Dear Diary,

"If you can rebuild, do that, Instead of seeking Vengeance, But build prepared to Defend." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Vengeance

In this Verse of the Book of Vengeance, Tabitha once again offers alternatives to Vengeance. Because our Goddess knows that it is not enough to tell us 'do not do this'; especially with things that lend themselves to times of crisis. She understands that in those times of trouble, we need more than directions to avoid, we need goals to pursue, alternate paths to put that energy into traversing. Here she notes that when we are motivated to do Vengeance, we should see if we can rather create, to rebuild that which was taken from us. As was said, 'living well is the best revenge'; if we can recreate what we have lost, and live our lives in such a way that those lives, enjoying those things we have built, causes those who have wronged us to regret doing so, or even to envy our success, then we have succeeded in our Revenge. Even better, should we rebuild our lives and truly live them, erase the harm done to the degree we forget about that harm, then we have given ourselves Justice without losing ourselves to the one who wronged us. But as the Goddess says, we must take care when rebuilding, for if the forces who tempted us to take vengeance on them did so with malice aforethought, they will attempt to harm us once more. So rebuild, but rebuild stronger, more durable, and with an eye to defense. So should those forces seek to harm us once more, we can defend ourselves, and prevent them from doing so. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha

I'd honestly forgotten I wrote this one. Seriously, I read this and started nodding along like, 'yeah, that makes perfect sense, this chick really hits the nail on the head'. Which I guess is a good thing, what with me being the chick in question. Gotta be good for my self image when I admire somebody's work and then find out that I'm the person I'm admiring. Kinda proof that I'm not a total trash human being. Even if my memory is so bad that I can, y'know, legitimately do that shit.

Seriously, though, if I can't even remember writing this, I sure as shit can't remember what I was thinking when wrote it. Like, from what I can tell Saffron hit the nail on the fuckin' head. Weird that they've got that saying here and now, although I guess that might mean it's more of a universal thing than I thought. Multiversal thing? Whatever, it's part of the Human Condition. So me basing my Doctrine, at least in part, on it is an unqualified Good Thing.

That said, my thoughts on this now are that right at this moment I have to think hard to remember the names of the folks who've pissed me off. Yeah, part of that is because as noted my memory is shit, and it's only gotten worse with the recent baby induced lack of sleep. But another part is because, well, babies. Homestead. Women, and ladies, and home. Yeah, there's some person of questionable provenance calling me to St. Boltophsberg, and the Europan Gods are probably still kinda reeling about what I've done here over the past two years, plotting to come over and fuck my shit up.

But that gets back to the verse. Our house is a literal fortress, one that my Wife, who is way smarter than me, felt comfortable using as a lure for kaiju knowing our kids live inside. She's done the same thing with our whole fuckin' country, putting a line of forts on the coast, training up literally thousands of Phileo style Heroes, not to mention functionally establishing a standing Army and Navy. Shit, if she manages to sort out Boltophsberg, we could wind up with another City and forts up and down the entire coast. Anybody trying to get to us would have to come through all of that. Which is a hell of a defense for Isnomi.

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Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's just as protective of all our kids. But some part of me will never forget that just like Diana stealing away Isnomi is what lit that fire under me to stand up and say 'no more', it's what started Saffron on... I guess it's not a pogrom at this point, but it's still definitely a war. A Crusade. Which she's starting by securing our base. No 'last desperate strike' for my Kitten. Nope, she's... she's winning her Crusade by making what should have been all along, then pushing that out until it covers everything she can make it cover.

So yesterday after getting myself back on the job and nursing as well, I brought everybody home along with dinner. Okay, I didn't bring the girls home, mostly because they were already home, but also because Lindsey actually seemed to enjoy the run. I dropped my Blend and ran next to her. She looked over at me, a little bit wary, and I asked, "you want a lift back, or do you want to run?"

She was kinda pushing herself, so I took her curt, "run," in stride. Literally.

"Cool." I didn't offer to race her, because I think we both knew that wasn't a fair race, and she didn't seem like the sort of kid who wants their parents losing to them on purpose. Instead I just ran next to her, getting the door while she stood there, hands on knees, panting, once we hit East House.

Really glad Marie and I brought salad and fish tonight. Okay, we always have salad for Ria and Lindsey especially, but Lindsey seemed to like the fish. I'm not sure what kind it was; I can tell tuna from the color and taste of the raw meat, same with salmon, but beyond that I'm lost. Marie made some sushi as well, and Lindsey seemed to like that too. Ria was a little less certain with this batch. No idea why.

Brought the kittens to the Bath again. They seem to love the water, and they've got less in the way of creepy wet hair going on than Marie. Then again, that might just be their fur being so much shorter. I also don't know if that will grow out as they get bigger, or if they're always gonna have shorter fur than her. They're not nearly as fond of showering, but that might be their tendency to turn to face the shower head and get facefuls of water. Most of them love paddling around; I think it's because their limbs are still weak and their balance is for shit, but in the water neither of those is a deal breaker. Hailee tends to paddle her way over to whichever of us is just lying there floating and chill though.

Toweled them all dry, which we really need to make sure we're in the habit of doing, because while it's warm now, if they leave the house in the winter with wet fur they'll definitely court hypothermia. Then again, Marie never seems to worry about that, so maybe not.

Dreamt of my ladies and the chibi beans getting back to less choreography, more goofy relaxation and playfulness. The beans dogpiled Madeline at one point, which was fun to watch.

In the morning I spread myself out again. I don't think about it that much, but I'm doing like a dozen different things at a time on any given day now. Yeah, some of those things are really low impact, more passively existing than anything, like bodyguarding or nursing. Some of them are things I can do by rote, like Maid duties at the Academy, or massaging Saffron as she works on fine tuning Inspect. The rest I kind of cycle through. Like I'm not really multitasking, I'm switching from task to task, but that's mostly okay. Siobhan and the girls know I'm there, and will focus on them immediately if they need me to. I've taken to having a third me in the bedroom with the babies, almost entirely for diaper changing duty. Okay, I've also started doing a little playing with them. Not much, just gentle wrestling, or helping them exercise their arms and legs.

Along with rooching, a couple of them have started rolling over to get around. Felicia started it, but Anise and Erato picked it up pretty quick. The rest mostly rooch, although Hailee got me today. While the others were either attached or rooching, I changed her diaper, then lay her back on the bed to rooch or play or whatever. Instead of doing any of that, she looked right up at me, then held her arms up to me.

Yeah, there were four of me in the bedroom for a while after that.

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