Dear Diary,

Something I definitely have to be aware of, to watch for, regarding depression. It has nothing to do with sadness, and everything to do with stress. Yeah, a lot of the things that make people sad are also stressful, but it's not the sadness that prompts the depression kicking in. It's the stress.

Wait, maybe that's why people think depression is about sadness? Because something stressful happens that would make them sad, but they see the person it happened to getting depressed, so they think it must be, like, The Big Sad? Fucking shitballs, but that's some fucked up shit right there. I mean, I can totally get how it would happen, how that kind of misunderstanding would come into being, but oh, fucking hell that is such a ubiquitous misunderstanding.

At any rate, I gotta watch out for stress. Not like I'm gonna run across any of that, right? I'm just the Patron Deity and Champion of the Alliance, with seven kids and who the fuck knows how many more on the way at some point shortly after Marie and Saffron and I tie the knot. Shit, I've also got, y'know, a wedding to plan. And a birthday party. Okay, multiple birthday parties. Ten of them, at this point. Although I guess I could get my ladies to help with the kids and, y'know, my other ladies. That's actually most of what happened last year with Menace. I just showed up and did what Saffron told me to do. Of course, the Alliance wasn't really a huge thing then. I mean, it was, but it was brand new. It didn't have a whole bureaucracy to monitor. Or to support her. During a plague and a famine and two back to back wars, first against Norfolk and then against the Undead.

Shit. I'm a terrible wife, making my wife do all the kid party organizing work. Of course I'm doing better this year. I've got multiple presents and a solid activity itinerary for the day.

Of course, I'd planned on being around to do more of the planning this week. Fuck.

So yesterday afternoon the dynamic duo wound up more or less behaving themselves. Then again, the entire afternoon was spent practicing throws, rolls, and throwing basic punches. Practically shadow boxing. What with me explicitly telling the Cadets to throw their partners up or sideways to make recovery a little easier, even those two couldn't really injure one another too badly. It even got kind of funny, what with her sending him cartwheeling through the air, and him practically doing a fastball special with her. He got pretty good at turning that involuntary cartwheel into a deliberate one that landed him on his feet. Meanwhile she just rolled and bounced back up to her feet.

Steaks for dinner again. Think we're gonna be having those for more than a little bit. O'Brien, Brown, and Mackenzie all three stayed in the East House with us. Ryan and Chloros wound up staying in the South House, which surprised me a little, what with Panther and Silk being Very Popular Guests at the North House. Which is in fact where Aetos wound up staying. Go figure. Still, I guess he's another, uh, source of entertainment and stress relief for the women who aren't into women.

I stepped over at the end of the meal, before they'd decided where our visitors would be staying for the night. Or maybe each of them had their own room and they had lots of visitors. Don't know, don't care, so long as everybody's having fun with it. "Aetos? Be ready to go at first light."

Silk looked up at me. "Will you be returning to our village so soon?"

I shook my head. "Gotta figure out where these fuckin' Dire Bears are comin' from."

He picked up the last bit of steak off his plate. "That much meat wasn't enough for you?"

I snorted. "Yeah, each one has been bigger than the last. Okay, not quite, but they're definitely trending 'larger'. I don't want to discover the next one when it's eaten an entire farmstead." When he got a speculative look, I rolled my eyes. "Or when I found out it went southwest instead of southeast."

Panther looked up. "Would you like us to come along?"

I thought about it for a second. "Either of you up for fighting something like that big bastard from Friday?"

Panther snorted. "No. But we do know the land. It's been a while since we went this far north or east, but I remember doing so once when I was barely old enough to go along on a hunt."

I nodded. "You guys also know what's normal and what's not in this neck of the woods, too. So. You two willing to come along? Not gonna force you."

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

They shared a long moment of silent communication, the kind of thing old friends can do with nothing but subtle gestures and facial expressions. I definitely got the impression that Silk would rather have stayed at our Homestead as our local Lachlan in training, but eventually Panther turned to me and said, "yeah, you've been really hospitable; we'll do what we can. Besides, like you said, the next one might wind up going toward Grandmother's place."

"Okay then. Be ready to go at first light."

"But..." I looked at Silk, not even glaring, just looking. "Okay, fine."

