Dear Diary,

Today was so fuckin' weird. I say this after more than two years here and now, where sometimes it seems like each and every day is weirder than the last one. I mean, yeah, there's some days that have been kinda calm and quiet and not at all weird. Yesterday comes to mind, with the most surprising thing that happened being a conversation about Consent and Intimacy and literally eating my wife's Co-Located other half which if anything just exemplifies how weird here and now has to be for me to be weirded out by it.

I think the weirdest thing of all is that the things that are weirding me out are almost entirely normal. Okay, the one not normal thing is totally a meme come to life, but sometimes that just seems like par for the course here and now, which gets me wondering about how much Mimic influences reality, what with Mimic being me and my brain being mostly made of memes, and them showing up on the regular. Shit, one of my best friends here, and again it's weird that 'best friends' is a category I'm keeping separate from 'fuck buddies' and 'partners', but here we are, is literally the embodiment of that old meme about two half human sorts having a kid who winds up just some guy. Yeah, technically he's fully Human Adjacent, no Human in there at all, really, but to look at him you think 'he's just a dude'.

Okay, after Academy training he looks more 'mini Mountain' than 'Pillsbury dough boy', but still, just a dude, not a Minotaur or a Faun or, I dunno, anything else that I would immediately clock as Human Adjacent.

At any rate, after cutting out early from Boltophberg's ongoing constitutional convention, which I did by again Co-Locating up to the Temple of Love while I left one of me leaning against a wall, arms folded, pointing a sort of halfhearted glare at Perun, I slipped around the Temple again. Kinda weird and funny and maybe heartwarming, but the two from the coat check kept tryna claim they'd had their turns Friday, and the rest of the blessed Clergy and temple volunteers steadfastly refused to let them not be at the front of the line. Cherry, who apparently had pride of place amongst both volunteers and Clergy for some reason, absolutely no sold their 'but we went already' complaints.

I mean, I listened in to make sure they weren't tryna avoid the spotlight or something like that, because I totally didn't want to force them, but they absolutely wanted to, they just thought they didn't deserve to double dip. Which, if the rest of the folks due up weren't absolutely down for them dipping again, I might have agreed with, but I am absolutely not gonna interfere with democracy in action when it gets people nice things that they want rather than the reverse.

I definitely took the opportunity to first check out the coat check, where Karen stood in both spots, her white Holy Garb on the one on the left, her black Holy Garb on the one on the right. Nice dress.

If I surprised Karen, she didn't let it show. Your son made it special for me, after all.

I kinda meant the other one.

Funny, the one of her in the black dress didn't seem to blush as much. Couldn't tell if it was the color of the dress or not. Oh. You put it on me, so I thought...?

I laughed just a little and enjoyed the relieved smile on her face. Nah. I put the lingerie on you. For titillation related reasons. But it looks good on you. You comfortable wearing it?

All of her, including the one standing by the Altar, laughed softly at that. Very much so, Goddess. Despite all prophecies and rumors, Mimic's tentacles have sheltered us all from the wrath of Gods, Dragons, and Men. I wear it with pride.

I stepped to the side of the her wearing Glowing Midnight, leaned in, and gave her a quick kiss on the temple. Thanks, Karen.

Then it was time to Revel. Something interesting I'd not really clocked before, but at least here at the Temple of Love the lights were different for different Revels. Not hugely, but the past two being so close, and so low impact, left me aware of it. Fridays the lights were what I thought of as 'normal', which meant a soft of soft, pinkish off-white. Tonight they were more of a gray, and lower, although as noted not so much that I'd noticed when focused on Worshippers. I guessed they'd be that same gray, but brighter, on the night of a Full Moon Revel.

As the sun set, I quietly settled onto my Altar, leaned my chin on one hand, and watched for a minute as the folks waiting to come up gradually quieted, while Wendell and Dorothea kinda stuttered to a stop as people stopped pushing them to go first.

I decided to alternate tonight. "Wendell?" He turned, eyes going wide as he realized he'd missed my arrival. I laughed. "C'mon up here, my man."

"Yes, Goddess!" It sounded like he'd really keyed into the whole 'man' part of that. Poor dude.

