Chương 964: Day Nine Hundred And Sixty-Two

Dear Diary, I think one of my biggest challenges as a Deity is the whole 'only able to focus on one of me at a time' thing. I know I've turned it into a bit of an advantage with my faithful, where for a few hours every week or so I focus every bit of my attention on one of my Worshippers at a time, and they love me for it. I just realized that's one of those things that mystified me back in the day, still kind of does here and now, but I just figured out the 'why' of it. Well, one layer at any rate.

Some part of the entire social media parasocial thing always bugged me. Like yeah, I get online relationships. Despite Luddites and Boomers all being up in arms about it, the idea isn't even that newfangled. I've read about all kinds of dudes back in the day wooing their desired cock dock using nothing but words in a letter. Okay, that's a little unfair. First of all, some of those dudes had nothing but descriptions or maybe paintings to know what their intended looked like.

Maybe they'd seen them at some kind of function, but sometimes they didn't even have that much. The only thing they knew about each other was their names, descriptions, and their words. Yeah, there's nonverbal communication and shit, but knowing somebody based on nothing but their words has got some kinda purity to it. Also, some of the folks I read about weren't dudes at all.

There was no dude involved, just a pair of ladies inviting one other to join them under the covers to turn their bed into a clambake of the desirable kind. Or even a couple pairs of dudes who read each other's poetry or philosophy or shit like that, recognized fellow boy kissers, and fell for one another again, based on nothing but words. So the idea that meeting somebody online and falling in love with them is either modern or invalid is just dumb.

Online relationships are no less real than pen pals or any other kind of long distance relationship. Yeah, there are catfishers, but that's been true since the invention of people with bad eyes. The existence of assholes does not invalidate the reality of romance. The fact that some people will use the desire of others to exploit them doesn't invalidate the idea of desire.

So I got the idea that streamers were just the latest ripple in celebrity, with a platform that let them interact a little with both their fanbase and, sometimes, individual fans. I get where they might consider some of those fans friends, and the fans might think of the celebrity as a friend too. Shit, some of them were even the sorts who would help out fans if they found out a fan was in trouble.

Not a lot, because those fuckin' grifters fucked it up for everybody, but I get that there's a real relationship there. I guess where it got weird for me was the idea of genuinely loving someone like that. Back in the day the idea of love seemed kinda sus to me. Probably some kind of after effect of my home life, my mom dying, and my sister fucking off to Philly. But that's the thing. I've looked into the hearts of those folks on my Altar, and they love me.

I have no idea why, and my traitorous brain keeps whispering 'trickster', but when I really connect to them, I feel the same kind of emotional exchange I do with Marie, or Saffron, or any of my ladies. Maybe not the same intensity, maybe not the same exact flavor, but that's the thing. When it comes to emotional connection, Marie and Saffron never 'tasted' the same. Yeah, there's overlap, but my love for each of my ladies is unique, and I'm sure that's true for each of them to the others.

I think I love them back, too. The folks on my Altars. My Worshippers. Again, maybe not with the same kind of earthshaking devotion I have for my live in ladies, but still, love is love. Fuck, never thought I'd say that in that context, but it's true. And I guess that's the maybe healthy part of all that parasocial contact back in the day, that people are connecting and loving one another.

I mean, yeah, the fact that they don't have anybody else and they get twisted around themselves because of that causes no end of problems, but the idea that somebody can say, 'you're special and I love you just the way you are' and have everybody listening think the sentiment is for them, because at the end of the day it is, is a powerful positive thing. Holy fucking shit, did I just call Mister Rogers some kind of proto-streamer? I think maybe I did. I also am neither taking it back nor saying it's a bad thing.

Because yeah, sometimes sitting there alone at home with my mom at work and my sister at school the only one I had telling that I was worth more than the shit I'd just taken was a nice old dude in a cardigan on the television. Was it everything I as a kid needed? No. Was it real love? Well shit, I'm pretty sure dude cared about all the kids watching, given he talked to his fuckin' fish because a blind girl wrote to him.

In the other direction, if he showed up here and now and somebody threatened him, I think I would literally shove their head up their own ass without stopping to think about it. So yeah, as the wise being says, 'broken, and small, but still good'. Fucked up and weird, but parasocial love is still love. And I love my Worshippers and they love me, and I definitely see that as healthier than any of the other shit I've seen going on here and now.

Fuck, I think the same is true for Diana and her Clergy now, and it sure as shit is true with Dionysus and the Maenads. Okay, yeah, there's a lot of fuck in their love, but they really do seem like there's a connection there, a not entirely unhealthy one. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

But to get back to my point, while I've parlayed that inability to focus on more than one thing at a time into a sort of unique benefit for my Worshippers, it's still a problem. The trackers and I pushed through until midnight, then came back to the Homestead. We stuck with thick chunky bisque for dinner, and as I've done for the past couple days I tucked everybody into bed after the Bath put them to sleep.

