Dear Diary,

Some days, like the day after Solstice, I feel like a Big Damn Hero. Others, like today? I feel like life's setting me up for the big devastating loss that turns me straight up Villain.

So when Saffron and I got home last night, somebody'd remodeled a little bit.

My rickety shrine had been moved to the eastern corner of the room and more or less permanently attached to the walls. It even had hooks and some weird pillars rising up from underneath it. I had no clue what those were for until Saffron knelt, pulled my boots off, and slipped them upside down over the pillars. Then she slipped The Dress off and hung it from one of the hooks. I'm occasionally capable of catching a clue, so I tossed her onto the bed and pulled her boots off and racked them, then stood her back up and far more gently removed her Dress of Glowing Midnight and hung it above them. Then I kinda collapsed onto the bed and lay there staring at her until she shook her head and collapsed on top of me.

She felt nice lying there atop me with her stockings and lingerie, like a warm, happy making blanket. "You comfy enough to go to sleep?"

"Nope."

"You up for anything else?"

"Nope."

"So what you want to do?"

A huge yawn escaped from her, right below my ear, before she curled a little and snuggled right on top of me. "Goin' to sleep anyway."

"Good plan." Moving carefully to keep from disturbing her, I wriggled around enough to get my head on a pillow. From across the room I heard, "ga na, ma. Ga na, mama." I flopped my head over to look at the menace; she lay atop a toddler sized bed where her crib used to be. She lay on her side, looking back at me, her head resting on a little toddler sized pillow, curled around a well-nommed Mr. Kraken. "Tikibada ma Ahnama bi ga be!"

"So he did. Good night, Menace. I love you."

From atop me, Saffron murmured, "love ya..." drifting off into a snore mid-goodnight.

"La ya," Isnomi whispered. Shortly after, tiny snores came from the far side of the room. Shortly after that? I fell asleep right there, lights on and everything.

I woke in darkness, the world in wireframe. As I took in the new configuration of the room, I listened to a strange melody of creation from the armoire. I'm not even being poetic, really. A hammer struck metal rhythmically, every now and then hitting a double tap that added a bit of syncopation to the beat. Something like a wood saw added some texture to the noise, some base to the music. The world's most polite belt sander added a melody. All of it sounded far away, like somebody watching a video at low volume in the other room. I slow-blinked at the closet. My son might be a sick sadistic fuck to shame the world's sick sadistic fuck population, but goddamn that boy could create Art. Hell, he made Music just making shit, and I'm absolutely certain he did it deliberately. Mental note to self, compliment him on his composition.

Still half asleep and conspicuously lacking in get up and go, I lay there looking over the room. The bed still sat along the southeast wall, although I think it was centered better. The desk stood just to my right of the south-corner door, sticking out into the room instead of along the southwest wall the way it had been. It made for a nice little entryway, and Marie had turned her cart sideways to block off that area from the rest of the room. With our rope baby fence gone, I guessed that worked. I mean, after watching Isnomi nom Gungnir like a goddamned super-sized lollipop, I guess the baby fence was more a suggestion than anything. Isnomi's toddler bed sat directly across the room from ours, along the northwest wall, with her pillow on the west end of the bed, unlike ours on the east end, almost beneath our altar shelves. Finally the armoire with its open doors and obviously open doorway to the Workshop sat midway along the northeast wall. Well, not quite finally. Marie lay in the middle of the floor in a huge curl of pillows that looked uncomfortably like a tiger-sized cat bed.

I rolled my head back to stare at the ceiling, and realized something that made my eyes shoot open, then drift back shut. The magnificent bastard hadn't just replaced our pillows, he'd supplied actual pillows. Not even, like, the shitty dollar store pillows I'd grown up with. No idea how he'd managed something so like memory foam, but it cradled my head better than anything short of paramour thighs. Okay, it gave them serious competition. No matter how long I lay there, the cool side of the pillow stayed cool. Such comfy. So pillow. Wow.

I drifted back to sleep thinking thoughts of exactly how many murders I'd forgive for this pillow alone.

I woke to the exquisite agony of Saffron stretching herself awake on top of me. Now, if you've never had the opportunities life has suddenly dumped on me, while silk and lace can provide some real exciting tactile stimulation in flagrante delicto, when you're waking up to it? Lace can be some scratchy shit. "Gnaagghhh." Saffron froze, snorted, then started laughing. Which kept up the whole 'lace rubbing across bare skin' thing. I reached up and interposed my hands over the most sensitive bits. "Ow! Kitten! Stop scratching there!"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"You seemed to like it the other night..."

"Yeah, well. I'm an old school arcade machine." That earned me a confused but curious look. "You gotta drop something in the slot and press the start button before you play with the knobs." The confusion melted into snorted laughter, but this time my hands remained firmly interposed between sandpaper lace and my sensitive bits. At least they did until she grabbed them and used them to drag herself up to give me a thorough mouth-only, tongue-enhanced kiss. Guess I failed to specify which slot.

Kind of moot point, though, because the menace chose that moment to crow out, "mawa!" and take a flying leap onto our sleeping tiger. Curiously, my asshole remained entirely unpuckered when Marie let out a blood curdling growl and initiated an enthusiastic game of pounce-in-the-dark. Saffron lay there atop me, her head turned the same way as mine, watching our daughter and her nanny tumbling around the floor, Marie's seemingly careless tosses of Isnomi somehow always landing the rugrat right onto the thickest layers of pillows.

