Chương 907: Day Nine Hundred And Five

Dear Diary, I'm not gonna say my girls' reactions to the events surrounding my return are 'funny', because they absolutely are not. Nothing about that was funny. But some of them really do strike me as odd. Like, not super out of character, I guess, but definitely not always what I expect. For example, I did not expect Davey of all my kids to just roll with things.

Seriously, no wailing or gnashing of teeth, just 'yeah, I got merked by my sister who is the Predator queen, but Mama fixed it, so let's go get my nails did'. Honestly, given what I saw yesterday, she's doing a better job of getting the girls to keep themselves busy and recovering than I am. Then again, I was gone for three days, moping at the bottom of the ocean.

While I'm aware that's a self-belittling description of a massive depressive crash following receipt of a piece of traumatic information or three, I'm also trying to both recover from that crash, get myself back on a path to healing and maturing, and keep everyone at the Homestead fed and healthy and safe. I'm not saying that I should be mocking myself, I'm saying that I'm a little overwhelmed still, so I'm gonna backslide. It would probably help if I had some idea how I wanted to move forward.

To be clear, I really don't. I know what I don't want to do, but I don't know how to avoid that. My goals are not concrete, clear, or even measurable, and that shit makes any kind of progress difficult at best. So yesterday I played pool with Anise, Davey, and Felicia all afternoon, which entailed teaching them how to play eight ball. Yes, I know how to play pool.

When you've got the kind of junk filled trunk I had back in the day, it's fun as shit to bend over for those hard shots, or even for the easy ones, and listen for falling pool cues. Totally worth any wedgies I got from way too tight jeans. Unfortunately, not worth the amount of scrubbing I had to do the time I went with a miniskirt, because I wasn't any more pro-panties than I am now, and the kinds of places I had access to with pool tables did not clean their seating often enough.

Got some nice tips from dudes who bet on me, though. I didn't win, but they handed over some cash anyhow. Fuck, I think that means I was technically a sex worker. Part time, almost amateur, but I got paid for putting on a show, and I didn't really understand that's what I was doing until just now. Like, I always thought I'd conned them or something. Nope. Just getting a few bucks for letting some dudes stare at my ass and privates while I played pool.

Y'know, if I hadn't been isekaied, I think I could have wound up doing Only Fans if I wasn't too stupid or jacked up by shame to do so. Like, I never thought my face was anything to write home about, but my ass, especially bent over a table, literally made bank at least once. Fuck, if ever I find myself back there and Saffron's with me, we will not have any problems with money, because her here and now ass is better than mine ever was.

Anyway, back at the plot, after we played pool for a few hours, and it was pool not billiards, because even here and now I'm not classy enough to play billiards, we headed down to dinner. Tonight was cold sliced meat, warm sliced bread, chilled sliced veg, and a variety of sauces and gravies to use as food lube. Not exactly a religious experience the way Marie's meals sometimes are, but still pretty tasty. The kids thought so too. When we got to the Bath, Davey pulled me along to play with the kids.

I'm not even sure what we played, because nobody told me the rules. I'm not sure there were any. Some splashing happened, and kids opening their eyes underwater, and parts of it were kinda like hide and seek. The game wound up done when the rest of the girls managed to catch Maze, Isnomi, and I all at the same time.

I'm not sure how hard Maze was trying to hide, but I know I wasn't really doing more than some basic Blend shenanigans, and Menace went purely on visual camouflage, which I know isn't the sum total of her subtlety. When bath time finally ended, I scooped all the girls up and carried them down to bed. The kids and kits alike all squirmed gently, like they wanted to say they were too big to be carried to bed, but didn't actually want to be too big to be carried to bed.

But I saw the smiles hiding under their fake frowns, saw the way they clung to me, with no real difference between my arms and my tentacles. That got me thinking whether my tentacles are technically tentacles or arms, which had me scooping Saffron up to the Bedroom once the kids were all snoring.

"Well, this is a nice surprise." The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. I smiled at her and pulled her in to tuck her under my arm as I lay back on the divan.

"Yeah, wanted to ask you about something."

"Oh. Bother. I suppose you'll want to remain capable of cognition then?"

"Yeah, kinda."

"Would you be upset if the ladies put on a show for you while we talk?" I thought about that for a second.

"Yeah, that's really fuckin' tempting, but at least part of that is because it would distract me and eventually convince me to join in."

"Sort of the point, really." I hugged her.

"How about after we're done talking?" She lay her head on my shoulder.

