Chương 939: Day Nine Hundred And Thirty-Seven

Dear Diary, There are days when I'm not sure if I should be thankful or in awe of my Kitten's enormous brain. I mean, I know conceptually that I ought to be the tiniest bit scared of it as well, what with her ongoing repeated commentary on Ledger Day, but any time I think about that my libido kinda elbows my fear out of the way with that 'stay down if you know what's good for you' look on its face.

So it winds up being a contest between in awe and thankful most days, depending on how much I can tell she's doing shit I'd have to do otherwise, and how much she's just doing shit that I know I could never do. So yesterday after the Revel I stepped home, helped the kids get dressed, and stepped us all back down to the Temple for school. Left one of me behind watching over Siobhan, what with Her insisting that Hailee go along to school for the day. Not a great day for her, but not an awful one either.

She wasn't feeling well enough to do more than gnaw at some hard tack and jerky, sip some water, and let out an occasional pitiful groan, but I held her, stroked her hair, and sang softly to her. At the Temple the kits were an enormous hit with the other school kids. I felt a little weird letting them out of my sight, probably because of the whole 'less than a year old' thing, but I compromised by Co-Locating and shoving my Blend all the way up, ghosting around behind them as they joined the kindergarten classes.

I mean, I don't know that they're called kindergarten, but they're for the kids who are just starting out, who still need to learn to read and write and everything. Which apparently Garde can do just fine, which I'd forgotten like a dumbass. Borysthenis, Calliope, and Erato could sort of do both, but definitely needed some practice on their penmanship and vocabulary building.

I think Anise and Felicia are going to blow several gaskets with four of their sisters moving ahead of them in any measurable fashion, but they're just gonna have to suck it up and deal. Gotta do something nice for Isnomi, because she took it upon herself to chaperone that pair through their first day. As I watched, each of the girls did that with one or more of the kits. Lindsey stuck with Hailee, Alex showed Isadora around, and Davey, Daya, Maze and Ria went with our little in-house band.

Of course, I got to see that group when they all trundled into Math class. I remember my teachers talking about 'differentiated learning' back in the day. I didn't get it, not exactly. Okay, I knew what it was, at least in the abstract.

It's where a teacher has students who are on different levels, and the lesson that will work for the slowest kid in class will be a boring assed review for most of the others, and most of the class doesn't have the prerequisite knowledge and skills to even engage with the lesson that would challenge the kid at the top of the class.

I never wound up top of the class except in Language Arts, but I remember one of my science teachers used the surprisingly effective strategy of having the most advanced kid in class teach some of the others. At the time I thought that was kinda lazy, while also being really impressed by it. Seriously, I'm kinda lazy myself, even if I've moved away from that just a little bit here and now.

But back in the day that kind of weaponized laziness just left me staring in awed fascination as the smart kid, this big walking mountain of a dude who had read the entire science textbook by the end of the first quarter, did a whole lecture and lab thing with one chunk of the class while the teacher sat down and helped a couple kids who were having trouble with the basics of the scientific method and why it's important.

I absolutely will neither confirm nor deny said teacher describing the method as 'fuck around, find out', but that got it through to both the academically challenged and delinquent kids in ways that, as you can tell, I still remember to this day. But I get it now. Normally we've got a couple people teaching various levels of Math at the Temple school, and I mostly handle the 'advanced' kids.

I never really took Calculus back in the day, so I can't teach the kids who have mastered basic Algebra anything new, but everything up to there, including some basic Trig, I can and do teach them. Although none of those words are in use here. They don't have a separate word for Trig, it's just part of Geometry.

Algebra, to the best of my knowledge, wasn't invented by some Middle Eastern guy, or if it was it's one of those things that have been lost to history here and now, or something like the whole Leibniz and Newton thing where multiple people came up with the same thing in different places at different times. But here and now in the Alliance it's called 'Variable Equations', which at least describes it pretty well.

As for Calculus, I'm vaguely flattered and sheepish that Saffron named it after me, what with calling it Mor-Mimic Calculations. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. Wait, no, I think I might understand the why of that now, and also finally get why one of my teachers described it the way he did. He called it 'the mathematics of change'.

