Chương 844: Day Eight Hundred And Forty-Two

Dear Diary, There are some things I've had to deal with here and now that have made me increasingly aware that even witnessing some things is traumatizing. That's not to belittle the trauma that occurs from things happening to people. If somebody's assaulted, or exploited, or even just trampled by some kind of disaster, it hurts them. Sometimes, especially when they've been hurt over and over, they don't feel it, or don't notice it, because they're in so much pain that the additional trauma doesn't register.

Or maybe they've been hurt so much so often that they're numb. That's not always necessarily a bad thing. At this point I'm pretty sure my fingers are a little bit permanently numb to minor burns, because if you spend long enough working in a kitchen, you burn your fingers so often that you don't feel minor bullshit any more. I read once that those old martial arts masters can punch stone and not even feel it, because they've done the same thing with impact.

Yeah, I also read that they've all got pretty awful arthritis in their hands, but that might just be the kind of tradeoff life makes us accept sometimes. You don't feel the minor dings of your chosen profession, but that means you're a little numb or a little hurting all the time too. But when it comes to shit people didn't sign on for, that kind of long term trauma is pretty fuckin' abominable.

Shit, it even happening once is bad enough, and that's when it's just a random act of god, and those words have a lot more weight behind them here and now than they ever did back in the day. They do, although even here they are used for things no Deity has ever taken credit for. I note you didn't say 'caused'. There's my perceptive girl. Thanks, Dad. You're the best. I know.

So, and I'm trying not to think too hard about my most recent exposure, literal Acts of God would qualify right along with assault and exploitation as things that nobody should ever have to experience. But I got brushed by that kind of shit a lot back in the day. I personally never experienced something I thought of as sexual assault, but then my standards were really fuckin' low. When I gave some dude a hand job so he'd stop following me around like a creep, I didn't think of it that way.

When I followed through on the chill part of Netflix and chill even when close proximity revealed the dude's junk had more in common with blue cheese than anything I wanted near my lady bits, I didn't think of it like that. When it comes to trauma, perception means a lot, so maybe I got traumatized less by those kinds of things than somebody who thought of themselves as being forced.

Then again, what with the whole orphan thing, maybe I'd just had enough trauma by then that I wasn't feeling the impact of the new damage. But even if I never thought of myself like that, both of my closest friends did, as did both of the dudes I hooked up with. They never said anything outright, but you only get that kind of anal abrasion from somebody sticking something in there, and neither of them showed any signs or statements that they swung both ways. Same goes for exploitation, abuse, and murder.

Okay, the abuse from my mom was pretty much just neglect, and I'm not gonna blame her for that when she was literally working herself to death for me at the time. The abuse from my sister was emotional, not physical. The exploitation I mostly avoided because of mom's insurance policy, but again, everybody who'd had a summer job wound up spending almost as much getting to work as they got paid.

Normally I'd say I only tangentially experienced murder, what with kids just not showing up at school sometimes, but then I guess I experienced that one more personally than is normally possible, what with the nature of how I got isekaied. Thing is, since I've gotten here, I've realized there's shit that it's traumatic just to witness. Shit that it's traumatic to do, even if you're not the one being done unto. What Larry and I did to Charlie comes to mind.

What I did to the Mother of Water Panthers right at the end. I'm not the kind of hypocritical bitch who is gonna say that it hurt me worse than it hurt them, but on the other hand, they didn't have to live with the after effects. I'm also not gonna say that all violence is always traumatic. Seriously, sparring with Lemmy is just good clean fun.

Neither of us gets hurt beyond what a little minor Healing will take care of, we both get a workout that gets the blood flowing, at the end of the day I think we're both in better shape mentally than we were beforehand. But shit like I saw yesterday, shit like I saw after the monsters formerly known as Lancaster hurt Bonnie, that shit hurts just to look at. Shit like that makes me want to lash out. To inflict the kind of pain on the perpetrator that they inflicted on others.

