Dear Diary,

"Don't block others' Ecstasy, We're all different people, With our own euphoria." - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Ecstasy

In this Verse Tabitha cautions us that like Passion, Ecstasy is idiosyncratic; each of us finds Ecstasy in their own ways. Much as with Passion, she instructs us to avoid harming the Ecstasy of another. Each of us have our own Passion, and each of us chases euphoria in different ways. If anything, rather than stopping others from seeking out their Ecstasy, as Tabitha's followers we ought help others achieve euphoria when we can. If it does not harm us, helping others ought be our habit. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha

Yeah, I'm not sure if I had that last bit in mind when I wrote this one, but if anything I'm glad Saffron added it. Seriously, it's a huge parallel to the Verses on Passion, and I'm not sure how deliberate it was, because, y'know, me, but I'm totally gonna say it was absolutely deliberate.

Everybody does find Ecstasy in their own ways, and everybody chases euphoria in their own ways too. As long as somebody's high doesn't require somebody else's low, I can't see a problem with any of it. I think I remember wondering how to explain that shit like BDSM exists, too, because it's not even about 'doesn't hurt anybody'. Some of the shit the ladies and I have done, some of the really freaky things Marie has mastered better than anyone I've ever met up to and including Saffron, twist pain responses around until pleasure overload is on a hair trigger. In case it's not clear, I love all that shit. Hell, even Saffron and Marie enjoy it now and again, as Penance nights have shown.

Okay, that's Saffron more than Marie, since Marie's been my copilot on those occasions. Because yeah, that shit is fun and all, but I have absolutely no desire to do something that crosses the line from 'this will ache in ways that make my lady bits clench and salivate tomorrow' to 'this will hurt every time it rains for the rest of my life'. But it's entirely not not Marie, what with the entire 'thinks Sparagmos is a fun adult party game' and 'please literally granulate my hips' shit we've done. That she's asked for. Demanded.

Shit, am I not the most masochistic one in my little family? Weird.

So yesterday the setting sun slammed the door behind me, locking me in a small room with the woman the Wicked Witch of the West wished she could be. Okay, to be honest she wasn't acting aggressive in the slightest, but that slamming door definitely made me tense up more than a little bit.

Karen?

Her reply came back slightly distorted. Yes, Goddess?

Let the fam know I'm gonna be late tonight.

Yes, Goddess.

Then I focused on the old woman across from me. I nodded to the chair, "may I?"

She rolled her eyes. "I just said to sit. Why would I tell you to sit if I intended not to permit you?" When I paused with my hand on the arm of the chair, she smirked at me. "Means yes, sit."

I sat. Gotta say, for a chair that felt almost as sturdy as the indestructible chairs at the Academy, this thing had some decent padding. Not enough to actually lounge around comfortably in, but then I think my standards for that had been broken forever by the Bed and its accompanying divan.

Once I got myself seated, I tried to pretend like I was a civilized guest and shit. "Thanks for inviting me."

I half felt Tallulah's facepalm even without her being in my head that I could tell, but the old woman just smiled and poured the tea. "Please, try the tea and cakes."

"Not the sandwiches or the cookies?"

She chuckled a little. "The sandwiches are already a little stale, like I said. The biscuits won't go stale. The cakes I just cut a bit ago."

"Cool." I reached out, picked up the tea, and took the tiniest sip to test the temperature. Then I blew on it a little and said, "what should I call you?"

That just got me an amused grin as she said, "what do you think you should call me?"

I reached out, picked up one of the little cakes, nommed it in one bite, and chewed while I thought. No idea if she was who I thought she was, no idea if she'd made the cakes or not, but the woman knew her cakes. "I think you've been called Baba Yaga, but I'm not sure if you'd take offense if I called you that."

She shrugged, sipped her own tea, then said, "I wouldn't take offense at that, if you can tell me what it means."

I shrugged, then beat at my brain to try and remember that old mythology book. "Uh, Baba is more a nickname or an honorific, like 'grandma' or 'auntie'. Probably close to 'Auntie' where I'm from, but that's kinda far away from here." I paused. She stared at me, although I thought I maybe saw her head bob the slightest little bit. "Yaga... That one's harder to pin down than Baba. Most of the guesses I read aren't real complimentary, but then most of the guesses I read were written by men." That got the tiniest head tilt. Which didn't really fill me with confidence. Fuck it. "So I'm just gonna assume it translates roughly to something like 'boss bitch'."

