Chương 832: Day Eight Hundred And Thirty

Dear Diary, Weirdest thing has to be when some part of my brain has decided to go native, but the rest of me still hasn't gotten the message. Kinda wondering if people who learn a new language naturally via immersion ever get to that point, where one part of the brain says something and the others just nod and go along with it, even though it makes no damn sense to the rest of the brain. Which can wind up with some hilarious sitcom worthy dumbassery when the rest of the brain shows up to work in a sexy clown suit.

Spent most of the afternoon yesterday getting myself good and grounded, ready to spend a night Reveling with my Worshippers in Calverton. Even hopped down there, all mega Blended, just to see what the place looks like outside the sanctuary, maybe make sure nobody's stuck like Wendell and Dorothea. That's when I realized that the folks there were absolutely not getting ready for a Revel. So I wandered around checking the place out, tryna figure out what was going on.

So the Calverton Temple really does have Olga's fingerprints all over it. Not saying that's a bad thing or anything. Honestly, I find it kind of funny. Where the Temple of Love is pretty clearly a love letter to hedonism of all stripes that's been expanded to include more kid-friendly stuff, not to mention functioning as a school, orphanage, and maybe even community space, the Calverton Temple of Tabitha Diaz, because that's what the sign outside says, is equally clearly a gym.

Not even, like, a cheap neighborhood gym with one boxing ring and some free weights, either, but one of those big upscale ones that's got some sports fields, a track, and I'm pretty sure one of the big open spaces is normally a swimming pool. Way too cold for that right now though. Back home I'd say it's... October, I think?

Been here two years, and what with mostly being an indoor street rat, I didn't much pay attention to seasons beyond 'gotta bundle up' and 'gotta stay out of the sun or risk not passing', but Autumn started in October, and we just passed the beginning of Autumn a few weeks back. Still, cold as shit in Calverton now, way too cold for playing around in a pool.

At any rate, the housing was a little more YMCA dorm than nice but small hotel rooms that the Temple of Love sported, and they served food cafeteria style, but it wasn't cheap or shitty or anything. Just maybe a little more mass produced. Then again, I'd never really seen what the kids at the Phileo Temple eat on days when Marie and I aren't bringing extras for our little extras.

I think maybe they used the classrooms for group training, because they had the kind of nice hardwood floors I think of when I picture dojos and dance studios and shit like that. After looking around for maybe half an hour, I realized there wasn't any kind of general drift toward the sanctuary, so I hopped to Madeline. She sat in an almost claustrophobic cell, with a desk shoved in next to a single bed not unlike what I remembered from the Academy.

Okay, the mattress looked thicker, but I wasn't gonna complain to anybody about not wanting to sleep on a slab of rock.

"Hey, Madeline, how goes?" She jumped a little, but smiled up.

"Apologies, Goddess. You startled me."

"I'm just reviewing everything here at the Temple." She looked a little sheepish.

"I don't understand half the details, but Highest Priestess Karen told me it's always best to review anything, and ask questions of those who know better if I don't understand something. Better than not looking at all, at any rate." She must have seen the question on my face, because she shook her head.

"But nothing in particular is wrong. Everything will be ready for the Revel tomorrow." Which is when my brain finally caught up to the fact that the day we'd just slipped into was Thursday, not Friday. I slipped onto the bed to sit next to Madeline, to pull her to me in a gentle side hug.

"I know it will, Mads. You're doing a great job here. I just stopped by to really get a look at the place before Revel time. I... Kinda have a lot on my mind on Fridays, on Revel days, so I figured I'd take a look when I can see things rather than when I'm focused on you and the other Worshippers." No lies told. She relaxed into me. But... Gotta be who I want to be.

I couldn't quite make myself say it out loud, so I murmured into her head, also, I might have gotten mixed up with all the time spent in M-Space over the past week, and thought tonight was Friday. Her head jerked around and she looked up at me, mouth dropping open.

"Goddess!" I shrugged.

"Yeah, never claimed to be omniscient, did I? Fuck, I never even claimed to be all that bright." I sighed.

"Just... Some dumb bitch who stumbled into way more power than any single person ought to have, and I'm tryna do the right thing with it." I don't know how, but that seemed to be just the right thing to say. She smiled, shook her head, and leaned back into me.

"Perhaps I have found precisely the right Goddess for me, then." We sat there for I don't know how long, just shooting the shit about nothing much at all. Kids from the Calverton school who'd caused some problems, or shown some knacks. Orphans, even though there weren't nearly as many of those, what with the two big pushes to adopt Calverton orphans, one just after the Plague, the other during the Siege. Eventually she quietly asked, "could you?"

She'd nodded at the paperwork, and I pulled the desk over to the bed, so we could both read through stuff as we sat on the edge and waded through. A couple things, mostly logistics stuff, I remembered enough of duBois' class to help her out with. A couple other things, those mostly the kind of chicanery that every person presented with a budget seems to run into, stood out.

"So... Should I... Should I punish them somehow, Goddess?" I shook my head.