To do the kind of shit I did to Charlie and the Mother of Water Panthers. Two years ago, I wouldn't have understood that. Fuck, I might not have a year ago. But I'm starting to realize that to really hurt Poseidon like he hurt those Titans, those Jotnar, like he's still hurting those poor Hybrid kids even as he throws them at us like berserk living weapons, that would hurt me. Traumatize me. A year ago if I understood that, I would have said 'worth' and pulled out the wood chipper with the dull blades.

Thing is, it has become more and more clear to me that whether I value myself or not, I matter to some people. To my Worshippers. To my kids. To my ladies. Traumatized people hurt the people they matter to. I get that sometimes I gotta do shit, gotta go out and risk being traumatized, because the end result is innocents getting hurt, getting killed, getting traumatized by the fuckers who dominate the Divine landscape here and now.

I absolutely will stand up and stop any of those kaiju who come at Atlantis, and I absolutely will find Poseidon and end his ass, permanently. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. But I'm not gonna plan out some elaborate torture routine.

I haven't even mentioned what I did to Diana, because the fact that I did that all on the spur of the moment fills me with more than a little self-loathing, and I am totally gonna blame both my ability to do that and my lack of hesitation on Mimic, on the influence of Her Dark Fatassness. But I'm not gonna say I didn't do it, or that I'm not ultimately responsible for my actions, or for the trauma I still haven't healed from doing it, or for any trauma I inadvertently pass on to my loved ones.

So yeah, that fucker deserves whatever pain he receives while I'm putting him down. Yeah, he is gonna fuckin' die, permanently. But no, I'm not gonna enjoy it, I'm not gonna take my time with it, I'm not gonna get off on it. If I tell myself that often enough, if I plan out what I'm gonna do clearly enough, maybe when the moment comes I'll even be able to stick to my plans and just end that motherfucker. If I do, I am rewarding myself with Unlimited Saffronworks.

Fuck, I'm gonna go at it with as many of my ladies as I can convince to reward me for my bravery and restraint, all at once. Kinda hope Siobhan decants before then, because I'd really like to taste Darling Ice Pop's terror at that point, because holy shit does she enjoy that shit. Yeah, I strained some shit ending Tartarus. The Primordial and his Demesne, both.

If any of those unmoving Titans or Jotnar weren't quite dead, I'm sort of sorry, but honestly given what had been done to them, death might have been a mercy. I woke up around noon today, and felt kinda like I'd strained every muscle and joint in my body, not to mention having a full body sunburn.

Not 'oh, I can't move' sunburn like I got once down in PR when I decided to brown up all at once early in the summer and didn't realize being as light skinned as I was meant I would wind up burning like a white girl, but still, that kind of light tightness of skin everywhere that told me I'd fucked up. Just in case it ever comes up, do not let your lady bits get sunburned. Negative three out of ten, would not sunburn my bits again.

Yes, more than just the outer mound and exposed areas, it felt like I'd shoved a UV lamp up my vajayjay and left it on while I lay in the tanning bed. Siobhan and Marie both lay there, Marie letting the kits all snuggle with her, Siobhan lying on the far side of Mount Kit, with me making the third side of the triangle. When I sat up and blinked, Siobhan responded first, quietly murmuring, "how are you feeling, love?"

"Kinda like I tried to dead lift Florida again, only this time while standing naked on the equator under the midsummer sun all day." She winced and giggled at the same time, both softly enough that the kits didn't stir.

"Well. The Imperator and I both Assessed you and Healed you while you were out. Not that you had much in the way of physical trauma, but our considered opinion was that if you passed out, you were trying to recover from something, so we'd help with what we could." I sighed, then nodded.

"Yeah. I, uh... I broke Tartarus." Marie's eyes slid open.

"You What?"

"I killed him. Tartarus. The guy down at the bottom of the prison. Whole place started to come down when I did that." She nodded, frowning.

"Titans?" I winced.

"They were all dead when I got there."

"How?" Before I could respond, she tilted her head a little.

"Poseidon?" I nodded.

