Dear Diary,

"A side effect of Bloodlust, You need to be aware of, Your O-face shows in public." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Bloodlust

With this latest warning about the hidden or unrecognized dangers of embracing the Power of her darker Domains, Tabitha reminds us of something very important as well. Our Goddess is a Trickster Goddess, and with that comes the power and joy and curse and pain of humor. Never forget, Bloodlust can and will fill us with pleasure, with overwhelming momentary joy, but that is not the only thing to judge it by. We must always remember consequence, and in so remembering, set that joy aside when the need for Bloodlust and all its power has passed. Should we survive the day, we must face those consequences. With the same face that all involved have now seen exposed at our most intimate. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha

I, uh, don't really think about that much. Seriously, I don't know why I don't. Probably because if I thought about it at all... Yeah, every time I think about it for any length of time I wind up feeling guilty, and feeling guilty specifically in a way my love, my life, my Saffron has told me not to.

Specifically I'm talking about how many people have observed me. Like, my brain wants to fill in something like 'at the heights of Passion', but lets face it, I'm talking about my O face. I'm talking about people watching me climax like circus goers watching particularly complex acrobatics at Cirque du Soliel. Literally watching with religious fervor. Since I am not actually an exhibitionist, thinking about that makes me a little weirded out.

Not, mind you, squicked or in any other way violated. Just, like, maybe a little shy, or wondering how people still want to watch after seeing me going at it at least like a dozen times. Seriously, I can't think... well, okay, I didn't hook up with all that many people back in the day, and none of them were the kind of hot that made me want to watch them in a mirror or shit like that, but... Okay, yeah, I just realized, my fuckin' M-Space borderline fuck shack has one full mirrored wall, a partially mirrored ceiling, a curved mirror so anybody on the bed can see the whole bed, and a fuckin' watching station on the Divan. I may not technically be a voyeur or exhibitionist, but I'm definitely adjacent to one or both of them.

Maybe I need to, I dunno, test it. See if I enjoy stuff more when one of my ladies is watching, or if there's zero change on that. Because I just fuckin' remembered that the final kitten requisition input into Marie's baby factory was prompted and prodded by watching Saffron doing the same with Siobhan. Yeah, your girl has some voyeuristic tendencies. So maybe I don't need to test that at all. But I still ought to test whether somebody watching while I do the deed is a turn on or not. Although that might be hard to really do, because my tendency, which has only gotten more pronounced since the weekly Revels started, is to pay very close attention to whoever I'm with. For somebody who proclaims to be all about the physical aspect of fuckin', I'm realizing exactly how intimate I find it.

Which, y'know, means my Worshippers, or really anybody who comes to the Temple Revels to observe, see exactly how intimately I care about the people who have committed in any way to helping me out with that.

So after heading home yesterday and getting my nom on, I spent a very pleasant evening mostly vibing with my ladies. First in the Bath, then in the Bed. I don't know why, but I couldn't really bring myself to ask them to test the watching thing. When everybody felt mostly sleepy, we collapsed back into the bed, and I wound up with a rotating selection of kittens attached through the night. I napped and dozed more than outright slept, but I still got to see my ladies continuing Vibefest 344 in my Maw. Each time I slipped that far to sleep I played eeny meeny miney moe and plunked one of them into the depths with a tentacle. Still weird, having objective evidence that they, ah, enjoy the experience enormously, because when I dip my tentacles in the maw it still feels kinda like what bleach smells like, and that's when it's a completely hale and healthy tentacle.

Woke up and remembered something. First stepped down to Calverton. Madeline?

She appeared next to the Altar a moment later. "Goddess?"

She looked so worried that I pulled her in for a hug, then held her at arm's length, just appreciating how she filled out her Holy Garb. "Lookin' Good, Mads!"

She glanced at the Altar, kinda worried maybe. "Did you want to...?"

I smiled. "I'm not totally opposed at some point when I'm not trying to keep an errand in my head, but not right at the moment? Needed to ask you about something, maybe get your help?"

I wasn't sure whether to be upset or not at how relieved she looked. "Anything, Goddess."

"Were you involved with the construction of the Temple in Norfolk?" She shook her head. "Okay then. I'm gonna step us down there, but I don't want to barge into Olga's throne room. Just kinda feels rude. D'you mind going in and asking her if she's got a minute to talk?"

