Chương 949: Day Nine Hundred And Forty-Seven

Dear Diary, Kinda weird couple days. Yesterday and today I mean. Okay, not so much yesterday. After the bath where Hailee told us that her larval sister was poking Saffron specifically once she wasn't expecting it, we all bundled into bed and slept through the night. My ladies one and all gathered around Siobhan and cooed at the baby belly. Which struck me as weird, because somehow I knew that Siobhan's bean wasn't there in her dreams. Like, not 'she wasn't pregnant', or anything awful like that.

Just that the proto-kid either wasn't asleep, or didn't follow her mom to my dreams in her sleep. Oddly enough, that made me feel better about things, because if anybody's gonna have some issues with handing over bits of their Soul, it'd be one of the itty bitty babies I've worked with. Their Souls are always so wispy, like they're barely there yet. I'm not implying that babies don't have Souls or anything, although maybe not until they've got, like, a brain to have a Mind to go with them or something.

When Grandma Aetos talked about it, she made it sound like reincarnated Souls show up when there's already a whole sac of amniotic fluid for them to be floating around in. Then again, it didn't sound like she remembered much about those times. The description of 'warm' and 'wet' could be anything from 'baby bumping around in fluid filled baby belly' to 'cooch in the act of being joyfully impregnated'. Not that the cooch is what's impregnated, but it's generally warm and wet if it's enjoying the process.

But the baby Souls I've seen are like tissue paper, like lace made out of spiderwebs, like cotton fluff or seafoam. They've got substance, sure, but it's always felt like the slightest harm will cause them to fall apart. I'm really not sure how the ones I've Revived survived the process, whether the Revive recreated what was there before, or created something new, or maybe the infants I revived were all reincarnated Souls or something.

I don't even like to think about the ones that I didn't exactly Revive, because it felt like they wouldn't survive the process for whatever reason. I watched Doctor Who back in the day. I know about Captain Jack Harkness. I'm not sure that's a fate I'd wish on anybody. Then again, in a world where there are legit immortals running around, and becoming a Demigod is something that can happen, maybe it wouldn't be too bad.

Yeah, they'd outlive some friends, but that always happens eventually, unless they're the first of their cohort to go, and even that assumes they never made friends of older folks. So maybe even if I did wind up setting those kids toggle to 'alive' permanently, they might not be doomed to become giant ancient heads or shit like that. At any rate, I spent the day getting back in my comfort zone, such as it is.

I watched over Siobhan, although at this point while she's nominally not miserable because of Hailee, she's gotten into the habit of not doing too much, lest it make things worse. I played board and table games with the kids, as well as providing an audience for our little budding band. I leaned against Tallulah's shins and watched the curves and sway of Saffron in Glowing Midnight as she wrangled the Grand Council.

At the Academy, I cooked, I cleaned, and under Marie's careful supervision I worked on fixing the sheet I'd torn. Yeah, I'm not sure I'm ever going to have the same kind of enjoyment of sewing as I do cleaning, and I'm pretty sure I'll never enjoy it as much as cooking. Still, I looked on it as part of fixing what I'd fucked up, and I can't say I don't enjoy learning new shit.

Brought dinner home from the Academy kitchens, because for whatever reason I can never get those individual dark loaves of bread to come out right at home. It's totally a me thing, too, because Marie can and has baked them there. I've even baked them at the Academy now and again, although it's always been part of a group effort, so there may be some secret step I'm missing, because a lot of my cooking instruction has been watching Marie and her sisters do shit, then trying to mimic it.

Like, small m copying what they did, not any kind of Divine woo of copying their Skills. Weird, I've never really thought of doing that with domestic stuff. I also brought some sliced up meats and julienned vegetables, not to mention making ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise. I even remembered and brought home some sliced up cheese.

After setting everything on the table, I took one of the bread knives I'd brought out, sliced a valley in a loaf, used a little spatula to spread some mustard around, and added slices of chicken and shreds of veggies. The kids reacted a whole assed variety of ways. Daya of all people loved the entire process, experimenting with different bread cuts and ingredient combinations.

