Dear Diary,

"Undeservedly you will atone for the sins of your fathers."

- Horace

After giving that statement all due consideration, my carefully thought out response is 'Fuck. That. Noise.' The only way my kids, and at this point I am absolutely including not just Menace, but all five of Marie's foundlings, plus any others we beg, borrow, or bake, are gonna wind up paying for my fuck ups is if I fuck up so bad I take myself off the board entirely. Which gives me a completely rational reason for not throwing myself at danger like I've got the worlds horniest death wish quite so much, I guess.

I mean, I'm still gonna. This is me we're talking about here. But I'm gonna do my best to start using my brain when I do. Y'know, forget about 'fighting fair' and just Blend and blend. Or Smite. Or whatever other method is required to turn the Big Dangerous Thing into a formerly Big, formerly Dangerous, former thing. I'm sure shit will come up where I can't do that. The duels in Norfolk come to mind, what with the whole point being people seeing me doing the deed. Which sounds a whole lot more suggestive than I intended, even if it's way more accurate than what I meant to say.

I know that no matter what, I'll wind up leaving shit undone. We all do. It's one of those life things, whether it happens because I somehow go a step too far and get myself irreversibly dead, or because I get distracted and wander off and forget about shit. I'm sure there's already a whole list of shit like that. Hell, Maze herself is one of those things. I never thought to check if Artemis' lackey had kids I'd left momless. Not that it seems like she'd been super involved in any case, but it's still a consequence of my actions. If you'd asked me about it before the Summer Solstice, it wouldn't even have been on my radar. But one way or the other, so long as I'm drawing breath, Menace and her sibs will not be the ones paying for the consequences of my actions.

So yesterday after sitting there grinning like the goof I am for most of the day, the three of us returned to Lancaster House for dinner. As I settled into my seat, Marie and Oscar led the dinner serving staff out with lid-covered trays and tureens, as well as baskets covered by towels, the fresh baked smell of cornbread seeping out around the edges. I caught a bit of a yeasty smell from some of them too, and when the baskets got close enough to the table, I snagged one of whatever smelled yeasty without looking with one hand while grabbing a slice of cornbread with the other. The maids carrying them looked a little scandalized, and I felt a little bad for them when I realized that up until I'd done that, not only the adults but even the kids had been waiting patiently to be served.

Not so much on the kid patience after that. I'd opened the floodgates, and the young maids carrying bread and cornbread to the kids wound up mobbed. I looked over and quietly growled, "Menace..." She looked over with her second and third biscuits in her hands, mouth already full. "Not until everybody's had some." I then put my own bread on my plate. Bowl, now that I looked, but still, I waited patiently, giving Isnomi the hairy eyeball until she trudged back to her seat, then flopped into it, her biscuits still clutched in her still surprisingly unpudgy hands. On seeing that, the other kids sorta lined up, collected their bread, and got back to their seats.

The trays held roasted veggies, and the servers brought it around, filling the bottom of each bowl with a mix of what looked to be carrots, onions, broccoli, cabbage, and some kind of cubed squash or something. Then Marie brought a tureen over, slid the lid off, and my eyes kinda glazed over. Spice, peppers, tomato, meat, all of it stewed together just right until that beautiful caustic red brown sauce poured into my bowl atop the veggies, leaving my breadstuff half submerged little islands in a tiny sea of chili.

I really don't know what happened after that to anything except my spoon, my mouth, and Marie's chili. At one point as I filled my mouth and just sat there savoring it, Saffron whispered, Marie and I heard you thinking about this the past few nights. Very loudly. I was good, though. I didn't grab the tureen and pour that shit down my throat until I swallowed it all or died trying. I took my time, letting each and every bite melt in my mouth until I could taste nothing but fire, then swallowing, nomming bread until I could taste again, then repeating the process. Eventually, around about when the last few bites of everything had become lumps of indistinguishable brown, I looked up to see Saffron leaning with her chin on her hand, staring at me.

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"Do I have it all over my face?"

"Sadly, no."

"Sadly?"

