Chương 917: Day Nine Hundred And Fifteen

Dear Diary, Yeah, at some point soon I'm gonna have to get back to my 'normal' routine. Bodyguard, Maid, Infirmary, plus all the normal things I do around the Homestead. Depending on how well I can manage those, I want to start teaching Math at the Temples as much as I can. I'm not gonna shove in at the Academy, what with their Season already being in full swing. Maybe I'll let the Headmaster know I'm available for short term subbing now and then. Substitute teaching! I totally meant substitute teaching!

Not that I'd turn Miles away, but I get the feeling he's not into lady type persons. I'm also pretty sure he's not into the whole dom and sub thing, but what with me only being 'pretty sure' about his orientation, I'm not even gonna go there. Also, in the interests of avoiding any further ambiguity, I'm talking about Phileo City Heroic Academy. Because we've got... Hang on, need to count on my fingers... Shit, more than five, gotta take my top off... Six Heroic Academies, plus the Naval Academy in Rich Man's Port.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I might maybe want to let the Headmasters of the other Academies know I'm available to substitute teach. Shit, I might want to find out who their Head Maids are and spend some time doing Maid shit in each of them, too. But that's for later. I'm not there yet. I'm getting there. I'm working on it. But I'm not there yet. I've been thinking about what happened after Yule. I know I had a major depressive crash.

I'm not exactly sure why, and while I've apparently got all the smarts in the world now, my particular flavor of neurospiciness sometimes makes me feel like a supercar with a stripped clutch. All the power and speed in the world, but no ability to make it do what I want reliably. Which applies to this because I can't just power through all the books on depression I stole.

Yeah, I got that bright idea today, stole a bunch of them, put them up in my office, because while I don't want to advert that I've got depression by putting them in the bookshelf in the bedroom, and they're definitely not the reading material I want in the headboard of the Bed, I'm tired of being embarrassed by my depression. At one point over the past couple years I sort of thought that my depression was somehow related to my trauma.

I'm still pretty sure that my life back in the day exacerbated that shit, but I also think it's wrong to say that it caused it. But just like being ADHD doesn't give me an excuse to fuck people over by forgetting them because my object permanence isn't, having chronic depression isn't an excuse for hurting people when I lash out at them or myself. Yeah, deep thoughts, which I'm having without actually spiraling. Weird, I know.

I think maybe that crash was hard enough to shake me completely out of my teenage need to see myself as special and unique enough to say 'yeah, okay Tabs, you're a special snowflake just like everyone else, but that shit's a step too far. As the incarnation of teenage angst says, 'Bring it down a notch'. Everyone is special and unique. That's not sarcasm. It's important, just like Agency. But just like Agency, it's limited when it starts hurting people.

I feel obligated to say 'hurting people in ways that matter', because apparently flipping Tallulah's reset switch, by everyone's estimation, does not matter when she says it doesn't. Gotta make sure she's not just avoiding conflict, or worse acting like Sister Siobhan back when she had a humility-induced eating disorder. Definitely got a chance to show that said eating disorder has been nuked into oblivion by now. Okay, I think it has, since she no longer complains about foods being 'too rich' or 'not for her'.

Maybe it's carrying the Imperator's baby or something. I'm hoping that between getting her in the habit of eating whenever and whatever she can, plus the constant positive reinforcement, she'll be able to avoid slipping back into her old habits of starving herself. But today at the end of a day spent in the kitchen with Marie and Mom, Saffron showed up and slipped her arms around my waist.

"Good Evening, love."

"Hey Kitten." Kinda funny side effect of her being strong enough to do duBois couples gymnastics and me being strong enough to move land masses, I can move around doing shit in the kitchen while she's hanging from my back without being more encumbered than wearing a thick coat with a fluffy hood or something. Or a cloak. People wear cloaks here and now, and they look totally badass, and now I want one, except then I couldn't have a Saffron cloak when she's in the mood.

"Are you feeling up to your Freyday Revel tonight?" I froze for a second with a tray half out of the oven. I heard her sniffing at the aroma wafting from it. After that brief pause, I shook my head.

"No. Not yet." She nodded.

