Day One Thousand Two Hundred And Two

Dear Diary,

Kinda funny, really. The day after my Court Martial I worked myself into a frenzy about what had happened with Marie in the infirmary, only to find out that both Saffron and Marie had completely different expectations, not to mention understanding of what rules applied after we had sex.

Laughing at myself right at the moment over how many different euphemisms I thought of for having sex, only to realize that none of them really fit. Like, there are some that I've tried to stop using, like 'bumping uglies' or 'doing the nasty', because genitalia are not by default ugly, nor is sex inherently nasty. There are others that I'm not averse to, like 'getting freaky' or 'making the beast with two backs' or all kinds of increasingly unhinged way of describing two people having sex, but I really don't feel the need to make a joke out of talking about it any more.

I mean, I'm still gonna on the regular, but at least here in my diary I don't always feel the need to.

At any rate, I got all wrapped up in myself when I realized that when Saffron said 'my Wife', she wasn't claiming ownership. I mean, okay, that's not true, but not in any kind of way that I find offensive. Yeah, she's got an acquisitive streak a mile wide, but she'd already started leaning away from jealousy during that first discussion, what with claiming Marie right along with me. Okay, I think what got me all twisted up was how she was absolutely fine with the idea of Siobhan and I getting together. Dating, banging, hell even having kids together, although again it's kinda hilarious that the two of them appear to have done that to the exclusion of me doing so.

I mean, unless she's the one to put a bun in my oven, which is possible, I guess.

At any rate, in the process of extracting my head from my ass regarding the morality of an open polyamorous relationship with an ever expanding polycule, I wound up having sex with, um... Oh, shit, I just realized I'm not sure if I had sex with three or four other people. I mean, Lachlan and Linus, yeah, not to mention poor High Priest Ray when Saffron Rae offered him up as a birthday present. Then again, what with Saffron and I both, uh... I really don't know if we were Shapeshifted into Saffron Rae or Mimicking her, but 'no guilt foursome with three of my wife' has got to be one of the weirder fully wholesome kinks I've heard of.

Seriously, 'I want my wife so much I wish there was two of her, so she can ride me while I'm wearing her thighs as earmuffs' is, frankly, kinda sweet.

Yeah, the one I'm not sure on is Saffron Rae herself. Wait, no, I'm pretty sure Saffron told me she couldn't resist my rizz once I got going, and while I'm still completely befuddled by that, I see no reason why Saffron would have lied to me about that.

Then Siobhan, then the Temple, then... An entire Season, more or less, where I had none of my memories, but all of the feelings were still there. Safety. Comfort. Love. I kinda realized by the end of that, after watching through Karen's eyes a few times, that maybe Karen felt... Not the same kind of way as the folks I think of as my partners, but still, love. So when she wanted me to show up at the weekly Revels, I did.

I'm not sure if I've realized this before, but that marked a very big change in my personal power levels, I think. Prior to that I'd had... A few Worshippers, but in a place as Pantheistic as the Alliance, none of them really Worshipped me the way the folks at my Revels do. Oh, maybe a prayer now and then if they thought it would help, but nothing like what I get every Friday, nothing like the constant low level distant buzz I get, that I'm only just now realizing wasn't there before I started those Revels.

At any rate, while I'd gotten over the guilt over hooking up and friends with benefits, the Revels really revisited that until I realized that what I was giving my Worshippers, what they really wanted, and what I kinda craved with them, was intimacy. Which, as I've noted before, completely blinded me to the fact that my Revels aren't really 'orgies' so much as 'clothes optional parties'. Seriously, for the past few I'd been far more aware of the folks around me, as I spent some time people watching with my Worshippers. Yeah, sex happened at Revels, but mostly? It was people celebrating all the good shit in life. Good food. Music. Some intoxicants, yeah, but sometimes that's the only thing that'll make the hypervigilance let go.

I know I've mentioned all of that before, but today was one of those odd days that let me see my people, my Worshippers, in yet another light. Or maybe one that I'd seen before, but today reminded me of.

At any rate, after I informed Sunny, the Lord of Sun's Harbor, of our relative places in the pecking order, which was basically that I was his great-great-something aunt, what with him being a descendant of my brother Elatha, he got way more friendly. Okay, it might have been that whole, 'Elatha isn't coming to save you, because he's vaguely afraid that I'll eat him if he does'.

"Hey, from what the Overlord told me, your whole reason for wanting me here was a kind of CPS check-in, right?" When he blinked and did that little head jerk that let me know he hadn't followed my stream of consciousness bullshit, I explained. "You asked me to bring Aisling?"

