Dear Diary,

I've never been the sort to champion ignorance, but sometimes lately I could kick myself when I ask questions I need the answers to, but also don't want the answers to.

More chill dreaming last night. At one point I levered myself up to see over the rocky outcroppings I'd propped myself up on. Beyond them lay a nearly flat hilltop, a series of little rivulets running from another set of outcroppings on the far side of the hill, merging into a cute little stream that ran south until it emptied into a protrusion of the lake to the east of me. For a while I just kinda pondered the cosmos as psychedelic tadpoles wriggled around the bits of me I dangled in the lake. Staring West, I didn't notice false dawn before I woke up.

For a bit I didn't really grok what had woken me. I mean, I figured out pretty quick that the ultimate cause had to be the menace, because Saffron, Marie, and I lay a tangled cuddle puddle on the floor, but I heard somebody shuffling their way across the floor. I lay there with my eyes closed, just listening, trying to figure out her plan before she knew I was awake. The noises moved vertically, so I assumed she'd crawled up the side of the bed until she kept going up, and I realized I'd gotten turned around while sleeping; she'd crawled up to the side of her cradle. Impressive bit of scaling for the rug rat, since while we'd padded the sides into a gentle slope to prevent her from self-destruction when she inevitably climbed out, it got a little steep at the top.

She went silent, then I heard the tiniest of baby whispers. "Fa." Some rustling from cradle-rail height, then nothing, then a whump at floor level. Maybe the tiniest, most suppressed baby giggles I'd ever heard, followed by more climbing up the side of the cradle, then another, "fa," followed by rustle, silence, then whump. After a few more cycles like that, I caught another tiny giggle, this time from top-of-cradle height, then a bit more rustling preceded a mothering great whump. Marie and I both shot upright, staring at the gaping armoire door where it had impacted with the wall. Even Saffron woke up, although she'd pushed herself up from prone and stared muzzily at the opposite wall.

Isnomi perched atop her cradle's rail, the soft red rope we'd used to tie the armoire shut still falling from where she'd grasped it in her chubby little hand. Isnomi had her diaper on, still adhering to our deal, and another diaper sort of covered her head, but it took me a moment to really understand what she'd bundled herself in, nearly as thoroughly as Marie's towel from last night, except... bright crimson... silk...

The Menace had wrapped The Dress around herself! I started to move, but she held one hand up imperiously and shouted, "NA!" Then she spoiled it by giggling. Although I suppose she hadn't really spoiled it exactly, since Marie and I both froze, staring at her. Louder than she'd screamed 'na', she shrieked out, "FA!" and fucking leapt straight out into midair, arms and legs stretched out in flying squirrel position, crimson silk streaming behind her, giggle-shrieking at the top of her lungs. She made it an impressive eighteen inches or so out into the room before whumping into the floor. Okay, impressive for a six.. well, shit. Eight month old? Nine month old?

As Isnomi, impeded by her own entirely uninhibited shrieking giggles, tried to get to something resembling an upright position, I poked Saffron. "How old is Isnomi exactly?"

"Nine munf." She worked her mouth a little, making those little lip smacking noises people made trying to wet their lips. "Nine months. Her birthday is the twenty third of Loush. Do I even want to turn around?"

"If you don't you're going to miss the..."

Isnomi managed to get herself more or less upright, threw her hands in the air and shrieked, "DAHDA!" Then she fell over backwards giggling.

"Never mind, you missed it. How far ahead of, like, a human kid should she be?"

Saffron rolled around and up into a tailor seat, shrugging as she answered, "I didn't have Inspect when I bedded her father. Not that it would be legal to point it at someone just to evaluate them as a potential bed partner anyhow."

I shrugged. "Might have done it myself to see if I wanted to have a kid with somebody."

She cocked her head and looked up at me. "You think I wanted to get pregnant?"

I shrugged again. "I mean, I can't see you getting pregnant accidentally."