I stepped up to the bar, asked the bartender for two of whatever Wendell's favorite drink was, and returned with two glasses of some dark foamy stuff. Reminded me a little of Guinness by the look of it. "Here you go." I handed him his after collapsing back to the Altar.

"But... the Altar."

I rolled my eyes. "Gets cleaned up on the regular. You know how nasty this thing would smell by now if nobody did that." He sniffed, then got real shy as he sipped his beer. "Go on, say it."

"I can still smell it a little."

I closed my eyes and inhaled, and definitely caught the edge of what he was talking about over the bitter smell of the beer. "Oh. Yeah, kinda, but," I chuckled. "I kinda like that smell. But right now it's just kinda a faint reminder of what's been done, maybe a suggestion of what folks might do next, not the kind of stank that puts you off your beer." After I took a drink and he did the same, I asked, "does it bother you?"

He paused thoughtfully, then said, "No. Not really." He took a long pull, then said, "if I thought you were going to, uh... Yeah, then it might."

"Nah." I pulled him into a celibate bro hug. "This is all about what you want, Wendell."

"What about what you want?"

I laughed, then hugged him tighter. "You're a good man, Wendell. I get lots of everything I want. Not everything and anything, sure, but I get what I need. Right now, though, what I want is to get to know you."

He took another drink, then asked, "do you like Squadball?"

Over the course of the next couple rounds, I learned a whole shit ton about the pro Squadball teams in the Alliance, which had apparently started up their old rotation now that nobody was at war with anybody. Wendell was one of those dudes who collected sports stats, and holy shit did he ever info dump all over me. Fuck it, I'd had dudes drop much messier loads on me on my Altar, and hearing him go on so passionately was just precious.

Eventually he kind of petered out, and I told him a few of the dumbass stunts we'd pulled at the Academy. When I finished, he leaned into me, let my tentacle gently pull his glass away, and said, "thank you," before starting to snore.

I handed him off to Karen, then waved Dorothea up. We spent the next little while talking about our kids. Hers were mostly grown, with the youngest somewhere between Maze's apparent age and Ria's actual one. She didn't want anything to drink, but didn't say no when the restaurant sent down a little plate of finger food desserts. I dunno what it is, but something about eating and drinking with somebody makes me feel like it's more intimate than just conversation. Which sounds like a stupid thing to say when we were both naked as the day we were born, sitting on a custom crafted fuckbed, but there you go.

Kinda funny how long my two Ace Worshippers took, but nobody seemed upset in the slightest.

After she had me snuggle her and rock her to sleep, Cherry came up. He slipped up onto my lap and slipped his arms around me almost as soon as Karen carried Dorothea off.

"Everything okay, Cherry?"

He nodded. I held him and crooned to him as he sat there, tension gradually increasing. It didn't feel like fear, not exactly, so I just stroked his hair and kept up a soft wordless kind of lullaby. Eventually he whispered, "I think I like men."

I slipped into boy mode, smiling, and said, "you mean like this?"

Holy fuck on toast, physically he melted into my arms while mentally that dark, quiet place in his head got anything but quiet. Fireworks and the kind of rigid tension I'd come to associate with the moment before somebody completely lost control of themselves. "Exactly like this... like you."

I caught it then, and had to hide irrational anger, as well as completely rational yet inappropriate sadness. Instead I absorbed the image in his head and took a very firm grip on him. With hands, with tentacles, not squeezing or hurting, but holding him in place. "You've never opened up to anybody before, have you?" He shook his head. "Yeah. Back where I'm from, folks who aren't into sex are called 'Ace'. For Asexual. Bet you thought you were one, right?"

I swear the boy was vibrating. Okay, man. Okay, fuck, if Cherry didn't qualify as a femboy, I had no idea what did. Definitely boy, definitely effeminate. "Yes, Goddess, but..."

"Oh, hey, I'm not tryna push you into anything. You're you. Labels are only good if they help you feel more like you, like being you is okay. And the label for somebody who isn't interested until they've got a connection to someone? Is Demi. Like Demisexual."

