Dear Diary,

"Not all questions are answered, but fortunately some answers are questioned."

- Terry Pratchett

Yeah, I get that's true, important, and really a Good Thing, but it still makes part of my brain itch uncomfortably. Like, if something has the potential to be factual data, I should be able to get my fuckin' hands on that data, right? Even if I'm not the right chick to go looking for any particular piece of information, I know who is, and she likes to use my BO as perfume.

So last night everybody wound up going to sleep late. Not even due to Love Shack shenanigans. We all just lounged around on Marie's floor bed, soaking up the vibe. Despite a few bouts of the zoomies, Menace settled down first, curling up betwixt where Saffron and I lay face to face, shoving herself right between our bellies before settling in to sleep. Literally curling up, too, all scrunched in like in fetal position, with Mister Kraken tucked into the middle of her little curled up body. After we watched her eyes flutter closed, Saffron whispered, "sometimes I still can't believe she popped out of me. She's getting so big."

"Yeah. Kinda wonder how big she'll get."

Saffron chuckled. "With her father being my height, I can't imagine she'll be anything but petite."

I lay an arm around her and gently tugged her to me until we lay touching, forehead to forehead, breast to breast, knee to knee, with Isnomi purring between us. "You know I might have fucked that up a little, right?"

If she winced, it seemed more because she'd forgotten than because the knowledge itself upset her. "Well then. I have no idea how tall she'll wind up being."

From above us, where she perched tailor fashion on Menace's toddler bed, Marie quietly whispered, "Enough."

I grinned and said, "she'll be tall enough, or that's enough chatter from the two of us who ought to be getting to sleep?"

She just smiled at me, and the her I'd been hearing quiet snores from behind me slipped an arm around me, one finger across my lips. "Yes."

Saffron just giggled quietly until the Marie behind her did the same thing. We lay there, just staring directly into one another's eyes. Way back when we first hooked up, I'd commented on how they reminded me of chocolate, and I maybe feel some kinda way what with Mimic treating her like the world's tastiest soup dumpling, but staring into them reminded me. Sweet. Hot. Underlying all of that, a bitterness that didn't detract from either, despite it somehow being her defining feature.

I don't know how long we lay there, but eventually she thought, aren't you going to sleep tonight?

Kinda waiting for you, Kitten.

She smirked. Is this to be a contest of wills, then?

Nah. Just wanted to see something, but you gotta go to sleep first.

Her smirk got deeper, sultrier, the Grin sneaking into it. Ara, ara. Will I wake with even less virtue than I have now?

That shut my brain mouth up for a minute while I untangled where my libido had run face first into my mommy issues and wound up with both of them lying on my mental floor in a tangled mess. After a bit I realized I was drifting and thought, I... not what I was thinking at all. Really. Seriously.

The Grin wore her smirk like particularly intent-laden lingerie. Damn. Here I was wondering what it would be like to dream while you did such things.

Isnomi's like, right there.

The Grin put its hands together and pretended to be a nun while still wearing that smirk with intent. I have great faith in My Goddess' subtlety and control.

Good thing one of us does. No, I just wanted you to go to sleep first.

The Grin walked away, showing me the smirk didn't cover anything past the front. Oh, well. You've my Consent should you change your mind. Eager Consent. Perhaps even impatient Consent. Command me, My Goddess.

That caught me off guard with a sudden realization. You like it when I do that. Command you, as your Goddess.

I do.

Go to sleep, Kitten. Go to sleep, Wife. Go to sleep, Priestess Most High Above All Others. By the time I finished that last thought, she went limp, gentle snores vibrating my forehead and breasts. I watched over her, entranced by every detail, until I drifted off to sleep myself.

Mimic dreamt of chibi Chef Marie organizing the super chibi sous chef beans yeeting themselves into Mimic's Maw with armloads of shrimp in varying sizes. The psychotropic psychedelic tadpoles convinced Mimic to bust a move on the Chesapeake again, despite her conspicuous lack of any body part resembling an ass. Soup Dumpling Saffron did not make an appearance.

I woke right in the middle of Saffron's boot up. I think her sniffing might have woken me. I got the best possible morning treat when her darting tongue taste testing the world touched my lips. The moment it did, she froze, her lips curved into a grin for the barest of moments, and then her lips melted into mine, her tongue taste testing my tonsils in lieu of the world. We stayed like that until, down between our bellies, Menace stirred, prompting us to pull apart, grinning like idiots at one another.

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"I'm surprised I didn't wake in our Library room, love."

I snickered as Isnomi tickled our bellies as she yawned and stretched. "Didn't think of it. Honestly, woke up right in the middle of you waking up. Guess I do wake up faster than you."

She smiled gently. "I've said as much, Goof. Did you forget?"

"Nah. Just kinda amused by having more proof now, I guess."

"I think I'm equally surprised you haven't spirited me away to have your way with me before breakfast."

"Don't you mean 'as breakfast'?"

I realized my mistake when Menace smooshed her way between our tits, pushing our faces apart to grab our full attention. "Breffas!"

"Yeah, sure Menace. Just let us get dressed first. They don't approve of naked people in the Dining Hall. It's a rule."

Holy. Shit. The Grin dashed across Saffron's face wearing that smirk while Menace looked at me. "it's not, actually. I checked."

Trying desperately not to choke on my own spit, I squeaked out, "Hey! Aren't I supposed to be the one corrupting her?"

