Dear Diary,

So many things. So much. Too much.

I couldn't even process everything from yesterday. As the sun settled behind the horizon to the west, I pulled my ladies all to me, pulled my partners and family and kids to me, taking comfort in how they didn't struggle, but rather just clung to me, to each other, to my tentacles even.

Okay, some of them squirmed, but that's a common feature of cats, kids, and my kits, who are equal parts both. Even their squirming to get themselves into a more comfy cuddling situation felt right in a way that I wouldn't have yesterday, that I might not have noticed the day prior.

Then I realized that I was holding many of them, maybe even most of them, with my tentacles, and I flinched. Banished my tentacles back to M-Space, and curled up around myself. Saffron clung to me anyhow, only letting go to brush my hair back from in front of my eyes. "Love?" I flinched again. "Karen, Madeline, Tallulah, could you take the children down to dinner, please?"

"Wanna hep!" Menace complained.

"And you will, my girl, but not yet. Mama will be down for dinner in a bit. For now..."

Menace heaved a sigh that at least two of the kits echoed. "Fine. We go hab dinnah."

As the kids trailed out of the room led by Tallulah and shepherded by Karen and Madeline, I crumpled further, coiled into myself. I didn't resist when Marie lifted me, settled me across her lap, pulled Siobhan and Saffron to my sides.

"Love?"

"Vlickies?"

Siobhan didn't say anything, just leaned against me.

After a while, a single sob tore its way from me. "It's okay, love. We're here. We're here and you're safe."

"But what... What if you're not?" I managed to choke out.

"Not here?"

"Not safe."

All three of them nuzzled at me, and Siobhan murmured, "I can think of no safer place than at your side, Tabitha."

"Please, love? Hold us?"

I flinched. "I... I almost ate you."

"But you didn't."

I couldn't handle Saffron's nonchalant attitude. I shoved myself away from them, pulled them away from me. "How can you be near me?"

"Because you didn't. I don't think you ever will. I think if I hadn't surprised you on your birthday, you would have stopped me."

"Should have," I grumbled.

She pulled away from my tentacles, and I flinched, banishing them once more. She crawled over to me and lifted my face to hers. "No, love. You should not have. Because what is the first and most important commandment of our Goddess?"

Before I could speak, before I could answer, all three of them intoned as one, "do as you will." The other three echoed that into my brain a few moments later.

"What, so if I yeet you physically into my Maw, you're just going to un-yeet yourselves? Yoink yourselves back out?"

A lone tentacle slipped along my back unbidden. Saffron smiled at me. "Yes."

I frowned, confused. "How did you...?" I looked to the others. "Can all of you?"

Siobhan scrunched up her nose, so adorable I almost pounced over to her and kissed her right there, but before I could berate myself for thinking that, something goosed me. Okay, she goosed me with my own fuckin' tentacle. Then she proceeded to make that adjective a little more literal. "Hey!"

She blushed. "Oh! Forgive me, Mistress, I..."

I silenced her with a kiss. I didn't remember moving through the intervening space. "No. No, you didn't do anything wrong. Just, um... Kinda startled me."

"I didn't mean to startle you. Only to prove, ah," she trailed off.

I lifted her chin until she looked at me. "That you're regretting getting pregnant?"

"No! Only, um, perhaps a little annoyed at, um, the incapacitation."

I pulled her to me. Pulled Saffron and Marie to me as well, as I rubbed at Siobhan's belly. "Speaking of, are you okay at the moment?"

She shrugged. "I usually have some time before Hailee's panacea wears off. Never a reliable amount, unfortunately."

"But you're okay right now?"

"Yes?"

I rolled the three of us to the Bedroom, looked Saffron in the eyes and said, "as fast as you can."

A few minutes later we all lay there as Siobhan caught her breath. I maybe kinda sorta made that worse with the kissing interfering with the breathing part of things. Yeah, we can all do without, but it's still needed for, like, talking. Or making mouth noises. I swallowed all of hers. Mouth noises, I meant. Not Siobhan.

Saffron and Siobhan lay curled up with their heads on my lap, while I leaned back into Marie, who wrapped her arms around the three of us. Saffron kissed Siobhan on the lips, cheek, and nose, then looked up at me. "Feeling better?"

I thought about it, and shrugged. "Distracted, I guess. Go, go, team lack of object permanence."

She sighed. "Can you explain what happened to you? What left you in such a state?"

I paused, then asked, "can I have some time to think about it? Or, really, to clear my head?"

She nodded. "Of course, love. The children would dearly love to see you, to know you're all right. Could you join them for the last part of dinner, and for a bath?"

Right about then my stomach rumbled. Not something that had happened in a long while, and I had no idea why it would do that now. "Uh, sure?"