She shook her head, bowing it as she did. "Have I complained vociferously about your insatiability yet?"

Three, two, one, we have comprehension. "Holy shit, you just banged some dude to get laid and wound up pregnant? Didn't you use protection?"

She looked up at me quizzically. "He might not have been my choice of permanent companion, but he wasn't a potential rapist."

"I meant birth control."

She shrugged. "I'm as aware of my cycle as any woman, but that's not exactly a perfect method."

I just kinda stared at her, disbelief filling my brain. I let it, because it didn't leave any room for the ever-simmering rage that wanted to push its way through. "The rhythm method. Shit, I thought you'd have, y'know, herbs or magic spells or some shit like that. The rhythm method? Seriously? You know we have a word for people who use the rhythm method where I come from?"

She looked at me, honest curiosity clear in her question. "Really? What do you call them?"

"Parents."

She snorted out something like a laugh at that, shaking her head as she did. Then she froze. "You didn't mean the rhythm method. I suspect from everything you've told me, what you've shown me, that you weren't in the habit of using abortifacient herbs or compounds. Explain."

My turn to shrug. "Take your pick. I mean, yeah, I'm not a huge fan of the morning after pill, or straight up aborting a kid, but," I cudgeled my brain for the list from that long ago Health class I'd mostly read novels during. I'd still aced that shit, an uncommon enough result for me. But, y'know, sex ed. 'You had my attention, now you have my interest' and all that shit. I counted on my fingers, although I couldn't remember how many there were supposed to be. "Let's see. Birth control pills. Diaphragms. Sponges. Uh, IUD's. Condoms. Shit, you've got to have condoms. If you haven't learned the contraceptive uses of taking it in the ass I don't know what to tell you. Swallowing works too. Fuck, I know there are some more, but I can't remember them."

"Birth control pills? But not abortifacients?"

"I mean, that's what the morning after Pill is, but regular Pills? They just regulate your cycle and keep you from ovulating."

She sucked on her teeth a moment, her brows drawing down, but then very obviously took herself under control. "You are, as I am well aware, not from around here. So I'll tell you this once. Do not imply that Bag lay eggs."

I sat there, mouth hanging open for an endless moment, just blinking. "Uh... shit. I'm gonna not assume, but that means I gotta ask you some real personal questions."

She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out. Before she could say anything, Isnomi said, "Ma!" We both looked to where she perched on the cradle rail, so she screamed, "FA!" and leapt again. Little less distance, little more height, just as much volume on her shrieking flying squirrel giggle until she whumped into the padded flooring. Saffron stifled a gasp, then reached out and snagged her by The Dress, towing her in and snuggling her despite her efforts to remain unsnuggled. After a minute of wrestling, she flipped her over and faceplanted her on a tit, then looked back up at me, her earlier vaguely offended, self-controlled look replaced by a grin as goofy as anything I'd ever worn.

"Ask away, Goof. If you say something particularly offensive, I may throw pillows at you."

"Okay. Dudes. Like, all of them, spurt out spooge when they finish, right?"

She giggled a little, "They ejaculate, yes. Usually white, a little pearlescent. I've heard that Zeus' glows, but that might just be something he told someone trying to bed them."

I shook my head at the Riker of the Gods, then at myself for being so unfair. Riker never raped anybody. "Okay. So, women bleed every month?"

She shrugged, "Mostly. I've read that not all Heroes do. Maenads," she paused and turned to Marie, who'd taken our conversation as time to get dressed.

Marie said, "Year," then waved for Saffron to hand over Isnomi. When she had the Menace in hand, she began unraveling The Dress despite Isnomi's best efforts to remain ensconced.

"So yes, in general, women bleed when their cycle is due."

"Okay. So I'm not one hundred percent sure, because so much stuff is so fucked up here, but women are most fertile at the other end of the cycle, right?"

