Dear Diary,

I'm really not sure if we're adopting D, Fostering him, or what. From one perspective, it shouldn't matter. Baby. Baby need family. Feed baby, protect baby, raise baby. This isn't, or shouldn't even be any kind of advanced knowledge. If you are an adult and there is a baby without family, you family the baby. Simple as.

From another perspective, I'm not sure if Sarah has some kind of claim on him because she's the one who hopped in the Vessel. If she does, I'm not gonna start some kinda schism within the Maenad community by not giving him back. On the other hand, I'm not sure Marie isn't going to start one, and if it comes down to it, I'm gonna be siding with Marie. From my time in class with her, Sarah is a decent sort. Not real talkative, because Maenads aren't, but a decent classroom partner. That's before the entire fact that she's the first Maenad to go through the training to become a Phileo Hero. Yeah, all the Maenads are kinda badass, what with being biped anthropomorphized tigers, and all of them have a protective streak a mile wide, but she's the first one to step up and say 'put me in, coach, I'm ready to play'.

But Marie is my Wife, my love, mother of my children. I want to be better than that, to be able to tell her no if she's in any way objectively wrong, but we're talking about a baby that she's nursed. That she's gonna be snuggling up with at night.

Yeah, I know, Sarah nursed him first. To be clear, I am absolutely fine with Marie pulling one of her sisters into our household. That's practically my optimum solution here. Oddly enough, I'm not even thinking about Bedroom hijinks. Just a place to sleep, a place to feed the kid, a place to wash him off after he gets himself filthy, fellow parents to help raise him. Y'know, family. It's not like it's the first time we'd be adding someone who wasn't yours truly Just Happening to somebody. Or seducing them, in Siobhan's case. Seriously, I didn't come up with the idea of Fostering Ria, and I'm not the one who decided Tallulah was gonna wind up in a family way with my kid.

Not complaining. Mystified, maybe, but not complaining. Also not gonna argue if our family keeps growing until we start spilling out of the bed. Okay, that might get me complaining a little. But other than that, I'm cool with it.

I am less cool with the fact that I now know that baby boys get itty bitty baby boners when they pee sometimes. Or with having to clean myself up in the water closet after changing him, because he's already able to hit a target in 'talking silly to the baby while she changes him' distance. Least of all with the fact that rather than stinking of ammonia, I stank of alcohol.

As we lay there taking turns letting him nurse, I asked Marie, "how fast will he grow?" She frowned, but not like I'd asked something rude, more like the answer wasn't simple. "Is it different each time?"

She nodded, but kept the slight booger look until she finally shrugged and said, "Not Many."

"So this has happened before, often enough that there's a whole assed ceremonial Vessel for a new D to be born in, but not so often you can say exactly how fast he grows?"

She smiled. Smirked, really, and when she nodded, she also said, "Not Born." That made no sense to me until she giggled the tiniest bit and said, "Brewed. Fermented."

What with that latter being enunciated carefully as she looked down at the toothless grin of the baby who'd just slipped off her nipple and booped his nose with each syllable, I couldn't help but smile. Then I got maybe a little sad. "Have you ever been the one in the Vessel?" She shook her head. "Did you want to this time?"

She gave me an odd look. Not like I'd said something weird, but almost like she'd thought she'd hid her desires from me. Then she sighed. "Not Mine."

"He could have been."

"Bad Idea."

That surprised me. "Why?"

She smiled, then reached over to ruffle Hailee's hair. "Foster Siblings."

Yeah, that left me gobsmacked. I still don't really think in terms of centuries, I guess. "Okay. That's got me weirded out, so I'm gonna leave that as a problem for Future Tabitha."

My big tiger wifey just snickered and said, "Good Idea."

Then Siobhan asked, "may I hold him?"

"Of Course." Marie slipped him off her nipple and handed him to Siobhan, who snuggled him up and let him play with her fingers. Not long after, he let out a shockingly boozy belch for a less than one day old baby, after which he fussed until she gave him a finger to suck. That lasted about sixty second before he spat it out and cranked again.

"I think he's still hungry." She handed him back to me, and I took a turn playing milky mama. He was definitely a chonky baby. Like, Isadora chonk. Which made me wonder exactly how big she'd be when she got full grown, as well as how small Anise might be, or Hailee.

Maze pranced up to the curtain and pulled it aside, letting some cooler air in. Not actually cold, but not super warm like the space inside the bed curtains. "Mama, Papa, Siobhan, time for dinner."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I sighed, because the recent goings on had kept interrupting something I now had no more time to put off. I detached D and handed him over to Marie, then said, "I'll join you guys soon?"

"Okay, Papa."

As soon as the others were on their way toward the Bore, I stepped to M-Space, fired up a Scry, and got to thiefing stuff. I know I was copying stuff, not stealing it, but given what I'd decided on, it felt a lot like stealing. Took me like half an hour to find the final thing, a big assed birthday cake with the words 'Happy Birthday Diamond' on it. Fortunately, that's not such a stupidly uncommon word that I couldn't find one. Unfortunately, it was pretty much undecorated other than the birthday wish, which is why I also stole a whole assed jar of edible glitter.

I don't know Daya as well as I'd like, although between Saffron, Marie, and Siobhan, I didn't think she was suffering from neglect. But I did know she enjoyed shiny, sparkly things. I might have gotten a little bit magpie as I filled up a big gift bag. Then I saw the piece de resistance, and didn't think, just grabbed.

