Chương 879: Day Eight Hundred And Seventy-Seven

Dear Diary, I've said it before, I'll say it again. When it comes to patience, I agree completely with Inigo Montoya. I hate waiting. To be clear, and to be fair to Inigo I think he meant this too, I hate waiting for the other shoe to drop. Also, given what we've seen of the kaiju thus far, especially that fuckin' crab, I would not be incredibly surprised to see some kind of millipede kaiju. Which would mean the 'other shoe' is in fact enough footwear to give Imelda Marcos a coronary just by looking at it.

Actually, I think part of my response to Maze might have explained it. No matter what the actual danger is, I am absolutely certain that my imagination will come up with something worse. Which, when I'm basically worried about sixteen kaiju, a rage goddess, and an oceanic storm god, my imagination might have to work overtime, but it's gonna come up with some doozies. Like kaiju pill bugs and shit like that. Or cockroaches.

Fuck, I'm a Goddess, I don't really have anybody to pray to and say 'please don't let it be cockroaches'. I'd say you could pray to me, but along with not having any ability to prevent the kaiju from manifesting that way, I also would already be preventing that. Really? You don't seem to be afraid of bugs. Afraid? No. Some bugs can even be beneficial. I'm fond of spiders, for instance. But I dislike roaches. Probably some side effect of being a Deity of Home and Hearth. Fair point. Thanks, Dad. You're the best.

I know. Yeah, while I haven't been thinking that much about her, I still remember that Lyssa probably wound up helping Poseidon out. I did not spend a large portion of my misspent youth consuming the horror genre like an addict to forget 'never believe a bad guy is dead until you've seen a body'. Which, honestly, I'm not sure she was allied with Possy boi, but by all appearances she did wind up working with him for at least long enough to enrage the kaiju.

I guess I could ask Dad to scry on her, but I'm not sure how much of a connection he has, and if it turns out she got herself dead in Tartarus, I really don't want to push him back into the pit of grief he wound up in when he realized Angrboda died there. Before anybody points out that I haven't seen her corpse, she's not a bad guy. Yeah, she's one of Dad's exes, but something about his response didn't seem like he hated her or anything. From what I remember he wound up getting married off multiple times by Odin.

Which I guess is what happens when you have sons who don't follow orders about diplomatic marriages. Or maybe Odin wanted the connections, but didn't want to risk an heir who wasn't Aesir. So yesterday Maze grilled me on All Things Sex, starting with 'how can two girls have sex'. Which, to be clear, I pointed out that even though all of us use the term 'girl', 'girls' really shouldn't be having sex, what with it being an adult activity.

I'm not gonna draw hard lines about when my girls are officially young women, because that's more a them thing than a me thing, but they need to know that's one of those adult things where there are consequences that no matter how much we might want to, we can't really protect them from.

Help them deal with, yeah, but at some point every kid has to say 'okay, time to grow up', and it's not fair for anybody to say that for them, and telling them they can't say that is, in my not insignificant opinion, not much better than telling them they have to say it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be sure to let everybody know when I finally say that to myself. I can make jokes about my own lingering immaturity even as I'm tryna help my apparently most mature daughter begin navigating her own path.

That's called 'being Human'. Or, y'know, 'Human Adjacent'. Being a person, with all our flaws and insecurities. Fuck, Maze shouldn't even have to worry about weird gustatory impulses coming from Her Dark Fatassness, so for all I know she'll wind up a fully functional adult and shit well before me. I'm not even gonna begin the Trauma Trials mini-game of the Oppression Olympics, either, because once those start, nobody wins.

I'm just gonna do my best to, like I said, guide her to make good choices, while still maybe regretting some of my own on the regular. Last night, since it was my night to get some rest, I stayed in the tub with Maze, Siobhan, and Hailee. Nobody else was feeling sleeping in the steaming water, and that was fine. I considered it a huge triumph that Maze suggested it, and not in any kind of Tomoko way.

Maybe a little because she'd really thought we were gonna sleep underwater last night, and it's been a while, but I can't see anything wrong with that. Stolen novel; please report. The ladies shifted through my Maw a pair at a time, watching on the big screen as Marie very, very carefully set off our sweet Siobhan's fear fetish by precision application of claws and fangs with the light turned down to where I know my wireframe vision would have kicked in.

In the morning, after breakfast, the kids all went off to do their own things. The kits are still growing like mad. Isadora is probably my second tallest daughter at this point, although that's a little hard to see, since most of the time she slouches a little like Marie used to, like some of the Persian Maenads still do. It's weird.