Which, what with me being the Mor Primordial of Change, if Calculus really is the math of how things Change, it just makes sense to name it after me. Still sheepish about it though. As for how I know who Newton and Leibniz are, that Epic Rap Battle was a total banger. At any rate, I digress yet again, like it's a minimum daily requirement or something.

With the kits and a few new students needing to learn basic arithmetic, a lot of the rest of the class needing more work on their Variable Equations, and Ria having that down cold and really needing me to call in Saffron or Tallulah to tutor her in Mor-Mimic Calculations, I finally understood the need for the whole 'differentiated lesson plan' thing.

I also am not ashamed that I wholeheartedly stole my old science teacher's method and put Ria in charge of teaching Variable Equations for the day while I worked with the new kids. I also had one of me on Treachery Rock and another leaning against Tallulah's knee. Almost had to intervene there today, when some dude was murmuring something and the guy next to him not only decked the dude, but tripped him and slammed him face first into the ground.

"Do not seek to include me in your treacherous plans against the Overlord's Bodyguard, you foul knave!" I sat up, only to see the dude I'd so thoroughly put in his place before standing over some other poor asshole.

"Everything okay, gentlemen?" Guy just took a knee facing the Overlord and I, immediately launching into a sincere sounding apology.

"Forgive me, Overlord, Champion, this varlet sought to besmirch your honor, and I wished to make my position on such foul behavior perfectly clear." I smiled, gently patting him on the head with a surreptitious tentacle.

"Thanks, dude! Glad to see you've learned your lesson, not to mention that you managed to shake that shit from before. Well done!"

"Indeed," said Tallulah from behind me.

"Come speak to me after Court, that I might hear your petition in private." You need me around for that, T? If you could remain hidden, I would appreciate your presence. Yeah, turns out he wasn't actually intending anything nefarious, just wanted a shot at a contract to supply the Naval Academy. Still, I totally got why T might want her Bodyguard around while meeting one on one with a dude she'd publicly embarrassed before.

Took everybody home at the end of the day and fed them all calzone, stromboli, and panzerottis. The Bath afterward was nice. I'm not damning that with faint praise, by the way, I've had far too little 'nice' in my life. A shit ton of 'awful', especially back in the day, far more 'horrific' than I want to think about, and plenty of doses of 'awesome' recently, but an odd dearth of 'nice', or at least it feels that way sometimes.

A brief, gentle tryst with Tallulah while Saffron and Siobhan did the same on the other side of the Bed, all while Marie looked on and dispensed pithy compliments and advice was also nice, in all the best ways. Dreamt of all my ladies floating around the Maw on pool chairs, commenting on the view of us all on the big screen. Mads and Orla seemed a little, I dunno, surprised, but Karen clued them in to the fact that I do not insist that every exchange of Ecstasy and Passion be wildly athletic and acrobatic.

Then she might have stolen a couple tentacles to dunk them both when they got snarky 'surprised'. Okay, I didn't fight her very hard. Spent today doing more of the same as yesterday, although the kits classes were more 'actual learning' and less 'learning classroom procedure' today. Also nobody smarted off in the Overlord's Court. After stealing Saffron away for a pit stop lunch that left her more energized than asleep, before taking her back to the Grand Council I asked, "do we have any word on the Spartans yet?"

She sighed, straightened up from where she'd been pleasantly slouched in post-coital bliss, and said, "would tomorrow before lunch be soon enough for a review?"

"Sure. Why before lunch, though?" Adjusting herself to put everything just so, she primly replied, "because the topic induces stress, which I'd rather not carry back to the Grand Council."

"Don't you deal with stressful shit there, too? Heck, isn't this one of those things they ought to be apprised of?" She nodded.

"Yes, but that's entirely different stress. Political stress and religious stress. Totally different. Stored in a different part of the body." I snickered, smiled, and slipped her supine.

"Well, let's make double extra sure you're destressed then."

"Oh, no, whatever shall I..." I interrupted her with a kiss. She didn't seem to mind. I think my new goal is to get my Kitten so relaxed she slouches during a Grand Council meeting. Gotta have a hobby, after all.