She licked her lips. "Would have been fun. It's just so... You... Goof, you do nothing by halves. I think if I'd have pulled my tits out and waved them at you, I'd have been waiting until now to get a response."

"Hey! I always pay attention to your tits!"

She laughed, falling backward into her chair as she did. "You pay attention to whatever you're focused on, love, and the rest of the world might as well not exist to you. For the past hour, that's been Marie's cooking, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

I gulped down a spoonful of the glorious mush at the bottom of the chili bowl and muttered, "I still wanna see your tits."

She leaned over to thwap me playfully with her spoon. "You have, and you will, but not here, and not now. I think Marie would like our help with the little ones tonight."

I looked over, and Marie nodded. "Okay." I scraped the last of my chili and biscuits greedily into my mouth, then stood and thought, lead on, Murder Mittens Mine!

It turned out Marie and the kids had a kind of system set up, almost a mirror of our morning routine. She would undress each kid, doing a quick check of their clothes as she did. Especially for the ones who weren't technically ours, she couldn't exactly confiscate their clothes all day for washing, so she separated them into 'stuff that ought to be wearable tomorrow' and 'stuff that needs to get any pee, poop, blood, mud, or other nasty stuff washed out before morning'. Then she sent the kid to the potty, a reasonable precaution even for those who had been potty trained. After they finished, or had spent at least a few minutes making sure they didn't need to, she had them do a quick rinse and scrub of their face, hand, and crotch regions in the bathtub, after which it was on with little nightshirts, with diapers for the kids who needed them. Maybe wanted them, I'm not sure, because it wasn't like Marie enforced diapering.

I don't think she did, at least, and Saffron took over the job of dressing and diapering anyhow, starting with the Menace, who Marie tossed a little knit charcoal colored onesie, complete with a hood with pointed ears on it. Leave it to Marie to come up with something our daughter's Blend would keep people thinking was the reason she looked that way when she inevitably 'forgot' and wound up dashing around the House fuzzy. That started calls of 'can I have one' from all the other kids, to which Marie patiently answered each child with 'soon' or 'maybe', depending on whether they were one of our six or not.

In case you're wondering, I got the wonderful task of helping them onto the potty, then into the tub. I wasn't really gonna complain about it; Marie definitely had the best eye and nose out of the three of us for determining what was wearable and what wasn't. Saffron had me beat hands down at Mom Diaper Origami Magic. I mean, I could do it, but not nearly as well as she did. It wasn't until I squatted there talking to the second kid to sit without producing any visible waste, muttering something inane about how if they didn't have to go, they didn't have to go, but if they needed to, now was the time, that Saffron thought, if they didn't go when you set them on the pot, they're not going to go, love.

It took me a second, but when it hit me I fumed helplessly. So I get the literal shit job then?

You have a knack for taking care of them quickly and effectively, love.

Before I could reply, Marie cut in with, Yes.

I must still have imperfectly hid my booger look, because Saffron thought, of course, that is why... When she paused, I glanced over at where she sat dressed in nothing but her uniform shirt. So fast I thought I might have imagined it, she glanced around the room, then flashed me. Well, half flashed me. One tit's better than none, I guess. And while I prefer terrain to scenery, I'll still stare at the scenery all fuckin' day long if I can't make it terrain. I looked around, but all of the kids were involved doing something else, or talking with another kid, or whatever. I manage meetings, love. Keeping track of where each member of a crowd's attention is directed is what I do. And as I was saying, you do all the shit jobs, and do them well, so you get all the... how did you put it? Glittering prizes?

That got me. Even as I mentally muttered, I'mma glitter you, I laughed at the thought of glitter being the Domain of kindergarten teachers and strippers everywhere, and my Kitten absolutely had what it took to excel in both areas.

At the end of bedtime prep, I stayed in the bathroom while the others trooped into the bedroom, only to have Maze take my hand and lead me over to the middle of the pile. Tonight Saffron had returned to her proper place between Marie and I, and Maze and Isnomi wormed their way in between Saffron and I, snuggling in back to back between us.

At least until Maze, half asleep and maybe already dreaming, reached around, unceremoniously glomped Isnomi like a rag doll, then started snoring.