I stepped over to South House, only to find nobody in the dining room there. Of course, both houses were way closer to replicas of East House than traditional 'bunkhouses', and that included a Bath on the third floor. I stepped up there, and was suddenly forcibly made aware of the fact that all of the women with children were currently staying in North House. Because shapeshifting shenanigans aside, it is somewhat more difficult to get in a family way when your partner has the same plumbing as you. Also, a disproportionate number of our women worshipped Dionysus. God of Revels. I'm not sure if this counted as Revel, or Orgy, or what, but apparently Ryan and Chloros had flipped some kind of switch. Then again, they're Senior Cadets. High Personality? Check. Incredibly fit? Check. Fucks to give about somebody else's 'morals'? Zero.

"Champion! Come to join us?" Ryan was definitely the most go-getter of the group; Chloros had barely acknowledged my arrival.

I laughed and shook my head. "Nope. I'm gonna try to get some sleep tonight, because we leave at first light tomorrow."

Both of them did a little bit of jaw drop disappointment. "But... Yes, Ma'am."

I smiled again. "So, y'know, make sure they sleep well, ladies."

That set off a round of laughter, and I stepped back to the Bath. While I showered with Saffron, I asked, "is it just me, or are things getting a little raunchy around here this weekend?"

She smiled. "Oh, I suspect some of it is you, love. Your very presence, oh she who owns the Temple of Love." Before I could protest, she said, "but not only you. There are a few stable relationships among our women, true, and several more relationships of convenience, but most of them are like the women in any small enough town. New faces mean potential new partners."

I took my time thinking about that while paying most of my attention to cleaning up my Kitten's magnificent mounds of squish, front and rear. "They know none of them are staying, right?"

She shrugged. "they likely won't, but stranger things have happened. Besides, many Cadets, once they have Senior standing, start looking for places to call 'home'. Most stay in Phileo, but some prefer a more rural setting."

"What, you think one of these guys might put down roots?"

She shrugged, totally making me lose track of everything in the world except her anatomy, which put a little giggle in her voice. "Oh, probably not, but the possibility exists. Perhaps one or more of them will decide that this is the place they call 'home'. Perhaps one of our women will decide instead to move to wherever whichever Cadet they've taken a liking to eventually settles. Perhaps none of that will happen, and you'll simply be that much more alert tomorrow."

That was odd enough I stood and looked her in the eye as she returned the scrubbing favors. She pulled my head down to lather up my hair, and when her lips came near my ear she whispered, "wholeheartedly screaming 'oh, Goddess' can, in fact, be an act of Worship."

I chuckled, and kept my voice low enough the shower meant no one would hear but her. "I mean, yeah, you guys, but..." Her smile got wider. "Wait, really?" She giggled. "Huh. Good to know. Wait, so it's in my own best interest to, y'know, encourage licentious behavior?"

"Tsk. Licentious. Lewd at worst."

"I thought lewd didn't include, y'know, actual fucking."

She rocked her head back and forth as she drew me under the shower to rinse. "Perhaps not, but those who call out to you in the throes of passion are unlikely to be 'unprincipled'."

"Huh. Is that what that means?"

She just hummed, then reached up to silence me with her mouth. I picked her up and carried her to the Bath, where we continued our completely appropriate for kid viewing necking. In fact, apparently boring by kid standards, since they all managed to declare it either 'boring' or 'silly' at least once.

Really hope that none of them are smart enough to keep saying that when they don't actually think it's boring or silly.

Dreamt of my ladies pantomiming little erotic vignettes, then laughing their assess off after some of the most over the top fake orgasms I'd ever seen. Okay, I'm pretty sure Siobhan and Marie faked theirs. Not absolutely certain. Karen and Tallulah definitely did. It was like a slapstick comedy routine, really. Almost had me laughing hard enough to ignore the fact that I do, in fact, have an odd number of High Priestesses, and the odd Priestess out was partnered with a tentacle for her vignette. Y'know, I could actually get to like that kind of Worship. Gotta be careful, though, because I'm pretty sure Aphrodite thought that at one point too.

In the morning, I woke up early stepped out to the courtyard well before dawn. Well before I had to go looking for them, the Cadets and the hunters joined me. "Okay, ladies and gentlemen. I need to be back here by sunset Thursday. That gives us four days to scout. We're gonna go straight up that big bastard's back trail, as far as we can track it, for two solid days, or until we find something. Everybody got that?" They all confirmed, and I said, "okay then, let's get moving."

Ran all day. Well, ran and jogged, since some of the time the hunters had to slow down to keep track of the big Dire Bear's path. Even something that big doesn't leave footprints in solid stone, and there are a few places at the ridge lines where there's bare rock.

No sign of Dire Bear Central today. Maybe tomorrow.