She nodded, shrugging her shoulders a little as well. "Not precisely opposite, but close enough."

Before I could say anything else Marie, who had not only succeeded in extricating Isnomi from The Dress, but hung it back up and removed her diaper helmet as well, interrupted with, "Before."

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

I shrugged at that. "The once a year thing might come into that, I dunno, but thing is? Humans do have eggs. They're produced by glands just above the uterus, and they join with the sperm in the spooge to make babies."

Saffron just looked at me. "Eggs."

I nodded. "Yep."

"Which, I assume, are also white? With shells?"

I sighed. "Shit. How do I explain this to somebody who doesn't... wait, do you know cell theory?"

She glanced around. "I assume from context you're not talking about our room?"

I sighed. "Yeah, no, that would be way too handy. Um... do you know what a microscope is?"

She puzzled at that for a second. "Small target?"

I blinked. "That's surprisingly in the right direction. It's a device for looking at small shit. Really small shit. Like, you know the size of dot you'd make if you tapped a mana pen on a paper without putting mana into it?"

She shrugged, "I can imagine."

"Like, shit that size is the biggest stuff you'd look at with a microscope. Also, that's about how big human eggs are, and they're pretty much transparent."

She closed her eyes, sighed deeply, and then a weird kind of smirk slipped onto her face. Without opening her eyes, she said, "I will take your word for it, although we will talk about all this later. One question first, though."

"Sure. Shoot."

"All humans?"

I grinned, finally getting her point, "I mean, shit, pretty much everything that does sexual reproduction, but yeah, all humans. Even the fuckin' Dan."

My Kitten had a whole collection of Evil Grins by this point. She slipped a new one on and asked, "can you keep all of this to yourself until we prove that last bit. Please?"

"I mean, I'll sure as shit try. I wanna see Larry's face."

She leaned over, and we lost a bit of time to tonsil hockey. By the time we finished, Marie had Isnomi over the chamber pot, hands over her head, saying, "dahda!" I looked at Marie, who nodded.

"That's three days! Very good! Only four more!" Her pout wasn't as bad as the first day, but she still wasn't happy. A few moments later Marie had her clean, diapered, and mounted up on her cart.

Saffron looked up at Marie and asked, "can you keep her all day?"

Marie smiled and nodded, Isnomi chanting, "ca! Ca! Ca!" in the background, slapping the front of the cart as she did.

"Thank you, Marie." Marie closed the door as she strode out of the room, and Saffron turned back to me. "So you had pills that would make women sterile?"

"I mean, temporarily, yeah. I heard about some people having long term problems when they decided to have kids, but that was, like, babies dying rare."

Absolute blind rage flashed across her face so fast I thought I'd imagined it. She noticed I'd seen it and put a hand on my knee. "My fury is not with you, Goof."

I remembered something, and, "oh, shit," just slipped out.

She chuckled, "just remember you Just Happened to someone?"

I shook my head, rolling my eyes a little. "I'm still weirded out how we're married and all and you're still so casual about that."

"I married you knowing how likely you were to Just Happen to someone eventually. Marrying you and expecting you to stop Just Happening would be stupid, and," she stopped, because I pulled her in and kissed her again.

When I let her go, I said, "you try not to be stupid." Never thought I'd be the one finishing her sentences, but here we are.

"Goof."

"Anyway, yeah, really short version? Where I'm from people don't have kids unless they want them. Or they're too poor for birth control. Or they're stupid. Or uneducated. Okay, people have unwanted kids all the fuckin' time, really, but they really shouldn't, and don't have to. Wait, don't you guys have condoms?"

She got a really weird look on her face. Half affectionate grin, half deep, abiding fury. "They're expensive. I've always thought artificially so, since there's not enough sausage in the world to use up all the sheep intestines from the mutton industry."

My face twisted. "Ew. Just... ew."

She rubbed at her face. "Your condoms aren't made of sheep intestines? Did your men require the intestines of cattle or something?"