"Yes, Goddess," he whined. Like, not in a bad way, but almost like overstressed machinery.

"You know I can see what you want, right?" He nodded, and I looked closer, then blinked. "Really?"

"Please."

Yeah, I did not peg Cherry for a size queen, but if Karen and all the others had put him to the front of the line, I figured he deserved exactly what he wanted. Fuck it, I could Revive him if he bit off more than he could chew. Not that biting would be involved at all. Given my utter lack of previous sweat, I definitely had to lubricate a little, then turned him to face me. Funny, I hadn't realized how little he was. Not like Saffron little, but smaller than he'd seemed every other time. Then again, that might have been what he wanted inside him.

I settled him in place, let him reach up and wrap his arms around my neck, burying his face into my chest. "You ready?" He nodded. "Tell me if it's too much, okay?"

He shook his head. "Please, Goddess?"

I pulled him down onto me, felt him tense as I spread him open. A moment later, he shuddered, groaning in mingled agony and ecstasy, as the thickest part of me forced its way into him, and the rest all pushed in at once. His ass gripped at me as much as his hands gripped at the fur on my un-Blended chest, and he looked up at me, pleading. "More."

"You sure?" He nodded. I smiled down at him, leaned to his ear, and whispered, "you mind if I," I slid him up then back down with agonizing slowness. So fuckin' tight already. "Enjoy you a little first."

He whined again, still that overstressed machine in need of release. "Please."

I laced my fingers through his hair and kept his eyes staring into mine. "I'm gonna do it slow then."

I shapeshifted bigger, and he shuddered, whispered, "more," as I kept sliding him up and down. I know I've joked about recreational gut rearranging, but holy shit Cherry had to be actually doing that shit, because I'd started bigger than I thought he could safely take, and it felt like I was at least twice that size now, and I definitely was starting to lose anything resembling coherent control.

Which was exactly what that secret space in his head showed me. "Cherry?"

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"Yes, Goddess."

"I'm," my breath caught. "I'm gonna not be slow and gentle now."

His smile spread as wide as his eyes, broad and open mouthed. "Please."

So I wasn't. By the third stroke I grinned down at him just as open mouthed as he was, because I felt him hard and throbbing against my belly. I leaned down and devoured his mouth with my own, plunging into him again and again, until he screamed his orgasm into my mouth as he covered our bellies with it. In that moment I heard his voice in my head, screaming out, Goddess! Hollow me out! Hollow me then fill me, please! Please! Please!

I think maybe some part of those secret desires absolutely both empower and maybe even control me a little. Not that I think I mind awfully much, especially one like this. I came inside him. I came hard. I came long. I realized after the first couple orgasmic strokes that his twitching wasn't entirely voluntary, nor entirely healthy, and slid Stabilizing Mana along his spine.

"No Healing, please!" he gasped into my mouth.

"Not. Fucking. Your. Corpse. Cherry. Boy." With each word I slammed into him again, filling him more and more until I thought it should be pouring out of him like a fuckin' overfilled donut. After that last word I shut him up by sliding my tongue down his throat, plunging it deeper with each pulse of my orgasm within him. I felt the panic warring with passion warring within him, and hit him with that Boon of not needing to breathe, because fuck not tasting his throat so deep I half felt I'd meet somewhere halfway into him. The moment I did, panic disappeared, and passion overwhelmed him. Boy had some endurance to be painting us both again so soon.

Eventually, after I do not know how long, but it seemed both an eternity and a moment, the my orgasm stopped pulsing waves of cum into him. We collapsed sideways onto the bed, and I slipped out of him, maybe Shapeshifting just a little to avoid injuring him any more than I maybe already had. Fuck it, I'd left Kitten black and blue all over her back, and that was before any pleasant things; if Cherry had felt any of that with All The Endorphins flowing through him at once, I'd be surprised. I might have done a little very surreptitious Healing as well, just to make sure I hadn't, y'know, ruined his whole career.

"Thank you," he murmured, and I glanced once more at that deep place inside him as I kissed him on the forehead.

At which point I kinda froze, because I'd looked at what, not why. "Uh, Cherry?"