"Of course not, Goddess."

I rolled my eyes. "Call me Tabitha. Please."

"I..."

I leaned in, tipped her face up to look at me with one finger under her chin. "Really. You passed your Trials. You're my High Priestess. You've earned that." Then I smirked. "Sides, we've definitely seen each other's most intimate bits, right?"

She looked up at me, clearly eager and terrified that I was about to kiss her. Which I wasn't, not really, but I wanted her to know I was serious, to look me in the eyes. "Yes, Go... Tabitha."

"Excellent." I leaned in and kissed her forehead. My lips still nearly pressed to her skin, I whispered, "do you want more than that?" She shook her head. "You know it's an offer, not a demand, right?" She jerked her head in a tiny nod. "Good. That's all it ever is." I moved back to look into her eyes. "Even when it's more than that, that's all it ever is."

She shook her head. "I... I don't understand?"

I smiled. "There may come some point when I have a powerful hunger for you. Specifically. I dunno, I haven't... No, on the night you were officially Ordained, the night after my birthday? Oh, yeah, I wanted you, specifically, right then, like that. Did... did you mind?"

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"Oh, no! No, not at all."

"You sure?"

She tilted her head, finally thinking, considering. "It... It felt like a confirmation of my Ordination?"

"So you didn't mind being a birthday present?" I smiled at her as I stepped us both to the Altar in Norfolk. Kinda weird, but after stepping to and from the Black Dragon, I realized that if hopping to the Black Dragon was noticeably harder than Translocating anywhere else, going between my Altars was ever so slightly easier. Like, I hadn't even noticed any difficulty when Kitten and I Co-Located on all of them last Revel.

She barely glanced around, totally focused on me for the moment. "No. No, I didn't, God... Tabitha."

I leaned in, "y'know, now I kinda want to hear you say 'Goddess'." She opened her mouth, and I interrupted her with, "y'know, next time we Revel."

I can't help it, I see hot cute woman in hot cute outfit specifically tailored to push all my buttons, I flirt. I probably should, but I can't. Fortunately, she took it well. "I'll guess we'll see what comes out next time."

With that she hopped off the Altar and headed for Olga's longhouse. I dropped down, flopping onto my butt and kicking my legs over one side of the thing, leaning against the other. A little while later, Olga's head crested the side of the little valley my altar was set in. "Champion Diaz!"

I laughed, carefully stepped next to her and Mimicked her size, and threw my arms around her in a hug before dropping back. "Olga! I'd say long time no see, but..."

"You did significantly more than 'see' Freyday before last." She smiled at the memory, which definitely took a weight off my shoulders. I mean, I thought she'd enjoyed having that little secret desire fulfilled, but I've had one or two things go entirely wrong before, so I wasn't gonna assume.

"What did you need?"

I nodded, because I totally got skipping the small talk. Olga was, much like my Kitten and Tallulah, a working Head of State with shit to do. "The, ah, Temple here. Y'know in most of the other Cities I've set up a whole bunch of services around my Temples, right?"

She nodded. "I do." After a moment of me watching her, she laughed and said, "I forgot, you haven't seen it from this angle."

She nodded to her shoulder, and I stepped up there. When I turned and looked around, it took me a little to realize what I was looking at. The first thing I recognized was where we were standing. The hillside we'd done the coronation on, although the only way I could tell was the distance and direction to the shoreline and the royal longhouse. When I looked down, I realized that as best I could tell, my Altar sat right where I'd been standing when I crowned her Queen of Norfolk. Around the open air sanctuary formed by the little depression, laid out in broken up concentric rings, were little buildings and big open fields. A mix of people in what it took a second to realize were uniforms sat around eating.

Jotnar stood out, but I definitely saw some people as broad and short as Svart, not to mention the widest variety of human adjacent sizes and colorations I'd seen anywhere in the Alliance. All of them wearing the same uniform. Black slacks. Blue jackets with golden yellow trim. Jackets which didn't seem quite as heavy as the ones I'd remembered, but then they'd had to make some of them Jotnar sized.

"Is this...?"

She chuckled. "You caught us at lunch. But yes, Champion Diaz. You told me. Norfolk style. Our very own Academy."

I just stood there, poleaxed. "Uh... Wow. Um, my Temple?"

