Chương 850: Day Eight Hundred And Forty-Eight

Dear Diary, Y'know, it's weird, but my problem isn't that I forget things. Not really. I mean, I remember all that wacky bullshit I read in that mythology book all that time ago, I remember a lot of what I learned back in ROTC, and I remember a surprising amount of fuckin' algebra, of all things. My problem is more that my brain has no real calendar, no sense of time or urgency, and little to no object permanence. I deal with shit when it shows up in front of me.

I think I've gotten pretty good at dealing with shit when it shows up in front of me, but there are some things that really need a bit more planning. Some modicum of preparation. Not just in the moment performance. I think I've gotten better at that. Not a lot, mind you, but a little bit. Some of it is forming habits. Which, to be clear, aren't what I've read about as 'habits'. Not things I do on some kind of schedule without thinking about them.

Shit, if I could get Skills, I'd do whatever it took to develop some kind of 'Habit' skill, to let me just get up and do shit without thinking about it. Which I guess I sort of do, but only when there's nothing distracting me. Seriously, by now I've probably spent most of a couple Seasons doing laundry and cooking at the Academy. Okay, more cooking than laundry, because I know I want to eat, and I know my kids need to eat, so I hit the Academy kitchens and get to making.

To be clear, I'm not just using those kitchens to make stuff for my own household. I pitch in wherever and however I can with getting stuff ready for the Cadets and whoever else is eating up in the Dining Hall too. I just do it in the Academy kitchens because having a bunch of other people there doing something with me helps keep me on task. That said, I totally did not do that over the past couple, because I had other shit going on, and it totally distracted me from that 'habit'.

Which, as noted, isn't really, or I would have gone and done some cooking and cleaning at the Academy while the kids were playing in the snow with Thanatos. Thing is, I did plan and execute the Liberation of Calverton. Not just the Siege, although I guess my name will go into the history books as 'in command' during the Siege, but most of that was my staff, not me.

But the Liberation itself, from the moment Kitten made her announcement to the Alliance Army sweeping through the City to clear and collect any remaining Undead, that was my plan. I brought it together, I executed it, I pitched in and helped, sure, but at no point was I ever in that position of the plan going utterly sideways because I didn't think of something.

Okay the Master Lich coming out with a bunch of kids wasn't on my bingo card, nor was her developing Mass Smite just to use it as a spoilsport device, but that's why I had plenty of reinforcements and reserve resources in play. Like Diana's ursine ass. Literally. I'm not gonna go on about whether I planned what happened after the Liberation before the whole thing started, but even there, from the moment I realized what I had to do, I also knew that what I wanted to do was give her another chance.

It's worked out pretty well so far, honestly. But right now, that's where I am. Not at the 'ready to start dropping rounds into the no man's land' stage, but where I was before that. I think the only reason the Master Lich got blindsided was because of how I make plans happen. I don't make a big checklist like my Kitten would do, or a blueprint the way I'm pretty sure Conrad would. I don't even really use a recipe the way Marie might, except in the most general of senses.

I know what I need to do, I know what pieces need to be on the board in what general position and as I think about them, as they cross my mind, I nudge them into place. For anything that desperately needs to be in place, I maybe tell somebody reliable what needs to be where, but I don't actually tell them why or what it's for. Oh. Oh, shit. I just realized. I need to get a cigar.

Because my plans aren't the kind of thing that I put together like a machine, or bake like a cake, or even the more militant thing somebody might expect from my Academy training. My plans just kinda come together. Okay, that came out way hornier than I intended, but it still works. Because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes I'm gonna do things that would horrify any cigar afficionado if they knew where that cigar had been. Still gonna smoke it though, because my mama didn't raise me to be wasteful.

Anyway, all that said, after making sure my Underworld allies knew not to go in on Poseidon solo, but to come get me if they spotted him, I realized I had shit I needed to do. Seriously, at this point things reminded me more than a little of Calverton. No real surprises in a strategic sense; he had roughly two dozen kaiju somewhere in the Atlantic, they were headed toward Atlantis.

He was hiding somewhere in the open ocean, probably driving the back ranks of the kaiju to make sure they didn't wander off or some shit. All of his pieces were on the board and in play, now it was time for me to start pulling my wacky Rube Goldberg shit. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. So of course I spent yesterday returning to my 'everything everywhere all at once' thing.

Had a dozen of me helping out at the Academy, both making sure that all the rooms were getting cleaned, mostly by doing it myself, as well as churning out a bunch of extra food. Plenty of that went to the kids when I delivered them back to their houses. Well, okay, I delivered all the kids from Lancaster House back to the entryway there, each of them clutching their loot bag and a Cadet sized lunch box.