"Yes, Goddess?"

I closed my eyes at the incongruity of what I was about to say, "you realize that you are not, in fact, pregnant right now?"

Fuck. He looked so fuckin' forlorn. "But..."

I shook my head, looked again, realizing that holy shit yes that was exactly what he wanted. "Um, okay. You want to have a kid."

Big, shining eyes full of trust looked at me. "Yes."

"You... Don't want to find a girl-type partner." He shook his head. "You... you want to be a woman?"

Horror replaced that trust. "Ew! No!" Then horror was washed away by embarrassment as I shifted back to un-Blended me. "I mean, there's nothing wrong with being one, but me? Oh, no. Nope. No thank you."

I shook my head, but said, "Uh. Okay. Um. You want to carry a baby. But as a guy."

"Yes! More than anything."

Searching for any kind of out, I said, "you realize I've already got plenty of kids, right?"

He just laughed, the sound like silver bells. "Yes, of course! So one more in the Temple won't be a burden, right?"

Before I could reply, Karen whispered into my brain, The orphans taken in by the Temples are referred to as Tabitha's Children. After you've saved so many yourself, then set your Clergy to save as many more as we can. She paused as if searching how to say something, then I got the sense of a mental shrug. Donations for Cherry's services support all of the orphans at this Temple, as well as a surprising amount of the other orphanages in your Temples.

Really?

He is very, very good at what he does, and he's only gotten better since he became your Priest here at the Temple.

I looked down at him, smiled, and sighed. "Okay, have you thought this through though?" At his confused, worried look, I said, "not telling you no. I just want to make sure you're ready for, y'know, having a kid. Carrying a kid. Being pregnant and giving birth and then raising a kid."

"I am!"

I rolled my eyes. "Cherry, I'm a literal Goddess and I've got four of the most competent people I know as partners and I'm not sure we were ready." His face fell. "But! I'm not telling you no, so don't give me that look. You're gonna need to make sure you've got somebody to cover for you here at the Temple."

"I can work, even when..."

I slipped a finger over his mouth, and if he wrapped his lips around it and sucked, he stopped talking. "Siobhan has been sick since just a little into her pregnancy. Like, utterly down for the count, cannot do shit other than lie around trying not to vomit. Not everybody gets that, Marie could do almost everything she could normally. But even if you're not as bad off as Siobhan, there still might be some of your normal, um, work related activities that you might not be able to do."

Credit where it's due, he opened his mouth, but stopped before he said anything else, just nodding and thinking. Eventually he said, "yeah. Okay. I guess maybe I couldn't do the really rough stuff, especially later on."

"Exactly. Now, you're gonna need to have a wet nurse lined up."

He nodded. "There's one here at the Temple!"

I very carefully did not facepalm. "You realize that women are not like cows, and she might not still be nursing when your kid arrives, right?"

The Temple maintains a wet nurse for young children at all times, Goddess, Karen thought with a grin.

Stop being helpful, I laughed back. You're as bad as him.

Hey, I am not trying to extend my lineage.

Just practicing a lot, huh?

Cat, cream, Karen. So, so much. I work so hard to be the best Priestess of Tabitha I can be.

Yeah, love you too, Karen.

"Okay then, I want you to help with the whole nursemaid thing." At his confused look, I said, "help find a replacement when the current one is done."

"Yes, Goddess!"

I hid my sigh, then pulled him in for a hug. "Okay, you little dork. I'm not even sure it's possible, but... I'm probably gonna roll around here a month or two from now again, right?"

"Yes?"

"Okay then. You've got two months to sort out somebody to fill in for you if need be, as well as helping with the nursemaid thing, plus whatever else my Clergy who are smarter than me think of that you need to take care of."

He looked at me, a little confused. "As you command, Goddess, but...?"

"Because I'll have to get with those very smart Clergy and figure out how to make this thing happen for you."

He rained kisses all over my face. "Oh, thank you, Goddess! Thank you! I won't disappoint you!"

I hugged him tight. "I know you won't, Cherry. You never have. You never will, just so long as you keep being you."

That got me a sly little grin. "Really?"

