Chương 945: Day Nine Hundred And Forty-Three

Dear Diary, It's so weird, sometimes, thinking about stuff that I took for granted back in the day, that here and now is considered impossible. Worse, some of it is considered stupid or even irresponsible. I get it, now that I'm thinking with my brain instead of whatever part of me governs instinctive momming.

In the world as it is, there are not only literal monsters that seek out and destroy anything that looks like an artifact of civilization, there are also people who have decided that the only way to beat the monsters is to become more monstrous than they are. Yeah, the Deities have to take some of the blame.

Unlike back in the day, where people saw weird toast patterns as 'proof of God's existence', or didn't recognize the circular reasoning of 'God exists because the Bible says so, and the Bible is correct because God says it is', or any other bit where people decided to believe in something despite an overwhelming lack of evidence, here and now there are Gods who will show up and fuck you over if you try to fuck with the status quo.

Shit, that explains a whole fuckin' lot about why they're so pissed at me, doesn't it? I believe so, Daughter. Dad? Yes, Daughter? Did you know? About the Change thing? Dad sighed, heavily, a sound I recognized now that I had a daughter, more than one, really, who I'd had to talk to about things I'd rather not. Tell them truths I'd hoped to hide until they were older. I suspected, much as your Wife did. We did speak of it on occasion. Did she tell you not to tell me?

She spoke to me of her reasons for keeping it from you, her reasons for waiting until you had time to heal from ripping that wound open, that it might have a chance of healing properly. Unfortunately for Loki, I'd gotten a little more perceptive over the past couple years. That's not what I asked, Dad. That got me another of those familiar fatherly sighs. She did not force me. I agreed with her. He paused, but I got a sense that he had something else to say. I was... He paused again. Was I right? Maybe. Probably.

I dunno, Dad, I think no matter when I found out, I was gonna take it kinda hard, but the way it happened... Finding out my Domain, finding out about what my Black Swan Title means, finding out I'm the fuckin' End of All Things and the Blind Idiot God all at one sitting probably wasn't the healthiest, but I'm not sure there was a better way. Dad had gone really quiet during that last bit, and didn't reply when I trailed off. Dad? Excuse me, what? That caught me, I'm not sure why.

Made me really worried about everything. Just generalized anxiety. Which part? In what way is my Daughter a 'Blind Idiot'? Huh. I hadn't even thought about how that particular bit of mythology wasn't really ancient. Okay, some of it might have been re-imagining of older stuff, Lovecraft was early nineteen hundreds. It's... It's a story. From the world I came from. Shit, that Title I mentioned, Black Swan with a Thousand, Thousand Young? Yeah, that's riffing on the same set of stories.

Another one is about a Deity from the dawn of time. He was, I dunno, asleep, or brain dead, or deeply insane or something, and there were Deities whose whole job was to keep him asleep, or quiet, or calm, because if he woke up or got active or whatever, that was it for the universe. It just ended. Yeah, Dad was quiet for a while after that. You remember what I said about stories, and how we are often beholden to them? That hit me. Hard.

Not the whole reminder about how as Tricksters, as Storytellers, we could wind up tied into the Stories we stepped into. But the fear in his voice when he said it. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that, Dad. But... Maybe that's one thing I can do? I'm not sure whether my tone gave him hope, or he needed to cling to something so desperately he was faking it really well, but he answered immediately. What's that, Daughter? Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. I can Change things?

Thing is, as I was saying before the whole digression talking to Dad about stuff, here and now is not the same as back in the day. Yeah, I'm tryna Change things, make some of them better. I'm letting Saffron handle a lot of that, not because I don't want to do the work, but because I really don't want to recreate the shitty parts of the world I came from. Yeah, I want to make things better. Sanitation. Education. Mass production, so people can spend more time being people and less being cogs.

But I don't want to fuck things up the way my old world got fucked up. So, Saffron. But that means I gotta be willing to see where my ladies are coming from. Meet them somewhere in the middle.

Now and then, that's gonna mean that our kids, who I love and adore and want to protect, are gonna need to learn shit I'd rather they didn't, because if we Change things fast enough, they'll never need it, but if we don't teach them those things, and we can't Change things fast enough, they'll be criminally unprepared to face reality as it is. Shit, I think a lot of people would be better off if their parents prepped them for the world as it is, rather than as it was, or as they imagined it to be.

