Chapter 1216 Day One Thousand Two Hundred And Sixteen

Dear Diary,

Once again I find myself on the horns of a dilemma, and unable to behead the fucker and mount it on my office wall. I mean, I've got an office now, and if I started collecting trophies Siobhan might feel some kinda way, but I think she'd tolerate it if I kept them up in and around my office.

Shit, I've already put the biggest trophy yet up next to my office, what with that Kaiju Dragon head that's become Menace's first Temple technically being a trophy from one of the Kaiju I killed.

Wait. Fuck. I've taken other trophies, and given them to Saffron, and she made the gates to the Homestead spur valley with them. The Jotnar femurs and all the assorted Dire Bear bones. Which does give the place a bit of a bad guy vibe, but given the number of people who live here of their own volition, I think I can tolerate the look, especially when those gates are, other than the femurs, the bones of Bears that would and did do harm to the Homestead women.

Getting back to the dilemma, though, after basically spending the past couple days worrying about how I'm absolutely some kind of shit tier Deity who can't even answer prayers right, I figured tonight would be a good night to get back to my old standby of one person at a time, one of me totally focused on them, and answering whatever prayer they held closest to their hearts.

My Worshipper base, Clergy and High Clergy included, had other ideas.

Yesterday went okay. Guarded bodies, for a value of guarding that means ogling while also providing a very strong hint at what would happen to anyone or anything which violated those bodies in a nonconsensual fashion. Cooked dinner, for a value of cooked that, at Marie's very pointed suggestion, included a lot of the kinds of pies that could keep in a cool shelf for at least a few days. Cleaned up the Academies, for a value of cleaned that mostly involved stripping beds and collecting dirty laundry, then agitating that laundry in big kettles full of soapy water.

Protip: no matter how many herbs and or spices are added to the soap to make it and whatever you're cleaning smell nicer than lye, do not take a sip of that particular forbidden stew. Not worth, 0/10, would not taste test laundry cauldron contents again.

Taught Math, for a value of teaching that wound up surprisingly like the teaching I remembered from back in the day. Show them how to do it, explain why we do it that way, give them a bunch of sample problems to work through, then wander around the room helping the ones who were stuck. Maybe praising the ones who did it on their own, just a little, because that seemed to keep so many from getting stuck in the first place.

As the day came to a close, I stepped everyone home, only to find half a dozen of the Homestead women streaming into the Dining Room. I looked around to see the rest of the Mom Collective doing what amounted to last minute tidying of our horde and a few other Homestead kids who'd followed their moms into the room.

"What's up? Where am I tonight?"

Saffron looked around at everyone's progress, then nodded to me. "You, love, will be attending each of your Temples today, per your faithful's request."

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I wanted, needed almost to have that intimate time with my Worshippers, to get a chance to see what they needed, to provide for them.

To answer their prayers.

But... I realized something just then, something that I recalled Saffron saying on that awful wonderful night on my first Autumn Solstice here and now. Prayer? Was just talking to a Deity. And my Kitten had just told me what my Worshippers wanted. What they'd told me, at one remove, was that they wanted me to be at my Temples tonight.

So I pulled on my big girl panties, entirely metaphoric in this case, and nodded. "Okay then." I looked around. "The kids?"

Saffron smiled at me. "This evening will be an all ages Revel, love."

"Want a hand getting them there?"

She smiled and nodded. I clapped my hand and asked, "everybody ready to go?"

Yeah, that was a no. I waited until everyone had their everything in place, then said, "okay everyone. For those of you who don't Translocate on the regular, hang on tight and maybe bend your knees a little."

With that, I threaded tentacles through the room, gently taking everyone by the waist, a few extra tentacles taking smaller hands, more helping to hold the warm crocks the Homestead women carried. I stepped us all to the Temple of Love, and wound up pretty glad I'd kept those crocks supported, because one of the women wound up with her hands slipping as her mouth dropped open.

I stepped over, took the crock in my hands, and asked her, "everything okay?"

Her mouth snapped closed and a blush showed through her tan. "Sorry, Goddess. I've never been here before and... It's so beautiful."

I looked around, tracking what she was looking at. At that moment I realized she was absolutely right. The Temple had been rebuilt a while back, but the newness had worn off. Honestly, that hadn't had any kind of negative impact on the Temple at all. If anything, things were even more impressive after my congregation had been using the place for... Well over a year now, I guess.

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is." I smiled my most comforting smile and held up her crock. "You ready to take ownership of this again?"

She smiled bashfully, then said, "but I brought it here to share with you?"

Yeah, turns out that tonight's plan was some kind of bake off. I pulled the woman, who's name was Charis, up to the Altar with me, where we waited until a bunch of kids ran off and brought down some bowls and spoons for the stew she'd made.

While we waited, talking about how she'd slow cooked the meat and roasted the vegetables the day before, then slow cooked them all into a stew today, I Co-Located to my other Temples. Where lines of my faithful waited with little crocks and covered dishes. Each of them brought them to me to taste, then after I'd taken a few bites, took them to share with the rest of the faithful.

I... I didn't binge. I savored. I took those few bites, complimented whatever stood out, and listened to them speaking about how they'd made it. The ingredients, the process, who they'd learned the recipe from.

Some of our kids went home some time around midnight, although the local orphans and a lot of the other local kids just sacked out right there on the pews, and some of our girls stayed with their Temple friends. That said, we wound up Reveling until they all woke up, and Marie brought our kids back to help clean up the last of the feast.

For lunch.