Chương 954: Day Nine Hundred And Fifty-Two

Dear Diary, Okay, kid birthdays for the year are done. I've had plenty of time to come to terms with being both a sentient tentacle tip cosplaying as a Human Adjacent person, and being the only sentient portion of a cosmic horror. I've realized that whether I think I deserve the power I've stumbled into, fuck whether I even want it or not, I've got it, and leaving it lying around unused is tantamount to colluding with the architects of shit pyramid.

With Great Power comes Great Responsibility and all that good shit, after all. I'm as physically healed up as I'm gonna get. I think I need to get my ass in gear and get down to business finding those fuckin' Spartans and neutralizing the fuck out of them. Seriously, if they hadn't killed our Troops and Heroes, if they'd just invaded and gone stomping around posturing, I maybe might just capture them or scare them off or something. But instead, they chose violence.

From what I've been told, they chose atrocity before violence, too, which definitely slides them further along the scale of 'do not care to talk things out with them'. Of course, there is a problem with me finding them. That being the whole 'they came here expecting me to scry on them' thing, combined with the 'they wandered off into the countryside during a winter storm, which eradicated any tracks' thing. Of course, your girl is not a complete idiot.

I'm pretty sure at this point Saffron and everybody she's got working on the problem are better at Scrying than I am, and if she just needed Moar Powah, she's not shy about asking me for that. But there are avenues that maybe she hadn't thought of, because just like everybody else she's got blind spots. After spending the day yesterday doing my daily stuff while also introducing the girls to Menace's new pet, I pulled Marie aside around dinner time.

"Hey, Mittens, you can track stuff by scent, right?" She shrugged and nodded as we worked on some dessert for the dinner everybody was noshing on in the Dining Room.

"Okay, could you track the Spartans from the watchtowers they took?" Her claws, kneading at the dough we were working up to make some kind of pastry, slowed as her head slowly tilted sideways.

"Maybe?" Not used to hearing her that uncertain, I asked, "kinda weird that you're not sure. What's the confusion?" Her hands sped back up as she thought about her answer. After a bit she said, "Time. Moisture. Temperature." After a bit she added, "Wind?" That last one made immediate sense to me.

"Okay. So is it harder to... harder for you to track in the cold or something?" She nodded.

"Does moisture help or hurt?" She huffed a little.

"Depends."

"Okay. So moisture complicates things, and they wandered through a winter storm with snow and sleet and freezing rain and shit. Right?" She nodded.

"The longer it's been, the harder it is to track by scent, right?" She nodded again.

"Could you even do it after this long?" She shrugged.

"Maybe." I laughed at that.

"Yeah, you said that, didn't you?" I wrapped my arms around her and held on to her while she rolled out the dough, spread a layer of butter across it, and started folding. Her purring almost distracted me from pulling the cookies out of the oven on time. Spent the night with my head pillowed on her thigh; slept through some of it, watching the ladies critiquing Saffron and Tallulah's sexy times in the Bedroom tonight.

Kinda funny, we're all kinda lusty, and with five of us plus the occasional visitor, it's pretty uncommon for the Bedroom to sit empty for a night. Not sure how to feel about that, although I can definitely say I don't feel any kind of way about it. Okay, along with all the other daily stuff, the Maid work, the Bodyguard work, momming, and caregiving, I snagged Marie and Co-Located to the Bedroom.

"So, you can still smell those two last night, right?" Yeah, I could still smell it. No way she wasn't going to. Hijinks ensued, and kept ensuing through most of the day. Goddess of Passion and Ecstasy and custom crafted Queen of the Murderfuck cult, not surprising, really. At any rate, while I was doin' all that, I hopped down to Jackville, to the top of that icy mountain, where I found Jack making art in the air.

Seriously, it looked kinda like those old random pattern generators the oldest computers in Eastside's library generated when nobody was using them. Only made of tiny ice crystals and wind and light. Beautiful, even if I'm pretty sure only my Jotnar cold immunity let me see it.

"Hey, Jack?" Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. Without turning, I heard Jack and Adrienne's voices intermingled.

"Mimic." I wasn't sure I liked them calling me that instead of 'Tabitha', but I'd talk with them about it during Spring. Your girl can learn.

"How did you find those Spartans? The ones you froze?"

"Jackville." I blinked.

"Uh. Yeah. The ones in Jackville." A sound like a breathy chuckle slithered through the wind.

"No. Jackville is mine." I caught the edges of a frown, even through their transparence and looking the other way.

"Ours."

"Yeah, you and Adrienne's. Marriage is like that." They sighed and disappeared. I realized what had happened a moment later, stepping to M-Space to find them hovering between a couple tentacles.

"Ours."

"Ah. Ah, shit. I didn't mean to leave these here. But I'm not really sure how to remove them." They shook their head, then returned to the Mortal Realm. I followed.

