Dear Diary,

I'm still boggled when people treat me like some kind of authority figure. Gobsmacked. Utterly confused. Except that the more that I think about it, the more I realize that maybe I shouldn't be.

Seriously. I've heard people say it, I've even said it myself, I'm the most powerful single military force in Atlantis. Which, I mean, saying it and believing it are two different things, but even if I don't really, deep inside, believe it, other people do. I'm the Champion of the Alliance too; that really seems to supersede anything other than Imperator in terms of command structure. Shit, I'm not sure who somebody would listen to if the two of us disagreed. I really hope they'd listen to Saffron, because she's smarter than me, but something tells me they'd listen to whichever of us gave them an order most recently. Which I guess is a good thing, since I'm not likely to contradict her orders unless I've learned something she didn't know when I gave them. So along with the title, I've got a whole fuckin military I could point at somebody. Not to put too fine a point on it, I did just that yesterday to make sure nobody fucked with Muscogee while I was away. On top of everything else, though the typical dude on the street might not realize, even though I'm no longer hiding it, I'm also a mass of tentacles a significant percentage of the mass of a tectonic plate.

For a lot of people, that kind of power is all they listen to. For most people, when someone with that kind of power speaks, they listen, not because they respect them as having something useful to say, but because they're afraid.

Shit, I hate having people afraid of me.

That's really fuckin' rich coming from me, I know. 'Scare the piss out of them' was my stock in trade when backed into a corner. Not like I ever did that back in the day. Mostly I just talked mad shit until whoever I felt threatened by decided I was too crazy to be worth the trouble. Then I finally came up against somebody I couldn't scare that way, because they were on the far side of the fuckin' aquarium, and I died. I woke up here. I started training, getting stronger, getting harder, getting maybe enough real power to be a real threat, and I just kept doing that. Threatening people. Literally making Lancaster piss himself on at least one occasion.

I guess maybe if the shittiest people in the world are afraid of me, that's not the worst thing in the world, especially if it makes them maybe stop being shitty. Or even if it curtails some of their shittiness. But... if I do that, or really if I keep doing that, keep leaning on that, I'm just copping a squat on shit pyramid.

Of course, all of that is really stuff I've thought of, realized before. It's the moral, ethical reason I don't want people afraid of me. None of them, from Gods to little kids, I don't want them doing things or not doing things because I'm the monster that will gobble them up if they do.

Thing is, I've got people who have no reason whatsoever to be afraid of me who still look at me like my mouth noises are more valuable than a noxious fart of equal volume, and that just boggles my mind. Seriously, I'm a dumbass. Everyone knows this. At best I've got a shitty high school education from a world that had some better tech than where I am now.

Seriously, that's the real reason Saffron's Imperator, and Olga's Queen. I'm not even trying to deny that I'm allergic to responsibility, either. I'm allergic to responsibility because I fuck it up because I am, as I've noted, a dumbass.

So yesterday right before dinner I let Rabbit, Lily, and my ladies know that we needed to talk. Of course, shortly thereafter Marie led our girls out with dinner. Cold cut sandwiches, but still, the girls were so proud they'd made dinner for everybody by themselves. Utterly adorable, so we all sat down and ate with them.

Once dinner was done, we went through the normal bedtime routine. Shower, Bath, then to bed. The kids and Marie quietly all but surrounded Siobhan, leaving the side toward the closet bathroom clear. After that I held my hands out. When my ladies and Lily and Rabbit all joined hands, I stepped us to that endless undulating meadow of tentacles. Lily and Rabbit both froze, and I shook my head. "You're safe. Safer here than maybe anywhere else in the world."

Lily looked straight down, then back to me. "I do not feel safe."

I nodded. "Yeah. All I can tell you is that if anybody tries to hurt you here? They'll discover that this carpet of tentacles is way more permeable for them than it is for you." At her confused look, I sighed, rolled my eyes, and said, "somebody comes all the way here and tries to hurt my friends? I will be hard pressed not to eat them."

"What if we hurt your friends?" whispered Rabbit.

I shrugged "You are my friends. Sometimes friends bicker. But I don't think you're planning on sticking a shiv in any of us. Yeah, I kinda meant 'physically harm' not 'make feel bad'. At any rate, will you two take my word for it that I'm not going to eat you? That I will protect you from anything that comes at you here?" I waited, and eventually both of them nodded. "Cool. Saffron, have you seen what I discovered about Muscogee?"

"I tried to give our new friends some privacy. Synopsis, please?"

I pushed my Blend around us, surrounded us with a layer of tentacles. "Sorry, ladies. Just making sure this stays with folks who already can kinda know." I turned to Saffron. "Muscogee City isn't a City, it's a fake. A fake whose entire purpose is to keep Europan settlers from thinking the land is unclaimed."

She tilted her head, looking at the locals. "Isn't it?"