Marie settled me into my chair, Siobhan on my lap all curled up, and delivered a whole assed sushi and tempura platter. I didn't eat all of it, but mostly because I fed Siobhan at least one bite of everything, because she hadn't eaten either. While I fed her and ate, Saffron scooted her chair over closer and leaned into me. Marie brought her another of those platters, and Saffron she didn't eat even as much as I did, that's because much like I fed Siobhan some of mine, Saffron fed some of hers to Marie, some to her baby mama, and some to me. Mostly the shrimp. Tempura had won the ladies over, but they still gave me some of their shrimp when we had it. No idea why. Probably some lingering thought about shrimp being ocean bugs or something.

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I mean, they kinda are, but they're tasty tasty ocean bugs, and I am not going to leave anything tasty un nommed.

"Fuck."

"Mmm?" Saffron had just filed her own mouth with horseradish fire and fish.

"Dunno why I'm hungry, but I think the juxtaposition of 'belly empty' and 'ladies tasty' might have been behind my impulse on the West Tower."

"Well. Do try not to skip meals then."

I shook my head. "I mean, I try not to, but I have no idea why it's so important some times, and not others."

She looked pensive, then said, "I'm not certain either."

"But you have an idea?" She nodded. I waited, then realized. "But you won't tell me." She shook her head. "Since I can't see you keeping secrets from me for no good reason, I'm guessing it has something to do with the whole 'don't check my Status' thing?"

She sighed. "Yes, love. Well, it's all part of the same issue, I think." I nodded in response, then went back to eating. "You seem very sanguine about that."

I stopped, swallowed. "Yeah, well. I trust you." I looked at the other two, then at Tallulah where she sat just close enough to hear our conversation, then even glanced at Mads and Karen, who'd been chatting with the kids as a distraction. "All of you. Implicitly. Explicitly. Enough that I let you take control of my body parts to do unto me, it seems like. So, y'know, yeah. If you say it's something I'm gonna need some time to process, right in the middle of waves of kaiju seems to be a bad time to kick that off."

"Speaking of, was there anything else you could tell us about them?"

I shrugged, then tugged at them like I did when I wanted them to see something I was looking at. When I got the sense of them all watching, I did a kind of mental replay of the sensory input I'd gotten from the Great Kraken at the edge.

"Hailee," Siobhan sounded desperate, and a moment later my youngest kit clambered up into Siobhan's lap, purring. Siobhan relaxed. "Thank you, my tiny Healer."

"De nada." Hailee sounded so much like her mom that I couldn't resist, I leaned in and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She purred louder, so I gave her another, then fed her some of my shrimp. First one of the tempura ones, then one of the shrimp and veg rolls. She nommed the first one immediately, but took her time with the second one.

"Hard to chew?"

She frowned. Nommed a bit more. Then swallowed. "Yes?"

I sighed. "Sorry, kiddo. Maybe you can get Isnomi to teach you how she does that dentition trick."

When Hailee got a thoughtful look, Saffron chuckled and thought, you know you've just made things that much more difficult for her future suitors?

Nah. If they can't convince her to reconfigure for maximum fun time, they don't deserve maximum fun time.

Saffron leaned in and kissed me. When we finished, we looked over to see Marie and Siobhan doing the same. Tallulah sighed, and I murmured into Saffron's ear, "think we ought to do something about that?"

"Absolutely."

Which is, while Mads and Karen played tub games with the kids, why we all wound up clustered around Tallulah come Bath time. Marie under her like a lounge chair, Siobhan lying atop her with Hailee stacked on top of her, and Saffron and I to either side. "Have I done something wrong?"

"No, Tallulah," said Saffron. "But that sigh seemed to hint that you envied our intimacy."

"I do."

"Well. That would be why we're letting you know it is yours for the asking. No, for the taking even."

Tallulah frowned. "But I only joined this family because my daughter is here."

"Really?" Saffron's dry question put smiles onto all our faces.

"Well, that and wanting Tabitha to sire my next child."

Siobhan and Marie chuckled while Saffron booped Tallulah's nose. "Yes, well. Your reasons for joining us are your own, and while they may be more pragmatic than most, they're no less valid. But be that as it may, you are one of us now. You've been intimate with each of us, have you not?"

"I have."

"You've given us each that intimate connection and care, yes?"

"Of course."

"So why do you think you deserve less?"

Tallulah kind of huffed a little at that. "Of course I deserve it. I just did not think I could get it."

"Whyever not?"

"Odd numbers?"

Yeah, we all had a good laugh about that. Okay, Tallulah didn't laugh, but she realized that we weren't so much laughing at her as laughing at the sheer raw silliness of her assumption. Especially when Marie, after snickering for a while, leaned her mouth down near Tallulah's ear and intoned. "Three Wives."