Not an actual lunch box, just a cardboard box full of wax paper wrapped food, but I still made sure they went back in better condition and better supplied than Menace found them. Took the kids from the Yards back to Drivers', because most of the Yards doesn't really have 'addresses' the way I think of them, and the kids were at that age where they pictured their own living rooms in a kind of fuzzy way, let alone the outside of their houses.

I might have bribed a couple of the waitresses to run for parents when they got off shift, and sat there waiting until all the kids had been claimed by parents. Okay, by adults they recognized and greeted with some form of affection. Honestly, back in the day that was a way better sign somebody was doing the parent job than who'd been a sperm donor or what hoo hah a kid had popped out of.

Shifted a few things from the Academy to my office at the Homestead, because as I collected laundry I swept through the top floor, and that included our suite there, and there were a few knickknacks I'd forgotten about that I needed or wanted in my office. Speaking of my office, it's more or less covered in snow at this point. Like, not on the inside, but the outside absolutely is. Okay, there's a layer of snow over a thick layer of ice.

I think that has something to do with heat from the Bore warming the air in the day or when we're cooking or something like that, then the shit freezing again at night. At the end of the day, after feeding the remaining kids, then sorta shooing the ones from South House back homeward, I got all of our kids through the showers then into Bath along with Mister Slither, who'd done some fantastic kid watching work when Menace had them all outside. Once I had them all more or less clean and soaking, I waved him over.

"You sure you're okay after that time in the snow?" Weird thing seeing a snake shrug, but he pulled it off pretty well. At that point I remembered a question that had bugged me for a while, and figured I'd ask. But first, I said, "thanks for watching the kids. No telling how many we'd have lost in the snowdrifts if you hadn't been there to corral them." I kinda thought Slither would be blushing if, y'know, snakes could.

"Mind if I ask you something?" He shrugged again. So weird.

"What kind of snake are you?" For a second I thought maybe I'd offended him, but then I realized he was sorta soft rebooting, because I don't think even he knew. Like, yeah, obvious viper fangs, which affected the configuration of his head and mouth, but the rest of him reminded me of nothing so much as one of the big, big constrictors from down in South America. Both of those are pretty fuckin' weird to find in Scandinavia.

At least it seemed that way to me, although I'd never really had a zoology hyperfixation, so for all I knew Scandinavia had a huge snake problem back in the day as well as here and now. Either way, Mister Slither finished his soft reboot and shrugged again.

"Don't worry about it, man. You know what matters?" He swung his head back and forth.

"You're family. You've been my Menace's friend since back in the day, and I'm not gonna forget that, or how much you help out around here when you can." Weird thing, getting hugged by a snake while soaking in the Bath. Before I started getting sugar crashed kids out of the Bath and drying them off before bed, I ruffled his head a little and whispered, "if you think of anything that you want? Let me know. I'll see what I can do." He gave me a weird look, and I smiled.

"Yeah, I'll try to think of something if I can." Dreamt of my ladies doing pearl diver shit. Okay, diving into my Maw, then swimming around as long as they could before they lost any sense of control or decorum as they dissolved. Still blows my mind that they all seem to enjoy that as much as they do. Or the way they do. For me, it's not exactly sticking my hands in industrial strength detergent, but it's not incredibly far away from that.

I'm not really sure as to why there's a semi-permanent layer of snow over my office and the surrounding terrain, but I took a little time to clear off Grandma's memorial today. Seemed like the thing to do, and I felt a need to get in touch with my inner old biddy. Because not long after lunch I stepped up to Boltophsberg. Specifically, I stepped outside of Baba Yaga's place. Which was not in the same spot as it had been.

Before I got the impression it lurked beyond the walls, maybe in a kind of shantytown, maybe in some scrub woods, but definitely not 'in' the City, exactly. Now I'd swear it sat in the M-Space version of Vyenemoinen's Palace. Like right there in the courtyard. I knocked. Politely. After I waited a few minutes, the door cracked open.

"Yes?" I put on my best smile and said, "hey there, Baba. It's Tabitha."

"I see that." She didn't sound pissed, but she did sound a little, I dunno, not in the mood to fuck around.

"I needed to talk to you, and maybe Pyevatar and Ilmatar. At your convenience, of course." She chewed that over. Okay, she chewed something, kinda noisily, but after that audible mastication, she sucked at her teeth and said, "Come see me Tyrsday at noon."

"Thanks, Baba."

"Plan to stay until after dark." Weird, but I was the one asking her for a favor.

"You got it. I'll see you then!" I'd almost asked her if I should bring anything, but I figured it was a better idea to just bring some leftover treats than give her the opportunity to ask me to bring her some leftover trick or treaters.