Dear Diary,

On the one hand, I get how sometimes, shit just does not go as planned, and there's no bogeyman screwing shit up, it's just the second law of thermodynamics in action. Shit falls apart. But goddammit, I want there to be a face I can punch to make things go right.

Kinda weirds me out that when I think about things like that, Larry's face isn't the one that pops up in front of my minds eye anymore. I mean, at the moment it's that sort of collective similarity of face that I see in the cousins Lancaster, which is pretty close to Larry. Just they've still got that arrogant sneer that he gave up for Lent.

So last night the family came to visit. After bath time, Isnomi found a whole stash of combs and brushes. Like the kind of thing you'd expect in the girliest of girl's dressing rooms. Which, based on the amount of wood and leather, this particular room was not intended to be. What is it with that, anyhow? As I sat there wondering, I remembered Saffron was literally right there, so I asked her, since she's so much smarter than me it's not even funny.

"Hey, Kitten?" I asked while running a brush down Marie's back. Because the rest of us had totally taken one look at the stash of hair tools and collectively decided Marie needed to be thoroughly brushed and combed. I'd say she submitted to it with a longsuffering sigh, which she did, but she also started purring like ten seconds into it, so yeah.

"Yes, Goof?" Saffron had decided on a wide-toothed comb, and was slowly working her way up from the tips of Marie's hair toward the roots.

"Why is it that everybody thinks of wood and leather as 'guy furniture'?"

"Hmm..." She got a thoughtful, faraway look as her hands kept grooming Marie. "I'm not certain, but I suspect it has something to do with durability. Leather and wood are both solid, long lasting materials, especially if there aren't any fine carvings in the wood, or delicate patterns in the leather."

"Huh. Kinda explains why I like it then."

"Hmm?"

I kept working my way down Marie's back as I explained. "I grew up with secondhand furniture. Third hand sometimes. Just all beat to shit. The only furniture I got that had any real life left in it was that kind of heavy duty shit." I shrugged. "I guess I came to think of that as 'nice furniture'."

"That does track."

"So what kind of furniture do you like?" I figured we might as well talk about it now, before we had a house or apartment full of the stuff.

Her brow furrowed as she worked at a knot while trying not to pull Marie's hair. After a bit she said, "mostly I'm a fan of adjustable metal furniture. Metal because it's even more durable than wood if you care for it right. Adjustable because..."

She trailed off, and I filled in, "because you don't want your feet dangling a foot above the floor?"

She shot me a sour look, but it evaporated as she looked at me and her fingers kept toying at the knot. "Something like that." She finally got the snarl coming apart and asked, "what about you, Marie?"

"Forest."

That kinda floored me. Like, the Maenad Maids are always so prim and proper, I kinda expected her to want something that fit the prim, proper, fancy vibe she gave off. The moment she said 'forest', I remembered that they'd literally been created to protect and nurture Dionysus, who wasn't exactly a 'prim and proper' anything. "So, like, no furniture at all? Or camping stuff? Or, like, makeshift outdoorsy stuff like hammocks and camp stools and shit?"

Marie didn't respond right away. Right around then I noticed her hands working, like she was looking for a word. After a bit I realized the motion wasn't quite that; she looked almost like a kitten making biscuits on something, except I totally got why she hadn't put her hands in the carpet or on anything, because she would totally wreck anything she worked her claws on. Eventually she sort of carefully half-nodded to avoid disturbing Saffron's work and said, "Impermanent."

"Huh. Could be fun figuring out how to build modular furniture."

Saffron pounced on the word, of course. "Modular?"

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Like, stuff that comes apart and goes back together other ways. Or has parts that move around so you can use something for more than one purpose, or make it bigger or smaller when you need it to be. I remember seeing stuff like that in shows about tiny houses."

She sucked her teeth at that. "Do I even want to know what 'tiny houses' are?"

I laughed, and she joined me. Marie purred, and Isnomi did both. "They were kind of a recurring fad. Houses that were stupidly small, like one room, maybe two or three. Some of them were mobile, like on trailers or bicycles or shit, others were just little. But with that little room, you couldn't afford to have anything that served just one purpose."

Saffron nodded. "Interesting. I don't think I'd want a tiny house, but I can understand the appeal."

I shook my head. "I never could. Just, I dunno, too much time spent living in a couple cramped rooms."

She cocked her head while running her comb through Marie's now tangle-free hair. "Aren't you living in one rather small room now?"

