Day One Thousand Two Hundred And Twenty-One

Dear Diary,

Y'know, I know I've said I'm my own worst enemy at times, but most of the time when I say that I'm either joking or on some kind of self-abusive kick. I sorta think one of those might apply right now, but I am not in the right headspace to take myself to task for self-deprecation or laugh at my own jokes.

Yesterday was a pretty solid day. This week hasn't been bad at all. Yeah, we lost two of the Courts, but in both cases from what I can tell they were kinda guaranteed to go for the Hill once one of the Ports went for Sunny. Given that Blackpool is not just a port, but the port closest to the Hill, that one going for Sunny seemed like low hanging fruit if there's any kind of friction between Blackpool and the Hill.

Yeah, I'm referring to her by the court where The Morrigan's throne sits, because at this point that's got to be oblique enough. If it's not, I guess I'll just have to deal with the fact that the woman has put up such a broad and paranoid web of passive Divination to detect any reference to her that no amount of indirectness is gonna work. I could try using Blend at that point, and maybe if we're planning some kind of surgical strike I might, but that's... We're not there yet.

So last night, after rolling out the update to Status the night before and getting the details on the two Courts that declared for the Hill, I finished up my day, which included Archmage Tallulah Crow assisting with my Math class. Then I stepped us all home. Okay, all of us but the Troll Girls, who are still spending some nights with the Legion. I was super torn about that, but not in any kind of way I'm gonna pursue, because while I maybe kinda miss them while they're down there in Troll Home, I also get that they're straddling two cultures, and the answer isn't to deny them the one they're from. I'm still not sure what the perfect answer is, but...

Maybe that's the answer. That sometimes in life there's no perfect answer. Furtim and I are gonna do the best we can, support our girls every way we can, and trust them to do the best with what we give them.

At any rate, got home, doled out dinner to the girls and partners. Meat pastries today, although I think I scored extra points with Ria by remembering and making a kind of quiche. Eggs, cheese, pastry crust. I'm not sure it's properly a quiche, but it hit almost all the same points as eggy grilled cheese, and she nommed it all without complaint or hesitation. I'm tempted at some point to start doing vegetable pastries, just to maybe get more vitamins into the girls, but... I don't want to fool them. Not really. I want to make something that's good enough that they like it despite having the typical little kid aversion to the bitter veggies that have the most vitamins in.

Then again, we don't really have that many little kids left. Aoibh, yeah, but she's still on mother's milk. Hasn't even started weaning. Tabson and Muiris, although I think they're both on milk too, which is weird in Tabson's case, but then I'm utterly uncertain what Giselle's background is. For all I know, she's some kinda mutant Sidhe-Dan hybrid, and Tabson is gonna look and act six when he's twenty. Given how his mom saddled him with that name, I think I'd Boon the Moirai with Shapeshifting, give them boy parts, and punch them in the dick just for giving him that kind of fate, but I'm tryna be a little more mature and understanding.

Yeah, I'm tryna de-escalate the whole Moirai thing. Then again, I'm tryna do that with a lot of things, because I'm...

I'm not the one who needs to strike first or I lose. I realized that when I fought against the Kaiju. I can tank the kind of hits that normally do geologic displacement. Fuck, I think it takes geologic displacement to make me notice. Mostly because I'm a geologic that somebody's tryna displace when they come at me.

So, dinner, followed by Bath, where I pulled Tallulah over and had her quietly tell the Imperator the situation in Airi. Not long after that, I got annoyed, because I realized that right at the moment, I'm once again stuck waiting.

So I pulled Tallulah back over from where she'd drifted to listen to our house band and asked her, "any chance I could do some scouting? Like, just Blend all to fuck and gone, then scout out the other Courts, see whether there's any intel we could feed Sunny to boost his chances of convincing them?"

She pursed her lips, then shook her head. "While I... There are a few problems with that Idea."

"Lay 'me out?"

After a second, she nodded like she understood. "First and foremost, as I've mentioned to you before, Glamour is not entirely dissimilar to Blend."

Saffron cut in, "that's almost entirely incorrect, yet somehow I suspect you're not wrong."