"Your people see land without Cities and assume it's not." Rabbit's words could have been caustic, but she said them with a kind of weary resignation.

Saffron shook her head. "That's not what I asked. The land around and beyond Muscogee belongs to your people."

Lily shorted. "Land doesn't belong to people. People belong to the land. They're... part of it? Become so, at any rate."

Saffron pursed her lips, thinking. "That's an interesting viewpoint." Lily opened her mouth to say something, but Saffron shook her head, "no, I'm not disagreeing, or arguing. We've talked about this regarding Bear's people, but... this is the same thing, yes?"

Lily frowned. "Not the same." Then she paused. "But..."

Rabbit quietly said, "the Great Bear's people do not live there any longer. They are gone. Our people, and their cousins, they all still live in the places they've lived for centuries. Places to your west, and your south."

"Okay, I get how Muscogee is to the south, and Grandmother's Village is to the west, but," my brain glitched for a second. "Do your people have a single name?" Rabbit shrugged, but Lily shook her head. "Okay, isn't not Muscogee, is it?"

Lily nodded, "the people around Muscogee have been called that."'

Saffron shook her head. "More importantly, since I'd like to avoid making plans for any expansion into the lands of your peoples, where do they still live?"

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Lily hesitated, and glared at Rabbit when she moved to speak. "Please, Lily. If they wanted to attack us, they could." Then she turned to Saffron. "Once they lived around the lakes, along the great river, and in the mountains. Then the Dragon came and killed those who lived near the lakes. Then your people took the northern mountains. So all that remain are along the great river and in the southern mountains. Some others live in the jungles to the south, protected by the one you call Jack."

That lit off a memory. "Wait. Great river? You mean the Mississippi?"

Lily and Rabbit both twitched when I said that word. "How... No, how is it we hear you say it correctly, then hear you say it so... badly?"

I shrugged. "It's a Skill. It translates for me. Shit, does that maybe mean Mississippi means 'great river' or something?"

Lily looked at me like I'd just started chewing on my own hair or something. "Yes. Great river means great river. I am Lily. This is Rabbit. These are your ladies."

I shot her all the side eye, then said, "Okay, Kitten. Looks like, um... gimme a second." I did something I'd never done with anyone but Maze present; I scried on my old world. I wasn't really looking for anything special, so I found what I needed pretty fast, then pulled it across and spread it out, a big assed map of the continental United States.

"Such power," gasped Lily.

I shrugged. "After that little Worship session at the Temple, you could probably do that. The creation part. Not sure about the scrying, my dad taught me that. But that's not the important part." I looked at Saffron, but I wound up having to snap my fingers a couple times to get her attention.

She looked up at me. "I will be keeping this." I rolled my eyes. "If they want one, you can make them another, I suppose."

I nodded, then pointed out Lake Erie. "Okay, that's Lake Erie, and the other Great Lakes around it. This," I ran my fingers down the line of the Mississippi, "Is their Great River. And the southern mountains are, I'd guess, this area," I ran my hand across Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi itself. "All that sound about right, ladies?"

The two of them just stared at the map. "This is... how..." Lily stuttered as Rabbit did the smart thing and shut the fuck up. I just waited, until Lily shrugged. "I cannot say for certain, but I believe so."

When I tilted my head in a little bit of confusion, Rabbit took pity on me. "We've little cause to look on things from such a height. But if this image is accurate? Some of our people live here as well," she ran her hand across Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee.

Saffron just nodded. "None of them in anything our people would recognize as a City, though." Rabbit and Lily both shook their heads. "I'm guessing Grandmother's Village is typical?"

Rabbit shrugged. "There are some larger. There are many smaller. Grandmother has led her people well for tens of years now, and they've prospered."

Saffron just nodded. "So... officially, all that land is protected by Muscogee?"

Rabbit snorted. "You know as well as I do that nothing about Muscogee is 'official'. It is maintained by a few who do so as their life's work, and many who visit out of curiosity, or to meet strangers."

Saffron nodded. "So. Officially. According to the Alliance Military. All that land is claimed and protected by the City of Muscogee."

The two of them just stared at her like she'd grown another head. "Did you not hear what I just said, woman?"

Saffron tilted her head forward, looking up at Rabbit, the ghost of a grin curving her lips. "Did you not hear what I just said, Rabbit?"

"You... you would concede all this? Without argument? Without trying to take any of it?"

Saffron just shrugged, her hands clasped behind her, which did interesting things to her anatomy in profile. "I'm sure at some point we may need to establish a more formal border. Markers? A fence? A line of lookout posts? Trading posts, perhaps. Something to let our peoples know where the Alliance ends and Muscogee begins."

Lily just shook her head. "But Muscogee isn't... it isn't real!"

Saffron just smiled. "Who says it is not?"

"You know it isn't!"

