Dear Diary,

"Do your best making choices,

Don't count on second chances,

And clean up all your messes."

Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Redemption

Yeah, gotta start with that, or else you know some people are gonna wind up just fucking spamming bullshit, assuming that they get to try dumb shit that never had a chance of working as many times as they want, and nobody's gonna stop them from trying over and over and over again, even if the steaks taste like shit and the game is hardly playable. I totally get why there were six copies of it at the Goodwill store. Only thing I've ever un-shoplifted. I couldn't even, like, try to get a refund or anything. Didn't want to burn it, because I worried about the fumes being toxic. Trust me, when you live in Camden and you're worried about the fumes from something being toxic? That shit is awful.

Honestly, that's gotta be one of the biggest fucking differences between people at the top and the bottom back there. Probably the same here, maybe. Folks in the middle got shit they want to keep, so they're worried about losing it. People way down at the very bottom don't, so they're willing to roll the fuckin' dice. Of course, the dice are fuckin' loaded, but now and then somebody manages to make it big. But anybody who doesn't just crashes and burns, hard. If they're lucky, they wind up in a pine box. If they're not, they wind up on the street as somebody's money maker. The folks on top, though? They fuck up and somebody else pays the bill. Or they pay it but they've got enough in the bank for another twenty tries. Or, because the dice are fuckin' loaded the other way for them, they hit it big the first time.

Shit, I don't even really begrudge them the win. I just wish they didn't try to make it sound like it's because they're smart, or skilled, or holy fuck does it piss me off when they try to make out like they won because they're somehow morally superior. Look, motherfucker, you got lucky being born to rich parents, you got lucky finding an idea that worked, and you got lucky that it actually took off and, y'know, actually worked. Don't give me that bullshit about how you 'worked hard' to get where you are. I knew dozens of people working three jobs, sixteen hours a day, six days a week. None of them even got fuckin' medical benefits from work, because legally they're not working quite enough hours at any one job. Not that they don't want to, but nobody who hires people from the hood does. Meanwhile the people they're working for somehow consider sitting in a fuckin' air conditioned office playing with spreadsheets 'hard work'.

Yeah, I'm fuckin' salty as shit about that. Not saying none of the people who hit it big work hard. A lot of them do. A few of them don't even fuck over the people working for them. But for every idea that somebody had that they worked their ass off for, ten, twenty, thirty more people had the same idea, worked their asses off, and didn't get lucky, didn't go viral, didn't make it big.

So yeah, second chances. Everybody deserves one, sure. You fuck up, you clean up the mess you made, you get in line for your next go at it. But when I say everybody, I mean everybody, not just the rich and powerful. Fuck, if somebody's first chance they screwed everyone they met over as hard as they could and called it 'smart', and they're all lined up to try that shit again? Why the fuck would I want that asshole to get a second chance? They're just gonna fuck everything up for everybody more. Odds are they didn't even clean up after themselves the first time.

Yeah, I'm in a mood. Fuck off, I died yesterday. It hurt. Scared the fuck out of me, too. I think somewhere between being jump scared by a piece of storage furniture and burning the soles of my feet on turret number two I pissed myself. I didn't know anything right then except pain and fear and a deep and abiding need to get somewhere safe, somewhere maybe somebody could protect me, could make the pain stop.

I found that when I found Mom. Yeah, some part of me got that the person I still clung to hours later wasn't the woman whose hoo-hah I slipped out of way back in the day, but most of me did not give the slightest shit about that. She looked like Mom. She sounded like Mom. She felt like Mom. She smelled like Mom. So obviously she was a duck. Which made me wonder if Loki had a corkscrew penis.

"I have no clue why you would wonder about that." Credit where it's due, he never stopped stroking my hair. Neither did Mom.

"Ever seen a duck penis?" I muttered into Mom's chest.

"I can't say that I have, no."

I nodded. "Corkscrews. Like three times as long as the duck."

"How... how is that even possible?"

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I shrugged. "Hydraulics. They mate in midair. So they gotta line up on the she-duck and just, 'pshew', and hope they get the tip in or some shit, I guess."

"I have no idea if you're lying to me or not, I have no idea how to check without actually becoming a she-duck and romancing a he-duck, and I cannot think of any result of that experiment that doesn't end with me filled with regrets."

"And duck penis."

He snorted. "Tabitha..."

"Duck spooge too, probably, unless you're really good at curving the he-ducks mid-sexing."

He finally stopped petting my hair, simultaneously chuckling and shuddering so hard I felt it shake the floor. "How?"

"How what?"

"How are you able to joke so soon after running to us in tears?"