Ria copied my process precisely, and Lindsey discovered that I'd brought some cooked fish and mixed it with the mayo and some veg to make something like tuna salad. The kits went light on the veggies, but I insisted they each get some, because even Marie and her sisters eat some veg, and I don't want my girls malnourishing themselves. Alex built one of those big monster hoagies you see in comics, then had trouble fitting any bit of it in her mouth.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Speaking of big mouths, I had to stop Menace from grabbing all the sliced up goat meat and eating it; I was sort of okay with her doing a deconstructed sandwich, so long as she got some veggies and bread too, but bogarting all of one thing was right out. It did not pass my notice which meat she tried to bogart, either. No idea why she's decided her go to maneuver is 'be a Chupacabra', but here we are.

After a slightly messy but very creative and satisfying dinner, we all trudged up to the Bath and cleaned up. I think the girls, especially Menace, Lindsey, and Alex, are getting a little rammy from being cooped up, but the temperatures yesterday were still cold as all fuck, so I vetoed them going out. Took a while to get them into bed and sleeping. Decided right then that if the weather didn't break at all, I'd figure out some way to warm up part of the valley for them to play in.

Maybe call in a favor from Pyevatar, maybe do something with a Ward. The ladies were subdued, almost like they weren't sleeping well, or maybe sleeping too deeply to be active in my Maw. Not sure which, and if it happens again I'll ask Saffron about it, but for now it was just part and parcel of each day being different. Woke up, saw those of my ladies who went to work every day to work, with me accompanying them as needed and appropriate.

Set one of me to combing Siobhan's hair, which has started to grow back out; it's nowhere near as long as it was, but it's past 'shoulder length' now. Went back to fixing that sheet, because my Skills when it comes to sewing are nonexistent, and I felt some kinda way about that. Marie is a patient teacher, which I appreciate. She's also kind of slim on instructions, which I'm not sure on. Still, I'm learning. Took all of the kids except Hailee and Maze outside.

The temp in the morning was cold, but the kind of cold that they could play around in if they bundled up, which they did. Hailee stayed in watching Siobhan's belly, still fascinated by the tiny Human in there, and Maze decided she wanted to stay in and read. She's reading silently now, which is kinda cool and melancholy at the same time, since she's not reading to me really. Then again, she's reading the fuckin' Silmarillion, so I can't say I'm missing a lot.

Don't get me wrong, Tolkien's not horrifically bad, but that book in particular reads like stereo instructions, or like a particularly awful history textbook. Late in the afternoon, when I had the kids back inside and soaking in the Bath before dinner, both to settle them down and warm them up, Karen's voice whispered into my head. Goddess? I wasn't used to her sounding uncertain. What's up? Could you join me at the Temple, please?

I Co-Located one of me to her side, a little tense because she sounded uncertain, but not full on ready for a fight, because she sounded neither angry nor scared. The first thing I realized was that the two of us were standing right in the main doorway of the Temple building itself, the doors Lemmy had knocked on standing wide open in a wordless invitation, while the faint shimmer of a Ward in the doorway made it clear why the Temple interior wasn't cold as balls. Standing right there in the doorway was Alexandra.

Aphrodite's sock puppet. She looked about the same as she had the last time I saw her, the same as she did whenever Aphrodite wasn't in residence. In other words, like she had slightly less going on upstairs than Giselle on a bad day, and wound up getting confused by difficult concepts like 'breathe out before attempting to breathe in, and vice versa'.

She also wasn't wearing much more than she had been on the day Karen ousted her from the Temple of Love, which is to say nowhere near enough to be comfortable or safe in this kind of weather. Yeah, it had warmed up, but that meant 'ice melting by midday and refreezing at night' cold, not 'frostbite in seconds at noon' cold.

"The Goddess is here now, High Priestess." Karen's voice was surprisingly soft. Then again, I remembered how calm and kind she'd been when she escorted the woman out after Aphrodite left. Alexa, her body shivering despite the placid, slightly confused look on her face, turned to me, blinked, then said, "My Goddess wishes to speak with you." Then, almost as an afterthought, far quieter, and way more uncertain than she should have been, said, "it's very cold. May I come in?"