Dear Diary,

So yeah, the dumb is strong with some people, to levels that make me feel almost like I'm not the world's biggest dumbass.

Seriously, I'm not subtle about things, and I think Saturday Night's demonstration of exactly how little I wanted this to turn into some kind of actual war is one of the least subtle things I've done since I got here. I'm including killing tens of thousands of people at the Battle of the Walls in that as well. Which, for anyone paying attention to things I did right out in the fuckin' open, should really clearly spell out, 'don't hurt my fuckin' wife, you rat bastards'. In, y'know, flaming letters of blood the height of Newark's walls. Hell, I'd get it if the folks of the here and now, who for completely horrible yet valid reasons don't invest in kids until they're not really kids any more, missed out on the 'look at Artemis' nose' memo about hurting my kid. I'll still leave them wondering why they've been Revived with somebody else's cock mineral bonded to their uvula, but I'd get it.

Maybe I need to make that message a little more obvious the next time it comes into play? Like, if somebody threatens my kid, and I mean actually threatens, not says or intends to do nasty things, I should gather up a few hundred thousand people in the temple district and explain why I'm putting somebody on a sieve stuck in the sky until their own body weight makes them leak through it over the course of a few weeks. Never thought my biggest 'I miss television' moment would be when I regretted not having a way to telecast bloody torturous murder as a position statement.

So after a while, after I'd absorbed enough oomph to crawl over to neck with Saffron on stage, I realized that the cheering was kinda sorta swelling and subsiding in time with our Canoodling activity. What with me being in full on lazy bitch mode, and Saffron being too exhausted for anything but micro-movements, the whole event really kinda cycled through flop into new position, tiny little movements, flop again, more tiny movements. Which meant we got cheers with each new flop. Flopping her face onto mine? Big cheer, which quieted to general merriment while she took a long time teasing my lips with hers. Flopping an arm onto my front? Another round of cheers, this one sounding a little odd, but dying down again as she tinkered with making me convulse with tiny twitches of her hand. Not like, full body convulsions most of the time either, just little shudders.

That went on for a while until I heard Menace snicker. I got an arm under Saffron and rolled her over until the back of her head lay against my stomach, her pony tail dangling past me and streaming out in the rivulets of rainwater washing over us. Gave me one hell of a view, what with her still having that white tank top on. I rolled my head over to look at the crowd, realizing super quick that the entire Green had turned into something not entirely unlike one of D's Revels. Maybe a little less alcohol, maybe a little more fornication, although less 'orgy' and more 'hundreds of couples failing to give any fucks other than the ones they were exchanging'.

"Okay, okay, okay. I get it, you're all super jazzed by Big J winning his lady love, but if you'll excuse us, I'm really not in the mood to do live action porn theater." Somehow these crazy Norse fuckers managed to boo that. Okay, not so much a 'boo' as a sort of thousands strong, 'aww...' I can't help it, I'm a sucker for puppy dog eyes. "Tonight." Tentative cheers, which just had me confused until I flopped back to look at Saffron, who'd rooched herself over me until her head flopped down to let her look at the crowd. Which basically meant she'd used my belly as back support for one hell of a distracting arch. Then the worst part of my brain took over with the best possible line as I stared at exhausted, limp, arched, sweaty, soaked Saffron. "G'night everybody!"

I shaped a Filtration Ward set to keep light out and dropped it over our half of the stage. "Hey Marie?"

"Yes?"

"It's well after dark, and it looks like Grandmama has fucked off on her honeymoon or some shit, so that little Menace in your arms needs to get to bed."

"Mama! No! I sday! I hep!"

I rolled my head back and forth. "No, Menace. Remember what I said about helping and you being bigger?"

"Na!"

I chuckled. "Really?"

She pouted so hard it showed up in wireframe. "Yeth."

"So you do remember it?"

Stolen story; please report.

She threw her head back, letting her arms and legs flop loose. "Yeth... waid! Waid! Na!"

I chuckled at that. "Seriously, Menace. when you're ready? I can't think of a sidekick I'd rather have. But bringing you along too early could hurt you in ways I don't think you understand, let alone are ready for yet. So for now? You go back home."

"Wanna! Hep!"

"Menace..." I'd let a little impatient threat leak into my voice. I took a deep breath and started over. "Isnomi Aetos-Diaz, did I or did I not include you in our singing and dancing from the very beginning."

"Yeth?"

I nodded, "why do you think I did that?"

I let her stew a little, because I really wanted her to figure this one out. Eventually Marie nudged her from behind with her nose, and Menace said, "I weddy?"