Saffron kept grinning. "Oh, it may not be what my people think of as a City. But it most certainly is a place. A place which represents a people. A people as worthy of respect as any other. Even if your ways aren't the same as ours, you are still people."

"Of course we are! Why do you even feel the need to say that?"

Saffron shrugged. "You were the ones who seemed to think we didn't think you were." She sighed. "Perhaps some of the Cities of the Alliance might need some convincing, or some correction, but..." she turned to Tallulah, who'd been hovering in the background with Karen. "Does the Overlord of Rich Man's Port agree with the Imperator on this?"

"I do. Humans are Humans, no matter what land they hail from. Those who are 'Human Adjacent', as our Goddess says it, are no more or less worthy of respect than Humans, so I fail to see why the place of origin of a Human should matter." When the locals shot her some side eye, she sighed and said, "Yes, as Overlord of Rich Man's Port I agree with the Imperator's position on this."

Saffron nodded. "I'm certain George will see this the same way." When Lily and Rabbit both tilted their heads to ask the same question, Saffron snorted and said, "of all the Grand Councilors, he is the most consistently concerned with 'right' and 'wrong'. I'm certain Mrs. Driver will agree as well. Camden Yards has no path to westward expansion. Which means that if we agree to this before Compton decides to join the Alliance, even if all three other Grand Councilors vote against it, my tiebreaker vote will decide things." She nodded. "So. Ladies. Can the peoples of Muscogee live with the Alliance as neighbors, as the people of Grandmother's Village have lived with the people of our Homestead as neighbors?"

Lily looked at Rabbit, then at me, then back at Saffron. "I think you are insane, to believe that anyone would honor an agreement with a City which doesn't exist."

Saffron just nodded. "Perhaps. My sanity has been called into question before. But whether or not 'people' will honor that agreement? I will honor that agreement, and any under my command will see to it that our people do as well."

Rabbit stepped forward and held out a hand. "Your people do this, right?"

Saffron clasped Rabbit's hand. "We do. So let it be." She sighed, obviously relieved. "Now, there's only three things to sort out at this point, and all of them are, frankly, just trivial details."

"Oh?" Rabbit looked a little iffy, like she'd just realized the bag of chips she'd bought was mostly air.

Of course my Kitten disabused her of that notion. "Yes, of course. First and foremost, I'll need to write this agreement up, then have you look it over and agree to the wording, then have it approved by the Grand Council." When Rabbit looked a little mulish, Saffron shook her head and explained, "we've found that if we write it all down, and everyone has a copy, there are less disagreements about what was agreed to later, when memories fade." She paused, then asked, "do your people have any way to mark agreements? Between individuals, or better yet between towns, or larger groups?"

Rabbit nodded. "Different groups have different customs, but... I think I... something could be done. I will see to it."

"Thank you. So along with those formalities, we need only work out how to guard Muscogee's shoreline from intruders, Europan or otherwise..."

"Didn't you just say your people would not intrude?" sneered Lily.

Saffron nodded. "I did. And my people will not. The Alliance will not. If we set foot on Muscogee lands it will be as guests, and if any of our people are ill behaved guests, they ought be treated as such. Eject them, punish them, whatever seems appropriate to you. Or simply turn them over to us and explain what they did wrong. But neither Boltophsburg nor Compton are part of the Alliance, and as of yet we have no real influence over any Europan Cities." She paused, nodded, then said, "should any from outside the Alliance attack Muscogee, the Alliance will, with the same spirit of neighborly behavior we stepped into the path of the Dire Bear headed for Grandmother's Village, step in to assist Muscogee."

Lily frowned. "And when the invaders leave?"

Saffron just laughed. "Are we still living in Grandmother's Village?" Lily pouted, and Saffron shook her head. "I would say there is no trap here, but... it's the same trap I've laid out for Compton, the same one which ensnared Calverton, and Rich Man's Port."

Lily reared up to her full height, but I already saw Rabbit nodding. "What trap?" spat Lily.

Saffron just held out her arms. "The same one Silk laid for us. The same one we laid for Panther. The one the children of our Homestead and the children of your Village lay for each other. When our two peoples live side by side long enough, when Muscogee and the Alliance have intertwined themselves inextricably... they becomes we."

She tugged at Karen, Tallulah, and I mentally, and we all stepped over to her, our arms going around one another, but leaving a space for Lily and Rabbit. I snerked a little, and Saffron looked up at me. "Same trap you laid for me, really."

"And you, me, love."

Rabbit stepped over, her arms going around Saffron, and the slight tension she still had started flowing out of her as Saffron's free arm went around her. Lily stepped over to where I held an arm out for her, looked down her nose at me, and said, "I... I like..."

I laughed. "I know. Men. Maybe we can find you some nice Alliance ones. I still don't think we've introduced you to Lachlan, have we? Or Carruthers?"

Lily just rolled her eyes at me as she stepped into my embrace. "This idea."

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