I rolled my eyes. "Why do I think someone wants to show off now?"

"Please?"

"You sure you're up to it? Your internals got all, uh, squished around there."

He snorted. "Yeah, well, I'd best get used to that." Then he shot me another sly little grin. "Oh, wait, I already am. Professional Skills come in handy!"

Yeah, he really does have some impressive Skills, and I let him show them off until he petered off and flopped over, exhausted, just before sunrise. I looked over at the others who'd been waiting, and instead of any kind of disappointment, I saw a mix of folks applauding and others who'd taken intimate matters into their own hands. Okay, each other's hands. But nobody seemed upset in the slightest.

I think Karen caught my confusion. Intimacy takes as much time as it takes, Goddess. You've shown us all that, time after time.

Really blew my mind. Almost as much as a little Demi-Patroc Femboy being that good at blowing my very woman mind in so many ways. Such a show off.

Then Karen took me by one hand, took Cherry by the other, and the sun rose. As we settled back to the floor, Cherry blinked at the two of us, smiled, and said, "well, I better get back to work!"

I gave Karen a quick hug, then set off to another day of teaching math and punching Perun in the perineum.

Okay, I didn't do that latter one, because today wasn't weird enough, apparently. Like half a dozen times when Baba ended an unproductive discussion before it turned into a shouting match, he twitched, turned to me, and settled. Eventually, after lunch, while people were kinda broken out into groups, but before they all got back together, I stepped over to where he'd been talking with Lenny.

"Lenny, how's it hanging?"

He rolled his eyes, sighed, and said, "what did you need, Tabby."

I swear Perun's eyes bulged out more at Lenny calling me 'Tabby' than he had last time I punched him. "Can I borrow him for a bit?"

Lenny nodded, then said, "we work for you in this, Champion."

"Thanks, Lenny!" I turned to Perun and held out a hand. "Can I talk to you?" He looked confused, frozen in the act of reaching for my hand. "Like, in private?"

Yeah, I saw the 'I'm gonna get lucky' look flash across his face, followed by an almost imperceptible wince as his hindbrain remembered all my previous interactions with his general crotch region. He drew himself up, nodded, and said, "of course," before taking my hand.

I stepped us to my office, Co-Locating to grab a couple big steins of beer from the Temple for us before collapsing back to myself. "Okay, Perry. You mind if I call you Perry?" I handed him a stein, and he took it almost as if by instinct. "I'm gonna call you Perry, even if you don't look much like a platypus. But Perry's a cool guy, and I think you could be too, so I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt and call you Perry."

He shook his head. "You prattle on, just like a woman." Then he took a sip of the beer and added, "good taste in beer, though."

I couldn't help it. I grabbed my left tit, then my right one, then groped my own crotch. "Ah, dammit, I am a woman." I took a long pull of that same dark, bitter lager that Wendell seemed to enjoy. While he tried not to get too much beer on himself as I interrupted his own drink by making him laugh, I said, "seriously, Perry, I gotta know. Why you keep antagonizing Baba? You don't seem stupid, you gotta know I'm gonna nut punch you if you do it." As he wiped his mouth and prepared to answer, I added, "unless that's what you're into? Like, if that's what gets your rocks off, you don't have to piss her off to get me to do it. Just, y'know, ask nice. Maybe. Dunno if I'm invested enough in the whole peace process to pimp myself out as your Domme."

He stopped, took another drink, then waited until I nodded. "She does not know her place."

I sighed, shook my head. "Perry, you gotta know that right now? She's absolutely doing exactly what I asked her to. She knows her place, and she's filling the shit out of it." I watched as his face got a weird mix of angry and upset. While I could give two shits about his anger, for whatever reason I cared about the upset part. "Okay, look, something about this whole process is disappointing you. I get that you're losing your spot, but here's the thing: that spot wasn't really fair to anybody else, was it?"

"No one complained before."

"Nobody could spit in the face of the storm and make it back the fuck down before." He looked honestly confused. I sighed. "Nobody complained because they were afraid of you. Not because they thought it was fair or good or right. Just because they thought that if they brought you a legit complaint, you'd ash them instead of giving them any kind of fair Justice."