"I think so. I'm pretty sure Tartarus said so. He helped. Watched. Enjoyed the whole show. I..." I paused, a sob escaping me. I sat there, holding it in, trying not to let that spill out onto my sleeping babies. Who weren't exactly babies any more, which left me reeling just a little. After a minute, I took a deep breath and tried again.

"Nobody responsible for what happened in Tartarus deserves to live. Also, I object to eternal punishment on principle, so I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry."

"The Morrigan?" Marie wasn't accusing, just asking.

"Can get loose as soon as she makes it clear, in person or via her Clergy, that she regrets and apologizes for killing my daughter, and will be more responsible with her Divine gifts in the future." Marie considered that a second, then frowned, nodded, and said, "Fair. Merciful." I snorted.

"Yeah, uh, I sorta regret doing exactly what I did with her. But I can't exactly undo it without her getting the wrong message, so I gotta stick to those rules. She knows what they are. So I'm just kinda waiting to hear from her Clergy at some point. Or maybe one of the other folks in her Pantheon, like Canta."

"Ah..." I looked over at Siobhan, who'd blushed just a little.

"About that?"

"Did he say something to you about The Morrigan?"

"What? Oh, no, not at all. I've been meaning to tell you, but I seem to be stumbling between your daughter's soporific aura and my own misery." I snickered, because hearing the kind of verbal mess that would come out of my own mouth coming out of Siobhan's tickled me somewhere that made me want to tickle her tummy. From the inside or outside or both at once, her choice.

"Tell me what?"

"Unless The Morrigan has changed her allegiance, Canta no longer belongs to the same Pantheon as she does."

"Really? Huh. Who did he switch to?" Yeah, she stared at me for like a whole assed minute. The clue did not penetrate my thick assed skull until Marie snorted, snerked, then broke down laughing, prompting the kits to wake, variously stretching or cranking. Okay, Isadora just rolled over and kept sleeping, but that's just how my biggest girl do.

"Oh. Uh, tell him I appreciate the gesture of confidence, and let me know if he needs anything?" She just smiled serenely.

"If it is not something I can provide, I will." When I looked the question at her, she shrugged.

"Mostly he just wants assurance that we will, in fact, support and defend him should he need it."

"We?" She nodded, squinted with concentration, and slipped the tiniest Mana Scalpel out of one fingertip.

"I am a High Priestess of Canta, Tabitha Diaz, and Mimic, not to mention an Archmage." I rolled and rooched until I could snuggle in next to her, one arm around her and Hailee. The moment my arm went around my youngest girl, my whole everything felt better. Not like I wasn't hurt, but like maybe I could rest, could recover despite my everything being hurt enough to compete with my scars for general discomfort.

"Yeah, I'm sorry I forget that sometimes." She just snuggled her butt into me, sighing.

"Don't be. I am undoubtedly the least effective adult among our little family."

"Hey..."

"No, Tabitha, that is not an insult, or any kind of self-denigration. My partners, my lovers, my family are Deities and Heroes and Legends. That I am simply a Clerical Archmage is no insult, and saying I am the least of us is simply a statement of fact." I thought about that for a bit, then said, "nah. You're definitely the cutest." She opened her mouth to say something, but shut it again, blushing, when Marie said, "You Are." I just laid there for the rest of the day.

A while after our conversation, something like a sob escaped me. Siobhan didn't move, didn't turn to me, just murmured, "do you want to talk about it?"

"Not... Not yet. If nobody needs me right now? I really think I need this." I didn't see it, but I heard the smile in her voice when she said, "of course, love." She thought something I couldn't quite catch at Marie, who nodded. A few moments, a few nudges later, and the kits all flopped themselves around me. Not long after that the rest of the girls stampeded into the room, led by my little Menace. All of them stripped their smocks off as they approached the bed, then they piled in around Siobhan and me.

"Hey, Menace. What's up?"

"Ith nap time! Time for thleep!" I am a mature adult woman who can take advice from my own kids when they're right. So I nuzzled into Siobhan's neck and went back to sleep.