Dear Diary,

It's amazing how many people seem to think that 'community' is something that needs building in poor neighborhoods. Shit, sometimes I think that's the one thing poor people still have, is a sense of community. I've mentioned my aunties before, but let's be clear; if any of them were blood relations, I couldn't tell you which. I mean, yeah, eventually when the Aunty Collective decided I was old enough to sit down and gossip, I'd figure that shit out, but I also knew sort of instinctively that it didn't matter. Kids are kids, and when your neighbor has to work, you watch their kids. Yeah, maybe if there's some kind of need for it you pay them for 'babysitting', but that payment is just as likely to be something you brought home from a job. Food, cleaning supplies, clothing. Whatever. If it got formalized at all, more than half likely it was to meet the requirements of some kind of government 'working poor' initiative designed to make sure that nobody 'undeserving' ate.

Babysitting, block parties, mutual aid, I never really thought about that kind of thing as 'community' until one of my Social Studies teachers pointed it out. Specifically, they said, 'Poor Rural and Urban people have Communities, Working Suburbanites have Home Owner's Associations'. Of course, when some wag asked him what rich people had, he replied, 'governments'.

Thing is, I don't know what I expected when I came to visit Closer's people, but somehow I didn't expect to find something so similar to what I remembered from back in Camden. I mean, smaller scale, I think. No way is the village holding seventy thousand people. Definitely a lot more guys, although most of them like Little Panther seemed to hang out with other guys rather than in the 'traditional nuclear family' I expected from television back in the day. But if the male to female ratio wasn't one to one, it was close enough I couldn't tell. I mean, I only saw the edges of it, and only from crawling around from house to house through the cellars during the snowstorm.

But those are just details, really. What I found was a community, hunkered down to wait out the worst of the winter. Telling stories, sleeping in, doing maintenance work on tools and clothing, not to mention making new stuff. I also found a community poised to accept the seven of us as putative friends, since our three hunter friends wound up coming back from their hunt way early, loaded with all the meat from that fuckin' moose on top of everything else they'd caught. Really, I think we got more goodwill from the meat than from Silk coming home early. I swear, I have got to set up some kind of a himbo exchange program between the village and Lancaster House. Maybe even elsewhere. Then again, that might wind up single handedly lowering the IQ of the species as a whole. We'd definitely all be prettier though.

So just as the sun set I stepped outside to get some air and spotted a certain Rabbit sitting between the mounds of snow, which I assumed were all houses. I waved, she nodded, and I stepped over to her. She froze for a moment when I didn't bother to trudge through the snow in between, then beckoned me to follow her. I realized really quick that while she'd been between a cluster of houses, she wasn't technically in the middle of the village. By the time we got to the actual center of the village, I'd raised my estimate of its size from a couple hundred to a couple thousand people. I'd also felt a weird change in the air. A glance over my left shoulder showed a dark cloud in the distance. A gently undulating cloud that told me where we'd wandered.

When she turned to face me, nodding to what looked like some natural benches, I said, "M-Space?" as I sat. When she tilted her head, I said, "uh, the spirit world?"

She smiled and nodded. "Perceptive."

I shrugged. "Wouldn't have known if it weren't for," I nodded my head towards the clouds in the distance. "Kinda wanna know how you managed such a smooth transition without Translocating." She shuddered a little, and I held up a hand. "Not tryna pry into your trade secrets or anything. Just curious."

She shook her head. "You wouldn't be one of us if you weren't curious."

"A God?"

She made a face at that, as if the term wasn't quite what she was, but then smiled and said, "A Trickster."

I laughed. "Yeah, I guess I am. Didn't set out to be like this. Just happened." Then I realized what I'd said, and laughed enough it was hard to get out, "guess I kinda fucked myself there."

She just kept up that mild smile. "This is the first time I've met a Trickster who didn't think it was the best possible thing to be."

I shrugged. "Hey, it's better than being a monster, like some of the assholes I've had to put down." She shuddered again, and I said, "hey, you've been nothing but polite and friendly. Shit, even if you're just setting me up for some kinda con, so long as no kids or any of my ladies get hurt I'll probably just laugh that shit off. Eventually. Probably. No guarantees if it involves Hole Spawn stink or anything close to that."

"Hole Spawn?"