Marie never struck me as 'slouching', she was always too prim and proper, but now that I've seen her next to other Maenads, not to mention standing to her full height as a habit rather than just being stiff and prim, I realize she'd gotten in the habit of making herself smaller. More than anything else, I'm happy for her about that. She knows that I want her to take up as much space as she wants, as much as she needs to be happy and herself. Funny, the kits are all weaned now, but now we've got another baby.

I kinda wonder if I should get a choker with a bell on it or something, but that might set off the wrong signals somehow. Shit, I better not think about that too hard, or Marie will absolutely get some kind of bell piercing for her white and black colored self.

The woman might have learned some hobbies she adores that all fall under 'wifiest wife that ever wifed' over her centuries at the Academy, but apparently nobody ever told her that 'collecting kinks like Pokemon' is not normally considered 'wifiest wife that ever wifed'. Yeah, I'm not complaining, just noting, and if she picked that thought out of my brain and did it, I would be both obligated and enthralled at the idea of that particular kink for who the fuck knows how long.

At any rate, while nursing Siobhan I decided to broach the topic of the other night obliquely.

"Did you have your eyes closed in the Bedroom last night?" Okay, very obliquely. It's my go to move by now. She tilted her head.

"No? Why?"

"You really did feel scared." She giggled.

"I was. Such a strange thing, to know I'm utterly safe, but still be frightened because of the dark, because of how dangerous I know our Marie is." While Marie just purred at her, I asked, "you couldn't see her?" She snorted.

"I can't see in pitch darkness, silly."

"You what?" She looked really confused, and I said, "You know that's a Boon you can have. I kinda thought you had it already."

"Oh? Really? I can't remember if you told me that or not. Or if I had it and gave it up, or... Oh, drat."

"What?" She shook her head.

"Memory issues. Some women experience them. I hadn't thus far. I thought I hadn't, anyhow."

"Oh. Oh, shit, that sucks." She shrugged.

"If I weren't already bedridden, it might, but since I am, it's hardly more than an inconvenience." I nodded.

"Okay. Fair. So if you can't spot stuff in the dark, I'm guessing underwater isn't super easy either?" She smiled and shook her head.

"Yeah. Don't freak out or anything, but you know how we had sex in the Bath the night before last?" She smiled, a hum as close to a purr as she could manage slipping out of her.

"Oh, yes. So lovely."

"Yeah. Yeah, it was, but, uh, we had an accidental eavesdropper."

"What?" I nodded.

"Yeah, Maze thought we were just gonna sleep, and by the time she realized we weren't, she was... I guess she was too embarrassed to say anything."

"Oh. Poor dear. Did you want me to speak with her about it?" I shrugged.

"Feel free, but she came to me about it yesterday. We talked. It's what prompted the whole sex talk."

"Oh! I see. Well. I, ah, I suppose..." She trailed off.

"I'm sorry."

"Why?" She shook her head.

"I lived a privileged life. Had my own bedroom as a small child. So that was never really an issue for me. But I've heard that many Bag households are... I mean their houses are..." She spluttered to a stop.

"Hey, big families, small houses, more accidents like that, is what you were thinking?" She nodded.

"Yeah, look, you weren't thinking it was because they were Bag, were you?"

"No!" She spluttered some more.

"But..." I nodded.

"Look, acknowledging that different cultures are different isn't inherently bad. Same goes for realizing that some people got screwed over for generations. So long as you keep in mind that that's culture and economics, not genetics. Also, that the little one in your belly is likely to run into some of the same obstacles."

"Not if I have anything to say about it." Gotta say, Siobhan looked absolutely adorable getting all momma bear about her kid.

"Yeah, and you'll have backup. Plenty of it. But just be aware, she'll run into stuff that evaporates the moment people see your face. Be ready to believe her." She just took a deep breath and nodded.

"I will." Then she looked back at me.

"I really am a little worried she's going to avoid me, though?"

"Did you forget where she slept last night? Or who else was there?" She sighed.

"Oh, thank you, Goddess. Still, let her know I'm willing to talk about it if she wants to?"

"I will." Not long after I settled in to my watches, Maze got to the top of the West Tower and prodded me a little. Apparently Fae can, if they need to, affect M-Space. Enough for me to hear her calling for me, at any rate. So along with watching, I wound up answering questions again. I'm almost hoping my little pony girl has the Fae equivalent of ADHD, because that way the hyperfixation will eventually fade. But for now, I answered questions. All fuckin' day.