I snorted, "I mean, if you asked them they'd probably say yeah, but nah. Latex. Not even sure what that is, but it's super stretchy. Like you could fit your whole arm in a condom for a regular sized dude. It's also not, y'know, a dead shit tube."

She chuckled again. "But you eat sausage."

"Yeah, I'm a lot less picky about what goes in the mouth than in the vag." I shrugged, then looked at the ceiling. "I mean, I'm not prudish or anything, but, like, organic shit going in there better be human and alive."

I looked down to see her leaning her elbow on her knee, her hand bracing her cheek as she smirked up at me. "I'm fascinated by your opinion on fascina."

"On what?"

"Artificial penises, without all the bothersome bits and fluids usually associated with the real ones?"

A laugh forced its way out before I replied, "okay, but they better not be made out of dead things. Plastic and rubber are fine. I've read that metal and gemstone ones aren't good for you. Glass, maybe?"

She shuddered, "what if it shatters?"

"Look, if you can shatter a two inch thick glass rod with your vajayjay, I'm not sticking any bits in there any more."

"Two inches thick?"

I shrugged. "I mean, go big or go home, amirite?"

She lost it laughing at that, pushing me toward the armoire. "Get up, Goof. You've got to get to class."

I started getting dressed. "Y'know, this whole conversation started because I wanted to know how fast Isnomi ought to be hitting milestones." After thinking about it for a second, I asked her, "maybe we just ought to Inspect her? Doesn't matter what her dad was, it matters what she is, right?"

Saffron got a really odd look on her face. "On the one hand, your suggestion has merit. It should work, although I might have to do research if he's an ethnicity I'm unfamiliar with."

"Does that happen often?"

"No, but he was my height. Not really common."

An image flashed into my mind, and I had to share. "Now I want you to find him, then take him and Rider to one of Dionysus' parties."

She closed her eyes, "and you just had to share that, didn't you?"

"Duh."

She shook her head. "The trouble is that while your suggestion would work, its also technically wildly illegal."

"Really? We're her parents."

"And, if we weren't the ones doing the Inspect, we could probably get away with standing in her stead for consent, since she's an Infant. But between not wanting someone else to potentially know more about my child than I do, and duBois holding us to the letter of the law anyway, I think I'm going to have to do a bit of legal research today."

I pouted. "But today's Remedial Celtic."

She shook her head. "Don't you have a copy of Law and Custom?" I nodded, and she said, "so I can do both." She spun me around, slapped me on the ass and pushed me toward the door. "Now get to class."

I wandered to class, picking up Lyman along the way, wrote a few paragraphs about my family's food preferences for Sister Cheryl, and then he escorted me back to Saffron. We worked through the morning, and I learned a bunch of legal terms, because that's the book she had open. No idea how I was gonna explain that to Sister Cheryl, what with her being the one currently looking for a missing copy of Law and Custom, but I wasn't about to argue. There was canoodling on the line. Shenanigans, even. Possibly even antics.

Weird thing. I got so into learning shit, so worked up by the idea that the more I learned, the more creatively kinky my little genius Kitten would get, that I completely lost track of time.

She looked up at me, practically glowing with pride, as she said, "I've got it!"

I pushed my book away, trying to set a new speed record for disrobing as I replied, "well don't just sit there, show me!"

A laugh escaped her and she said, "totally not what I was thinking about." Before I could get bent out of shape, she continued, "I've been thinking about that, don't worry, I wouldn't, ah, 'leave you hanging', but I meant the legal thing."

I shrugged out of my shirt and said, "Okay?"

"There is a caveat where if two Council Members agree that the Inspect is in the target's best interest, they can authorize it."

"That seems kinda sus to me."

She shrugged. "There are caveats about no intention to exploit the target, and a practical need for information the target cannot supply, and a few others. It's intended for things like medical emergencies or inheritance disputes."

