Chương 957: Day Nine Hundred And Fifty-Five

Dear Diary, Yeah, part of me thinks I definitely need to explore my Domain as Mimic. On the other hand, multiple other parts of me are terrified at the suggestion and implications of doing so. Change. It's clearly part of life. Shit, I remember one of my Science teachers referring to Physics as the study of Change.

It's a fundamental part of reality, and I can kinda get both why Domnu stepping into the here and now from wherever she came from both birthed a Personification of Change and scared the living crap out of a being who may or may not have had any experience with living or crap at that point. That makes me think that wherever she's from, whatever dimension or state of existence she originated, Change is not a big thing there.

Thing is, from what I can tell, given my ability to step outside of Time when I've got enough focus to force enough of my Mimic self to push me there, Mimic has a kind of dual citizenship, existing both here and now and wherever Domnu comes from, because that's what allows me to step outside of Time. So yeah, Change itself isn't evil, but holy fuck on a stick is it scary.

I remember talking to Saffron about the Domains of the Mor, and the thing they have in common is that they're all things that grab primitive humans by the hindbrain and whisper 'run'. Freezing isn't useful, fighting even less so, fucking might not actually work, which leaves flight as the final available option.

Change is definitely one of those, because when you're an upright ape following the best forage and occasional hunting, shit changing, especially in unpredictable ways, is not something your tribe is likely to survive. Thing is, while we all have that primitive hindbrain functioning inside our skulls, most of us have added on layers atop that. Abstract thought, cultural and academic knowledge, lots of stuff that helps us deal with Change.

Even some things that, once you're used to Change happening, make us see Change as a good thing. Kinda like the Sun; in reasonable doses, it's useful once you know how to grow crops or build solar panels, but it's still scary when it starts turning the asphalt to goo and even threatening the properly melanated with sunburn and skin cancer. But on a more personal level, I've seen Saffron use my Domain to kick a hole through a solid stone wall.

No, not just kick a hole through it, but to kick the doors in a doorway that didn't exist before she started kicking open. That shit has some potentially potent uses, although I'm honestly not sure how much she can use it for. Like, can she change every house in Camden Yards to have full HVAC units or some shit like that? Probably not, not least of which because that would require creation of those HVAC units, and as I've mentioned before metallic stuff is hard to make from nothing.

I'm guessing her 'kick open the nonexistent doors' trick was easier because she wasn't creating those hunks of stone from whole cloth, just reshaping them. Kind of a mild digression there. I gotta work on figuring out the limits of Changing shit, not only because I might need it, but because the more I know how to do shit, the less I wind up doing it by accident. At least I think that's how that works, and I'm basing my plans on that for now.

So after prepping all day yesterday I let Lemmy join us in the Bath, since the Heroes and Hunters were doing so as well. Low key kinda hilarious how he gave Silk all the side eye in the world when our local hottie decided to go play with the kids. The look on his face got even funnier when he overheard our Heroes talking about how that definitely decided who they'd be celebrating with once we caught the Spartans and dealt with them. I mean, I can't fault them, really.

If you're gonna do the horizontal mambo and there's a nonzero chance of acquiring crotch goblins, you might as well go with the dude capable of doing some caregiving. I mean, yeah, Lemmy's prettier. Silk's got better shoulders. which is important for clutching purposes. Lemmy's better hung, oddly enough, given that Silk is physically bigger than him.

Silk's got hair to die for; Lemmy's isn't bad or anything, but Silk's hair is that black so dark it has faint a rainbow sheen in the right light, and it's bone straight and hangs down below his ass. Not sure if it was that long last time he was here. Which is another point in his favor, because I know Saffron and I both commented on that length in a positive way.

Yeah, what I'm saying is that both of them are top tier bean polishing bank material, and if Lemmy's continued to practice his amorous skills up on Boltophsberg, they're both fun to ride, so it comes down to personal preference and non appearance, non sex related things when deciding which of them to bed. Unless you're my Kitten, whose preference is apparently being sandwiched between two slabs of beef, at least when it comes to casual shenanigans.

So weird that I now know my wife well enough to know that particular detail about her, that I've watched her put it into action, and felt not the slightest whiff of jealousy. I mean, little bit of envy now and then, but not even very much of that, because my Kitten has the Endurance to put most men in the ground, so if I'm in a mood to I can just step in for one or both of them when they need a break. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

At any rate, there were no shenanigans last night, because I'm still not sure I want those particular complications with Lemmy, and the Mortal among our hunting party needed a full night's sleep. Panther and Silk both looked a little disappointed, which led me to giving poor Panther a kiss good night, followed by patting Silk on the head. Which led inevitably to me running a hand down that waterfall of black silk, then slapping him on the ass before saying, "morning comes early; get some sleep."

