Dear Diary,

"Ecstasy is euphoric,

It will distract you from stuff,

Make sure you don't drink and drive."

Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Ecstasy

Yeah, I think that might be the furthest toward 'careful with your Ecstasy' I go. Okay, I might think of something else, but I'm not, like, planning on it. Even here I see people doing shit like Siobhan did, denying themselves because they think it's for the greater good somehow. Which, yeah, sometimes it might be, but that shit gets out of hand, fast. Especially when you get people who are just sucking up money and power with no sense of satiation, counting on the people they're sucking it from to keep tightening their belts endlessly.

Also, I get that this is a callback to some of the warnings about Passion, but that kinda fits. People find their Ecstasy, their euphoric state, their dopamine rush and sometimes even their serotonin streams from their Passions. So the same kinds of potential problems apply. Might need to put something in about not harshing other's joy. Freedom to waggle your elbows around ends at somebody else's nose kind of stuff. Which ought to be common sense, but as I may have mentioned before, whether I remember it or not, common sense isn't. At least not if you live in an society bigger than a single village where everybody knows everybody else and has all the same cultural baggage and shared history.

It's like the chimps and the banana ladder. I read about this in class once. English class, just in case you think I was actually using class time to study for that particular class. Honestly, I'm not sure if it was an actual experiment or a just so story, but it's about an experiment with a cage full of chimps. You put a banana on a hook in the ceiling in the middle of the room. You put a stepladder under the banana. Whenever any chimp goes up the stepladder, you spray down all the chimps with fire hoses. Like, hard enough to knock that chimp down, hard enough to knock all the others around. You keep that up long enough, and eventually any time any chimp goes for the step ladder, the other chimps beat the living shit out of them. Once you get to that point, you replace a chimp. The new chimp is gonna go for the banana, and the other chimps are gonna beat the shit out of them. When the new chimp is fully on board with 'beat the shit out of anybody going near the ladder', you swap out another chimp. Then another, and another, until no chimp has ever been sprayed with the fire hose, but all of them will beat the living shit out of any chimp that goes for the ladder.

That's what common sense is. Shit everybody in a culture believes without knowing why. And if instead of replacing one chimp at a time, you move those chimps in with chimps that haven't been indoctrinated, there's gonna be a war, because the other chimps are gonna be 'oh, shit, free banana, get some', because to a chimp without that training, 'see tasty treat, get, eat' is common sense. Where to the hosed chimps, beating the shit out of anybody going for the banana is common sense. And chimps are fully capable of going to war over shit like that.

So I gotta make sure that if something is clear and obvious to me, I put it in the Doctrine, because Common Sense? Isn't.

And that's entirely before me being from an entirely different world, y'know?

So yesterday after bath time our curvy local Brewer decided to take Murder Mittens up on her unspoken offer. I wound up kinda surprised when I got the free full spectrum play by play, not just by the free head porn, but because I really wasn't jealous in the slightest. Shit I wasn't even envious, because at one point something looked kinda fun and I might have errantly thought, ooh, I wanna try that, and a few moments later I was. But honestly? Even if that hadn't happened, I wasn't upset. Like, it wasn't a competition. Them being together took nothing away from me. It was just... my Murdre Mittens being her best Murder Mittens self.

Right around then I looked up into her eyes and said, "is this how you three feel about me?"

Funny. Three months ago I'd feel some kinda way about all three of them laughing at me like that. But... It really was funny, because apparently that's exactly how they felt about me. I mean, maybe not exactly, because I'm me and she's her, but... the thought of either of my ladies with Devorah, or Lachlan, or anybody else did not fill me with dread. Anticipation, maybe. Surprise, like an unexpected treat. But nothing awful. All I had to do was let go of that jealousy.

Even if jealousy was 'common sense' back where I'd come from.

Dreamt my now normal lovely lady food dreams. Oddly satisfying.