I nodded. "From what I've gathered, hybrids of the big Dragon in the Chesapeake and bottom feeders like crabs and catfish."

She looked more than a little disturbed by that. "But... the great Dragon of the Chesapeake died hundreds of winters ago."

"Yeah, death didn't seem to slow it down all that much."

She froze again, a look off horror clawing its way onto her face, then turned almost unwillingly to look at the cloud of my tentacles hovering above the eastern horizon. "Is..."

I laughed, the sound startling her. "Nah, that's, uh, kinda indirectly why the Dragon isn't a problem any more. Dropped a big metal ship on it from about five miles up. It went splat."

"The ship?"

"The Dragon. It splattered to bits all over the Bay. I kinda keep forgetting to check and make sure it's not pulling itself together or something, but my Trolls haven't said anything, and I kinda suspect they spend a fair amount of their time underwater. Shit, might just want to give them the Bay and call it a day." I looked over to where Rabbit just stared at me, still looking kind of horrified.

I watched as she looked back and forth between me and my tentacles a couple times. I saw it in her eyes when something went click. Guess well honed Trickster survival instincts do occasionally beat Blend. "That's you."

I very carefully slouched a little without moving very much at all. "Yeah. That's me."

"I want very much to flee, but fear that you will give chase."

I shrugged. "Not gonna lie, following you here I liked the view, but not so much I'd force the issue if you so clearly weren't into it."

She snorted despite herself. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

"Hey, I'm also not gonna lie and say I've never eaten anyone. At least one of them sorta deliberately, but the other option was letting a little girl who never deserved to be hurt stay dead."

"Stay dead?"

I sighed. "One of the first hints that I got that I was," here I just nodded at the mass of my tentacles on the horizon, "was helping a healer bring a friend back from an untimely death. So yeah, I do that now and then." I stopped and thought about it, glancing away and giving her an opportunity to bolt if she wanted. "Mostly kids now that I think about it." Then I chuckled. "Hell, with all the kids in Calverton, I'd say 'overwhelmingly kids'."

"You save the young? What about the old?"

I sighed. "The only one I know of who was really old wasn't down for it. She was ready for the afterlife, so I carried her there."

"She couldn't find her own way?"

"There's an ocean in the way. Also, dunno, maybe folks out here in the," I very carefully edited the word 'sticks', "country can find their own way, but City folk tend to need a guide. This side can be a little tricky if you're not used to it."

She thought about that. "I suppose."

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Y'know, you showed up, then led me here, and I really do have something I want to ask you about, but I kinda thought you had some questions for me?"

She shook her head. "Not so much questions. Just bidding you welcome, perhaps introducing you to someone, since you seemed to take Silk in stride, yet something tells me you could and would put him in his place were he less..."

"Less Silk?"

She laughed. "Just so." She turned to the side of the town furthest from where we'd come in and called out, "she's here."

Now, I'd meant what I said about Rabbit earlier, but only in a kind of casual way. She was cute, in a kind of almost androgynous way, black hair pulled mostly up under a cap today, wearing leather pants that looked more like organic jeans than painted on, her outfit one that said, 'I'm dressed for cold weather' rather than 'I'm here to party' or 'I'm dressed to survive the blizzard that's just barely ended'. The woman who straight up vaulted over one of the houses like it wasn't no thing was something else entirely. Moccasins of the dainty variety where Rabbit had on sensible almost-boots. A skirt which at first looked to be above the knee, but settled to mid-calf after she landed, but clearly slit high enough to show plenty of thigh. Dressed for Spring, in the 'mating season' sense. Long legs, nice understated curves, classic almost-handsome beautiful face, long straight black hair that flowed all the way down to mid-thigh. She strode over to where the two of us sat, looking haughty and maybe a little bit full of herself.

Also tense enough to nearly snap herself apart, although I wasn't sure why.

"Hey there. My name's Tabitha. What's yours?"

She shot me a look, and somehow I knew that what came out of her mouth next was being translated by my Blend, and was also not her actual 'name', even in the sense that Rabbit called herself Rabbit. "Lily."

"Good to meet you, Lily. I hear you're a friend of Rabbit's?"

She looked at Rabbit, who gave her a surreptitious nod, then looked back at me. "We're... cousins."