Now, something I haven't really commented on, mostly because I hadn't really thought about it, was one of the details about Scrying on my old world. The reason only Deities could do it didn't have anything to do with the Shape itself, but rather with where it had to be done. If places like the Bedroom and Loki's cave and maybe even Conrad's Workshop were bits of M-Space that overlapped with the Mortal Realm, there were other places that were kind of the opposite. Places that were further from the Mortal Realm. My brain wants to think 'higher', because it takes more power, more Mana, to stay there, but it has nothing to do with distance from the ground, and everything to do with distance from the Mortal Realm. Although that's not quite true either, because places like Hades and Hel were both further from the Mortal Realm than normal, but in the wrong direction.

Not sure about the Elysian Fields or Valhalla. Something tells me they're not in the right direction either.

At any rate, I could lift a Mortal person here just fine, and I'm pretty sure Loki could as well, but unless the Mortal was some kind of freak of nature or right on that fuzzy edge of Mortality, I'm not sure they could. Like, I'd be willing to bet money on Saffron or Tallulah doing it, but I've got a bottomless coin purse and don't care about money. So, y'know, they might be able to, but I wouldn't be super surprised if they couldn't either.

But because it's kind of further from any kind of beaten track, I don't generally get the idea that its someplace you're gonna meet randos.

So when I pulled that last bit, having Spider show up and say, "Pardon, Mimic, but... Oh, excuse me. I suppose it's a forgery then?"

"Uh..." He pointed at the biggest sparkly bit on what I'd just stolen. I blushed a little. "Yeah. Uh, I could steal you another one?"

He rolled his eyes. "No, that's fine. As one of the Tricksters of many extended Pantheons, it behooves me to keep track of things like that. But I suppose if it's not the original, if you just created it here, there's not much reason for me to be too upset. Although those," he pointed at a long string that sparkled green. "Might eventually get you visits from the subcontinent."

"Uh... Still fake though?"

He leaned in, "which is why you might want to send them a message that they are, in fact, just copies." Then he leaned back. "Whatever did you want them for, anyhow?"

I shrugged. "My kid likes sparkly bits. It's her birthday."

He froze. Then snorted. Then burst out laughing. "That's fantastic. Okay, a bit of advice. Tell Son Wukong, ask him to carry the message. He'll get a kick out of that."

Then he was gone, just an echoing ongoing snicker.

I shuffled things around in the bag, Blended, then stepped back to the dining room, where everybody had settled in to eating. My little sparkly girl definitely did not look as thrilled as she ought on her birthday, so I kept things Blended, pulled my girls and kits to me, and surreptitiously gave them all a countdown and a view of the cake.

At the end of the countdown, I dropped the Blend and we all shouted out, "surprise!"

She looked absolutely floored. "For me?"

I nodded to the cake as I slid it in front of her. "Your name on the cake, after all."

"You... You didn't forget."

I stepped over and pressed my forehead against hers, hiding the sparkle of tears from her eyes. "Of course not, Daya. I don't know you as well as I want to, as well as I ought, but that doesn't mean I love you any less."

Her gaze darted to the bag in my hand, a question in her eyes.

"Yeah, soon as the cake is done "

That got her motivated. The simple sheet cake didn't compare to some of Marie's masterpieces, but it was cake, with sugary icing and what amounted to pure sugar sparkling covering the entire thing. I don't think the kids really minded. I got maybe a bite, then fed the rest of my piece to Saffron. Siobhan and Marie did the same. Tallulah ate all of hers, a shy smile on her face, like she didn't expect to be allowed to just enjoy it.

When the cake had gone the way of all food, I handed over the bag. "Sorry, I was a little rushed, but I tried to find some things I thought you'd like."

She pulled off the tissue paper, although she had to stand on her chair to do so with the bag on the table. Then she snorted. "Like Mama's Yule present."

I realized just then that it kinda was. She started pulling things out, setting them to either side of the bag. I thought she was sorting them into 'yes' and 'no' piles or something, but I wasn't sure, and given that I'd filled a big gift bag up with kid's toy jewelry, kids toy jewels, legit costume jewelry, costume jewels, a little 'kids first jewelry making kit', and a couple handfuls of wire and actual precious gems, with no real rhyme or reason to any of it, I wasn't gonna complain if she had some stuff she liked less than others.

Then she found the second layer of tissue paper. This one was kinda thick, and each item had it's own layer around it. She pulled one out, unwrapped it, and got the weirdest look on her face. "It's... A stick."

I snerked. "Yeah. Kinda. But it's a very sparkly stick."

She looked at it, looked at the rest of the stuff at the bottom of the bag, then shifted her gaze over to her jewelry making kit. Which I just then realized could also be used to deconstruct jewelry. "Will you be upset?" She asked the question quietly, almost like she thought I'd go off on her for asking.

Instead, I just let out a quiet laugh, at least as much at what some folks from back in the day would think of her doing that as anything else. "Nah. I didn't make them, not really. I found them like that. Before you do, though?" She froze. "Just some advice, I'd practice with the other ones. Stuff like these are a little hard to find. Also?" I leaned in real close, "they're all real gems and stuff, but if anybody asks, especially any hairy dudes? Just tell them they're fake, just copies."

Yeah, definitely my kid. She just looked at me with the most exasperated face in the world and said, "duh."

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