Dear Diary,

Good news, my body no longer aches too much to move from the shit I did to it on the Equinox, nor from Loki's treatment; bad news, my body now aches from my first attempt at 'Independent Physical Training'.

Worst part? I can only blame myself.

So yesterday we had Combat Training with duBois, after which my body reminded me that I was not, in fact, recovered from my bout of heroic idiocy on the Equinox, no matter how passable I felt when I'd warmed up and worked up a sweat. I'm pretty sure Saffron was laughing at me as I drifted off to sleep, but I can't really blame her. From the outside I'm sure it's kinda funny. Y'know, 'ow, ow, ow, I shouldn't be doing anything, wait, spar with duBois? Sure! Ow, ow, ow, I shouldn't have done that.' She helped me get to sleep, too, so if she wants to laugh at me for putting myself in this position, I can't see where I've got a leg to stand on and complain.

Mimic dreamt of more nasty smells wafting up from the south. Dunno what's got into her, but I'm sure it's part of why I haven't been up to consuming mass quantities lately, if that smell is lingering in my subconscious.

I woke up right in the middle of Saffron's boot up sequence. Not nearly as fun as her waking me up with silly seven syllable satisfaction, but pretty fucking adorable nonetheless. When her eyes finally slipped open and she said, "good morning, Goof. You feeling any better?" I nodded, then realized that her fully functional Kitten brain might be able to determine, y'know, why Mimic's refrigerator has stopped refrigerating. Still, I kinda flexed everything to see if I was still 'not quite dead', and while my everything grumbled at that, nothing actually felt like I'd just been re-injured.

"Feeling pretty okay, actually. Had a question for you, though."

She leaned in to kiss me, then pulled back and said, "go on?"

If that's the treatment I get when I've got questions for her, I need to think up more questions more often. "Okay, so I don't remember if you were there or awake for it, but at one point Loki told me that the weird dreams I have are related to Mimic. Do you remember that?"

If memory serves, she was half asleep and possibly very drunk.

At the same time she replied, "I don't remember the occasion, but I vaguely remember him saying something of the sort."

Thanks for the confirmation, Boss. You're the best.

I know.

"Okay, so the past couple days, like maybe as far back as the Solstice? I keep dreaming that I've left the refrigerator open and shit's started to rot. Or something like that." I kinda petered off, because saying it aloud sounded just a little bit stupid. If Mimic had a refrigerator, it'd have to be the size of Antarctica, and if Antarctica was melting, shit was going horribly, horribly wrong.

My brilliant Kitten just hummed as she thought it over though, not even her expression betraying a hint of 'my wife is a psycho moron' the way I'd kind of expected. "Do you get any sense of direction?"

Not the question I expected. "Uh, yeah, actually. South."

She nodded. "She... you... find the smell unpleasant, yes?"

I shrugged. "At first it wasn't, like, nauseatingly bad, I don't think? Bad, but sort of 'oh, hey, that's right, I've got formerly fresh veg in the fridge, maybe I should cook something with it' bad, not 'omigod I want to throw the whole fridge away' bad."

She hummed at me, then said, "two related questions. First, is Mimic actually dreaming about a 'refrigerator', and second, what is a 'refrigerator'?"

That got me. I stopped and shook my head a little to reset myself, then said, "I don't think she's actually thought about a fridge, now that you mention it, but it's a big insulated box you put food in to keep it from going bad. It's cold inside. Most of them have a 'freezer' compartment as well, that keeps stuff frozen. Frozen stuff lasts even longer, but some stuff doesn't freeze and rethaw well."

"So, kind of like an icebox?"

I shrugged again. "I've heard the old heads' old heads calling them that, but I'm really not sure what those are. Most freezers are cold enough to make ice, though."

She sighed. "Yet another thing I'll need to research at some future date when time permits."

"No." Marie's interruption took both of us by surprise. She remained curled around behind my back, but she definitely wasn't asleep at this point. Dunno how I could tell, either, but she wasn't.

Saffron's brows knit. "Do you mean I shouldn't research it?"

"No."

"So you mean I shouldn't wait?"

"Yes."

Twenty questions with Marie was typically a lot less fruitful for me than that. Just goes to show how much more effective a functional brain in use can be. More effective than my random collection of internet trivia and memes, anyhow. At any rate, Saffron just nodded and said, "I'll prioritize that then, as much as I can. As for your dream, if Mimic finds something unpleasant, I can't think that it'll be good for us. I'll have to have some of the Alliance forces to scout to our south, make sure that there isn't a Norfolk raiding force brewing or something similar."

"You're still attending Alliance meetings?"

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

She shrugged. "Most days. We're all taking weekends off, and I've been ferrying Lancaster home on weekends."

"Y'know, if you don't mind, we really ought to get Larry back here soon."

She shook her head. "I asked. He's not dropping out, but he's prioritizing his changes to Lancaster. Not something I can really fault him for. But if I were to put Leonard back in charge full time, he might kill those changes before they really set in. He might even do it without intending to."

"So... he's taking correspondence courses or something?" When she gave me a blank look, I said, "taking a course via the mail." Still more confusion than comprehension. "Via letters to and from the instructors?"

With that, we had comprehension. "That would require some kind of reliable messenger dedicated to going back and forth between Phileo and Lancaster."

"Uh..." I wasn't sure about the feasibility of mail service in the here and now, but some of the books from the Eastside library tickled my brain enough that Saffron noticed.

"Out with it, Goof."

"Mail service. It was mostly privatized by my time, but when it was put in place it was a Federal thing; a bunch of message routes with dedicated riders carrying mail to local hubs that distributed it. I think. I'm not sure how much of that was, y'know, all at the same time. I only read about it the once. I wasn't really a horse girl." Definitely wasn't. Not my kind of riding at all.

