Dear Diary,

So, no matter how much things change, some things stay the same.

This morning I woke to the sounds of Isnomi fussing where she'd gone to sleep between Saffron and the wall. I quietly disentangled myself from Saffron, lifted Isnomi clear, and opened the light just enough I could properly clean her off before attempting Mom Origami Diapering. After the third time where the diaper fell off of her before she crawled more than six inches back toward the bed, I totally cheated and Mineral Bonded it together. I set Isnomi free with a quiet, "there you go! Be free!"

Only to hear an amused, "you don't pull the folds together tight enough."

"I'm afraid of hurting her," I admitted. "She's just so itty bitty."

Saffron scooped her up and attached her to a tit while I tidied up the diaper mess and set it next to our dirty clothes pile. I stared at it for a moment before saying, "Wouldn't it make more sense to give us hampers?"

She shrugged with the shoulder opposite Isnomi, "Some of the Cadets wear a uniform for more than one day, others go through multiple changes a day."

I raised an eyebrow, "The first one sounds a little gross, especially on weekends, and the latter is just mean to the Maids."

"I'll give you one guess who always changes before lunch."

I shook my head. "Fuckin' Lancaster. How the fuck did he wind up a Cadet, anyway?"

"His family has a long tradition of Heroes; I think he's got an older brother, maybe a cousin, who is a Senior Cadet, and he's not the oldest man of his generation, either." Her voice held the frustrated acceptance I'd heard from so many people back in Camden when talking about privileged folks who didn't realize what everybody else had to go through just to get to the point they started at. I moved over and knelt in front of her, pulling her and Isnomi both into a hug.

After we'd sat there long enough for Saffron to rotate Isnomi to her other boob, I asked, "are they all as bad as Larry the Loser?"

She shrugged. "It's not like I've gotten to know any of them personally. Hell, the only time I remember seeing a Lancaster prior to Laurence was when Hero Velazquez dragged a bunch of Senior Cadets through the Yards. They went door to door, meeting people, asking them if everything was okay, doing some intense pest control, and rebuilding some of our sewer lines that had been infested with some kind of pixie rodents. The Lancaster with them pitched in just fine, but... do you know that look some people give you? Nothing you could call them out for, but just," she waved one hand around, at an uncharacteristic loss for words.

"The look that says they don't see a lot different between you and the rodents they're exterminating."

She sighed, "Yeah. Thing is, I'm not sure if it's because we were Bag, poor, or just 'not a Lancaster'."

I smiled at her, tickling Isnomi's tummy as she detached from Saffron with a little burp. "Hey, we're both on the fast track to not being poor, at least."

She snorted, "No plans to not be Bag? Or becoming a Lancaster?"

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"Yeah, the only way to do that latter one would be banging a Lancaster, and I just don't see myself doing that." Saffron giggled a little, and I scooped Isnomi up to burp her while Saffron slowly tipped over, trying and failing to keep her laughter in. I got a decent burp out of the crotch goblin, then started blowing raspberries on her belly until she giggled as much as her mom was doing. I settled her in between Saffron and the wall and went to the door to check if Marie was on the way yet. I opened the door to find her standing there, one hand half raised to knock, but with her head sideways like she'd been listening through the door. I grabbed her hand and yanked her inside, her cart rolling behind her. I tickled her sides, but she just kinda stood there, looking down at me. "Dammit, you're not ticklish, are you?"

She almost drowned out her, "No," with a sudden bout of purring. She put her arms around me and hugged me, so I hugged her back, her purrs vibrating my whole body. After a while she let go, and I let her go about pulling our laundry off of the stack atop her cart, and tucking our dirty laundry into a laundry basket on one of the cart's shelves. As she left to go about her busy day doing Marie things, I went over to the armoire, put away our clean laundry, then set about getting dressed. Instead of letting me wander off to my Remedial class alone, Saffron got dressed, fixed my sartorial mistakes, and she and Isnomi accompanied me to breakfast. She wound up getting away from me and crawling all over the table, accepting hugs and tickles and smiles from everyone there. Even Angel smiled at her, although I caught a hint of something else in her smile. Fear? Frustration? Regret? I wasn't sure what it was, but there was definitely something there.

Eventually the rug rat settled in next to a tray of sausages right between Saffron and I, and set to gumming them to death. When she managed to break the casing and get to the meat, she got that weird 'wtf?' look, and I yeeted a hunk of bread at her. I figured if she kept nomming it, the spices couldn't be upsetting her too much. Saffron didn't comment on the sausage or the spices, so I guessed her maternal research didn't have anything bad to say about babies and spicy sausage.

After breakfast I gathered her up, delivered her back to Saffron, and wandered up to Remedial Standardized Celtic. Apparently Carruthers had gotten shifted into the class as well, although the other half dozen who'd been with me last quarter had passed out of the class, and three new kids, all obviously Camden Yards kids, sat at the desks the others had vacated. Sister Cheryl smiled at Lyman when he wandered in, and we spent the morning with me memorizing the shapes of common words in Celtic. By the end of the day I'd learned to write two different versions of 'a' and 'the', although apparently they're not 'a' and 'the', but two different versions of 'a'? Maybe? Written grammar evaded me entirely, although I kinda understood what Sister Cheryl meant when she said 'Verb, then Subject, then Object'. Maybe my writing career wasn't doomed before it began!

Okay, yeah, unless written English suddenly wound up the common language, the best I saw myself doing was being able to write really janky letters home while out patrolling.

Lyman followed me to lunch. I guess he liked the cooking, because he didn't do anything embarrassing at all. Saffron glared at him a bit for sitting next to me, but when he took over the chore of yeeting bread bits at Isnomi, making a game out of getting her to catch them before they hit the table, she eased off a bit. I suppose not needing to eat at all made him pretty blasé about the mediocre lunch we got today; shoe leather beef, apples, pumpkin mush, and cucumber slices. Not, like, mixed veggies. Just the cucumbers, all sliced up. They weren't bad, but cucumbers are like one of the blandest veggies out there.

Right before lunch ended, a Cadet came into the Hall and handed me a sealed envelope. "This just came for you."

"Thanks," I looked at Saffron, who shrugged, and Lyman, who did the same. I looked at the seal, which looked like nothing so much as a pine cone on a stick. I broke it open, unfolded the paper to read the simple message within. "We have matters of some importance to discuss. Please meet me at Six Hundred Thirty Eight South Street at your earliest convenience." The signature line simply read, "D."

I showed the letter to both of them, and they both shrugged again. "You mind hitting South Street next Monday?" They both said, 'no' at the same time, then traded annoyed looks.

Looks like we'd all be hitting South Street next Monday.