He opened his mouth, stopped, then took another long drink. Then sighed, slumped against the wall, at which point I kinda saw some of his daughters in him, and said, "so what am I to do then?" Before I could even begin to formulate an answer, he bought his ass a whole lot more tolerance by saying, "what are my Adventurers to do?"

I stopped and took a drink while I thought about that, because he kinda had a decent question, one that deserved an answer. Not one he'd like, but I even maybe had something to soften that. "Look, Perry, I gotta level with you, if everything goes exactly right? We really shouldn't need nearly as many Heroes as we do now."

He frowned. "What?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Look, everything we've done has been trying to make a world where... Look, Adventurers are kind of like Heroes, right?" He nodded. "And at their best, Heroes are the ones who step into the gap when everything goes to shit. When monsters attack, when wars break out, when plagues hit, when shit goes wrong."

He nodded, took another drink, belched a little, and said, "that's... not wrong."

"Okay. So what my Kitten and everyone else working for me is tryna do? What pretty much everybody who signs on to the Alliance is tryna do? Is build a world where less shit goes wrong. Where plagues can't get their teeth into people. Where there's enough food and shelter for everybody." I paused, and he opened his mouth, and I interrupted with what I really hoped was a counter to his complaint. "Where people Worship Gods because we've helped them grow. And if that Worship isn't quite so desperate as one poor bastard who's about to die if we don't help, the fact that there are tens, hundreds, even thousands of people Worshipping more than make up for that, right?"

I saw right then that I'd caught his attention. "But... Glory?"

I shook my head. "Yeah. A world where Glory isn't won by some poor bastard throwing himself into the jaws of a monster, but by people making great art, singing new songs, discovering shit that makes everything better for everybody, including us."

His eyes narrowed, "what kinds of things?"

I shook my head. "Fuck if I know. Seriously, I have no fuckin' clue. Maybe some kind of new food. Maybe some new world to explore. Maybe some way to make everybody live longer, be happier, whatever. Glory for shit that makes things better, instead of just Glory for keeping them from getting worse."

He took a deep breath, took another drink, and sighed. "My Adventurers..." He paused, then started over. "Adventurers aren't good at creating. Not like you describe."

I laughed. "Don't I know it." At his look of surprise, I said, "look, my core competency is wrecking shit. I don't make shit either."

You make beautiful kittens.

That was Marie, Kitten. Now shush.

"But here's the thing. No matter how much better we let them make the world, shit is still gonna happen. We don't need to stir the pot for that. We don't need to keep people down for that. Even with the best Healers, plagues are still gonna hit now and then. Even with Gods on watch, storms will rage sometimes. Dragons... Dragons are gonna Dragon." I hadn't quite caught him, and grasping at straws, I tried, "if nothing else, people are gonna wind up doing dumb shit and needing first responders." He looked blank. "Firemen. People are gonna do dumb shit like accidentally setting their houses on fire, and they'll need somebody brave enough to run into a burning building to save people, and strong, swift, and smart enough to get themselves and the kids trapped inside back out again safely."

His eyes kinda lit up at that, not like he really understood the totality of what I was saying, but like he'd latched onto the idea of what a Hero could still do in a world without monsters or wars. Before he could lose that thought, I moved to seal the deal. "At the end of the day, what's more Glorious? The guy who killed a Dragon and saved a thousand people in a big village, or the guy who stopped a City from catching on fire and saved a million?"

Yeah, that got him. Not stupid, but not really numerate either. Big number made Perry's head go brrrt. He gulped from his stein, tipping it back until he'd emptied it to the dregs, then slammed it down on my desk, looked at me, nodded, and said, "we should be getting back."

I set my own stein on the desk, took him by the hand, and stepped us back. The moment we arrived, he walked over to where the assorted delegates and diplomats had gathered. With far more gravitas and far less bluster than any previous attempt, he stepped up to the table, poked the documents with one finger, and said, "with all due respect to the Baba, my fellow Deities, and the gathered Guild leaders, we must speak of the Men of Fire."

Baby steps.

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