Chương 81: Day Eighty

Dear Diary, I'm really not cut out for anything involving lots of math. I mean, I can do math, but it's all, like, memorized rules and shit. Not something where I can see an image in my head of what the math is describing. Isnomi woke Saffron and I this morning, protesting about being left in her cradle overnight. I wasn't about to complain too much, what with her being in her crib for Obvious Reasons, but I wasn't super happy about the alarm.

Still, not her fault, so I rolled out of bed, walked across the room, scooped her up and dealt with the inevitable dirty diaper situation.

"Hey, can you show me that origami trick you do?"

"That one really takes two people, and Isnomi's awake." I shot her a 'really, Saffron' look, only to see her grinning down at me.

"I know exactly what you mean, I just can't resist taunting you a little." I finished cleaning Isnomi up, then pulled a fresh diaper out of the armoire.

"You know that kinda grinds my gears when you tease me like that?"

"Of course I do. It would be less fun to taunt you when you can respond in kind." Her smile melted into that evil grin I loved so much. Completely unfair she did it with Isnomi awake, when neither of us could really start something. I looked down at Isnomi and tickled her belly while baby-talking.

"Somebody's being a cruel bitch, and will pay for it later, won't she? Won't she now?" For her part, Isnomi giggled at my voice and the tickling, going off into full on uncontrollable baby giggles when Saffron knelt down, picked up the fresh diaper and bonked me on the head with it.

Then she scooched over next to me and lay the diaper out flat, then tugged Isnomi onto it until her butt sat about two thirds of the way down the diaper, then started folding things around, stopping after every fold, undoing it, and having me repeat what she'd just done. After a bit, when I tucked the last bit into itself and picked the baby up without dropping her, a big stupid grin stretched across my face unbidden, and I spun Isnomi up and spun her around to face Saffron.

"Look! I'm a baby with a diaper on! No longer free to spray the world with toxic waste!" Saffron just rolled her eyes and pulled us both into a hug, then took Isnomi and told me to get dressed.

"Why me first?"

"Because I like to watch you too, Goof." That shut me up for a bit, so I ignored the heat rising from my chest and got dressed. Fall had hit in earnest, and I didn't look forward to going out in the Practice Yard commando or in a silk thong. Weird, missing granny panties. Still, that was a problem for another day, and for now I opted for silk. It would have been a little less face-heat-inducing if Saffron hadn't narrated each article of clothing as I put it on.

Still, she did the whole thing in a 'talking to babies' voice, and Isnomi seemed fascinated by the whole process, so I endured. Amazing what you'll do for kids that you won't do for anyone else, even yourself. So once I got dressed, Saffron handed me Isnomi, tucked things in, folded them over, and generally put my uniform more or less in order the way I could never be bothered to do, and then went to get dressed herself.

Again, I didn't complain, although this had less to do with me spending the time playing airplane with Isnomi and more to do with the fact that we both slept in the buff and the longer she spent like that, the more I got to see her like that. I said it before, I'm a simple woman. I see T & A, I press like. So I narrated Saffron getting dressed for Isnomi, just like Saffron had done for her.

I added the additional bit of touching each article of clothing as I named it, once touching Saffron's as she put it on, once on me where I wore it. Saffron seemed a little put out when I described her linen underwear as a 'torture device' and her linen chemise as 'pit spawned evil', but she didn't correct me, either. I'd get her on team Silk Underthings Or Nothing sooner or later. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

We rolled over to the Infirmary, where we'd arrived before Sister Siobhan. Grandma sat there at Siobhan's desk and nodded when we came in. Before handoff, Saffron sat down on a bed and fed Isnomi; after that we had a big group hug, even getting Grandma involved before we left for breakfast. Odd breakfast today. No spicy eggs, but plenty of jalapeno scrapple, some decent sausages, and lots of bread. Something new hit the table; fresh apples. Kinda small ones, but clearly fresh from the farm.

I ate everything but the seeds, just to see if I could. I saved all the seeds in a pocket, because when I ate one accidentally, it tasted awful, but before I managed to get a Maid to take them away, I started craving them. Kind of odd thing about the uniforms I hadn't really grokked before, what with everything else being weird and new, and the single universal failure of women's clothing back in Camden. The pockets straight up had no pants. I mean, the pants had no pockets. You know what I mean.

A few loops of fabric at the waist and along the seams that didn't have any apparent purpose, but no actual pockets. The jackets more than made up for it, with both thin external pockets right above my hips, small pockets along the centerline of the double breasting, and bigger inside pockets under each arm. I didn't use them for much, since they weren't really in easy-to-reach spots, except the hip ones, but that's where I stuffed my bounty of apple seeds.

Saffron noticed me pop one out and crunch it up as we walked to class.

"I really hope you're not tiring of me already?" I just gave her a 'what the fuck?' look, to which she explained, "building up a tolerance to cyanide, so you can poison me with it without suspicion?"

"Y'know, I'd say your mind must be a scary place, but then you might drag me further into it."

"Oh, you love it." I grinned at her and pulled her into a side-hug.

"Yeah, I really do. Dunno about the seeds. I'm just kinda craving them."

"Just remember what Sister Siobhan said, we can't get one another pregnant." I smirked down at her.

"Not without some really weird shapeshifting shenanigans, at least."

"So you think we ought to cut back, what with your Patron being the God of weird shapeshifting shenanigans?" She grinned That Grin right up at me, and I zoomed in for a quick kiss before she pulled away to enter the classroom. I pouted and followed her in, ignoring Lancaster's comment about inappropriate PDA as he followed me into the classroom. Okay, I just flipped him off a little bit behind my back. Very restrained and classy, I thought.

Once we all got seated, Doc DeLeon opened up with, "today we'll be studying Morson's favorite Greek city, Corinth. Cadet Morson, do you recall why you'd suggest we study them?" Morson rumbled out, "engineering?"

"Exactly! Whether its their use of columns and arches, their fascinating machines, or even their interesting ship designs, Corinth is the home of pragmatic engineering in the Greek peninsula." He nodded to Saffron and said, "While Athens has had its share of discoveries, machine wise, they tend to be more concerned about creating new and interesting machines, as opposed to Corinth's focus on refining and incorporating existing machines as," here he paused, "what's the term the Marshall uses? Force multipliers!

Right. So, as usual, we'll begin with the Races in Corinth, move on to the history and culture, and along the way we'll study some of their most impactful devices, as they are key to understanding present day Corinthian culture." What followed was eight hours of three distinct forms of boring; first reviewing the Races of Corinth; pretty much Human and Bag, with a small sampling of Olympian.

Then we talked ad nauseum about battles, which might have been interesting if Doc DeLeon got into more details about combat and less about logistics, and inventions, where he'd brought models, examples, or blueprints for everything we discussed. Of course, he went over the math behind each invention extensively. Morson loved it. Me? Not so much. I mean, when Morson, Saffron, and even Lancaster discussed how the math related to the inventions, I could follow the bouncing ball, but otherwise? I just did not get it.

I tried, but the ball just would not bounce for me. At least I got some idea as to the state-of-the-art in ship building (somewhere between old school triremes and early multi-decked sailing vessels), construction (stone, stone, and more stone, but really well crafted, usually magically enhanced stone), and machinery, (clockwork if you were rich enough, and everything non-magical was driven by muscle, wind, and water power).

They had some really amazing shit they could do without, y'know, modern machines, but all of it was either super-expensive, required Mana to power it, or both. It made me feel some kinda way about my old world, and about this one. Not sure exactly what, but I got this niggling feeling in the back of my head that something was Not Right, but I had no idea what. Apple seeds really hit the cronch I'd been missing though, so there's that.