That got... the shadow of a frown from her, and an offended snort from the debutante. "Who are you, who would call the Baba a bitch?"

I didn't even look at the one I assumed was Ilmatar. Just kept my eyes locked with Baba's. "I call my wife a boss bitch. I call my other wife a bad bitch. The Imperator calls me her favorite bitch. Word don't mean nothing but 'female dog', and dogs are loyal, friendly, and will bite your fuckin' throat out if you hurt their pack. We're all about taking that word back and throwing it in the faces of the assholes who try to use it against us. So yeah, 'Auntie Boss Bitch' seems to fit."

That frown cracked when I pointed out that I was the Imperator's favorite bitch. When I came out with 'Auntie Boss Bitch', she shook slightly, then giggled in a creaky way, then started laughing. No, not laughing. Cackling. This woman had mad old crone energy, and her cackle was something to be seen and feared. I just sipped my tea and tried one of the cookies. It really didn't look so much like a 'cookie' as much as a bit of deep fried dough with powdered sugar on it, but holy fuck was that shit sweet. Sweet, kind of somewhere between crispy and crunchy and flaky without ever being quite any of them. Again, like the cake, didn't know if she'd made it, but she definitely had good taste in tasty bits.

"Ah, then you may call me Baba Yaga then, without... Well, with only a reasonable amount of fear."

I smirked and shrugged. "Yeah, I'll try, but I'm not real good at fear."

"No?"

I shook my head. "Nah. I've had pretty much every awful thing I can think of happen to me personally. You could say I got my personal fear shot off back in the day."

She cocked her head. "But what of danger to your loved ones?"

I went very, very still. I didn't want this to go sideways. Diplomacy. But I wanted to be very, very clear, and I'd heard about Baba Yaga's reputed culinary habits. "Yeah, that tends to go straight past 'fear', stopping briefly at 'anger' before taking the fast lane to 'towering rage', which is usually followed by 'incredible amounts of mindful violence'." I paused. "So yeah, no, no real 'fear' there, either, not so you'd notice."

If she took offense, she didn't show it. On the other hand, she cocked an eyebrow and said, "mindful violence?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Tried mindless violence. Didn't like it after the fact. Mindful violence makes me laugh, horny, or both, so, y'know, mindful violence."

"You're very wanton with your words."

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I shrugged. "Yeah, well. Just us girls here. Never heard about you getting it on with any chicks. Or dudes, now that I think about it, but that's usually the default setting. Not that I'd know. Illy here is banging two guys, so..." I paused, turned to the pretty woman who'd been sitting there staring at Baba Yaga and I. "Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to assume. I'm not normally into hooking up for bad reasons, but if you just can't find a lady to lubricate your love tunnel, not only would I take one for team diplomacy, I know a whole bunch of other ladies who like ladies who might do so as well if you're not into brunettes or buff chicks."

Ilmatar just sat there, jaw hanging open, unable to fully process my bullshit. Right up until Baba snerked, at which point she shot the old woman a look, then turned back to me. "That offer is incredibly crude."

"Yeah, well intentioned and sincere, though. Which is kinda me in a nutshell. Including the crude part. But then, I'm not as pretty as Lemmy." I turned to Baba. "Is Vyenemoinen pretty? Does she like pretty? My Concubine is pretty. Shit, no, she's not available at the moment. Not really." I turned back to Ilmatar. "Sorry, she's pregnant, and it's been kinda rough on her."

Weird. Ilmatar shuddered a little at the word 'pregnant', kinda like some of the girls I knew who thought that popping out a kid was fundamentally 'Game Over'. But Baba looked intrigued. "Tell me more."

I frowned. "Our kids are not up for sale, nor are they diplomatic bartering chips. Or any other kind of chips."

She rolled her eyes. "You eat one disrespectful child..."

"Just the one?"

"That anyone knows of." Her grin was both horrifying and infectious. "But you've made your position very clear on that. One doesn't acquire wisdom without knowing when not to rile a Dragon Slayer."

I sighed. "Yeah. Not my finest moments."

