Chương 936: Day Nine Hundred And Thirty-Four

Dear Diary, Y'know, it's weird, but I think being able to be injured, even in weird and painful ways, is something I could grow to appreciate. Not in any kind of 'ooh, hurt me' way, although I've had all kinds of experience with the multitude of ways my lovely ladies turn 'ow' into 'ooh'. But I'm talking about the other kind of hurt, the unpleasant kind. The kind where for whatever reason I'm at less than a hundred percent for some appreciable length of time. Of course, I'm not sure how it happens.

Seriously, I'm a tentacle tip cosplaying the part of a Human-Adjacent person. Just a snaky girl piloting the ultimate finger puppet. Blend putting in all the work in the world keeping me and everyone else unaware of that. Shit, maybe that's why I can do it, why I can feel hurt in ways I probably shouldn't. Seriously, there's no fuckin' reason my hips should hurt when I'm not actually in possession of hips. Or bones. How can I break bones when I have no bones. My bones, that is.

Obviously even without bones cephalopods manage to mangle the bones of others. But I don't have bones. I don't have a skull, or ribs, or fuck it, I don't know how I even look like I have teeth. I know I've experienced swallowing a tooth or spitting one out at times when I do not, in fact, have teeth. Or I shouldn't. The whole 'look like I have teeth', sure, but I've left tooth marks in people. I've left permanent scarification in those perfect round fang shapes. Okay, I had to Shapeshift my teeth for that.

Which kinda explains the rest if I use my head to think rather than as a comfy place for Saffron to sit. Way back before he knew who I really was Dad told me that Blend can do minor Shapeshifting when it needs to. Given that my Blend is way higher than his, it only makes sense that it's got even more Shapeshifting mojo than his. Even if all it can do is make me look and feel more like what I'm trying to look and feel like, that's still enough to explain teeth. I guess it explains how I get injured, too.

Yeah, some things have injured my tentacles, like Draconic scales and fangs and breath, or Cold Iron weapons, or some Deific stuff. But nothing other than stuff at that level really has an impact on my tentacles. Then again, I'm not sure how often I've really put the tip of a tentacle to the test. I have a tendency to instinctively whip them out of the way, or even do the 'more incorporeal than not' thing if some asshole tries to hurt them. Not that it's happened often with the little ones.

Shit, I think that might be why I had so much trouble with the Spartans; I'm out of practice when it comes to fighting groups. I've mostly been fighting single big opponents. You use different moves when you're fighting half a dozen people than when you only have to be worried about one. Back to my original point, however, because while digression is my passion, I really did want to talk about said point, however it happens I'm perversely glad I can get injured.

It makes me feel more like a person, like I've got actual personal skin in the game, like I still remember what it's like to get hurt. Like I can properly empathize with folks who get hurt, rather than looking on them as somehow less than me, which I worry about doing if I ever get to a point where I'm actually invulnerable rather than just super tough. So yeah, sat there yesterday talking with Maze about kissing.

About how everybody kisses differently, how it's not just about Skills, it's about opening up and really touching someone else. Chatted a little about how lips are some of the most sensitive skin on the body. It's kinda funny how curious and technical she is about all of it. I could get maybe Ria being that technical, and Isnomi being that curious, but Maze has both of those qualities for days, and it always surprises me when she starts grilling me on stuff.

Best question, at least from a 'made me feel weird for entirely different reasons', had to be when she asked, "is kissing boys and kissing girls different?" After a minute of thinking, I nodded.

"Yeah. Girls are softer. Warmer? Yeah, warmer." I thought about Siobhan.

"Well, mostly."

"But you're not soft." Yeah, like I said, felt weird getting called out like that. Of course, I rallied by saying, "yeah, I guess I phrased that badly. A better answer would be 'every person is different'. Like, all the women I kiss on the regular are softer than the men I kiss on the regular, but, like, Silk is smoother than Linus, and Lachlan is way more Skilled than either of the others. Tallulah's lips are slick, like porcelain, where Marie's are fuzzy, and her teeth are always there, lurking.

Siobhan is receptive, where Saffron is... I was gonna say 'demanding', but that's not right."

"Mom isn't demanding?" Yeah, she definitely had opinions on that. I chuckled.

"Okay, yeah, she can be, but a better word would be 'decisive'. Maybe 'determined'. She knows what she wants out of the kiss, what she wants to deliver with it, and she intends to see that both happen." If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Yeah, weird talking about this with my kid, but I think at some point I decided my parenting style was to give them the information, as much information as I could give them, and trust them to do the right thing with it. I'm sure that will come back to bite me in the ass at some point, but I can't think of a single situation where shit goes sideways and the kids being ignorant turns out better than them being informed.

End of the day rolled around, and the girls, Maze, Menace, Alex, and Lindsey all escorted me down to the Dining Room. I kinda half carried Alex and Lindsey; despite being kinda athletic and getting plenty of exercise, they're both still under ten and had been out in subzero temperatures for who knows how long. No sign of frostbite or anything other than exhaustion on any of them, but the exhaustion was there.