"Jackville is... Part of me." I thought about that for a bit. When it hit me, I had to bite back a curse.

"Oh, man. That sucks." At their interrogative hum, I explained.

"Jackville is part of you, especially when you're like this in the winter, right?" Funny, how I can tell when somebody's rolling their eyes even when they're transparent.

"Okay, yeah, you just said that. Anyway, that's how you found them. Proprioception."

"What?"

"That whole 'being able to sense where your body parts are, and where something touching them is' thing. Like feeling a mosquito land on you."

"Strange word." I shrugged.

"I read a lot of strange stuff as a kid. But yeah, I think there's a scale problem."

"Scales?" I laughed.

"No, scale. Like..." I sighed.

"The fuckin' Spartans are too little. I could barely feel the kaiju." That gave me a thought though.

"Hey, if you were part of the Alliance Pantheon, could you find them anywhere in the Alliance?" They froze for a second. Even the frozen heart hanging in their transparent chest went still for a moment.

"Truly?"

"Hey, you're good people. You take care of your people, too. You want to join up, just let me know. Or, y'know, Saffron, or even Tallulah at this point, although she'd mostly just be telling Saffron. She's the one who organizes shit anyhow. But as for the Pantheon thing, yeah, you're welcome to join any time." Adrienne's voice dominated Jack's in their endless duet for a few words as they said, "not Mama, but Matriarch?" I laughed.

"I could be both if you want." That got a laugh from them, and their voices fully comingled as they said, "we want, Matriarch." Definitely felt something from that. Kind of like a frozen enema, only not as unpleasant as that sounds. So maybe more like a slushee injection.

"So... Can you tell where they are now?" They huffed out a sigh.

"Too soon, Matriarch. Too soon." I realize then, the kind of awareness they're talking about isn't instant. Won't happen for a while. I still don't regret inviting them or accepting them in the slightest. Like I said, they're good people. I nod.

"Okay. No problem. If you catch wind of any of them, let me know, okay?"

"We will."

"And, y'know, come visit if you want. Your mom and sister miss you. Cailyn probably does too." They kind of hummed out a response to that, surprised, but considering. I stepped away, landing in the middle of Grandmother's village, in M-Space.

"Anybody around?" When nobody answered me, even after I waited a few minutes and called again, I stepped over to the Mortal Realm, where the houses were all still buried under low mounts of snow, and knocked on Grandmother's doorway.

"Grandmother?"

"Come in," she called. Caught at me a little, how her voice had that same cranky, crotchety, old quality that I remembered from Grandma. Both because I missed Anise's namesake and because I figured some day soon I'd have to mourn another person going away, maybe forever. When I stepped in, she and her daughters and granddaughters were working on some mending. Weird, how I still couldn't tell knitting from crochet from fuckin' macrame, but I'd learned enough to recognize mending when I saw it.

"Are the guys around? Panther? Closer?" I paused, then realized that I really ought to include him.

"Silk?" The women didn't fail to notice the pause. Chuckling, Grandmother said, "not looking for a bed partner, eh?" When I barked out a laugh at that, she shook her head.

"They're out hunting. Don't expect them back for at least a week or two." I nodded.

"Okay. You guys need anything?" At their look of maybe confusion, I said, "you're still a little snowed in. I know you've probably got supplies and shit for that, but something always goes wrong, runs out early, right?" Grandmother sighed, chuckling as she did.

"Young people. So bad at planning." I could have felt some kinda way, but lets face it, I probably wouldn't have graduated college yet if I hadn't been isekaied, even if I got in and could afford to pay for it. I was young, and not great at planning in any case. Instead I laughed.

"Yeah. Yeah, I kinda am. Saffron isn't, though. Probably the only reason Marie and I still have shit to cook." When that got a laugh out of them, I nodded, said, "just send word with Rabbit or Lily if you need anything though." Then I stepped away, landing in the little bower where we'd first met the neighbors. While they weren't there, the supplies in the place looked like they'd been packed away for the day, not for the season, so I waited. Paid a bit more attention to the goings on in the Bedroom.

Got a wild hair up my ass late in the afternoon and turned a position change into a location change, because I'd never gotten to use the bower, despite my Cadets being pretty enthusiastic about it. Marie and I set to correcting that. Looked up after my Murder Mittens roared out her appreciation in a duet with some high quality word salad, only to see Closer lowering his hands from what I recognized as a Shaping position. Something like a Soporific Spell, I think. Kinda surprised me that I recognized it.

"Hey, Closer. Silk and Panther back yet?" He sighed.

"Right behind me. Hopefully keeping their clothes on, since it's still freezing outside." Y'know, I think I've finally shucked off the last lingering neopuritan embarrassment at people knowing that I have sex. Weird thing to realize, but it's like everything else, I guess. Baby steps mean I don't realize I've moved forward until something points it out.