I waved my non-brushing hand around. "Hey, I've got four rooms now, all of them pretty big."

"You know what I mean, Goof."

I shrugged. "Yeah, but that's not cramped."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah. It's not cramped. It's comfy. Cozy."

She reached out, pulled me into a hug with one arm while she kept combing Marie's hair with the other. I reciprocated, brushing the back of Marie's neck and her shoulders. She rooched back towards us, which made combing and brushing a little harder, but I couldn't bring myself to care all that much. After a bit, Saffron said, "what about you, my girl? What kind of furniture do you like?"

Isnomi, who'd been working on Marie's legs and thighs, probably because she was the only one of us who could without getting hella distracted, stopped brushing for a second. Her tongue protruded from her mouth in a total blep for a few seconds, then she shrugged, said, "sof," and went back to combing.

I thought about her antics for half a second before I said, "yeah, that makes sense. I'm kinda down for soft too. So we've got two votes for 'durable', two kinda for 'adjustable'. Man, I can't wait to see what we eventually wind up with." Saffron pulled me toward her and kissed me thoroughly. When we came up for air, I asked, "what was that for? Not complaining, just, y'know, taking notes so I can do it again."

"You're incredibly cute when you're domestic."

Before I could reply, Marie rolled over onto our laps, oofing us both just a little bit, and said, "Yes." After she'd collected kisses from both of us, we worked our way down her front, which was hella distracting what with the menace there to prevent any shenanigans.

Eventually the length of the day hit home on both Saffron and I, and Marie and Isnomi put us both to bed, then snuggled in around us.

Mimic loves moss. Oh, and apparently during the day is playing tic tac toe with somebody? Look, just because they're Big Bad Deity Dreams, it doesn't mean still don't follow completely batshit insane dream logic.

The family left before breakfast, but not before a round of hugs and kisses. It's the little things that keep me going sometimes.

Breakfast was just the five of us, which really seemed weird what with the whole big table and everything. As I finished up the first round of everything, I asked Larry, "y'know, it's just you two, who've seen them all before, and us girls here. Is there really a reason we couldn't eat over there," I nodded toward the Ladies' Quarters, "or have some of them join us for breakfast?"

I swear Larry looked like I'd just shoved a pickle down his throat sideways. Like, not offended or anything, but definitely not copacetic about the idea at all. He glanced to his left, where Bonnie just raised an eyebrow and asked, "yes, why not?"

He closed his eyes and heaved a sigh. "As my brother can confirm, while most of the Ladies are quite content in our absence, there are usually at least a few who consider our time spent in the Ladies' Quarters to be, ah, well..."

I think Bonnie caught on before me, but she just smiled at him and watched him scrabble for some way to say it without saying it in front of her. Eventually, a bit after I'd grokked the reason for his stuttering, I decided to let him off the hook for this one, since he obviously wasn't the one who'd put the system together. "So, Lachlan, they'd pounce on you when you paid them visits?"

Affable idiot that he was, Lachlan smiled and nodded, "oh, yeah. I had to make sure not to wear anything, y'know, tearable."

I shook my head and laughed. Lachlan did as well, and shortly thereafter Raven and Bonnie joined us. Eventually even Larry chuckled a bit. "Yes. Well. As you can guess, those Ladies are a bit strident in their demands. As is their prerogative."

"I didn't notice anything when we were Curing them?"

He rolled his eyes. "Anyone who might be interested in you has any number of outlets available."

"Okay, but what about you?"

He sighed. "I may have used Stabilize not unlike you do when sparring. I had important work to do."

That got another round of laughs from everyone but Lachlan, who joined in eventually as well. I shook my head and said, "it's like none of them have ever heard of self-service before." That got confused looks from Larry and Lachlan, which only got more laughs from the women at the table, myself included. Despite the two of them trying to get us to explain, the three of us all clammed up, at least until Bonnie batted her eyes at Larry and said, "I'll explain it to you once we've dealt with all the crises we're juggling. It might take a while, and we're all too busy for that right now, right?"

Never really pegged Larry for being motivated by shit like that, but based on him vacuuming the food off his plate and encouraging me to do the same? I guess he is.

After breakfast, Larry and I headed northward. As the sun neared the horizon, we saw a typical Lancaster three-building farmstead looming in the distance.

I absolutely did not tease Larry about him having to beat the ladies off with a stick.

Who am I kidding. I fucking needled him about that shit all day long.