Orla and Mads joined Marie and I in the Bedroom for our nightly Worship refueling, which I think may have been starting to get a little... I'm not sure if Worship really makes up for sleep entirely. I'm feeling myself get, I dunno, more scattered. More ADHD. It's not terrible for tracking, really, when I need to be looking at seven different people at once to make sure none of them accidentally get skewered, but the fact that there are eight people with me and I'm only watching out for seven says something.

I'm not sure what, but something. At any rate, oatmeal shakes for breakfast, with the chunks of bacon and generous dollops of butter and honey, and off we went to tracking again. About halfway through the day Karen pinged my brain. Goddess? Alexandra is awake. How's she doing? Better. She's asking to speak with you. I sighed, mentally tagged Marie and thought, I'm gonna be focused on Phileo for a bit. Go, we will continue.

I gave her shoulders a quick squeeze, then Co-Located to my Temple, to the room I'd last seen Alexandra. Aphrodite's priestess sat there looking reasonably healthy, albeit still a little thin. Karen said, "well, she's here." Alexandra tilted her head, then turned to Karen.

"Leave us." Karen, feet not moving, said absolutely nothing, but looked to me.

"Yeah, you don't order my Priestesses around, Affie." Alexandra looked confused, but a moment later after another head tilt looked at me and said, "I would speak to you in private." I shrugged.

"If you ask politely, I'll have Karen go handle other stuff while we talk, but my ladies are pretty much free to look in on me at any time, and while I'm talking to you is gonna be one of those times I don't doubt I'll have at least Karen and Saffron in my head." Another head tilt, followed by, "may I please speak with you in private?" I nodded to Karen, who rolled her eyes, sighed, and left the room. Alexandra's spine straightened, and the room felt just the tiniest bit smaller, more intimate.

"Is it true, then, that you are but a Demigoddess pretending to be something more?" I smiled at her, letting a few tentacles creep into the shadows of the room.

"Lady, you ain't got a clue what I really am." She nodded admission of my point, then added, "but I know what you have done." I let that stand, so she continued.

"You ended Apollo. Diana and Dionysus have left Olympus and joined your Pantheon." I nodded.

"Yeah. Pretty sure a couple others have or are thinking about it. They might have followers they're worried about back in Europa. Or maybe they want to wait until after they move their stuff."

"Others?" I shrugged.

"The Weyland Smith is the only one I'm sure of." She looked like she wanted to piss herself just then, and it took me a second to really grok that for anybody from the other side of the Atlantic, he was still some kind of bogeyman. Okay, for folks on this side of the Atlantic he was too, but he was our bogeyman.

"Wait, I think Jack may have joined up too." Yeah, that did not make her any more copacetic.

"As for ending Apollo, that was kind of an accident. He died of his own terminal stupidity more than anything. But I did kill Sengann, and Balor, and Tartarus."

"And the other one," she whispered. I tensed.

"Which other one?"

"I don't know. No one does. His priests went mad, destroyed his statues and temples. But you did that, didn't you." I ran my tongue across my teeth, thinking.

"I might have. Maybe. Not sure, what with you not even knowing who you're talking about. How do you even know it was a him?"

"No Goddesses have exclusively male Clergy."

"Okay, so you're just assuming." She nodded. I waited. Eventually she said, "I have a Boon to ask of you." I waited a little longer, then said, "I'm not real pleased with anybody from Olympus right now, including you, but I'm listening." She sighed, seemed to deflate, but nowhere near deflating back to just Alexandra.

"I know," she whispered.

"I can only offer you information, and hope that it proves useful to you."

"Okay. Go on. I'm still listening."

"My husband has told the King of Sparta of your treatment of his Clergy. He told him all he knew, all he's learned, of your weaknesses. Told him you were to blame for the deaths of a handful of young Spartans in Asia Minor." I nodded.

"Yeah. That would be me. Sparta's King believed him?"

"An Athenian High Priest, one of my sister-in-law's, travelled to Sparta and confirmed Ares' accusation."

"So, what, they sent a hundred fifty Spartans on a punitive expedition for the death of five guys?" She slumped.

"You knew already."

"Yeah. Yeah, I did, although you telling me tells me two other things." She sat there, not even curious.

"First, that Sparta isn't so anti-Deity as to ignore what Deities tell them, and second, that you're not entirely happy with your hubby."

"I am not." I nodded.

"It's a start. Not gonna guarantee you any kind of Boon for that, but we'll watch over your High Priestess here. So long as you don't kill her by being negligent, you'll have a way to contact us." She nodded.

"I thank you, Tabitha Diaz." Then Alexandra seemed to shrink. A few moments later she slumped over, and I sprang forward, Stabilize forming as I did. Fortunately, she wasn't dead. Unfortunately, she seemed almost as bad off mentally as she had been shortly after she arrived, staring at nothing and drooling. Did not make me any happier with Aphrodite when, a moment later, Silk stepped in another ankle pit, then set off one of those spiked tree branches.

Dude's a tough himbo and needed less healing than Panther had, but still pissed me off that I wasn't focused enough to yank him out of the way. Fuckin' Olympians.