"I need you to promise me something, Goof."

"Anything, Kitten." While she couldn't bribe me now, I'm all adult now and understand the concept of delayed gratification.

"I'm serious, Tabitha."

Ah, fuck. Meh. Bribery might still happen. "Okay."

"Lancaster is going to deploy me. I need you to stay here."

I frowned. "I do not like where this is going."

She smiled, "don't worry. I won't Just Happen to anyone while I'm away. I promise. Worst case, I'll make it up to you until you don't care about it any more."

"Pfft. Like I'm the jealous sort."

"Of course you're not. Besides, if someone made you question our relationship, I'd execute them."

The affection in her words sent a shiver down my spine. "Hey, uh, don't do that. I'll work on my jealousy issues. Just, I dunno, scare them off. Poke them in the ass with a Blade or something."

She bowed her head for a moment. As my Goddess wishes.

Somehow I knew I'd been mousetrapped but good. "Why do you want me to stay here?"

"Three reasons. First, because I don't trust Lancaster, and I want both you and Marie here to look out for Isnomi."

"What about our son?"

"You mean the mobile one, who won't be going with me?"

I shuddered. "Yeah, let's go with that."

"Okay, I want you, Marie, and him all three looking out for her. Of all the deities ranged against us, Odin is the most powerful who is actually capable of subtlety and self-control. You saw how quickly he changed his approach in the cave."

I thought about that for a few seconds. I hadn't realized it at the time, but holy shit he absolutely had. Raging man-beast to urbane diplomat on zero seconds flat. "Yeah, I hadn't fucking noticed until now. Shit."

"I know. If I could choose which of us to deploy, I'd stay home, because while you are the most devoted, fiercest defender our child could want, you are unsubtle at the best of times."

"Hey! I thought you liked unsubtle."

She lifted her head and Grinned at me. "Oh, I do. I do, and I do, and for that alone I would say I do, but love it though I do, I can recognize where a more considered, methodical approach is appropriate."

"Okay, fair enough. Methodical, I am not. Methodical, thy name is Saffron."

She rubbed the side of her face against my chest. Her hair tickled in ways that we couldn't explore right now, but still felt kinda nice. "You're so sweet, Goof." Then she pushed herself up on her arms, being nice enough to distribute her weight along her forearms instead of driving those piton-like elbows through my ribcage. "The second reason is that I don't trust Lancaster. He has connections on the Council, and we need at least one of us attending any official meetings."

"Y'know, I'm starting to see a whole 'shit that Saffron ought to be doing' pattern here."

She nodded. "I would be foolish to think that's a coincidence."

"So why aren't we just swapping places?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Other than the fact that Lancaster might object?"

I looked up at her from directly underneath her, and with her voice from a mouth that matched hers, said, "object to what?"

She purred, "I never knew I had a narcissistic streak." Then she spent a minute proving she did. When we came up for air, she shook her head and said, "newly discovered kinks aside, I don't think either of us is really a good enough actor to pull it off." When I returned her raised eyebrow with interest, she said, "I hesitate, and you don't."

"Okay, fair. Third reason?"

"I don't trust Lancaster. If you're deployed alongside me, he'll know exactly where you are. He'll be able to throw you into the most distracting part of the fight, then shift things around to sacrifice you like a pawn, or do so to me, or..." she trailed off, her mind's racing obvious from her thousand yard stare. "Suffice to say there are enough permutations he could do that would look legitimate until the moment one of us fell, or he cornered us into something worse. If you are here, however, he has no idea where you are."

I rolled my eyes. "Except a million miles from the battlefield." She reached between our chests and pinched. "OW! That fuckin hurt!"

"I'm aware. You're smarter than that. The battlefield will be a hundred miles from here at most, and if you can move from here to Loki's abode between one step and the next, you can just as easily move to me between one step and the next."

"Oh. Oh, shit! You're fuckin' right!" I frowned at my next thought. "I still fuckin wish you could be here to deal with the Council shit while I went and fucked up the 'Damn army, waiting for my call for fire support."

"As do I, love, but if we're not just going to kill everyone we don't like, we need to play the game. We just need to outplay them."

I sighed. "You tell me the moves to make, I'll make 'em."

She bowed her head into my chest. As my Goddess says it, so shall it be. "And our next move is for me to go and you to stay. I will ever be by your side in spirit."

"Me too, Kitten."

"Ahnama da, Ma!" The menace popped up over the side of the bed, and her eyes shot wide. "Ma? Ma! Ta Ma!" She scuttled up and wormed her way between us. I looked down and had a moment of completely irrational envy of the kid, head surrounded by four rounded Saffron titties.

Then her mouth latched onto my nipple. "Hey, what did I tell you, these boobs are lactose fraauugghh that's so weird."

Saffron chuckled, cupping my face with one hand. "You'll get used to it, love."

"Gnnaaauffrfrrrhghh." Yeah, women normally get like nine months to anticipate this shit, and they start doing it when they're still pumped full of post-childbirth endorphins.

So. Fuckin'. Weird. Then a bunch of Mommy Endorphins hit. Even fuckin' weirder. Then Saffron blew my fuckin' mind one more time.

"Good thing, really. She'll want to nurse at least once a day while I'm away. Two or three times some days."

"Fffffuuggghhgghhhh."

It's weird. Fuck off.