"Is its centerpiece." She nodded as she said it, then lowered her voice. "You changed everything. You broke the cycle we'd been in since the City was founded."

I snorted. "C'mon. I killed a few assholes. That's not enough to..." I trailed off as she laughed quietly.

"Your wife is right. You don't even realize. You focus so much on some things, and totally overlook others."

"Clue me in?"

Still quiet, so her voice wouldn't travel like it normally would, she said, "there's a reason your Altar is in that spot."

"The coronation?"

"The first in Norfolk's history attended by the previous Monarch. Well, I guess a few had attended posthumously, but not," she heaved a sigh. "My coronation was the first completely peaceful transition of power in Norfolk's history."

"No."

"Yep."

I blew out a lungful of air at that, then looked around again. "Um. I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but..."

She laughed again. "The children and the poor?" I nodded. "As for the latter, there are precious few left in Norfolk, what with the number of Thralls who left for Calverton after the war. Those who stayed..." She trailed off, looking a question at me.

"They're not Thralls any more. Not slaves."

She smiled. "Oh, they're not slaves. Definitely not slaves. But the term seems to have stuck around. There are even a few Karls who have petitioned to change their status to Thralls."

I blinked. "What the fuck?"

"It's Jarl Johnson's fault, really. His Thralls are the model for the status now. All of them free to do as they please, but mostly staying in his Jarldom from loyalty to him. Loyalty gained because when all the Thralls were freed? The only real change for his people was that they could travel about and not worry about some other Jarl snatching them up, or being mistreated by Karls. Which was never permitted in his Jarldom. So other than freedom to travel and leave, they really didn't gain much. Although..."

"Yes?"

She smirked at me. "Some of them were lured away anyhow."

"How?"

She shrugged. "Promises of preferential treatment. Wealth. Land to call their own. Whatever the Jarls had available."

"Why?"

She nodded across the bay, more or less in the direction of Jarl Johnson's Jarldom. Jarl Willy Johnson. Third William I knew here and now. Weird. "The least educated Thrall in his Jarldom had more practical crafting skills than most Thralls elsewhere, and far more than any Karl or Jarl, since they'd mostly taken such things up as a hobby."

Suddenly it made sense. "So Thralls are... Crafters now?"

She shrugged. "More or less. They're the ones who make the wealth. Karls are the ones who guard it, not make it, and there's far less need for them now, even if none of the Jarls have Trolls any longer." At my quizzical look, she explained, "they've all moved to that fortress across the bay from Calverton. Technically they're beholden to neither City, but realistically they're far closer to Calverton than us, and I'm not too keen on trying to enforce my rule over them."

I chuckled. "Marylin's problem, huh?"

She nodded. "Or yours. I think they're officially calling themselves the 'Champion's Legion', after all."

"Oh. Oh, shit. I ought to look into that, shouldn't I?"

That got another laugh out of her. "Probably, yes."

"What about the kids?"

She nodded down to the shoreline, where I'd noticed a line of longboats, the kind that could be grounded on a beach without too much harm, flipped on their sides or all the way over. I realized that a couple of what I'd taken to be really big dudes sitting in the shallow water weren't. They were Jotnar. Just small ones. On closer inspection, kids. With regular sized kids moving between them and the tipped over boats. "While we've plenty of combat instructors among our Jarls, and we've a few Thralls to teach practical skills, we've had to bring in teachers in reading, writing, and arithmetic from other Cities. Our Academy math professor is from one of the Phileo universities, but most of the teachers for the children are from Calverton or Camden Yards. Well, except our physical education instructor."

"Phys ed? You've got a phys ed teacher?"

She nodded. "Mostly just has them swimming and running, but it helps keep them settled in for the rest of their classes. He's from Rich Man's Port. Can't handle Cold Iron, not fond of iron in general, really, but the Overlord vouched for him." She looked around, then pointed out a horse running along the shoreline, gathering a bunch of kids trailing behind him like some kind of equine pied piper. "There he is. Pooka, I think. Or a Kelpie? I can never tell them apart."

"I don't know enough about either to tell if that's racist or not."

She snorted. "Oh, it's not a question of prejudice on my part. Not really."

"No? Then what is it?"

She chuckled. "Same reason I can't tell the difference between Vanir and Aesir." When I kept up my quizzical look, her chuckle turned into an actual laugh. "You're all of you so little, I can't tell the difference!"

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