Dear Diary,

I realized just today how weird it is to actually make progress. To see the improvements I've made in myself, not just subjectively comparing myself to some other rando, who might be in another stage of their personal journey from me, but by comparing myself to myself in the past. I mean, I'm seeing progress when I compare myself to the Senior Cadets, but that's kind of a no brainer. I'm a Goddess who puts everything I've got into pushing my limits and pushin' that Kitten cushion at every opportunity, I've got an absolute unfair advantage. But I'm still outpacing them, which I don't think I could have done last year.

But that gets to the real measure of progress, comparing me to me. Like, last year this time I was tryna deal with the shit going on at Lancaster House. Getting rid of the plague, getting rid of the former Heroes Lancaster and all their bullshit, getting rid of Ares' corruption of the good people of Calverton. Like, on the one hand I get that there aren't 'good people' and 'bad people', there's just people who choose to do good things or bad things. But the people of Calverton pretty much packed up everything they had and said, 'okay, time for one last hurrah' and moved toward the folks they'd been told killed them. That might not be pure as the driven snow, but it sure as shit isn't the kind of evil Garland pulled, where he infected the group of people who might have been able to organize some kind of meaningful action against the plague, then blamed the target of the fuckin' plague for causing it.

Of course, 'driven snow' both has a new meaning and has given me an absolute appreciation for how much I've improved. Last year this time, it pushed me to go down unplowed roads the day after a snowstorm. I could do it, but I sure as shit wasn't enjoying it. This year, like just yesterday, I ran directly into a fuckin' snowstorm. I am not the reason we stopped yesterday. I mean, okay, I made the call, and even with airliner sized Dire Bears navigating directly toward my house I stand behind that call. My Cadets weren't really looking too hot tryna forge forward against horizontal snowfall, and the hunters sure as shit weren't making any kind of progress when it came to tracking. Shit, they were barely making progress in terms of 'moving forward'.

Once I'd made the call to stop, I gathered them all around O'Brien. Seriously, the dude's a stocky motherfucker, and if he's not quite as cut as I am, that leaves a whole lot of room for him to be carrying some serious muscle. While I think I could overpower him, he just straight up had more mass than me, which is important for things like 'standing still in a gusting blizzard'. Once I had everybody gathered in one place, I threw up a Filtration Ward set to keep the precipitation out. We still had some wind coming through at first, but we could see each other now. Briefly. Because within a very short time, the storm covered my fuckin' Ward with a solid enough layer of snow to block light, wind, everything.

"Okay, everybody. Scrounge what burnables you can within the Ward. Do not, I repeat, do not leave the ward."

"Yes, Ma'am."

While the Cadets and Silk got to scrounging, Panther wandered over to where I stood, eyes on the snow buildup. "Almost looks like you're building... what's that word Grandmother used?"

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"Igloo?"

He thought about it, then nodded. "Sounds right."

I chuckled a little at that. "Grandmother travelled a bit, then?"

He smiled, the way you do when talking about an older relative who you'd realized hadn't always been old. "Yeah. So she tells us. Way, way north. Past the Lakes."

The way he'd slotted that capital in there made me realize we couldn't be all that far from Erie or Ontario. "You know this area, right?"

He shrugged. "I hunted this far north twice before, with my father. Bad years."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Don't be. Was good to spend time with him before he passed."

I thought about how long it had taken me to get over my mom dying. I mean, I still hadn't, not really, but I wasn't basing my whole fuckin' life on 'waiting for her to come back' any more. Although that would be a little hard, what with me being here and now rather than then and there. "Sorry to hear he passed."

He shrugged. "He died doing what he loved." When I shot him the obvious question via head tilt, he laughed and said, "visiting nearby villages to woo women. Got caught on the way home by a snowstorm. He never met my littlest sister."

"Aw, man. That sucks for her."

"I try to be there when I can."

I looked around. "This isn't, like, triggering you or anything, is it?"

He laughed a little. "That thing you do? Where you jump from place to place?"

"Translocation."

"That. Your... Marie does that too. As does your wife?" I nodded. "She's brought us as much food as I could carry. And they brought your children to our village."

"Yeah, and?"

He smiled serenely at me. "I can't think you'd let us freeze out here if you had the option of carrying us back to your home."

I nodded at him and smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, you're not wrong. Really don't want to hop back if we don't have to, though."

"Training?"

I shook my head, then shrugged. "I mean, you're not wrong, but mostly I'm not sure I could get back here." When he gave me a weird look, I said, "I've got to envision the place pretty clearly. Technically I can get back to any place I've seen, but," I waved around at the featureless dome of snow around us.

He chuckled. "Yeah, I can see where that might be a problem. After a bit of the two of us checking under the snow nearby, then clearing a space to build a fire, he looked at me and asked, "how is it your wife and your woman Marie could come to you then?"

I'd never really thought about that before. When I realized why, it definitely lit off some warm, fuzzy feelings. "Yeah, um... you ever hear the phrase that home is where family is?"

He nodded as he worked to dig a little fire pit. "So it's more than just sex, then?"

I smiled. "Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot more than just that."

When the Cadets and Silk got back from scrounging firewood, we set up the fire, and I popped a single chunky Mana Blade through the roof of our not so little dome of snow to act as a chimney. Then put my Filtration Ward back up and lit up our fire. All eight of them took turns standing watch, although it was mostly to make sure somebody could raise the alarm if the dome collapsed or something else weather related was about to kill us. I stayed up again. I figured worst case I'd dig them all out and, as Panther said, carry them all home.

By late morning the snow trickled off to just stuff swirling around with the wind, and we broke out of our dome and started south. I needed to be home by end of day Thursday, because while I didn't want surprise Dire Bears messing things up, I wasn't gonna miss my kid's birthday party just on the off chance that we might find where the fucker had come from.

Of course, I got a rush of brains to the head on the way back, when our zig-zagging path took us across the bear's bivouac. I Translocated a solid bear-length into the sky from the top of the tallest nearby hill. Before I started dropping, I saw what I'd half expected to see, right on the edge of vision. The West Tower, sticking up over the horizon like a giant middle finger to Dire Bears everywhere.