Her eyes widened. "That... I'm sorry, dear Marie, but I think that might be more important than refrigerators."

"Fair."

With arms that only bitched at me a little bit, I snuggled Saffron in for a hug, and it only got better when Marie put her arms around both of us and pulled us closer. Of course right about then the menace wandered in from her room and insisted on worming her way in between Saffron and I. We lay like that for a while, all snuggled in, warm and quiet, until Marie ran a hand over all three of us and, regret clear in her voice, said, "Breakfast."

Still, while the room wasn't quite as warm as all four of us under the blankets, it wasn't horrifically cold, and the warmth of the cuddle puddle did wonders for my pained stiffness. I even managed to tie my own pants. I'd have tried my shirt, but Isnomi smacked my hands away. Apparently that's her job now. Oh no! Anyway.

Saffron hopped us down to breakfast, something my legs appreciated far more than I could express in public. If I weren't so harebrained, I might even try Pavloving her, just to have a response, but, y'know, 'long term plans' and 'Tabitha' do not really belong in the same sentence. Breakfast was a little odd. Eggs and fish figured prominently. Spicy Eggs, which I'm always down for, and fish cakes. I'm guessing it stretched the fish out a bit, what with it being a little too early in the season for anything to have been harvested? Also, the fish cakes had that kind of crumbly texture I always associated with cornbread, so maybe they'd dipped into the feed stores for that. Fuck it, it had calories and protein and tasted good, so if anybody had any complaints, they could fuck the fuck off. Only one tray of sausages and one tray of scrapple though. Sadness.

Once breakfast finished, and the Maids had gone back to their routine of dropping leftover trays at the ROTC table for me to finish up, Saffron and I gave Marie hugs and kisses, because our menace cranked that she wanted to come with us today, and Saffron seemed to think it was okay. She stepped us up to the Practice Yard, where there was, in fact, a complete absence of Marshall duBois.

"Where's the Marshall? Or do we have somebody else for PT now?" I asked.

Saffron smiled at me, the one that told me she wanted to giggle, but didn't want to hurt my feelings. I smiled at her to let her know I wasn't gonna take it the wrong way, so she giggled as she said, "Independent means self-instructed, Goof."

"Oh!" That made sense, now that I thought about it. "Doesn't anyone have to, like, grade us, or do we grade ourselves?"

"We can work with one of the Faculty or Staff if we need their expertise or want an objective assessment, but it's not required."

"So, it's an honor system thing?"

She shrugged. "I've not heard it called that, but if it means we're honor-bound to do our best and grade ourselves accordingly, yes, that's it exactly."

"Huh. What do you think I should do?"

She smiled and nodded. "I'm glad you asked. I hoped you'd let me ease you back into things. I was thinking we start with a run to warm you up, then do some basic weightlifting to make sure you've not lost anything meaningful from your injuries. Then in the afternoon we can do a bit of dancing, maybe some more running if you like."

"Sounds good to me. You good to jog along, Menace?"

"Yeth!" So we set off. The menace surprised me by keeping up with us for like ten minutes before lifting her arms up toward me and saying, "up!"

I scooped her up and kept jogging. Not like she weighed all that much, so I set her on my shoulders and considered it that much better, training wise. It got a little weird when we got to weight training, where she'd sit on the bar and force me to balance her shifting weight on top of, y'know, the actual weight Saffron had put on the bar. Hard to believe how much harder one little kid shifting around made lifting a hundred fifty pound bench press, but it sure as shit did.

At lunch Marie brought around stuff we could eat while jogging, and Saffron had me keep jogging while eating. "You can't really eat as much without getting sick, but right now I think you're better off not cooling down until we're done for the day."

Of course she said that from the princess carry I had her in while she fed me my fish sandwich bite by bite. When she finished, she ate her own, which bothered me way less than the crumbs in my hair from the menace eating hers while sitting on my shoulder.

When we finished, she went to join the other folks training, who'd put together an obstacle course in the middle of the Yard. Once again she wound up being a moving obstacle between the climbing ropes and the climbing nets. Saffron and I literally waltzed around the perimeter of the course. Yeah, I prefer the fancier sexy dances, but a Waltz was way better suited to my current level of flexibility, not to mention keeping our daughter from asking about shit neither of us really wanted to talk with her about yet.

Right as the sun got near the roof, we shifted to jogging around the edge of the Yard again. The menace jogged along beside us for most of it, only jumping up into my arms as the sun set. Saffron stepped over to the pair of us and stepped us back to the Dining Hall.

Dinner wound up being a thick stew with cornbread. Although apparently nobody but me and the other ROTC folk even guessed that it was made of corn, the rest were all pretty impressed, especially since we had plenty of butter and preserves to spread on it. Our table and the gobbos wound up with some extras as well; plates of shrimp with some kind of spicy sauce. In our case, we'd tried Marie's shrimp before, and the gobbos were too much children of the Yards to pass up food without trying it.

I nommed hard, because for once I actually felt hungry. Maybe I needed the food to heal. Probably something like that. Two hours after we started, the Maids started bringing me leftovers. I spent another half hour packing stuff in while the menace napped and Saffron just watched me, leaning with one elbow on the table, her hand in her chin, smiling softly while the Menace in her lap leaned against her, snoring.

Then I tried to stand up.

Pain. My arms were fine, since I'd kept them moving, but my legs informed me that I no longer had joints below the waist, and that sitting was my life now. Saffron just smiled, reached out, and took my hand. A moment later I sat on the edge of the bed, Saffron sitting in our chair in front of me.

"Ow."

"I know, love. Let me put her down and then I'll help you to bed."

"I love you."

"And I you, love." Then The Grin made an appearance and she sing songed, "be with you in a moment."

Endorphins help with frozen up muscles. Who knew?