If anything, I wound up surprised by her look of surprise. "Moments? Plural?"

"Which one did you hear about?"

She pursed her lips. "I know of two, but you only slew one."

"Yeah, the one in the mountains was really Saffron. The Imperator. She shot it with Vulcan and that pulped its innards but good. I just kept it distracted by pretending to be a chew toy."

Her mouth worked. "I referred to the one you've taunted by stealing from so frequently, but then, he's the only one in Europa to reach the age where he can speak."

I filed that information away, but repeated, "so, which one were you talking about?"

Ilmatar cracked before Baba. No surprise there. "All in Atlantis heard your declaration on slaying the Primordial Dragon of Atlantis."

I winced. "Yeah, I was a little maybe high on power after I ate the Mother of Water Panthers. Sorry, didn't mean to be a bad neighbor."

"You... you ate it?"

I dunno, something about the way little miss debutante said it just got to me. "Yeah, look, Baba knows that sometimes when somebody's disrespecting you, you gotta express dominance by digestion." I looked away before I muttered, "and maybe teasing them with the possibility of escape before finishing them."

That got her. That finally got her good. Baba cackled up a storm, and the room... Flickered. What I saw never really went away, but at the same time we were three women sitting down to tea, Ilmatar was a cloud, a breeze, a storm, a sunny blue sky in summer. Baba wasn't just an old woman, she was every old woman, and her features distorted more with each successive one. Her nose and ears both huge, her limbs long and twisted, stretching across the room like a spider. Every soft bit on her sagged until it spilled out over the floor, strands of silk coming free of the chairs, adhering to me like overused post it notes.

I took a deep breath. The sun shone from Ilmatar's chair, and flames of torches and candles and lamps flickered all around the room, none of either touched me. I didn't look away from Baba's unhinged laughter, but eventually Ilmatar did. She glanced at me. Once. Then fixed her eyes on Baba's chair. More or less where her eyes were most of the time.

Eventually Baba calmed down, her guffaws settling into a creaky chuckle. "What others have you slain, then?"

I shrugged. "Crushed one to death right after," I almost slipped, but managed to keep speaking without hesitation, "getting out of that fuckin' box. Squish, crunch, splorch. Buried him in the silt at the bottom." I paused. "Might have been a mistake, I hear the fish there aren't real great for eating, don't know if I made that happen."

Baba made a throwing away gesture. "Fish in any port are unusually nasty, save for the bottom feeders."

"Bottom feeders in ports aren't nasty?"

She snorted. "Bottom feeders are nasty everywhere, but they fill the belly."

"True that. The other one was nastier than that though. Dragon that mated with bottom feeders." Baba's face screwed up, and when you've got the kind of wrinkles she had, 'screwed up' takes on a whole new meaning. "Also, she... he? It was Undead. Its kids too, I think."

The old woman straight up hissed at that like a cat. Ilmatar made a little hurking noise like she regretted ingesting the sandwiches. Which reminded me I hadn't eaten since breakfast yesterday, so I snagged a couple of the sandwiches and popped one in my mouth. Like, little sandwiches, not full sized ones. Those little triangle ones that are almost bite sized anyhow, and I had a sudden need to get my nom on. The first one tasted of salmon and cream cheese. Not bad, even if the salmon was a little ripe. Not rotten ripe, just sitting out for a couple hours ripe. Still, strong flavored, not bad flavored.

As I swallowed, then took a bite out of a sandwich with a greenish, vegetable look to it, Baba whispered, "an Undead Dragon. How... No, I don't even want to know how it could become twisted like that. But... how big was it?"

"Not as big as the Primoridal one. Not too much smaller though. Like maybe a quarter the size of, uh, shit, you haven't seen the Black Dragon yet, have you?"

Ilmatar cut in. "Is that the unholy mass of death metal you took Ivan Ivanov to visit?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Although I wouldn't call it 'death metal'. Industrial metal, maybe. Or symphonic classical metal?" Yeah, nobody here gets my jokes or my references. I just shook my head. "Uh, no more than a thousand feet long. Same wingspan. Was a little hard to tell, it was right in the middle of the battle, and she never got all the way out of the water."

Baba creaked out, "how did you destroy such a thing?"

I just smiled at her. "Dropped just shy of eighty thousand tons of steel coated in Cold Iron onto her from about five miles up."