"Nah. For all we know, this is just sloppy. Shit, it's right on that fuzzy edge of somebody being bad at math. Here's the thing, this is all in the food budget, right?'

"Yes, Goddess."

"Okay, then. Anybody going hungry?" She shook her head.

"Anybody getting turned away?" Another head shake.

"Okay, then whoever's responsible is getting the job done, which at the end of the day is the single most important thing. If they're maybe bad at math or don't get why keeping track is important, then get them some paperwork help or gently explain that we need to make sure the numbers are solid so if there's another famine, nobody goes hungry. If they're pulling money out the till for something stupid but essentially harmless, like some kinda little bonus treats for themselves or their people?"

I stopped, thought about it for a second, then laughed and shook my head.

"Shit, I'm the Goddess of Ecstasy. If they've got some kind of guilty pleasure, my issue is with the guilt, not the pleasure, you get me? Not like I haven't stuffed the Imperator full of cake every chance I get."

"But... She's the Imperator!" I nodded.

"Yeah, and in times of plenty that maybe means she gets to be a little indulged. First. Maybe. So long as everybody else who needs a little something something extra gets their turn being indulged too." I looked around the room.

"You know I don't expect you to force yourself to live like some kinda monk, right?"

"I... I didn't... I don't..." I turned her to face me. Pulled her forehead to mine, then whispered into her lips, "I'm not gonna hear some kinda stupid shit about you not deserving nice things, am I?" Her lips closed that last gap, and she thought, not after you saying that, no. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. She really didn't want anything beyond that, and that was absolutely fine.

Okay, she wanted to be held, and needed to cry it out, so I held her, and let her cry on my shoulder. When she ran out of tears, before she settled to sleep, I quietly whispered, "you know how proud of you I am, right?" She snorted.

"Had to have you help me do my job." I jiggled her a little, hugging her.

"Yeah, well. What do you think your job is, at the end of the day?" She opened one eye a crack.

"Just helping me do my job. So, y'know, we all help each other out. Same as you're gonna do with whoever messed those books up. Help them with math. Help them understand. Help them realize that so long as everybody's safe and fed and all that good shit, rewards are part of the perks and bennies of working here, and they don't have to hide that shit."

She snickered then, and I might have made some kind of curious noise, because as I gently laid her down on the bed, she murmured, "I thought one of the nicer parts of tomorrow's Revel would be you sitting with me like this. Talking with me. Helping me." I shrugged, smiled, and pulled a blanket over her.

"Hey, no saying you can't do that then, too." Her smile turning the tiniest bit wicked, she thought, but I've got other things in mind now. Yeah, got home a little late for dinner, but after playing in the Bath with the kids, recreating some parts of the Battle of the Bay with me playing the part of the Mother of Hole Spawn and Borysthenis playing the part of the Black Dragon by having Lindsey and Alex plonk her on my face and topple me into the water, we all bundled into bed.

Whereupon I got a full night of dreaming of all my ladies watching something other than the contents of the Bedroom on the wide screen. Apparently given sufficient fervor, my High Clergy can in fact make their own personal fantasies show up there. I do not look that good, but fuck it, Mads was doing a hell of a lot of good work down there in Calverton, and unlike most of my High Clergy she wasn't Academy trained, or a purpose built murderfuck tigress, or a millennia old Sidhe Overlord.

Just some formerly suicidal bitch who survived getting killed and was doing the best she could in the position she found herself in. Yeah, she and I might have more in common than I think. So today I circled back to speak with Saffron while I Co-Located to all my other daily stuff. Specifically, I snagged one of her and first settled her into her chair in the Academy office with me as her seat cushion, then duped us both to the Bedroom.

"Someone's in a mood today." I smiled at the back of her head, then looked up and smiled at her in the big mirror.

"Yeah, well. Not really."

"Who are you and what have you done with Tabitha?" I snorted.

"No, really, I wanted to bring you up to speed with what I learned from Hades." She nodded, then the her in the Academy Suite slipped loose, scooped me up, and laid me down on Marie's big floor bed.

"Uh..."

"I've very little left to research just at this moment." Nothing I'm prepared to start, and me sitting there doing nothing wouldn't be very convincing.

"Yeah, um..." She smiled down at me.

"You know how proud I am of you, right?"

"But..."

"I'm not going to hear you say some stupid shit about not deserving nice things, am I?" You were listening in? I was curious. Perhaps hoping to see you Just Happening to someone. I've kinda done that with Mads before, y'know. Only in your official capacity. Right about then she took egregious advantage of her mouth not being engaged in speaking to distract me. I managed to keep most of my other eyes completely uncrossed, including the pair that looked at me through the big mirror above the divan.

"You're... Really good at that."

"It is an act of Devotion to my most deserving Goddess. Besides, my Goddess commanded me."

"I what?"

"Do as you will. Which in this case involves you."