"So smart, my girl," Saffron cut in. "I didn't think you were ready, but Mama said you were, and she was right. You sang and danced beautifully. You helped Mama and Grandmama and Grandmama's new friend. But..."

"Budd?"

I realized that Saffron was still kinda wheezing to recover, so I took her handoff. "But I say you're not ready to help with this. Yet."

"Yed?"

"Yet. When you are? I'll let you. Just like I did today. But for now, what do you say?"

She slumped, then wiggled a little until Marie set her down. She shuffled over to us, already apparently working the first edges of her angsty phase before leaning over and kissing us each on the forehead. "Gnide, Ma. Gnide, Mama."

We both smiled up at her. "Good Night, Menace. We love you, and we'll be home when we're recovered and I'm done dealing with King Gregor's pissy fit."

"Ah tay." She turned to Marie and held up her hands. "Ub! Ub!" Marie looked down at her, one eyebrow arched, until our little one said, "ub, peez."

Marie scooped her up at that point, saying, "Scamp." then disappearing.

Moving slowly and gently, I lay my hands down my front; one just above the collar of Saffron's shirt, the other about three inches below that. "You realize, dear Goof, that some in that audience can in fact see the same way Marie can?"

I chuckled, surprising myself at exactly how intent-filled it came out. "Yeah, well. Privacy curtain drawn. If somebody's gonna peeping Tom us through that, it's on them."

She laughed, which did amazing things to the terrain under each of my hands. "You are so Goof. So inconsistent. No coherence whatsoever."

"Is... is that an actual complaint?"

She wriggled the tiniest bit. "Did I tell you to stop?"

"No?"

"Then don't."

So I didn't. Marie showed up a few minutes later, looking not much less tired than us. After confirming that Marie was, in fact, curled up entirely around our sleeping Menace on her floor bed, she joined us in seeing exactly how many shenanigans could be had without moving more than an eighth of an inch. Turns out it's way more than you'd expect.

Also turns out that all those ASMR videos where they play water sounds to help you sleep? You know, the shit like 'soft rainfall', 'flowing river', 'rain into puddles' or 'water against the hull of a boat'? I have no idea how effective those were back at Eastside, but the actual sounds in the here and now? Relaxing as fuck. Possibly more relaxing than fuck. Certainly made no less relaxing by having tiny fuck sprinkles scattered across them. Saffron seemed to think so, anyhow, because I sure as shit applied some fuck titty sprinkles until she started snoring.

Heh. Titty sprinkles. I wonder if here and now has a Morgan Freeman?

With the first snore, I went still. Her eyes did slipped open the tiniest crack immediately and she muttered, "don stahp".

"Really, Kitten? You're falling asleep."

After the world's tiniest snort of derision, she said, "know. don stap." Fuck it, I am an obedient, attentive, and dedicated spouse, fuck you if you think otherwise. I would say I kept that shit up all night or something but the fact is that I fell asleep at some point not long after that.

Chibi Hibachi Chef Saffron had apparently decided today wasn't about ranged combat, and instead crammed kaiju shrimp into my pie hole by jumping up and down on them. There may have been multiple instances of her following the shrimp down. I have no fuckin' clue how that worked, and it would have been more disturbing had I not been so fuckin' exhausted and it being so goddamned soothing every time she did it. Not even going to talk about how somehow the background feed of the world, like the entire goddamned sky and anything that reflected it, was shit you'd have to go on premium for-pay sites to see. Apparently Vulcan comes by that shit honestly.

Woke up to a mostly empty Green, with the bleachers under deconstruction. Three Trolls, I think the ones I'd brought from Karlson's place, stood spread across the approach to the stage. Marie and Saffron still lay where they'd been, although Saffron's exhausted upside down resting bitch face had been replaced by a serene smile of rapturous joy. Still upside down, but that didn't detract in the slightest. "You awake?"

"Yes, love."

"Yes."

I looked at the sky through our Filtration Ward, gently rocking my head until I caught sight of the sun. "Damn. Did I sleep the whole fuckin' day away?"

Marie purred a little harder. "Twice."

"Oh, fuck. Kitten? Do you need to get to work?"

Her serene smile didn't slip in the slightest. "I'm on a religious retreat. Any complaints about the location, duration, or activities of my retreat may be directed directly up the southbound end of a northbound Kraken."

I wondered whether Greg intended to pass up one of his tries at me, right up until the moment some dude crawled noiselessly over the edge of the floating stage. Inching along, low to the ground, he circled around until we lay between him and my Lizard Bois, then crept toward us, crossing the line into our little bubble of night just as the sun set.

Fuck it, time to get back to work.