"Love, we do these things to try to help you heal. Try to get back in your good graces." I froze.

"You're not out of my good graces, Kitten. None of you."

"Then why does your Maw remain closed to us?" I took a deep breath.

"That's kinda what I wanted to talk to you about. What do you mean, 'closed'." She paused for a bit in thought.

"Before Yule, whenever we slept, our dreams would inevitably carry us to your Maw. We Reveled, we comforted one another, we even, as you might have seen, communicated via that medium. Planned, when planning was needed. But mostly it was a way of communing with you and with each other," she touched her breast, "deep inside. Inside ourselves and inside of you." I might have pouted a little.

"In my belly." She snorted.

"Oh, please. You felt what I felt when I fed half of myself to you on your birthday." I couldn't help it. I shuddered.

"That... I think that might be a bridge too far."

"Why?"

"Because I shouldn't be eating people!"

"You ate Grandma." Her words could have been an accusation, but they weren't. Just a reminder. A reminder of her very different situation.

"Yeah, well. That was her choice." Saffron shook her head, sighing. No, not just sighing, but sighing at me. There's a difference.

"Oh, yes. You plotted and planned and tricked and forced me to Co-Locate to your Maw and dive as deep as I could before suffusing you with my innermost essence."

"I what?"

"My point, Goof. That was my choice to do that. I gave you exactly what I could recover from, no more, no less. I did it because I wanted to, wanted to feel that overwhelming pleasure while awake, wanted to let it echo through you as well, so you would finally stop berating yourself for enjoying the gifts we give to you freely." I shook my head.

"Yeah, I don't see how anybody in their right mind could do that. I mean, what the hell do you get out of it?" She turned to look at me, entirely so I would see her rolling her eyes at me.

"Besides the certain knowledge that it feeds you, sustains you, and helps you pursue your health like nothing else can?"

"Yeah, not exactly something for you."

"Oh, and the time you spent with our daughters over the past few days was for you?" I worked my mouth a little.

"Yeah, well. I'm not your daughter." Her Grin made an appearance.

"And I am not yours. If either of those things were true, our Worship would border on incestuous." I facepalmed.

"Please don't remind me about that. I've got two daughters who are novices. What the hell am I going to do if they want to go through the Trials?" She kept Grinning at me.

"Nominate some lucky High Priestess to stand in your stead for their final Ordination? Perhaps share some lucky High Clergy with them?" I definitely did not like those suggestions, and was not gonna be bribed into that, despite a sudden thought of throwing Cherry at the girls.

"Yeah, I'm not ready to even think about that yet." She just smiled at me.

"We'll burn that bridge when we come to it." I nodded, then slumped.

"Even if I was ready for you guys to start yeeting bits of yourself into me at night again, I'm not even sure how I'm keeping you guys out." She nodded.

"Perhaps you should take some time in rest and meditation upon that part of yourself?" I pondered that, then shook my head.

"Like I said, not sure I'm ready for that."

"So do it while we're awake." Yeah, sometimes the solutions are stupidly simple, and it takes a genius pointing them out to me.

"Okay, yeah, but how am I gonna stay up all night though?" She grinned at me, spent a torturous second maneuvering herself around until we lay front to front, with her head on my breast and our lady bits pressed against one another tight enough I felt the metal of her piercing against me.

"Oh, I'm sure we can think of something." A moment later Mads and Orla were in the Bed. Yeah, they're both on the athletic side. Impressive, really. When they needed a break, Karen and Tallulah showed up for a bit. Then Marie brought Siobhan in for a vignette. Then they started mixing and matching. I think they were napping in between acts or something.

I'm not sure, because my diabolic little Kitten kept a steady flow of Mana into her piercing all night long, and that both kept me awake and kept me unable to think straight or protest the entire time. In the morning she blinked, yawned, stretched, and said, "good morning, love."

"Wait, you were asleep that whole time?" She giggled.

"How did you keep the Mana flow going?"

"I have Skills."

"Okay, fair, but how... I'm sure..."

"Do you think after all this time and all those nocturnal visits to your Maw I can't sleep through that? I'd rather never get any sleep if I couldn't." I pouted a little.

"So you missed it?"

"The show? I'm the one who choreographed most of it, before I fell asleep. The orgasms? That's why I slept so well. They're very relaxing." At that point her yawn caught up to me.

"Okay. Okay. So who am I spending the day with today?"

"You even have to ask?"

"Uh, duh. Otherwise I wouldn't be asking."

"Isadora."