Of course my devious little Kitten snagged me and the rest of our ladies and pulled us to the Bedroom.

"Uh, we need sleep too, y'know." She grinned and shook her head.

"Worship will help more. Sit." She pointed imperiously at the end of the bed. I sat. Marie sat next to me. Moving with synchronized precision that had to be choreographed somehow, but for the life of me I was too distracted to pay too much attention to that, she and Tallulah pushed Marie and I onto our backs, where Siobhan knelt and started stroking our hair, her eyes closed, the Worship flowing from her. Then Saffron took away my ability to think, all while maintaining another flow of Worship.

My Kitten be like that sometimes. By morning Siobhan had returned to bed, what with her 'morning' sickness distracting her, and both Saffron and Tallulah looked like they'd run a marathon. A sexy, sexy marathon. I couldn't help it, I leaned in to kiss her, only to have her catch me with a stiff arm to the chest.

"No, love. We can sleep the day away if need be. You might well be facing a small army of Spartans. We cannot be with you in the field, but we can give the two of you this." I chuckled, because while our hair wasn't sparking and glowing, both Marie's and mine had that sort of staticky quality that told me it wasn't far from that.

"Lemmy's gonna be envious."

"Oh, no, you will be demonstrating for our northern neighbors the benefits of choosing Love over Fear." My jaw dropped.

"You did that on purpose." She just smiled up at me, utterly unrepentant.

"Do I ever do anything for just one reason?" I rolled my shoulders, enjoying the complete lack of tension this level of power up gave me.

"Nope. My Kitten not only do the awesome, she forks six different opponents at the same time." Her grin got deeper.

"Six? Oh. Oh, my. I've never done six." I laughed.

"That was poetic exaggeration, you irrepressible hedonist!"

"Is that a complaint?" I snorted.

"Only if you don't let me watch." She pursed her lips, faking a pout.

"How can I let you watch when you'll be one of the six?" Yeah, we kept bantering through breakfast, although the presence of the kids made us get a little oblique. Panther looked like he wanted to run down the Spartans and execute them all just to get back in the Bed. Lemmy wasn't quite that bad, but he still looked intrigued by our banter. Closer just sighed with a kind of amused frustration. Sadly, Silk missed the whole exchange, because the kids were showing him how to add stuff to his oatmeal.

Fuckin' Silk, man. It's a whole assed experience, but still, the man was more oblivious than Carruthers and Lachlan put together, and those two shared a brain cell that was fighting itself for third place. After breakfast I gave all the kids, not to mention Saffron, Tallulah, and Siobhan kisses good bye.

The Heroes exchanged farewells with Hero Aetos, who pretty much lived in the North House as well, and a couple South House women, and then I stepped us all to the watchtower where we'd found and fought the single Spartan, the one where they'd beat the shit out of Lemmy. Cold overcast greeted us, the temperature at that awful just below freezing that let you know that sweat would freeze, that some time during the day everything would melt and get slick, and then freeze back in place whenever it was least convenient.

"Okay everybody. Here's the deal. We don't know if the Spartans have been moving since we last saw them, in which case they might be as far west as the fuckin Homestead, but might have run afoul of wild animals or terrain or even just the snow and ice, or if they're holed up just behind the next bend in the road. They're also fuckin' dangerous as shit, as Lemmy and Marie will both attest to. I want Marie on point, Lemmy in the middle of the formation, and I'll bring up the rear."

"I didn't expect you to put yourself behind the rest of us." Lemmy's comment could have been snarky, but he sounded genuinely surprised. I shrugged.

"If they ambush Marie or anybody in front of me, I'll see it from there and can Translocate directly to them to intervene. On the other hand, if they're using their heads for more than hat racks and lure us into an ambush where they've got somebody behind us, I'm the most likely to shrug off some Spartan asshole tryna give me a superfluous orifice or three." He nodded, like he really hadn't understood. I had no idea how the man survived this long. Okay, yeah, I did.

Vyenemoinen had more than enough brains for three ordinary people, and his wives needed a pretty chew toy. Yeah, the smile that put on my face wound up being the last one of the day. Gray clouds, gray trees, gray snow trampled into the ground then half melted and refrozen. Nothing but that all day long as Marie, the Hunters, and the Heroes all conspired to keep us on the trail of the Spartans, who had apparently decided not to stay within a day's march of the watchtower they'd desecrated.

Eventually I gotta put up a sign that says 'don't hide, you're just gonna piss me off'.