"Oh." I lost some verbal capacity at that point, but managed to force out, "Poseidon." So weird. Several of me were doing chores of various skeevy factors basically on automatic. A few more played with the kids the same way, although mostly there I just oversaw them playing with each other. Socialization and all that good stuff. A pair of me did surreptitious and mostly mindless naughty stuff with a pair of Marie while the two of us guarded the bodies of our Overlord and Imperator.

One of me, as noted, was the object of my Kitten's Skills practice. And the final one of me, who managed to remain almost verbal, watched as my Kitten's thoughts raced out and around and over that one piece of information.

"He has Tartarus?" She whispered at one point. I nodded, although I think I might have nodded with more than one of me. My Kitten can be very distracting. She also wound up getting very bitey. I'm not sure what to think of the fact that I kind of liked that. Okay, very bitey. Kitten angry. Kitten also very Skilled. That woman is definitely gonna wind up inflicting several new kinks on me eventually.

Shit, I probably already had them, and she's just demonstrating her mastery over every aspect of everything I enjoyed. When my eyes uncrossed, the two of us sat facing ourselves in the mirror.

"I have very unpleasant suspicions, Goof."

"Okay, explain them to me." She worked her mouth a bit, then said, "should I be correct, I would rather you not feel guilty about anything that happens to the Earthshaker." I shrugged.

"He's an asshole. I'm willing to off his ass just for what he did to Cerberus." She nodded, but said, "ask your father here for a moment?" Dad? Quick conference? A few moments later Lyman sat opposite the pair of us, Sigyn in his lap.

"Sorry, daughter, but Sigyn wanted to see the little love nest you sired our grandchildren in."

"Hey, no problem. Everything okay, Mom?"

"Certainly. What did you need us for, Daughter-in-Law?" Saffron nodded politely at both of them, then as Sigyn tried unsuccessfully to peek at the bookshelf, said, "Father Loki, are you still in contact with Hel's mother?" If Sigyn tensed the tiniest bit at that, she relaxed as soon as Loki shrugged and said, "not actively, not since Odin imprisoned our sons." Saffron sighed, then asked, "how are your relations with her and her people?"

"Cordial. I assume this is about the recent attacks?"

"It is. Those attacking us show signs of having been cursed by Lyssa; the only way the offspring of a Titan and a Jotnar could be so cursed is if they carried some rage and pain within their heart already." Loki nodded.

"That makes sense."

"Poseidon is the most brutal of his siblings. He is also known for one particular type of atrocity more than any other." To his credit, Loki looked as sickened as I was.

"He wouldn't..." He took a deep breath as Saffron frowned.

"No. No, he absolutely would, wouldn't he?"

"Abuse them? Molest them? Bind them to him, turn them against us, somehow blaming us, and use Lyssa to drive all but pain, fury, and madness from them?" The meaning of her words hit me, but the depth of her fury was only explained a moment later.

"Capture some Jotnar, drag them to Tartarus, and force them to bear children for him to use?"

"But how... what..." Sigyn trailed off into shocked silence.

"Unless a Jotnar willingly sided with Poseidon, that is the most likely situation. And even if one did, that would still mean they simply followed the Earthshaker's lead and forced themselves on one of the imprisoned Titans." She went silent, letting all of us stew for a moment.

"Father Loki, if you can please find out whether any Jotnar are missing from Jotunheim or elsewhere?" He nodded.

"I shall. I shall also inquire as to whether the Lord of the Sea has been seen in the Northlands."

"Thank you, Father." With that, she twisted around and buried her face in my breast. Please, hold me. I snuggled her in, then looked up.

"I can give you guys the room for the moment?" Mom and Dad looked at each other, then shook their heads.

"No, Daughter. The offer is appreciated, if ill timed."

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry."

"No need for sorrow. None of the atrocity spoken of is your doing. Perhaps another time." I nodded.

"Yeah. Just let me know." With that they were gone.

"Shit."

"What's wrong, love?" I shrugged, then scooched back until we both lay on the bed, with me looking at the back of her head in the ceiling mirror.

"I gotta be ready for the Revel by sunset. I'm... I'm not sure I can shake this out of my head by then." A few moments later Mads stood at the foot of the bed.

"Goddess?" Saffron pushed herself up just far enough to say, "the Goddess may need to forgo attendance at the upcoming Revel." At the forlorn look on Madeline's face, she smiled softly and said, "it has nothing to do with you or yours, Madeline. Tabitha has received some disturbing news from Europa." I pulled myself upright enough to at least look her in the eye and said, "if I can be in the right headspace for tonight, I'll be there. But if not?" I waited until she nodded.

"I really look forward to acting out what you put on the big screen last night." She nodded and disappeared. After Saffron and I laid there holding one another, I quietly sighed.

"What's wrong, love?"

"I don't think I should offer that piece of shit in the shape of a God Redemption, even if he asks for it."

"I doubt a fool as arrogant as he would even think to do so." I shook my head.

"Yeah, but that's the thing. If he does? I don't know if I can tell him no."

"Well then. You'd best prepare my Penance well in advance." I froze, looking at her in the mirror as her eyes narrowed.

"For when I prevent him from asking."