Elle. Go, love, we've got things here. Call us if you need us."

"Thanks." I hugged them both, then collapsed back to the Bedroom. Right around noon, with the opening closer to maybe four inches across and the greasy cabbage bulging further with each contraction, I called to Siobhan. Ice Pop? Is everything normal here? I felt her behind my eyes, carefully examining the cabbage and surrounding fuzzy inner tube. It appears to be. How much pain is she in? Apparently Marie had been listening.

"Deeply Uncomfortable." No pain? Marie shrugged, shook her head. Well then, everything seems normal. I can come there if you need me? I looked at Marie, who shook her head.

"Thank You." Mid-afternoon, she got the weirdest look on her face, then started panting. She opened her mouth and moaned out, "Vlickies, Please." I slipped a tentacle in between her fangs, and she groaned as her jaws clamped down. At the other end, that little cabbage finally slid free, and my brain stopped functioning for a minute as I caught a foot long greasy black and white kidney bean.

I crouched there, feeling like an idiot, as the thing pulsated weakly, until Marie bonked the me cradling her head with one claw. Once she got my attention, she waved me up, and I scrambled to carry the big bean to her. It wasn't until she scooped it out of my hands that I realized how much bloody snot had covered the thing. I didn't even think, just wiped my hands on one of the blankets and moved back to my receiving position.

Look, I'd been staring for twenty four hours, just received a giant kidney bean as a daughter, and wasn't at my best. Upon receiving the bean, Marie gently ran a single claw along the skin of it, which split, revealing matted, drenched fur. Marie went straight to work, licking our daughter clean, purring the whole while. I tried not to really pay attention when she straight up swallowed the chunky non-daughter bits covering our little one.

"Anise." I realized what she meant as she shifted our daughter to one breast. I reached out, hesitant until Marie caught my wrist and guided my hand to the little one's head.

"Anise." I nodded as I said it, and I'm not sure if I felt Anise purring, or if Marie's purr just carried through. We sat like that for a while. I'm not sure how long, until another waxy cabbage, this time black, showed through Marie's birth canal.

"Do you need something to bite, Mittens?"

"Please." I gave her back that slightly mauled tentacle, and this time she clamped down with jaw and claws, and then I held another bean, this one black with bits of gray. By the time she finished cleaning her off, I'd noticed that Anise wasn't pure white. She had a few black markings on her face, and some faded ones near where Marie's black rings were. When Marie finished cleaning our second girl, she looked at me, almost sheepishly, and said, "Garde?" That... that hit hard. I couldn't speak. I just nodded.

And so Garde slipped in next to her sister. Well, half on top of her, really, but both of them had a nipple, and neither of them seemed to care about anything else. While I waited for the next one, I gently stroked Marie, and Anise, and Garde. Garde's fur wasn't entirely black; she had what looked almost like tabby stripes, made up of gray tips at the end of her fur. By the third bean, I wasn't even taken by surprise by the sudden transition from 'straining against the opening' to 'sloppy bean in my hand'.

I just scooped her up, cuddled her a moment, then handed her over. Without thinking about what I was doing, I kept petting Anise and Garde while Marie cleaned off the third fuzzy little bundle. She nudged me a little to get me to look before saying, "Calliope." Calliope had the most beautiful white fur with gray tips everywhere. Which really meant my brain was getting hammered by the Happy Brain Chemicals, to call a spit-soaked sweat-slick ball of fur 'beautiful', but fuck it.

She was beautiful, and she latched on to Marie's teat next to Anise and focused on the serious business of nursing. Our fourth girl arrived not long before sunset. I thought I'd gotten prepared for anything, but frozen when I saw the color of her fur. Brown. Brown with brown highlights. But different brown. Brown the color I'd seen every summer, brown the color my hair had been in winter. Back in the day.

"Erato." I stumbled back to my receiving position as Erato snuggled in next to her sisters. I knew that all four were more interested in getting their share of teat than snuggling, but my brain was still not quite recovered from the color of Erato's fur. As the sun set, Siobhan's voice whispered in my brain. How are things going? Four here. Four to go.