After we finished soaking, Mads and Karen helped us get the kids to bed and settled before saying their farewells and heading out. "You don't have to go if you don't want."

The glanced at Saffron, then back to me. Karen chuckled and said, "someone needs to oversee repairs to the Tentacles."

"Yeah, but it's night time. Not like crews are working on them right now."

"They rather are, love."

"The fuck?"

She waved the two in, hugged them, and said, "thank you, ladies. Do get some rest."

When they'd gone and all the kids were snoring, I pulled the other four up to the Bedroom. "Why are repair crews working at night?"

"Because despite every other combat worthy ship in the Alliance deploying, the Tentacles are still our best defense short of the Black Dragon against those kaiju, love."

I winced. "Shit. I... I wish I could do more to stop them." I thought about it. Then let my brain drift for a moment, realizing I could still kind of feel that weird itch. I wasn't about to try indirectly controlling my tentacles again, but I kind of, I dunno, flexed the way you do when something itches and you can't reach it. "Dunno if that will help."

"What was that?" Saffron paused, then before I could respond, said, "are you ready to tell us what happened over the past two days?"

I thought about it again, and nodded. "I'm not sure I can really describe it very well, but I was tryna use my tentacles to find the kaiju. Maybe find Poseidon while I was at it. Then I got the message from the Kraken, and I knew they were somewhere within my reach, and I could feel them, but not, not..."

"You couldn't precisely locate them?"

I nodded. "Thanks, T."

"De nada."

"Yeah, at any rate, I couldn't find them, no matter how I tried. I can still kinda feel them, though, I think. It's like... Like an itch in a place where I can't quite tell where it is. Like when you get an itch on your back and you can't reach it, and can't exactly say where it is, but you know it's there and... Agghhh." I broke down into frustrated grunting, trying not to spiral.

"Hush, love. Do you know aught else other than what you've told us?"

I shook my head. "Nope. I mean, I'm trying to maybe get those tentacles to slow them down, or at least writhe menacingly, but it's rough. I... They're not... Do you remember when we Shapeshifted into Great Kraken?"

"Vividly," purred Kitten.

"Yeah, remember how things weren't quite, I dunno," I groped for some way to explain, then remembered. "Wait, you remember when I Shapeshifted into one, and you hadn't yet?"

She winced and giggled both at the same time. "I think I almost discovered what it would be like to be a Kraken love toy."

"Yeah, um, you know I wasn't thinking about doing that, right?"

She nodded. "Yes, of course."

"Well, it's like that." A memory from back in the day surged up. "Wait, cephalopods have distributed intelligence." Saffron quirked an eyebrow. "Like, their brains aren't all in their brains. They've got a lot of gray matter in their limbs. So, like, their limbs can sort of think about stuff and react. Shit, not 'think', maybe. Although maybe Great Kraken have enough so their limbs think?"

She snuggled to me. "So your tentacles were thinking of using me as a toy?"

I snerked. "Uh, yeah, I guess?"

"They take after you then?"

I laughed at that. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess. But the thing is, that weird shit going on? Is so much worse with Mimic's... With my tentacles. They're just.... I dunno, I guess they're each maybe smarter than me or something? It's like my brain isn't enough to drive them."

"You seem to use them just fine when you pull them into the Mortal Realm."

I stopped. Thought about it. Nodded. "Yeah, but that's not really... I'm doing the thinking, and just moving them. I can't think like me when I'm them, if you see the difference."

She took a deep breath. "I do. Need you think more on this?"

I stopped. "Oh. Oh, shit. Is this?"

"Yes. Rather close to some of the things I'd rather you didn't examine too closely right now." She paused. "Rather like reading the fine print on your own body art when attempting to punch someone."

I rolled my eyes. "Okay. Okay, sure. But that does put some crimps into... Well, no. I guess not."

"Going to tell us?"

"Mind if I don't? Just in case someone is listening?"

Saffron nodded. "So it's to be like Calverton?" I nodded. "Is there aught we can do to help right now?"

I snorted, laughing at myself. "Yeah. Shit that reminds me I'm me. Shit that reminds me that this is my body, that's... Me."

Saffron, very carefully not looking at someone, asked, "anything in particular?"

Very pointedly not looking at that same someone, I said, "Siobhan first. Fast, before her timer runs out."

Both of them laughed at that, even if neither one disagreed. Once we had Siobhan settled on the divan with very clear instructions to return to the bedroom and Hailee the moment she felt out of sorts, I scooped Tallulah up. "Time to learn why we were chuckling about odd numbers."

Yeah, she wound up laughing too. Best shenanigans are laughing shenanigans.

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