All day yesterday I spent helping the ladies clear the fields around the base of our Tower Hill. As we cleared away the trees and the boulders, not to mention shifting dirt to eliminate some of the tiny hillocks those boulders had created, I realized that our little valley let out onto a broad valley running northeast to southwest. Around about noon, I pinged Saffron and thought, hey Kitten? How far our are we gonna clear? Because I don't see most of our ladies as, y'know, farmers.

No?

Not really. Gardeners. Hunters, maybe. Gatherer types, sure. But I don't see them tilling fields like that.

They might surprise you, but... it's a good idea to keep some portion of our lands wild. Could you find Anna and bring her to the top of the tower?

You got it, Kitten. It took me longer than I thought it would. Unlike my ladies or Karen, I couldn't seem to step right to Anna. Oddly enough, I managed to step to Devorah's general vicinity. She was out with a couple Maenads and Chloe, still hunting up beehives. Anna wasn't with them, but Chloe told me she'd been in the South House, working on the looms. After a few minutes wandering through the first floor of the House, which had been blocked off into working areas, a common area, and a big assed kitchen, I found Anna working on building a big fuckin' loom that seemed like it would take up a big chunk of the room it was in when it was done. Like, not nearly all of it, but the thing was wide enough to do like a two yard wide tapestry. Or bolt of cloth or whatever.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Speaking of bolts, when I hopped Anna to the top of the tower, Saffron was there waiting with one. A bright glowing blue one, and a crossbow. Not the fancy one I'd seen at the Academy, but a nicely made plain one obviously following the same basic design. She handed the crossbow to Anna, who took it clumsily, folded a bit out from the side, and said, "move that back and forth."

Anna proceeded to work the tension lever, pulling the crossbow's wire 'string' back, putting more and more tension into the stave. Eventually, she couldn't move it, and Saffron leaned in to slip the tension level back in place. Then she laid that glowing blue bolt into the bow with a whisper of 'no showing off', handed it back to Anna, and Shaped some Mana into what looked almost like a megaphone. "All women working outside the house, please return to the base of the tower for your own safety."

That got them moving, although surprisingly not in any kind of panicked rush. I guess they figured if there was a clear and present danger, they'd be hearing Maenad roars and Mana Blades slicing shit up. When they'd gathered at the base of Tower Hill, she called out, "Please watch the tree line to see where this bolt lands." Then she turned to Anna. "In your own time."

Anna blinked, but took the bow, pointed it out toward the trees, and squeezed. The bolt flew out almost too fast to see, disappearing into the trees maybe twenty feet up in the air. Do you mind encouraging them, Goof?

Sure, I can play cheerleader.

"The one who finds the bolt and marks where it landed gets a kiss from the Champion!"

As I goggled a bit at Saffron, Anna turned to her and said, "I seem to be at a bit of a handicap in that race."

Saffron took us by the hands, stepped us down to the floor below, and asked, "I didn't think you wanted one?" Anna shrugged. Saffron turned to me and said, "she's right, it really isn't fair. What do you think?"

Now, I'd never really looked at Anna and thought 'ooh, got to get me some of that', but in the first place, she wasn't really unattractive, and in the second you can't call yourself a girl kisser and not kiss girls when given a clear invitation like that. "I figure if she wants one she deserves one at least as much as whoever finds that bolt. She did fire it after all." I turned to Anna. "Well, did you want one?"

In answer she just smiled, closed her eyes, and tilted her head back a little. I stepped up, cupped her face in my hands, and quietly said, "say the word, and it's yours. I don't want to do this to someone if it's not what they want."

"Yes, I..." I'd heard all I needed to, and gently set my lips to hers. I took my time with it, but kept it sweet and light, and she didn't push things further than that, although after the first little bit she put her hands on my biceps, almost like she had to hold herself up. When I pulled away, she blinked a bit. "I... I half expected you to take me right here, Champion."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Kiss. Besides, it's like three in the afternoon."