"How... How did you get Cold Iron five miles into the sky?"

"Uh, made it there. Well, no, I made it five miles up in M-Space." At her quizzical look, I clarified. "Underhill. Although is it really 'Underhill' if it's five miles up? Anyway, yeah, summoned her there, then turned a hex pattern on her hull to Cold Iron, and she kinda ripped her way back to the Mortal Realm at that point. After that, gravity did its thing, and... Splat, no more Undead Dragon."

"She?"

I smiled. "My Black Dragon."

Baba just... I couldn't say she 'shook her head', although the gesture was superficially similar. She rotated her chin back and forth, super slow. "Well, child. You asked me to bring her here. She's here. Ask your question."

Weirdest thing, watching a woman who was both a woman and several different weather patterns work herself up to asking a question. "Do you intend to seduce Ivan Ivanov away from me?"

Shit, I know I was tryna be all diplomatic, but I'm only Human. Human-Adjacent, and adjacent enough that when a joke didn't land, I totally tried again with a new audience. This time I did my best to imitate that old timey voiceover as I shook my head and said, "I am not trying to seduce you." I think I made a mistake when I went all Candace Bergen and leaned forward saying, "would you like me to seduce you?"

Yeah, didn't go over super well here, either. Then again, right about then I realized that while Baba was still, on some level, that creepy old woman singularity, and Ilmatar was the sky, I was definitely channeling more than a little of the fatass of continental proportions. Not to mention the inky flirtatious tentacles writhing in the space between us.

"You're really her then?" Baba's question could have been accusatory, but she managed to keep it conversational.

"Yeah. Yeah, and I've been tryin' not to hide it so much."

"Terror does add a certain spice to meals." Old woman sounded like she knew what of she spoke.

I shook my head though. "Not my reasoning. I mean, okay, yeah, that fuckin' Dragon bitch who threatened my family tasted guilty pleasure levels of tangy when I fermented her hope into despair right before eating her head meats, but... Really? The best flavor I've ever had?" I let my mind, my memories, drift back to my birthday. "You ever had someone who loved you without reservation feed half of themselves to you, with no feeling but absolute orgasmic joy?"

I dunno what she saw in my face, but Baba got the weirdest faraway smile. "Can't say that I have."

I nodded. "Yeah. Cannot be beat. Ten thousand out of ten, would nom again." I shook my head. "But here's the thing, you only get that when people are absolutely devoted and happy and... I dunno... Fulfilled." The two of them just stared at me. "Look, part of me doesn't wanna eat anybody." I ignored Baba's snerk. "But all those fuckin' prophecies and shit seem to think it's unavoidable."

I went quiet, thinking about things, while Ilmatar tried to get herself under some kind of control, and Baba looked as thoughtful as I did. Finally, after I don't know how long, and in M-Space that shit could be absolutely anything form picoseconds to eons, Baba murmured, "so you'll let them simmer as long as they need to be tender, aye?"

I rolled my eyes. "I... That's not why I'm doing it? I don't think? Fuck me, maybe it is. But here's the thing; if every single person who winds up in my Maw is happy to be there? Not only does that mean maybe I'm doing something right, it also maybe means I wind up with less shit tastes in my mouth." Baba asked the question with her expression, and I stuck my tongue out for a second, tryna forget the taste, before saying, "Oliver and Octavio Orange. Blech. Tasted like shit."

"How do you know what shit tastes like?"

I shrugged. "You can't call yourself a freaky Gen Z slut and not know what ass tastes like." I grabbed a bit of cloth, hoping it was a napkin and not a doily, and scraped my tongue with it. "Struck that dude's name from my booty call list with prejudice." Baba just stared at me. Fair, what with me replying to her vaguely insulting Sandler-esque dialogue back with some prime quality 'WTF Diaz' bullshit. "Anyhow..."

She took a deep breath. "Yes. Anyhow." Then she got an absolutely impish grin, one that would look right at home on Menace, or Marie, or even Maze or Saffron, and turned her head incrementally toward Ilmatar. "So... Would you?"

Ilmatar blinked. "Would I what?"

I swear I heard a thousand years of cackling laughter in advance as Baba deadpanned, "Like her to seduce you?"

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