At that point Hailee reached over from where she'd standing quietly and laid a hand on Aisling's thigh. My tiny Bane-Sidhe in training unburrowed herself from my chest at that, and turned to look at Sunny. "... hello."

The look he gave her was kinda complex. On one hand, clearly not a guy who enjoyed kids, and saw them as particularly unruly livestock. On the other, he also remained acutely aware of me standing there, and if he had some of those faceless plate armored guards like Tallulah did back in Rich Man's Port, I think he knew those wouldn't even be speed bumps. "You are Aisling?"

She nodded. "... yes."

I'd hoped she was gonna get braver with all the time spent with her sisters, and to be honest she had, but I could totally see her backsliding a little with this dude pointing all his gravitas at her. Still, he wasn't doing anything but asking completely reasonable questions, so I wasn't gonna end his ability to speak. Then he moved a hand in a way that looked a whole lot like Shaping, and I lifted a hand. He froze as I said, "don't know what the local customs are, but where I'm from it's impolite to Shape at somebody without asking first."

He lowered his hand, eyes still locked on Aisling. "You are the daughter of the Leanan Sidhe?"

If I winced a little as dropped the name of Tallulah's old nemesis, that was nothing next to Aisling's thin whine. I murmured, "I'm here, Aisling. She can't hurt you. I won't let her hurt you."

The whine stopped growing, but it didn't go away until Hailee squeezed her sister's thigh gently. At that point Aisling shuddered, then said, "... yes."

"Her daughter by blood?"

I felt the shuddering whine in Aisling's voice, but she managed to say, "... yes ..." before turning to bury her face in my chest again.

I shook my head. "Look, I'm not entirely against you Shaping, but... Are you gonna Shape anything other than Divinations?"

He paused, then nodded, saying, "I had no intention to do otherwise."

"Okay then. If you promise me you'll Shape nothing but Divinations on any of us, and nothing that will harm any of us, I promise not to turn Elatha's little summer home into a smoking hole in the ground."

He closed his eyes, breath catching, then opened them and said, "I solemnly swear to you that so long as you and yours do not make further threats to me, my Court, or Sun's Harbor, I shall make no Shapes that harm you and yours, and limit my Shaping only to those Mortals would consider Divination."

I grinned at him. "Oh, hey, Sunny, that wasn't a threat..."

Before I could tell him I agreed, Tallulah deadpanned, "it truly was not, Lord."

He froze with his mouth open, then nodded, raising one hand. "May I?"

"Go on."

I'd had enough Fae Grain in my diet recently enough that I caught the edges of what he was doing, what he was weaving. Sort of superficially similar to Status and Assess Health. I couldn't really see the results, but something shimmered into place where I'd expect the readouts from those Spells. Gotta say, the kind of languid hand motions he used to Shape and go through the information looked totally classy. Nowhere near my own showy Mana wires, or Saffron and Tallulah's businesslike efficiency.

Eventually, as Aisling was getting enough courage back to look at him, he frowned. Not his fault, and the next words out of his mouth didn't help. "She lied."

"Excuse me?" He jerked like he'd been slapped, and I realized that even here in his own court, I was kind of a WMD waiting to happen. "She who?"

He nodded, relaxing slightly. "Her birth mother. The Leanan Sidhe."

Tallulah stepped forward, "if it pleases the Court, might we know what lies my nemesis has spread about me?"

Sunny shook his head. "About you, precious little, or I'd likely not have allowed you to visit my Court. About your," he paused, and almost had to choke out the word, "Mistress, she has claimed that your paramour kidnapped her daughter, had 'his' way with her, and was keeping her as a pet." I guess the look on my face told him what I thought about that, because he quickly added, "which my Shaping has shown to be complete falsehood. While she has been accosted, the perpetrator of that abomination is not in my Court at this time."

"Yeah. Too bad. I'd like to turn whoever hurt my kid into a greasy stain."

Then he waved his hand, I guess to look at more information, and got that kumquat look on his face again. "She is anathema," he hissed.

I took a slow breath. "Yeah, people say the same thing about me."

His jaw worked. "That is... Not incorrect. I meant no offense to you... Or to her. But... While I appreciate her visit, and would see justice done, I would ask you to remove her from my Court?"

"Are we to leave as well, then?" asked Tallulah.

He shook his head. "No, Overlord. I would speak with you at length regarding this. And..." He nodded to me. "Mimic is, of course, free to enter into Elatha's home as she wishes."

I turned to Tallulah. "You gonna be okay if I head home?"