I shrugged. "Defense mechanism. Shitty coping skill. Bleak sense of humor. Take your pick."

"Will you be well, daughter?" Mom asked, loosening her grip on me.

In response I clung to her harder than before. "No. No, I will not."

She just pulled me close again, holding me as I broke down again. I don't know how long I stood there, sat there, because eventually she sat down and pulled me into her lap. I know some time later I realized she'd sat in Loki's lap, and his arms encircled us both.

Eventually Siobhan gasped, breaking the spell. "Tabitha? Pardon, Lord Loki, Lady Sigyn. Is Tabitha...?"

I shook my head, but pushed myself up enough to see her. I'm not sure what I expected, but her face had nearly as many tear stains as my own, I think. "Hey Siobhan."

She leaned toward me, every inch of her body lined with tension. I held out my arms, and she practically leapt into them. "I... we... I thought you were dead."

I found myself running my hands over her hair, not unlike Sigyn and Loki had done with me. "Where are the others?"

She opened her mouth, but couldn't speak. A moment later she fed me images. Marie, her hands blackened, racing for the tree line on all fours. Saffron, cradling a body as it fell to dust, then sitting in a round stone pit, her arms around a malformed hunk of metal, rocking back and forth and weeping.

"Fuck." I wasn't quite sure whether I was doing it right, but as loud as my mental voice would go I 'shouted', Priestesses! To me!

I didn't have time to brace myself as first Saffron, then Marie slammed into me. They both clung to me, pressing their faces to me. weeping with as much joy and relief as they had been shame and sorrow.

A moment later a redhead in a stripper's version of a wedding gown dropped into the room, with what looked like three-foot-long black cored lightsabers extending from her wrists. "My Goddess! You..." The blades of light slid back into her wrists, and she looked a little sheepish. "Apologies, I thought..."

"Come here, child." Loki's tone brooked no disagreement, and the redhead stepped over to us. He lay a hand on her shoulder and said, "you need not apologize for anything, Karen Smith, Highest Priestess of my daughter Tabitha Diaz. She called, and you came, ready to do battle."

She shrugged. "I... she sounded a little stressed. I couldn't think of anything else that would cause her that much distress." She shook her head, taking in the dirty water dripping from Saffron and the blood, mud, and forest detritus coating Marie. "Did I arrive too late?"

I may be a dumbass, but I can catch a verbal ball when it's pitched underhand like Dad did. "It's okay, Karen. The, uh... curse?"

"Did you break it?"

I shook my head. "We were trying to let me... like, amnesiac me like I am now, talk with curse-suppressed me. So she could maybe show me how to do some of the shit she does, so I'm more than a liability."

"You are not a liability!" Saffron half shouted, half sobbed.

I pulled her closer, making Siobhan squeak a little. "At the moment, I kinda am," I shrugged. "You can't tell me with all these scars I never wound up on the injured reserve list? Like, at least once?"

Still sniffling, she shook her head. Right about then Marie growled out, "Thrice."

"What? No, she's not been..."

Marie growled, then said, "Plague. Phileo. Amsterdam." She paused, and for the first time I heard something other than certainty in her voice. "me"

"The fuck? Was I stupid enough to throw down with you?" Marie shook her head, burying her face in my shoulder.

Siobhan whispered, "I think she's referring to the time you saved her from the Undead in Calverton. You," she paused, tensing, "died then too."

"Shit, I've died four times now?"

Something resembling a snort of disbelief came out of Loki, followed by a chuckle, and suddenly everybody in the pile was laughing. "Daughter, were we to count the number of times one of your Co-Located selves died, I doubt we'd have enough fingers and toes among the lot of us."

That hit me. Kinda hard. "Shit. Fuck. Did... did it hurt like that every time?"

He sighed. "From what you tell me, most times there have been more than just the two of you. Also, for every case I can think of, you've been enraged. I've heard that cushions one from shocks. I suppose it might do so to that ultimate shock."

"You suppose? How many times has it happened to you?"

Loki sighed. "Daughter, to the best of my knowledge, you are the only one to survive such a trauma."

Right about then I felt the sun dip below the horizon. "Wait... how did you two get so fucked up so fast?"

"So... so fast?"

Yeah, clueful I'm not inherently, but sometimes I can catch one when it's that obvious. "Shit. How long have I been here?"

Saffron just buried her face in my chest and muttered, "I've wept the clock round, love."

I looked at Loki. "Is there some way you can clean us all up?"

Saffron looked up at me. "You're worried about that now?"

I shrugged. "Not so much about the mess, but about how much worse it's gonna hit the kids if we show up after a day away looking like we got the shit kicked out of us."