I have no idea why the woman felt she needed to lie to me, but she was so bad at it I almost couldn't accuse her of lying. Like, she was saying things that weren't objectively true, maybe, but her delivery was so bad I knew they weren't true, and I can't even consider that lying, really. "Cool! I'm just here visiting our friend Closer and his buddies Panther and Silk. Thinking about bringing the family in to meet them tonight. You gonna be around for a bit?"

She looked at me, looked at Rabbit, then looked back to me. "Perhaps."

"Okay. Well. It's cool meeting you." I turned to Rabbit. "If it's not too much of an imposition, could I ask you something, maybe?"

"So long as you don't think we're bound to answer."

I shook my head. "Oh, hell no. Just asking maybe for some information about someone who left Rich Man's Port. She's my Foster-Daughter's sister, and both her sister and her mom miss her. She left after a bit of a fight with her mom, and for all they know she's lying dead in a ditch somewhere, and we'd really like to find her." I didn't go into how I'd tried to scry on her, and how my cranial rectal inversion made it really seem like she had some defenses up, which meant she wasn't dead. I hoped.

"A lost daughter? I'm not certain what we could do to help, but I think we will if we can. Right?"

Lily blinked once, then said, "was a man involved?"

I shrugged. "I think her brother might have stirred some shit up, got them fighting or kept them fighting longer than they would have normally. He was kind of a shit."

"Was?"

"My fiancée gutted him."

For the first time I saw a smile on Lily's face. "I think I'd like to meet this fiancée of yours."

"I could arrange that," I turned to Rabbit, "if you don't mind?" She shrugged, and I thought, Marie, come join me? Careful, it's cold.

A second later my Murder Mittens showed up, and shit got very, very tense. Lily and Rabbit both froze, and I'm talking 'no moving, no breathing, no blinking' froze. Before anything could go horribly wrong, I pulled Marie into my lap, rustling her Maid's uniform as I did, and said, "Marie, this is Rabbit and Lily. Lilly, Rabbit, this is my fiancée Marie. The one who gutted Adrienne's brother Lindsey."

Rabbit relaxed. Not much, not all the way, but she moved from 'I am a sculpture' to 'I am a small mammal in the presence of an apex predator who has inexplicably chosen not to eat me'. Lily, on the other hand, shook her head. "Did you say Adrienne?" I nodded. "Is that a common name among your people?"

"Not really. You knew an Adrienne from Rich Man's Port?"

"She said not where she was from, but she looked a little like one of your people. A bit skinnier than most."

I nodded. "Yeah. Sidhe tend that way. Honestly, I think she's stockier than her mom. But... red hair, freckles?"

"That sounds like her."

I stamped down on my excitement. "Do you know where she is then?"

She shook her head. "Sadly, I cannot help you with that. Only that I met her, I think shortly after she fled. It was some ten winters ago."

"That sounds about right. Any idea where she went? Even a vague direction?"

Lily shrugged. "We spoke about that for a bit. She asked about the Spirit Lands to the West, and seemed put off by some of what I told her. She seemed ready to return to the coast, although not to where she'd come from. She couldn't return to her mother's house, nor would she go to any of her mother's enemies, but she spoke of people elsewhere along the coast who she might be able to join."

I sighed. "Well, at least we know she didn't wind up dead in a ditch before getting this far. Also, knowing she didn't intend to head West gives us a little more information than we had. Thanks, Lily." I held out a hand, and she stepped forward and clasped it without thinking. Then she froze again as Marie chuckle-purred. "Oh, cut that out, Marie." Turning to Lilly, I gave her hand a quick squeeze then said, "sorry, she's got a sense of humor, but she's not going to eat you."

"Maybe."

"Mittens!"

"Hot."

At that point I laughed. "Okay, okay, yeah, she's smokin' hot, yeah, but could you maybe not cause a diplomatic incident by implying that you're going to literally consume her when you're trying to imply that you'd fuck her if she's inclined?" I turned to Lily again and shook my head. "Sorry. I've been away and I think somebody's missing me."

Mittens shook her head, then shrugged. "Tall."