Tallulah chuckled. "As I said to Tabitha when I first told her." She looked back at me. "The Shape is almost entirely dissimilar in construction, yet... I suspect the Shapes that counter it, of which any given Court has many active at all times, would... Not pierce through your Blend, but perhaps interfere with it, or detect something, or any number of things that might cause the Court to react. Which would possibly, even likely, negate the information you gathered."

"Well, shit."

"I wasn't done."

I closed my mouth, then thought, go on?

"While there are few Bane Sidhe remaining, I've discovered that all of them have been loaned out by the Hill. Well, 'sent as diplomats' to those Courts which might be influenced by them."

Yeah, that was not happy news. "How many?"

She sighed. "At least five."

"At least?"

"I know there are five Courts which have Bane Sidhe sent by the Hill. It's possible there are others with Bane Sidhe, or multiple Bane Sidhe at some of those Courts."

I slumped under the surface of the Bath. I hate Undead.

Siobhan kinda took my bad mood, or at least the self-loathing part of it, and broke it over her knee when she replied, and yet you were the first to Heal them.

I slipped back up out of the water, just far enough to talk, and said, "thanks, ladies. I'm not upset with any of you. Not really even upset with the Airish folks who aren't copacetic with the Alliance, because I'm pretty sure the info they've got on us is half rumor and half wrong."

"How so?" asked Saffron, clearly thinking about some kind of strategy.

I snorted. "Because somebody who ought to know better thinks I'm a guy."

She opened her mouth, then froze, snorted, and broke down laughing. Took a while for us to get even a single word out of her, at which point she said, "kits."

It took me a second, but that got a chuckle out of me too. "Yeah, I guess maybe that might have given her that impression." I shrugged. "Then again, Loki's my Dad. Sure as shit runs in the family, going against type like that."

I'll have you know I fathered far more than I birthed, Daughter.

Yeah, well, I haven't birthed any.

I was tryna think how to work Dad being the best into my reply when Saffron shut us both up for the night by thinking, I have plans in place to correct that when the time is right.

Yeah, that kinda tossed all my coherence in the toilet and flushed. I think I spent part of the night in the Bedroom. My assumption is based on what was on the big screen beside my Maw, but II guess those could have been reruns. Dunked ladies sort of on automatic.

I think a big part of it is how much I enjoyed nursing. Like, all of us in the Mom Collective do. Okay, maybe not Tallulah. Obviously not Furtim. Or Cherry, for the same reason, that being a lack of equipment to do so. But my point, and I did have one, is that I enjoyed the fuck out of nursing, even though it felt so weird, and I'm wondering now if I'm gonna be the polar opposite of Darling. Y'know, one of those women who just fuckin' glow throughout their pregnancy, like somehow the bean growing inside has set all dopamine reserves to available.

Oh. Oh, fuck. I'm really not sure what I'm gonna do if that's true, because I am, as I've said before, kinda turned on by the idea of Saffron getting me pregnant, which means if I enjoy being pregnant, there's a nonzero chance I'm gonna wind up addicted to being pregnant.

Oh. No. Whatever shall I do?

At any rate, late in the afternoon today, as I had the Camden Yards Cadets playing tug-of-war to get them focused on the effective teamwork they so dearly needed, I had a sudden thought.

I poked Saffron where she sat on my lap coding after spending most of the morning going over certain kinds of Fae chicanery with Hat.

"Yes, love?"

"How's this Shape coming along?"

She rocked her head side to side. "With Hat's help, I'm beginning to make progress, I think."

"Okay, so, you're working on stuff to interfere with Fae Shaping, right?"

"Yes?"

"So... Any chance you could boost my Blend to make it Fae Divination proof?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Got that faraway look I'd seen when she got inspired by something I'd said. Then shook her head and mock glared at me. "No. Not this time."

I shrugged. "Aw. Okay. I guess it was too much to hope that you could do that."

"Oh, I could. But that is an entirely different field of Magic, and I have learned something since my time working on Status."

"Oh?"

"I have learned, painfully, the concept of 'scope creep'."