And yet, here we still lay, none of us in the Library. "I thought I'd take a turn. I see why you enjoy it!"

Meanwhile Isnomi had scrambled up to scamper toward the door shouting, "breffas! Breffas! Nekkid breffas!"

"Sorry, Kitten," I whispered. "I'm a little paralyzed by post massage pain at the moment."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, love," she said as she lay a gentle kiss on my forehead. While simultaneously Co-Locating us to the Love Shack, where she looked down at me and said, "I guess I'll be the one to play with you like a doll today, what with Marie feeling out of sorts."

"Wha?"

She nodded while slowly, gently positioning me exactly how she wanted me. Weird, but oddly hot. "Yes. I think she needs a visit to your father as well, but I suggest waiting until tomorrow, since she'll need a day of recuperation as well."

"The fuck is up with that?"

She paused as, back in the room, Marie snagged Isnomi right before she opened the outer door of our suite. "No." The Menace pouted, but hung limp as Marie got her uniform on. Meanwhile Saffron first dressed herself, then me.

"Was she exposed to Miasma?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Fuckin' Undead Mage. Loki told me Miasma fucks with Gods something fierce. Something about us being 'Souls made manifest'?"

Well. I suspected she knew anyway, but if not, I suppose we'll all learn things now.

She froze in the middle of bracing one of my legs with a bolster. "Really?"

"Yep."

Another Saffron dropped naked into our desk chair, coding windows blossoming around her. I looked over and said, "naked coding now? Really?" She stuck her tongue out at me and blinked on Glowing Midnight. Okay, part of it, because she didn't bother with the dress or the boots, just the underthings, stockings included.

Down in the Love Shack I laughed out loud and said, "you're working overtime jumping up and down on my 'sexy times now!' buttons today, aren't you Kitten?"

She snorted as she slid another bolster right under my lower back. That kinda stretched things more than a little painfully, but a moment later the Grin strutted onto her face wearing the remains of that smirk not unlike coding Saffron wore Glowing Midnight's undergarments. "Only you could be lying here with me doing this and only now catch on, Goof." She crawled over to lean over my face and say, "before anything else?"

"Yeah?"

She leaned down, kissed me until my lips got sore, then pulled back and said, "I love you, Goof."

Breakfast got downright funny when Isnomi tried to feed me, but kept eating spoonsful of stuff halfway to my mouth. At least once she pulled half a spoonful of jalapeno scrapple out of her maw and shoved it into mine. Fuck it, I know it's unsanitary, but frankly if any germ manages to get past 'God of Healing' and 'God of Disease', it deserves to propagate just a little.

Marie carried me to the Black Dragon and set me up on the mast, binoculars in hand. It ached a little moving them back and forth, but the slow motion pain forced on me really worked better for carefully scanning the City than I'd realized it would. Of course, the lack of motion meant late in the afternoon I wound up sending Marie in when we had a red flag with Olga already deployed to reinforce one of our groups of Undead hunting Heroes. I'd say 'send Marie in alone', but then, Marie's really never alone even when she's alone any more. I'm not sure if anyone had quite realized Marie had my whole Co-Location thing going on prior to this, what with all the other Maids looking the same, but when she hit the docks and a whole squad of her leapt from her one at a time, it definitely let the cat out of the bag.

My cat definitely bagged a bunch of Undead, but as I watched the Marie on the mast with me got crankier and crankier until an Earth shaking roar rocked the docks, followed by a fuckin rain of body parts flying toward the Bay. A few minutes later, the Marie next to me shuddered and she whined, "sparagmos?"

"Not today, Murder Mittens."

She growled at me. "Sparagmos."

I sighed. "You know I can't, love. Too much chance we'd all wake up tomorrow without you, and I don't know if I could survive that."

She towered over me, claws curling, hot breath washing over her fangs, over my face. "Sparagmos!"

She lunged, and I spun, grabbing her wrists, adrenaline washing away the last of my stiffness. She roared right in my face, and I twisted her forearms around. She tried to force me to snap them by lunging, but I spun and left her kneeling. I leaned forward, thinking, be still, my High Priestess. She froze, not even bothering to close her mouth as her roar cut off. I leaned in and lay a gentle kiss on her forehead, the fuzz tickling my lips. "I love you too much to risk you, Marie."

She whined at me, and I thought, at sunset I will deliver you to Loki. He will make it right, and you can rest up tomorrow.

Her lower lip stuck out, and she quietly whined, "sparagmos"

I rolled my eyes. "If you're a very, very good girl we can figure something out," she looked up at me, eyes eager, "after Saffron and I have made a proper Wife out of you."

Oh, the look on her face at that was the most bizarre combination of 'eagerly terrified' I had ever seen. Of course, her whine, like every other non-verbal vocalization I'd ever heard her make, was absolutely larger than life. When the mast itself started vibrating visibly I said, "fuck it, it's sunset," and told the Sun that it was, in fact, time to go to bed for the night. Then I scooped her up in my arms and stepped to Loki's place.

"I rather thought you'd be here momentarily." He nodded to his table, and I lay Marie there, then reached down into her, through her, and pulled like I'd done with Sengann. Her eyes crossed, and she whined as all the Maries in existence collapsed back into her.

"But."

I lay one hand on her forehead. "Rest, My High Priestess, and let my father heal you. All of you. I will watch over our Wife and Daughter until your return."

Loki smirked at me. "Did you get married again without warning me first?"

I rolled my eyes at him, shaking my head.

"One time! That happened one! Time!"