"Can your High Priestesses know when you'll be ready to return to your faithful? We've told them that you were struck down after the final battle against the Kaiju, but that you're recovering well." I pursed my lips.

"Almost wish you hadn't."

"You don't wish to return to your Freyday Revels?" I slipped another pair of trays out of the oven, turning the contents onto cooling racks before setting another few into the ovens.

"I... I'm worried, Kitten."

"About Changing them?" I nodded in response.

"Love, if ever you worry about that? Think on Dana and all who came with them in New Amsterdam. You Changed them, did you not?"

"Meh. I made their outsides match their insides." She nipped at my ear.

"Which is Change. Not every Change need be traumatic. That is in fact one of the greatest benefits you bring to the world, my love."

"Whassat?"

"You facilitate Change. Even before you came fully into your power, you removed obstacles to Change. Change that should have happened long since." That hit the Tabitha pause button again.

"Okay, yeah, I'm gonna need to talk with you about that." The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"Now?" I shook my head, then realized something that I really should ask just then.

"Nah. I'm busy with dinner, and this is one of those things I think we ought to set aside a day for. Maybe with the 'rents and the ladies in support."

"You wish to discuss your Domain, then?" I nodded.

"Yeah, but like I said, not now. For right now," I sighed, then did the mature thing, even if it seemed really immature.

"When I'm crashing, when I realize I'm crashing, do I have permission to steal one of you away and bury my face in your tits?" I felt her grin through the back of my fuckin' head.

"Why do you think you need ask?"

"Because Agency is important."

"Haven't I given you blanket permission for anything you wish to do?" I snorted.

"Yeah, you have, but that maybe covers spontaneous things or surprises. You still have the right to say no."

"Then yes, I Consent to being your 'woobie'." I'd finished cycling the baking sheets, and started pulling the pies out of the oven. Kinda funny side effect of all those crazy Skills and my stupid high Endurance, I no longer need oven mitts.

"Where did you learn the word 'woobie'?" Instead of answering, she whimpered.

"What's wrong, Kitten?" She dispelled my tension with a laugh.

"Oh, just a strange yet seemingly inevitable side effect of... You." Okay, my tension went back up a little.

"Which is?" She leaned over my shoulder just a little and inhaled.

"My reaction on smelling delicious pie is no longer child appropriate. Which you'd realize were you wearing you proper Maid's uniform." I glanced down at the Academy Maid's uniform I'd decided to wear in the kitchen today, because it made Murder Mittens smile.

"What do you mean? This one's regulation, made by Marie herself."

"I meant the proper one." I didn't even need the mental image she shot me, what with the Metaphoric and literal heat in her voice warming my ear.

"That thing? That isn't a Maid's Uniform. That's an apron with delusions of adequacy."

"Wear it for me?" I shook my head, laughing.

"I really do need to finish dinner, but sure. Now or later?"

"Why would I wait?"

"Because I can let you give in to every one of your nefarious impulses if you wait until after the kids are asleep." She opened her mouth to say something, and I interrupted her with, "while I feed you all the leftover desert that'll fit into you while I'm wearing it."

"The outfit or the dessert."

"Either. Both. Up to you." She just kinda melted across my back at that point. Grinning and making little happy Saffron noises while I finished getting dinner ready. With three of us in the kitchen all day, we wound up maybe going a little overboard. Then again, grandma in residence. That calls for going overboard if anything does. We started everybody with some veggies.

A kind of pickled salad thing for the girls who liked salad, tempura veg for the meat eaters, since it added a little savory something something, and straight up deep fried veggies for everybody. Lindsey and Ria weren't keen on the plain deep fried veggies, but then maybe they preferred the other stuff. Then we brought out the soup. We'd done a bear-based French onion in little crocks, plus tureens of something like miso and a rich creamy tomato soup.

The kits liked the French onion, Ria found a new favorite in the miso, and everybody'd had the tomato soup before when we did grilled cheese, so that went pretty quick. Weird thing, a few of the Homestead women who'd stopped by looked a little weirded out by it; maybe because it was red and tomatoey, I'm not sure. It's not like they haven't eaten tomatoes before.