At that point I realized that Lily really was kinda looming a little. Not Marie tall, definitely, but well over six feet. "You know I could do that too, right?" She shrugged, and I turned back to Lily. "Anyhow, she's not going to be having you for dinner," here I steamrolled Marie's next comment, "even if she wants to, sorry for the vulgarity but I don't want misunderstandings, fuck you as an after dinner activity." Then I turned back to Marie. "What's gotten into you. Okay, I know, but still. You don't even know if she's into women."

"Spaghetti."

For whatever reason, that got me. I broke down laughing, and Marie followed me. By the time I finished, Lily was sitting next to Rabbit, both of them staring at us. "I think we're gonna be going back in, socializing some more. I dunno, are you two...?"

Rabbit shrugged and nodded, while Lily said, "someone needs to keep Silk in line."

I waved for Rabbit to lead the way, picked Marie up into a princess carry when I stood up, and followed her back, Lily crunching through the snow behind me. My Murder Mittens spent the whole walk back looking over my shoulder, presumably flirting wordlessly. No idea what had gotten into her, but so long as nobody got hurt and everybody agreed, I was cool with it. Lily really was pretty hot. If I weren't on duty and planning on bringing the kids along for the evening, I might even think about joining in.

Wild thinking about it like that, even wilder realizing that Saffron and Siobhan might well join me joining in rather than feeling some kinda way.

When we got to the house, Rabbit walked in like she was family, and Grandmother greeted her by name. She did the same to Lily, but I got that same weird 'translation error' thing happening in the back of my head when she said it. Not my lookout, if she had some kind of privacy thing going on, I wasn't gonna be the one to harsh her mellow about something like that, so long as she didn't pull any really heinous shit. After I introduced Marie, who Grandmother got the tiniest bit wide eyed about at first, but rolled with when, after I set her down, Marie curtsied and said, "Hearth Mother."

Dunno what was up with that, but Grandmother seemed to like it. When things settled from that, but before they got too settled, I said, "I was thinking of bringing my ladies and daughters here for the evening, if it wouldn't be an imposition?" When she paused, I said, "they're a bit of a handful, but mostly just because there are a lot of them."

Grandmother smiled, but a little sadly, and said, "we've certainly enough to go around, and if they're all smaller we can all bundle together in the evening, but I'm not sure we've prepared enough for dinner for..."

"Nine more, after the two of us."

Grandmother winced, and the moment she did Marie disappeared. A moment later two of her reappeared with what looked like a whole roast side of beef. Grandmother's jaw might have dropped open a moment, but then she laughed and said, "that will certainly do. Finch, Dandelion, Sunflower, help her put that in the kitchen."

Kitten? You mind bringing the kids to meet the neighbors?

I wondered where Marie hared off to with dinner. We'll be along presently. Should the children wear their cold weather gear?

Probably. If I know our kids, as soon as the snow stops falling they're gonna be out playing in it.

A few minutes of chatting with Grandmother about beef versus bison later, with her having had both, but not very much of either, since both were apparently imports for the little town, Saffron showed up behind me holding Daya and Isnomi. Siobhan showed a moment later holding David, and I felt Marie drop the bigger girls into the mud room a moment later. "Thank you for inviting us into your home, Grandmother."

"Saffron, Siobhan, Isnomi, Daya, David, this is Grandmother. Grandmother, this is my wife Saffron, my Concubine Siobhan, and my daughters Isnomi, Daya, and David. Maze, Ria, Alex, and Lindsey are," I raised my voice just a little, pitching it toward the mud room, "getting their outdoor clothes off at the moment."

Siobhan took that moment to say, "oh, I should help the little ones with that."

Grandmother just looked at me. "Big family."

I shrugged. "I like kids."

Saffron laughed. "Don't I remember you saying 'crotch goblins give you shit all the time'?"

"Yeah, but that's not their fault."

Grandmother laughed and said, "true. Come. Sit. Let's talk."

Turned out, especially once Closer got back, that Grandmother, Closer, and Sparrow were Mana Shaping nerds just like my Kitten. On the other hand, our four older girls showed themselves to be remarkably good guests, going to help Marie and Grandmother's two littler girls with dinner. I just sat there and helped the little ones with making food bite sized while they talked nerd stuff deep into the evening, until we all settled in for the night.

Okay, 'bite sized' for Menace was the whole fuckin' cow, but you know what I mean.