So yesterday after spending a good portion of the day getting wrecked by Saffron who was, not to put too fine a point on it, in a mood, I napped through the last part of the afternoon. I kinda figured I'd wind up helping the kids serve dinner or something. Because I forgot what day it was. I woke to her poking me in one of my hypersensitized bits, only to have her giggle as I twitched.

"Time for dinner?"

"Nope."

"Time for more?"

"Nope. Well, not exactly." I blinked.

"Who then?"

"It's Freyday, Goof." I checked the position of the sun.

"Oh, shit! Where am I today?"

"In a very short while you're due in New Amsterdam." She frowned a little.

"I'm a little worried, love."

"What about?" She sighed and looked away.

"You were upset with Marie more than anyone else." I froze. Then slumped.

"Yeah. Yeah, I was. I'm still... I wanna have a talk with her. Apologize to her, among other things. But yeah."

"Will you be okay at the Revel?" I smiled.

"She's officiating?" Saffron nodded.

"Yeah, I'm upset with her still a little, and I want to talk with her, but it's not like I don't love her. Not like I don't still think she's the wifiest wife to ever be wifed." Saffron smiled back at me.

"Okay. Well, then, before you go..." Then she proceeded to make sure every bit she'd spent the day getting hypersensitive was still hypersensitive when she dropped me on the Altar at New Amsterdam. That struck me just then. Enough that I slipped out of Time to think about it.

"Daughter."

"Hey, Mom."

"Why are you here?" I shrugged.

"Needed some time to think before the Revel."

"There is no Time here."

"Yeah, but I can still think."

"About?" I shrugged again, then chuckled.

"Whether it's one of my ladies dropping me here, or me dropping myself here, I'm the one on the Altar." Mom just stared.

"It's like I'm the offering to my congregation." She hissed. Like, literally hissed like a cat.

"Blasphemy!" I blinked at her once. Slowly. Pulsed those emergency coring tentacles.

"Excuse me?" She straightened up, but still shook her head.

"A Deity offering themselves to Worshippers is... Blasphemous. Perverse. Inverted from how things should be." I shook my head, and shrugged again.

"Yeah, well. My Temple. My Worshippers. My Altar. My rules." I paused for a moment.

"For that matter, my Pantheon." She sniffed.

"I am glad I am not part of it, then."

"Eh, whatever." I slipped back into Time, and she was gone. Marie stood there, and I held out a hand. She took it, and I pulled her down into my lap, just holding her for a bit before exchanging a long, lingering kiss.

"When this is done," I murmured, "you and I need to have a talk."

"Just Talk?" I snorted.

"Yeah, like that's ever gonna happen. But we do need to talk though. I made assumptions, I hurt you, and I'm sorry. But you did the same." She laid her claws alongside my face.

"Sorry, Vlickies." I hugged her.

"I know." When I let her go, I asked, "so, who's first?" Kinda funny, where Karen's always got the 'line' in order, Marie's a lot more organic. The various Temple Volunteers and Clergy noodled around for a minute before Dana, who kept trying to get other people to go first, wound up unceremoniously dropped on my lap by Murder Mittens herself.

"If you don't want to spend time with me, you don't have to, Dana." They sighed.

"I... I don't deserve... No, I don't need it." One big hug later, I asked, "what do you need then?" Funny, for someone who didn't need time on the Altar, they talked for most of the night. Some of it wasn't really personal, but stuff where the Temple itself needed someone to do something, and nobody had volunteered to do it, and a certain High Priestess hadn't voluntold anybody, so it wasn't getting done. Marie nodded each time I glanced at her, and I knew it would be handled. But most of it wasn't like that.

Most of it was just Dana bitching about day to day realities of life, and how they'd been piling up with the snow and ice slowing everything down lately. Late in the evening, I asked, "may I do something?" They tensed, but dutifully said, "I am yours to do with as you will, Goddess." I nodded, laid them down on the Altar, then rolled them over and, starting at their feet, gently massaged all the tension out of them.

I know it wasn't a cure all, and I know it didn't do jack shit about their laundry list of problems, but I figured Murder Mittens could help with the latter, and by the time I finished Dana had passed out, sleeping the sleep of the blissful and just, right there on the Altar. Spent the last few minutes of the night necking with Marie until sunrise activated her Holy Garb.

Didn't really need the cleanup, but the side effects were fun, especially since I don't get to look into her eyes while that's happening very often. Spent the day teaching Math back in Phileo. Might need to start cycling through the other schools now that I'm back at it.