Dear Diary,

"Your Children ain't part of you, But they come from part of you, Love what you have in common." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Children

In this Verse of the Book of Children, our Goddess reminds us that while they may often seem so, our Children are not in the strictest sense part of us. They are their own persons, with hopes and dreams and doubts and fears and Agency. They are not automatons, or slaves, or homunculi. Yet even in the case of those Children we have taken in when the winds of Fate blew them through our door, there will be points of commonality. For Children of the body, there are of course simple things like looks, or culture, or shared family. But for all of the Children who we shelter, nurture, and love, there will be our common living space and our shared history, whether that is just moments of time spent huddled together against the cold or secrets shared with those we trust. As parents, we ought seek out those commonalities. Celebrate them. Rejoice in those things which our Children do which we did once, in those things they do which we still do, and even, perhaps especially, in those things they do which we could not do. For if there is one true, good, viable pyramid of people in the Mortal Realm, it is also the one way in which we and our Children are part of the same continuum, as they stand on our shoulders to reach higher than we could, to strive for success we could not achieve, to be our ultimate impact on the future. Not as puppets, or as cat's paws, but as free, empowered people who are in all ways better than us. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha

Y'know, now I'm almost sorry I spent so much time talking about 'don't do this, don't do that, please don't do atrocities, be aware of the danger of embodying cranial rectal inversion'. Because yeah, Saffron hit some high notes on those in the Commentary, drawing out things I didn't think of, making some of the worse parts of my darker Domains seem less evil. Maybe even not evil at all so much as dark, or unfortunate. A septic tank isn't evil, after all, just a kinda nasty part of the price of sanitation.

But this, these last few Verses now that I've gotten to the Book of Children, where I kinda remember just singing the praises of the idea of kids, she's just knocking them out of the park. Taking what I said and not ignoring it, not even really altering it, but transcending it, turning it from something mid into something epic. All of it is shit I would have said if I'd maybe had a year to think about it, but none of it is stuff I actually said.

Yeah. I get it. She knows me better than I know myself. She's also so much smarter than me that it's not even funny. I still have some occasional moments of self-doubt, when I wonder if she's ever gonna get tired of me for being too slow or too stupid or too... Me. But then I remember that she does know me better than I know myself. She knows that, and knowing that she still chooses me.

Kinda funny, I just realized, some of the really mononormative stuff I grew up with has apparently been fully shucked off like dead skin, dried up, and blown away on the wind. Because I've watched my pretty Kitten rocking and getting rocked by both partners of the evening and our mutual long term and life partners. She chooses them too. So do I. We all choose each other. Because it's not what my old science teacher would have called 'one of them there binary solution sets'. It's not like there is one materia slot and she has to choose which of us goes in it. Not just literally, either. It's more like she's going to the supermarket, making sure she's got everything she needs, and I know I'm gonna wind up in her cart. She knows the same thing, that she's gonna wind up in mine. Marie's in there too. Siobhan's like the little kid who jumps in mom's cart when they get to the supermarket. Tallulah. Okay, Tallulah I don't know all that about yet. But she's clearly put me in the cart as a weekly purchase, and so far she seems to be dropping my other ladies in there on the regular too.

No, I'm not talking about sex. Okay, not just talking about sex. I'm talking about 'this is someone I want to share my life with'. Which is all of them. Yeah, because at least four of us are pretty fuckin' sex oriented, that means 'someone I want to share my body with'. But it's also 'someone I want to raise my kids with'. 'Someone I want to cook meals for and eat with'. Someone I trust. Someone I love.

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And she totally gets me when she realizes that while at its base I think I'm just tryna be the mom I wish my mom could have been, that I wish the world would have let her be, that somewhere deep in my heart I want to believe she wanted to be, that's where it started, but it's not where it's wound up. It's wound up with me wanting to set my feet and lift our kids up to someplace better. To be better, and not in any kind of 'better than all the other people' sense. But in the 'better than me' sense. Because at the end of the day, even on my best days I know I fuck up a ton. Okay, maybe now and then the Fates smile on me and I manage to be everything everyone needs me to be, and I get it all right for a day. Or an hour. Or at least, like, an important interaction. But if I can just manage to do enough, well enough, long enough for our kids, maybe they can be better. Fuck up less. Raise their kids even higher. Reach their hands out further to the sides, to lift more people up higher.

Yeah, a shit pyramid where the guy on top is using the people below him to lift himself out of the shit can fling itself into the sun. But a pyramid where the bitch at the top is pulling as hard as she fuckin' can to lift everybody out of shit, up into the sunlight, that I could get behind. Okay, I get on top of, because I am in fact the bitch who has to get up there and pull.

But I better fuckin' be damn sure that I'm not just fooling myself and shoving everybody else down.

Speaking of shoving people down, after yesterday night's whole potty training session, after we all spent some time soaking in the Bath, I did a lot of that while my ladies floated around my Maw.

I spent most of the day yesterday focused on playing with the kids while cleaning up the Academy, prepping dinner, and guarding my Head of State ladies' bodies. I also had one of me on the mast of the Black Dragon, binocs in hand, watching the docks of Boltophsberg directly and via Karen.

All day long watching, and nothing but tension. People still had jobs to do, but nobody hung around like dock workers do. Karen saw half a dozen almost fights, but every time some old grizzled fucker would step up and pull people back, talk people down. At one point a bunch of guys who walked like cops walked through, and everybody fuckin' ghosted except for a couple of those old guys and some guys in fancier outfits. That meeting was tense as fuck. The kind of thing I used to see when cops would roll up on some dude aspiring to respectability, push every button they could without crossing some unspoken line. Tryna get a response, tryna get any excuse to 'fear for their lives'.

But Ivan's boys kept their shit together.

Brought home pizza, got everybody settled in eating, including my kits eating what amounted to some tomato gravy, then asked, Karen? Marie? Where am I supposed to be tonight?

The Temple of Love in Phileo, please, love, answered Saffron.

So I stepped to my Temple in Phileo, where Saffron waited with her white Holy Garb on. "Again, love?"

I stepped over and whispered, "tell me you're not getting jealous?"

She chuckled. "Of course not, love. No, I want you to show those who are certainly watching exactly who is the preeminent force in the Alliance."

I smiled and slid my hands down her arms. "Yeah, I'm looking at her."

She shook her head. "No matter that those governed by the Alliance Consent to that governance, no matter that we now have Heroes numbering in the thousands, a standing Army with an dozens of times that many troops, more advanced ships of greater size than any City in the world, you, love, are still the single most potent force in Atlantis."

Not gonna lie, that made me feel a little giddy. "So..." I looked into her, and she smiled, knowing I did it as I did. "Really?"

"Show them."

Yeah, shoving people down again. Specifically my gorgeous little Kitten, who wanted nothing more than me to show her again, to show everyone watching that struggle as hard as she might, I could still gently, quietly, inexorably bring us both to the heights of pleasure time and time again. There on my Altar in the Temple of Love. Then a second time on all my Altars. Then, because it had been so long since we did it, on the mast of the Black Dragon as well.

I might have projected the pair of us into the sky, because fuck the Deities of Boltophsberg not seeing this.

In the morning, I carried the kids to school and taught math all day. While also hanging around on the mast of the Black Dragon with my Kitten while the crew spent the day preparing to take on refugees and decorating the ship. Because if we were gonna wind up using her to evacuate civilians, she was gonna look good doing it.

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