Saffron barked out a laugh. "Like that's ever stopped you before. Or even slowed you down."

I rolled my eyes. "Besides, along with all that stuff we talked about with Devorah still applying, Anna never said she wanted to." Suddenly suspicious, I looked back at Anna. "You... you didn't want to, did you?"

She smiled up at me, the smile melting into a smirk. "I hadn't really thought about that. Not my preference, despite it being so prevalent in the hideaways. But," her hands kneaded my biceps. "Would it be too forward of me to hope you're not completely occupied at the House's next Revel?"

Before I could answer, Saffron slipped a hand over one of hers. "It absolutely would not, Anna. Not that anyone can guarantee her lack of occupation. She's a very popular choice for such things. She is, in fact, my personal favorite." When Anna tried to pull away, Saffron held her hand where it was. "I didn't say I wouldn't share, Anna. More accepting your compliment regarding my taste, and complimenting yours in turn."

At that point I let my hands slip down to her shoulders, then pulled her into a hug. Saffron joined me, and before we let go I heard Murder Mittens in my head. Found it.

Marie had not, in fact, been the one to find it. That honor went to Devorah. Of course. Whose kiss was anything but 'sweet', despite how much she tasted of honey. Wound up having to hold her hands behind her back, and still wound up with her legs wrapped around me. Practically had to drag the thirsty wench off me before she used my abs like a kitty scratching post.

These women keep treating me like some kind of supermodel slash action hero, I'm gonna maybe start believing it.

Slept well. Dreamt of ladies feeding me ladies. Maybe even a few of the women showed up? Not sure, because midway through got flashes of Kraken whipping through the ocean, coming up over a cliff into sunlight, racing along the bottom as the surface came closer, running from the surface song of death, running to the Keeper.

Woke up and shook Saffron. Kitten?

She popped upright. Unfortunately, staring at the wall across the room from me. After shaking herself awake, she thought, Tabitha? What's wrong?

I fed her what I remembered of the dream. The sense of urgency, of being chased. She shuddered, but when it finished she quietly said, "I think perhaps today you should visit the Kraken who have remained with the Black Dragon."

So I spent today first getting ready, dressing up in my Holy Garb of Loki, then hopping down to the deck of the Black Dragon, then, after psyching myself up, hopping in the water. Discovered that my need to breathe is less need and more habit. Discovered that my Kraken are not, in fact, Octopi or Squid or Cuttlefish, but Octopi and Squid and Cuttlefish and even some Cephalopods that didn't look quite like any of those. Discovered that despite being more touchy feely huggy than the Homestead women after I've been gone a few days, the Kraken are not exactly loquacious. By sometime in the late afternoon, the only word I'd heard, and by then I'd heard it so many times it had gone from sounding like a word, to a name, to a not-even-a-word, and back again?

Chosen. Over and over, each one who touched me, the big ones who handed me around like a plushie, the little ones who writhed around my hands and feet and even a few who came up to look me right in the eye and whisper, every one of them whispered that to me as they touched me. Chosen. With their minds. With their motions. With the patterns that rippled across their skins.

Then, late in the day, as the sun approached the horizon, I finally got the bright idea to Mimic one of the biggest ones there, one of the ones that didn't quite seem quite Octopus or Squid or Cuttlefish. Man, I did not know that cephalopods could squee. At that point, though, I finally had all the right body parts to ask the question I'd been trying to figure out how to ask. Sort of. Keeper?

A kind of hush rippled through them, but more like I'd said something profound than, y'know, farted. The hush rippled out, then the word rippled back to me, echoing through the crowd that had gathered around me, and with those echoes came images. Wooden planks. Iron chains. A heavy looking wooden box chained to the sandy bed of a river. I reached out to Saffron, sharing the image with her. Kitten?

I know where that is, love. Take your time, say your farewells, we will rendezvous with your Kraken scouts on the morrow.