I snickered and did my best Talk Show Host. "YOU are NOT the Father!"

She rolled her eyes. "Goof. Anyway, there you go then."

"Uh... you do know we aren't actually Heroes yet, right?"

She shook her head, laughing. "True, but who is the Council Member representing Loki's religion here in Phileo?"

I shrugged, mystified. "How the fuck should I know?"

She staggered a little laughing, but managed to force out, "because most Religion's Council Members are, despite any legal niceties, declared by their High Priestess."

Comprehension hit me like a particularly embarrassing brick. "Uh, who do I tap for this? You?"

She fell straight on her ass. "You know, I was gonna say that most High Priestesses choose themselves, but honestly? You choosing me would be so you."

Hey, Boss?

Yes, Tabitha?

Are you okay with me making Saffron your Council Member in Phileo?

I have no issues with her representation in that office. I trust you implicitly as my Champion, but she does seem a bit more... politically inclined than you. Why did you think to ask about her, though?

She thought it would be funnier.

Oh, I insist on it then. She's right.

"Okay then. Saffron Aetos, you're the Phileo City Council Member representing the Church of Loki. How do we get a second Council Member?"

If anything, that made her laugh even harder. Laying there on the floor wheezing, she thought at me, Oh my beloved Goddess Mimic, would you accept Tabitha Diaz as the Council Member representing your worshippers' interests in the Phileo City?

I chuckled. "Okay, that is pretty fuckin' funny. Yes, absolutely."

Then as High Priestess of Mimic, I declare you the Phileo City Council Member representing the interests of the worshippers of Mimic.

"You gotta promise me you won't unduly influence my Council Member to do immoral stuff though."

She scaled me, dragging herself up my front even as she fought against her laughter. When she dangled from my neck, she breathed out, "with one caveat; I make no such promises about amorous activities. How am I supposed to know if Mimic will find something so distasteful that she declares it anathema until she tries it?"

Yeah, we both had other uses for our mouths for a little bit there, although eventually she came up for air and said, "so, Councilwoman, do you agree with me that Inspecting Isnomi Aetos is in her best interest?"

I kicked my hormone flooded brain into gear enough to say, "Uh. Sure!" Then I leaned back into her. She pushed me away, laughing. "Okay, so we'll do it as soon as..."

Right about then Marie knocked on the door.

"Fuck." I sprang up, shaking my head to clear it, headed for the door. Maybe we could get her to take a few laps around the dorm? Or, more realistically, given her speed and Isnomi screaming, "Fafa! Fafa!", several hundred laps? I opened the door and said, "sorry, Marie, I didn't realize it was lunch time already."

She looked at me weird as she pushed her cart in, Isnomi somehow strutting while sitting on her ass in her hood ornament spot. "Dinner."

"Uh. What?"

"Din. Ner," she enunciated carefully.

"We missed lunch?" She shook her head, and in a burst of adrenaline fueled clarity I got it immediately. "We missed dinner?" She nodded. "Well, shit."

Saffron sighed. "Tomorrow night, dear one."

"Not tonight?" I whimpered.

The Grin made an appearance, heating my nethers in the absence of any panties to disintegrate. "I'll need to get Grandma to sit tomorrow night, because you will not be quiet enough to allow Isnomi to sleep."

"Tomorrow's good."

She snickered her reply. "Thought so. Now. No time like the present. Marie, close the door please?" Marie nudged it shut. "Please hold Isnomi still? I need to cast a Spell on her." At Marie's inquisitive, slightly suspicious look, Saffron said, "we need to Inspect her to see if she's developing at a healthy pace." Marie shrugged, then grabbed Isnomi's pudgy little hands, playing a noiseless version of 'So Big!' with her. Saffron casually gestured her Inspect active, the hand motions almost nonexistent.

"What the... Shit!" She rotated on her heel to shoot a boggled half-glare at me. "What the fuck did you do?"