She turned to me, leaned in, and gave me a kiss on each cheek, then on the lips. I didn't give a shit about the maybe scandalized noises coming from the hoi polloi in the cheap seats. I did appreciate when she said, "I will be fine, Mistress," then leaned down a little further and hugged Aisling. I think she maybe didn't expect Hailee to take my hand, but hold up her other arm for a hug, but she gave her one anyhow.

Then we stepped back to my Temple.

Unfortunately, between Pye getting cranky about being manhandled and the weird nature of Time in M-Space, we got back to the Temple in the afternoon. Worse, it seemed like the girls were a little jet lagged or something. Which meant they crawled onto the Altar next to Cherry, Giselle, and the boys and promptly sacked out.

Giselle and especially Cherry looked a thousand times better than they had when I left. Giselle had a kid on each tit, with Cherry kneeling next to where she sat tailor style. He kinda hovered there, oblivious to my arrival until the little one detached and Giselle handed him over. Cherry looked like he was terrified of dropping the little one, but took him and curled around him. That's when I realized that our son was not, as I'd kind of assumed under the greasy forty weight amniotic fluid, a light nut brown. Well, he was, but it wasn't skin. Or it was, but it wasn't, like, bare human skin.

Cherry was holding a seal pup.

I blinked. "Uh... Cherry?"

"Yes, Goddess?"

I chuckled. "We're co-parents now, right? So I think you can call me Tabitha."

He grinned and hunched a little sheepishly. "Tabitha."

"Better. Now, um... Seal?"

He blinked a couple times. Then barked out a laugh, one that I'd never heard him make before, one that sounded way less controlled, way more... Natural? Than anything I'd heard from him before. "He's half-Selkie, after all." Then he looked down at our son and said, "and he's far too little to take his skin off yet, isn't he? Isn't he! Yes he is!"

Yeah, totally adorable. Adorkable even. "Have you picked out a name yet?"

He did that little wincing hunch again, and whispered, "I... I thought you'd want to?"

I shook my head. "Hey, Cherry, are you afraid of me or something?"

"Of you? Oh, no! No, Goddess! I just... The Healing fixed things, but I'm still sort of... Tender?"

I chuckled and sat down next to him. "Okay, okay. If Hailee were awake, I might ask her to help with that, but for the moment, I figured you did all the work, so you've got more skin in the game when it comes to names, right?"

He gave me a wide eyed look. "Truly?"

"I mean, I'm gonna love the little rugrat like all my kids, but you've been pretty clear about wanting him here with you at the Temple. So, y'know, yeah. You pick." I paused, then said, "I reserve the right to veto anything awful or hard to pronounce, but honestly if I got used to Borysthenis, I can get used to anything, I think."

He nodded. "Okay. Um... I've... I guess... Do you mind if we name him Muiris?"

"Like your old boss?"

He nodded. "My old manager, yeah. He did a lot for me when I was just a kid on the street."

I chuckled and hugged Cherry. "Sure. We can name him after his uncle Mo."

He looked down and said, "so, what do you think, Muiris? You like that name?" Muiris, who'd mostly gone to sleep, just kinda cooed and snored, like little babies do. Cherry rocked him a little, then looked at me. "Did you want to hold him?"

I nodded. "Sure."

Acting like the little one was made of spun glass, Cherry handed him over. I took him with just as much obvious care and attention.

At which point Muiris woke himself up by cutting loose with a massive messy shart.

Yeah, fortunately the Revel doesn't start until after sunset. No, I did not have Karen clean the baby with her Holy Garb, but I did have her clean up the Altar itself.

The baby, along with Giselle, Cherry and Tabson, got a quick trip to the Homestead and a brief shower. Which produced annoyed cranking from Tabson, some quiet groans of appreciation from Cherry, and cute little coos from Muiris.

Tonight's Revel wound up being one of those where there was less sex and more community building. More talking, and holding, and introducing every blessed person in Phileo, it seemed like, to little Muiris. Kinda funny, Dorothea eventually wound up on the Altar with the rest of us, because while Giselle is absolutely sweet and apparently still lactating, she has the mothering instincts of a particularly dim sheep. Like, not actively hurting her kids, and definitely feeding them and cleaning them up and all, but no idea on how to get them potty trained or talking or walking or anything.

So, y'know, I'm not sure if Cherry and Giselle will be spending more time at the Homestead, or Dorothea will spend more time at the Temple, but one way or another, we'll make it work.

Sometimes I think that's, like, ninety percent of the answer to every question in life.

Just making it work.