Chương 75: Day Seventy-Five

Dear Diary, Y'know, back in Camden I always low key dreaded days off, even while the other kids got pumped up about having time away from school. Weird to think that here and now I'm actually looking forward to them, while simultaneously missing my classes. Back then, having someone to hang out with might happen or might not, and I really never had much of a say about which. I had friends, kinda. People I hung out with at lunch, people I'd game with online when I had a working console.

But nobody who I knew without a doubt would hang with me if they had the chance. At one point I even had a guy; we hooked up on the regular until he went total edgelord. Utter pizza cutter; all edge, no point. I can't blame him, though, because I didn't notice until I outgrew my own edgy phase. To be clear, I'm not saying all edgy people are going through a phase, but the ones who aren't don't usually try quite so hard. Online gamers, lunch friends, fuck buddies. Nobody who felt like home.

I woke up curled around Saffron. I lifted myself up to look at her, and had a moment of panic when I didn't see Isnomi anywhere. Then I heard wet gnawing noises from the floor behind me. I twisted around, slowly and carefully so as not to wake up Saffron, only to see the adorable little crotch goblin gumming at the face of the bearskin rug. I mean, I'd turned the light all the way out, so all I could see was an outline of her and the rug, but it still bonked my personal cute meter all the way over to the peg.

I reached around Saffron and gently put my left hand over her mouth, despite its insistence that its bones had exploded into acidic lightning, then shook her shoulder gently with my other hand. She woke silently, and I moved my hand to put one disintegrating finger over her lips. She nodded, the tiniest motion I could detect, and I slipped silently off the bed, watching the rugger gnaw happily at the bear's ear.

I crept over to the light and, with one hand on it, reached over and moved Saffron's head until she'd see Isnomi the moment the light came on. I slipped a hand down her face to be sure her eyes were closed so she wouldn't be blinded by the light, then tapped three fingers on her cheek, then two, then one, then slid the light open. The moment the light came on, Isnomi froze, eyes popped open and staring at me and her mom, one hand on one bear ear, the other ear halfway into her mouth.

Saffron and I stared right back, until half a second later Saffron snorted, then started laughing so hard she eventually rolled over and fell off the bed. The moment her mom started laughing, the little menace started that giggle coo baby thing, smacking at the poor bear with both hands until she fell over backwards herself. That startled her, but before she could cry I dove in and blew raspberries on her tummy until she started laughing again. Then she dropped an enormous load in her diaper.

Like I said, I don't really dislike crotch goblins, but they always give me shit. Literally. Of course that set Saffron off again, which left me dealing with the crap myself. Luckily, I am slightly less incompetent than I appear on first meeting, so I managed to get the old diaper off, Isnomi's butt region cleaned up, and the new diaper on without turning the rug into a toxic waste dump site. Okay, my diaper origami skills aren't at Saffron's level, so I wound up Mineral Bonding her diaper closed. What?

Carbon is a mineral. I mean, it's an element, and it's solid, so that makes it a mineral, right? Fuck it, it Bonded, and I left it a little loose in any case. I didn't want it to be too hard to get off when the little nom-bot inevitably filled it again. By the time I finished, Saffron had laughed herself out and rolled around until she lounged with her shoulders against the bed, her ass on the rug, and her legs just kinda stuck out toward me.

Hell of a view, lemme tell you, especially since at the moment, Isnomi had more clothing on than Saffron and I put together, and she only had a diaper on. I set Isnomi back where she'd been nomming on Mr. Bear, and she happily started in on his other ear. I, of course, fully intended on nomming something else, and started low crawling my way toward Saffron.

"Tabitha!" she hissed, laughter clear in her voice, "Isnomi's right there! Awake even!" I snorted.

"Pfft. Kids don't start forming memories until they're like two years old. Besides, she's totally invested in Mr. Bear at the moment." Saffron rolled her eyes at me.

"The bear in question was a she-Bear." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"There you go, then, nobody in here but us girls, no need to be shy!" I'd reached her ankles and tugged her toward me, careful to let her catch herself with her elbows instead of smacking the back of her head on the floor. This might sound weird, what with us nearing our one-month anniversary and shagging like particularly sex-crazed rabbits at every opportunity, but we'd never done oral stuff. I mean, foreplay-ish things, yeah. Kissing, of course, but our mouths had pretty much stayed above the waist.

I blame Saffron; she's too goal oriented, and mostly experimented in Heroic Skills, not in bed. But the view just then reminded me that if they weren't meant to be eaten, they wouldn't look like tacos. Her eyes got big as I tugged her toward me just enough that she wouldn't bonk the back of her head on the bed if she lay down all the way, then kissed the inside of her knee.

