Dear Diary,

Back in the day, I didn't know what chronic pain was. Anybody mentioned a chronic condition back then, and I absolutely jumped straight to the thought that they were high twenty-four seven. Y'know, hitting that chronic on the regular. While I maybe sorta understood how hurting all the time could impact somebody's outlook, I was maybe a bit of a little shit when it came to chronic conditions other than pain.

I really should have known better, but there's this thing about chronic conditions. If they start when you're young enough, you don't realize that they're not part of the normal human condition. When you're always kinda hungry because you've never had reliable nutrition, you think that's just normal. When you are also always a little peckish because a lot of brains don't register chronic thirst as thirst, but as hunger, and tap water isn't safe to drink and bottled water is super spendy, you think that's also normal. Same with waking up with a mild headache and dizziness from being parched. That shit isn't normal, isn't right, and it gets so much worse when you've got a flavor of neurospicy that fucks with your normal hunger and thirst alerts anyhow, but as a young teen I did not know any of that. All of those things that are symptomatic of 'dying of hunger and thirst slightly slower than your body can fix itself' don't show up as big red warning signs, they're just... normal.

Here and now, I've come to realize that my scars will never really stop hurting. Oh, there are things I can do to maybe get a respite, like super hot baths or letting my ladies filling my brain with dopamine and endorphins until I forget the concept of time, but even then the pain never really stops. Sometimes it's overwhelmed by pleasure, sometimes it's background noise to more immediate or meaningful pain, sometimes some kind of soporific or analgesic tells my nerves to shut the fuck up and take the rest of the day off, but somewhere in my brain I know that pain will always, always be there.

That's something that's harder to explain to people who've never had to deal with a chronic condition. After a while, after a certain number of repetitions of 'pain, surcease of pain, return of pain', life grins in that the pain will never actually 'go away'. You'll never return to a pain free life. You'll never wake up and say 'I have no pain, and I do not expect pain to arrive without some form of injury'. There's no time when you can really fully relax the way you could before that pain moved in to stay.

Never relaxing is its own kind of hell.

I'm starting to realize how that particular bit is true of all chronic conditions. Even if they aren't painful, they're always there. Whether it's something that will cause your body to fail, or your brain to go on the fritz, or who knows what the fuck else, they're there, and you can't fully let go while they are. Even when they subside, you know they'll be back. Which I think explains why so many people with chronic conditions like that wind up with some kind of addiction. I'm not even value judging at this point, and I'm not sure I'm using the term right anyhow, but when the only way you can relax and rest is for something to reach in and flip the 'rest' switch in your brain, and you find something that does that switch flipping, you use that shit on every occasion you can.

The reason I'm realizing this came up in conversation with my ladies as we rendezvoused at the Homestead for dinner. All of us were Co-Located, because none of us could really leave our ships, but Right after sunset Saffron filled our brains with, ladies, meet me in the Homestead dining room please?

A minute or so later, because everybody needed to make sure they weren't standing somewhere an errant wave would leave them tumbling overboard, everybody arrived. "Hey, Kitten, what's up?"

She smiled at all of us as she settled into her seat at our comically small head table. "We've all been on watch for days now. It's important to reconnect on a regular basis."

I smiled and pulled them all together into a big group hug, lifting her clear of her chair to do so, because of course I wanted her there in my arms. "Thanks, Kitten. You're right." I looked around and wondered where the kids were at until they started trooping out of the kitchen, each of them carrying something. Hailee and Siobhan walked hand in hand with a big bowl of salad. Each of the other kits had a couple plates with sandwiches. The bigger girls brought bread and soup. Before I could even thank them, they set things down and proceeded to bully us all into our chairs. With David, Daya, and Isadora all leaning against my thighs pushing me toward the head table, it was all I could do not to lose my shit laughing. I mean, I still laughed, but purely out of happiness rather than any kind of humor, I think.

Once we thanked the kits and kids for the food and settled down to eat, Siobhan asked, "how are things going?"

Saffron took that as a cue, but didn't stop eating to start what amounted to our command meeting. Ladies, have any of you spotted anything yet?

That got a round of denials, although they varied from Madeline's relieved, 'nothing' to Marie's impatient, almost eager, 'Not Yet.' Before I could speak, something tickled at me. Nothing mental, but a repetition of that weird itch I'd been feeling for days now. Which, y'know, is why I'm beginning to understand non-pain chronic illness.

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I swallowed the spoon of soup I'd just taken and said, "uh, yeah, kinda?" I immediately had everyone's attention. "Not, like, directly. But I can sort of feel them moving, I think."

That got me Saffron rifling through the back of my brain for an endless moment, after which she swallowed and said, "Damn. I see. Is that why you went looking the way you did?"

I shrugged. "Thought maybe I could help secure the borders a little that way. Didn't really work."

She rocked her head back and forth, then said, "yet it didn't not work, either. I suspect your instinctive response, that attempt to interfere, is why this wave has taken longer than expected to arrive."

That kinda froze me right there. "Really?"

"Indeed. You say you can still feel them moving?"