Then again, it was a creamy tomato soup, which took a bit of work to make come together, since the cream had a tendency to curdle when the acid from the tomato hit it if you did it wrong. Okay, that happened to mine the first couple times I made it. Either that's a thing creamy tomato soup does if you do it wrong, or I screwed up in new and exciting ways. After soup we brought out the main course.

We made enough baked potatoes for everyone to get one, plus some extras, with all kinds of different toppings including cheese, butter, sour cream, some fresh herbs, both some diced onions and sliced green onions. We also had some crumbled up bacon, which I had to stop Menace from grabbing handfuls of and eating it just like that.

What with the kids all having different preferences, not to mention a couple of them being a little picky, we had a variety of options for 'meat', some of which weren't really 'meat' at all. Sushi, fried fish, and some paninis including an eggy grilled cheese for Ria. It kinda warmed something in my chest when she shared almost half of it with Maze. Then steaks, both ham, bear, and beef. We'd seared all of them for a nice crust, then sauteed them until they were cooked enough inside.

That took a bit for the ham, but it turns out much like Assess Health will tell if a dead body is some kinda plague vector, it will also detect any pathogens in meat. Which meant we could cook the ham until it was perfectly done, not worrying exactly so much about whether it was a certain particular temperature inside. Of all the cool things about living in a world with magic, I did not expect to discover 'it improves culinary experimentation'.

I mean, I'm still not gonna be eating raw pork or chicken, because no thank you, but I guess it's kinda cool that the option is there if we need it. Or want it. Once all the kids had pretty much stuffed themselves to bursting, we did something that might have been a little mean, but then we weren't throwing leftovers out, either of their dinner or of dessert, so they'd have plenty over the coming weeks. Okay, days. I sometimes fail to realize exactly how much fifteen growing girls can pack away.

Because oh yes, there was desert. No chocolate cake, because I don't have a recipe that would compare to Mama Drivers', and she wasn't around to help make it. But we had pie. Chocolate silk. Pumpkin. Sweet potato and yam both, because we'd gotten some sweet potatoes and I wanted to compare and contrast.

'Squash' pie that Sigyn and Marie made out of some non-pumpkin gourds, I think. Then, with some pecans Marie scored from Jackville, we made pecan pie, which is basically just sugar, eggs, sugar, nuts, and more fuckin' sugar. The kids looked excited when I carried in pie after pie, but that's still wasn't the finishing touch. Grandma was here, after all, and that meant one thing. Cookies. Chocolate chip. Ginger snaps. Snickerdoodles. Sugar cookies.

Somehow, and I don't want to ask because I'm afraid my Marvelous Maenad might have done something shady to do so, Marie even managed to recreate those crispy cookies from Baba Yaga's place. Apparently it's some kind of pretty common Eastern European recipe or something. Kinda funny, the kids had eaten so much at dinner that at most each of them managed to pack away a single slice of pie and one cookie.

Well, okay, one cookie in total, because Ria, Maze, and Lindsey teamed up to split three cookies so they each got to try three different kinds. Meanwhile I held Saffron down. No, I didn't feed her. I let Siobhan do that while I held Kitten in my lap. The kids were, unsurprisingly, easy to get to sleep. Even with the little bits of sugar from dessert, they were all full and sleepy from the heat of the Bath.

Once we had them asleep, Saffron pulled us all off to the Bedroom, where she unceremoniously popped my slutty Maid outfit onto me, then pulled me to her bosom while Marie fed her bits of sweets in between sips of Rich Man's Port hot cocoa. In between bites, Saffron said, "yes, Goof, I absolutely Consent to be your woobie." All of us looked over when Tallulah, who'd ensconced herself with a cup of cocoa and lounged on the divan, smiling at our antics, cleared her throat.

"Woobie sounds far too silly for the Imperator."

"I'm surprisingly accepting of my newest Title, nonetheless." Tallulah shook her head, continued smiling, and said, "there are far more appropriate Titles."

"Such as?" Tallulah's smile slipped into a grin as she won the argument with the absolute slam dunk of, "Emotional Support Cleavage."