"Tabitha..." hunger and worry warred in her voice as her knee twitched just a little when I ran my tongue just a little into the back of it. Inch by inch, I worked my way up the inside of her thigh. About halfway up, she tangled her hand in my hair. I took that as encouragement and, after paying enough attention to her mid-thigh that she ought to have a nice hickey by lunch, pushed onward. Only to have her hand refuse to budge, despite the continued nomming sounds coming from Ms. Bear's head-region.

I glanced over, and Isnomi was, just as I'd planned, completely oblivious to us, focused totally on gumming Ms. Bear's ear off. I lifted my head and looked at Saffron, whose eyes still hadn't quite uncrossed.

"You're really not cool with it?" She let go of my hair and scratched at my head.

"Sorry, love. If she were asleep, if it were anyone else..." she trailed off. I mock-glowered at her and said, "I'm gonna hold you to that tonight, you realize," about then my brain kicked in and I asked, "wait, what's the Isnomi schedule this week, what with the holiday?" Saffron smiled down at me and said, "Grandma has her tonight, then she'll bring her back over tomorrow before sunset so we can celebrate the Equinox together." She paused, a thoughtful look racing across her face.

"Did you want to join us?" I shrugged, "Sure. Never celebrated an Equinox before, so I'll need you to give me pointers if it's anything other than just hanging out and, y'know, eating and drinking or whatever."

"You didn't celebrate the Equinoxes? I'm guessing not the Solstices either?"

"Nope. Pretty much one weekend-long holiday a month, with a week-long break at Christmas and Easter." Her faced bunched up in an adorable little moue.

"Easter? You mean the English fertility goddess?" That kinda blindsided me.

"Uh, no. I mean, not that I'm aware of, although the Church probably ripped off the name. They did that shit a lot back in the day."

"Which church?" Something about the way she said it made me think that whatever had come out of my mouth wasn't exactly 'church', but more like 'temple', or 'religion'. Still, I answered, "like, the Church. Back in the day there was only one, before Martin Luther got his panties in a bunch back in the middle ages." She just shook her head.

"So strange. All the gods worshipped in one huge pantheon then?"

"Nope. Just the one. The others kind of got squished when the Roman Catholics rolled over Europe." I shook my head.

"None of that is really important, though."

"Then what is?" I picked up Isnomi, who had been getting steadily noisier in her mastication of Ms. Bear, and plonked her right onto Saffron's tit, where she started nomming happily.

"Getting her fed, so we can get breakfast our own selves." I paused, wondering if I were about to overstep, "we could bring her to the Dining Hall with us, introduce her to the rest of the ROTC crew." She tensed, but not for long, "you really like pushing me out of my comfort zones, don't you?"

"It's good for your growth as a person. Say the word and I'll stop." With that I dropped my mouth back to the thigh I hadn't mouth-molested and, after leaving another hickey, this one quick and sloppy, started working my way back down to her knee. The moment I moved away from her taco, and let me point out that it looked so tasty it took self-control I didn't know I had not to leap on it, she started laughing.

Laughs that switched to giggles when Isnomi giggled when she came up for air and baby-giggled at her mom's laughter, then gasps when I kissed the back of her knee.

"Okay, but she's wearing one of your uniform shirts, not one of mine." Without any more encouragement than that, I hopped up and yanked my uniform on, scooped up Isnomi and bundled her up in yesterday's shirt while Saffron put herself together. We headed down to the Dining Hall, where I discovered that Angel, Bill, and Raven already knew about Isnomi. Something about all of them knowing one another before Phileo Heroic, and Saffron being way too petite to hide being eight months pregnant.

They still cheered when the little rugrat made her appearance, and everybody agreed that it was the cutest thing they'd ever seen when she started alternating itty bitty mouthfuls of spicy eggs and bread. She'd arrowed for the eggs like a chubby little seeking missile, stuffed a tiny fistful into her mouth, nommed, then got the weirdest look on her face before spitting like half of them out.

Before she could start crying I tore off a little piece of bread and stuffed it in her maw, and she nommed that for a while before picking the previously spit-out eggs back up and nomming them again. Stubborn little crotch goblin. I fully approved, and used my spoon to portion out some eggs into Isnomi-fistfuls, and straight up tore off bits of bread. I barely got to eat anything, because the moment she'd had her fill, she filled her diaper, which sent Saffron and I back to her room to clean her up.

Yes, I absolutely took that lack-of-nom-for-Tabitha out on sweet Saffron's taco after Grandma picked Isnomi up. I'm pretty sure she didn't mind.