They still insisted on walking down to dinner, and if some achy bits in my torso didn't appreciate the exercise after sitting all day, I wasn't gonna disappoint my daughters. We got soup. The rest of the girls had worked with Marie to recreate the 'soup', which honestly was more of a stew, but that's a feature, not a bug. Thick, savory, creamy, big chunks of veg and meat floating in it, little islands of something like dumplings submerged under the rest.

Menace and her kid Clergy absolutely inhaled multiple servings each. Then dropped straight to sleep, which meant that when we hit the showers before the Bath, Tallulah, Marie, and I washed Lindsey, Alex, and Isnomi respectively. When we got in, letting the three snoozing kids float quietly on the adult side, Saffron and Siobhan both looked at me with some concern plain on their faces.

"S'up?"

"Are you in much pain, Mistress?"

"Ah, shit. Am I showing it again?" Saffron lay a hand on my face.

"I'm afraid so, love. May we?" Before either could answer, Hailee asked, "Mama? May I?" I shook my head gently.

"I think Siobhan needs you more than me, kiddo. I appreciate the offer though."

"I meant looking, though?" I shrugged, then settled back against the side of the Bath, dropping my Blend just in case.

"Okay. Go ahead." After a few moments, during which I heard murmurs in the back of my brain as they conferred, Saffron let out a humorless chuckle.

"How did you manage this, love?"

"Huh?"

"Pieces of metal." Hailee sounded completely confused.

"cooked bits around them."

"Uh... Oh sh... Sure, yeah, Here?" I touched one of the spots where the spears had penetrated.

"Here?" I touched the other. She tilted her head, then shook it.

"Near there." Saffron ran a single finger over the raw, ragged, barely healed cut the spear head made coming out of me.

"You got these fighting Spartans?"

"Yeah, those guys are no joke. Open field I might be able to take them before they could get to my squishy bits, but in close quarters? Not so much." Her gaze hardened.

"I am glad you did what you did to them." For violating you so, they deserved to burn. Hey, Kitten. They were soldiers, we were fighting. But yeah, they definitely wanted to do the whole 'rape before, during, and maybe after murder' thing, so I'm surprisingly not guilty this time.

"Really?" I thought about it. Nodded.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm not super proud of it, but mostly because of the property damage I did." I reached to hug her, and realized that yeah, I had some lingering pain. More than the typical pain from my scars, and this shit didn't feel better from the heat.

"Ow. Um, can you guys do something about it?" Saffron looked at Siobhan, who shook her head as her shoulders slumped. My Kitten turned back to me and said, "do you remember the crossbow bolt Svart put through you?"

"Yeah?" It took me a second. When I figured it out I had to bite my lip to keep the invective from flowing out my mouth. Yeah, apparently Menace can sniff profanity out of my brain, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna make it easy for all my kids to learn to cuss.

"Same cure?" Saffron pursed her lips.

"I think we can be a little more directed. Also, I remember the Shape, so we need not involve doctors Glass and Zeccardi. But yes." After the kids are asleep? I'd really prefer to wait until the morrow, and perhaps do the operation itself in our old Academy Suite, lest the children see. It's likely to be bloody. I nodded. Okay then. Tomorrow. Weird how sometimes pain fades into the background, but once someone calls it to my attention, I can't ignore it.

I slept fitfully, dreaming of my ladies all clustered around one tentacle, doing the whole telekinetic massage thing. Made me vaguely grumpy, because I kinda wanted something lewd to take my mind off the pain. Still, they meant well. Turns out Saffron pulled some strings, and instead of the Academy Suite, she had a private surgical theater in one of the Universities to do the operation in. I really ought to say 'they', because all of my ladies were there.

Which meant Hailee was there too, but something told me that much like Lindsey, blood and gore wouldn't bother her. In fact right before Saffron started working, Siobhan walked my kit over to me, and Hailee laid her daintily clawed hand on my forehead. If anything, she looked like dulling my pain while damping Siobhan's nausea was easier than doing one or the other. Weird, I know, but I'm a disguised tentacle who fucked a bipedal tigress and made a whole dev team of catgirls.

I have no right to complain about weird. The surgery itself had three parts. The first, which didn't really hurt at all, where Saffron created little filtration wards that sectioned off the dead tissue. The second, where Marie carefully slit me open so those little spheres could float out of me. I felt that, but nowhere near as bad as when she fingerbanged my crossbow injury. Then the reconstruction which, honestly, I think I may have overstated before.

Or, y'know, my kit's ability to dampen pain was dampening pain, which I hadn't thought of just then. But instead of screaming and blacking out, I just whimpered a lot as Saffron and Tallulah, under Siobhan's obvious supervision, took turns fixing what Translocating with fragments of Cold Iron inside of me had fucked up.