I nodded, but held up one hand. Of course, I'd just used the other one to take a big assed bite of what turned out to be a pulled bear sandwich, and I was not about to waste that by not savoring it, so I thought to my gathered ladies, I can feel them moving, and it's like an itch that I can't scratch because I can't tell quite where it is, but I can kinda, I dunno, flex where it itches, which I think Saffron might be right, it might be slowing some of them down. But trying to get more specific information on where any of them are is what put me out of commission for a day, and I'm still kinda off from it. Sorry about that.

Marie put her arm around me and squeezed. "Don't Apologize."

"She's right, Goddess. You've done all you can."

Still had a mouthful of savory goodness. But I want to help more. I want to keep you all safe.

"We know," Siobhan whispered to me as she joined Marie in hugging me.

"You have done more to keep us safe by buying us time and security to train than anything else you have done, Tabitha." I dunno why Tallulah's statement hit me just then, but it did. I noticed she had a sandwich full of, I dunno, salad or something, and fed her a bite of mine, because I couldn't think of another way to show my appreciation without putting my sandwich down or pulling my arm free of Marie and Siobhan. After a quick chew and swallow, she said, "that's quite interesting. Not what I expected from bear."

I know, right? Then I realized I needed to be just a touch more grown up, finished masticating my current bite, and called out, "thanks for dinner, kids. I dunno who gave you the idea for this pulled bear, but it's awesome."

Ria nodded. "We spoke with Marie about gumbo, and we don't have the right ingredients for that, but we figured out that everything came together after stewing it longer. So we tried that with the bear steaks."

"This isn't stew though?"

She blushed a little, at which point Isnomi piped up, "da veggies all melted. Just goo."

I nodded. "So you pulled the meat out and made sandwiches?" They both nodded, as did Maze and Calliope. "What did you do with the gravy?"

"Gravy? You mean the," Ria glanced at the Menace, "goo?" I nodded, and she shrugged. "It's still in the cauldron. We were going to clean it up after dinner."

"Did you taste it?"

All four of them stuck their tongues out. Calliope was the first one to respond. "Eat goo?"

I laughed, as did Marie. "Not, like, as goo, but it sounds like it'd make a really awesome base for some stew, or gravy, or something like that. Also, y'know, eating some veggies now and then is good for helping you grow."

Yeah, that particular incantation still worked on Menace. When she got the look like she was gonna go eat the veggie goo right now, I laughed and said, "don't. Honestly, the texture's probably not great, so you'll want to do something with it. Maybe put it in a pie with some fresh veg or potatoes or some other meat or something. Don't try to slurp it up in goo form."

"Mama hep?" asked Calliope.

I sighed and looked around the table. "Right now Mama and Mom and Marie and Tallulah are all busy keeping the kaiju from wrecking the coastline, but if you like, you can put it all in a crock and store it up in the snow by my office."

That seemed to pacify them and keep them from trying to eat jellied veg goo. Of course, after dinner and before bath time, while the rest of us watched and walked to the Bath, they descended on the kitchen and cleaned it up. More or less. It wasn't the spotless clean Marie expected in the Academy kitchen, but it was mostly clean, and Alex and Lindsey carried the crock full of veggie goo up to freeze it. Because the temps had definitely dropped below zero and stayed there, especially at the top of the Bore.

The rest of us were all soaking in the Bath by the time the kids got done cleaning up and hit the showers. They wound up using both sets, the ones nearer the back of the house and the ones nearer the front. I never really thought about it before, but now that I do I'm glad Saffron designed our house to accommodate so many people. Not only is it nice when we have guests, now that we've got fifteen self-mobile daughters, it means we're way less likely to wind up with people fighting over a single shower or toilet or whatever.

Yeah, tonight was a night for things hitting me from out of nowhere. First the realization of how one of the biggest symptoms of all chronic illness was the loss of ability to relax, then the reminder that holy fuck on toast, I've got fifteen daughters, followed by the final surprise knowledge of the night, which didn't hit me until near morning, after a night sitting atop the West Tower listening to my ladies socializing in my Maw in their dreams. None of them really needed that face to face meeting. Okay, I'm sure they all appreciated it and enjoyed it, because there were a lot of smiles and lots of laughter despite the ongoing underlying tension of everyone being aboard a warship waiting for fucking kaiju to attack, but all of them met every night here at my Maw in their dreams.

Except me. I was the odd one out, and they'd gotten together just for me.

I swear, if any of them wind up dead, I'm going to rip pieces off Poseidon to Revive them. Rip them off and make him watch while I do it.

Which might interfere with my cunning plan a little, but not so much that I won't do it.

Of course, when it comes to interfering with my cunning plan, I got a much more intense interference late in the day today, as we all sat there on watch, trying to stay frosty and ready to rock while also trying not to burn out.

That feeling of itchy bits crawling down a part of me that I couldn't quite feel? Got way, way worse. Like, more than twice as bad. Like all of a sudden the bugs crawling along my skin, through my hair, had been joined by an even larger number of bugs.

Ladies. I don't mean to alarm you, but I think the rest of the kaiju are headed this way.

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