Diary of a Teenaged Mimic

Dear Diary,

So many realizations over the past few days, all of them drenched in the worst depressive crash I can remember. Definitely the worst one since I arrived here and now. It's possible I spent more than three days bedridden back in the day, alone and hating myself, but here and now it's been a long time since I was alone. A long time since I was even capable of being alone. Kinda funny that over the past three days I've realized that Blend gives me the ability to sort of ignore those persistent, insistent pings inside my brain. Not gonna do that any time soon, I hope, because even as I'm feeling the dregs of that crash, I don't want to go back to it.

Part of me thinks I should. Part of me thinks it was justified. Part of me is worried about me hurting people accidentally, or changing them accidentally, or worse than either or both hurting or changing them on purpose because I enjoy it.

Part of me is a toxic little bitch who needs to shut the fuck up and let me try to heal.

Yeah, I haven't crashed that hard since I've gotten here, I don't think, and I'd kind of like to avoid repeating that, because a multi-day crash back in the day could only be distinguished from my normal summertime existence by the lack of self-service, whereas here and now my life is pretty fuckin' baller. I don't want to fall like that again because here and now, I've got a lot further to fall.

So after Siobhan held herself hostage to keep me from diving back into my self-imposed exile, and Saffron belabored me with the fact that not every part of 'remaking the world in the image of my perfect paradise' might be a hideous mockery of love and kindness, I sagged down a little and whispered, "okay."

"Okay you'll stop running away from us?" I nodded. "Stop hiding from us?" I slumped a little more and forced out another nod. "Stop worrying about Changing us?"

I froze. I shuddered. I couldn't run. Couldn't hide. "But..."

"Do you really think I haven't known about your Domain, what it means, what it can do?"

I blinked, then stared at her. A memory surfaced. "The Practice Yard doors." She nodded. "You Changed the Practice Yard." She smiled at me and nodded again. "But..."

She quietly silenced me by saying, "what is your first commandment to your High Clergy, which we have made sure to repeat and reiterate to your faithful?"

"Do as you will?"

She smiled at me. "Good girl."

I shuddered, breathing heavily through my nose, the scent of my ladies filling my nose. "I don't know if I should be doing what that makes me want to do."

The two of them snuggled in around me, and before Saffron could speak, Siobhan murmured, "if it would hurt you to do so, then do not. But do not deny the Agency of others by removing the choice to be with you away from them."

"Wait, what?" My brain ran in circles as I tried to reconcile that. It kept running back to 'them wanting me meant I had to give myself to them', and I knew that wasn't what my Darling meant.

She just nuzzled closer to me. "Do you want me?" I nodded. "Do you want her even more, what with her calling you a good girl?" I nodded, my breath deepening. "Then be a good girl and ask. Or tell us you want us and let us decide."

"I want both of you so bad I can barely think of anything else right now."

"Good girl."

I lost a bit of time to Siobhan's mouth, crushing Saffron to me when her hands wandered south. She squirmed a bit, then sighed. "Shall I tell your Clergy you're not up for tonight's Revel?"

I sighed. Ladies? West Tower please?

The next moment they arrived, all of my High Clergy, including the two who'd been gathering everyone in the Courtyard below to see to any lingering hurts. "Goddess! What happened?"

I sighed, taking them all in, then hesitantly pulling them all in, embracing them. "Homestead got attacked."

Karen looked at Saffron. "Why didn't you call for us?"

"I had all I could do preventing Lyssa's madness from claiming me, or spreading beyond the Homestead."

Karen blanched. "Rabies? Where?"

I had an impulse to do something like belching at her, but my heart wasn't in it. "I ate her."

She looked a little shocked at that, then relaxed and nodded. "I suppose your bloodlust might be a little bloodier now."

"Yeah. I don't think I'm up for the Revel tonight. Not for a bit, I don't think." At least half of my ladies looked ready to protest, and even Siobhan frowned, but I cut them off by saying, "at the very least I need to make sure I've got that shit locked down and under control." I shook my head. "None of you, none of my Clergy, none of the Temple volunteers deserve that. Deserve to be hurt by the person you're going to for intimate comfort."

Karen spoke for all of them when she said, "but you will return to us once you've adjusted?" I opened my mouth, my head already jerking in negation, when she said, "please?"

Something about the way she said it caught at me, reminded me that if I had done the worst thing I could imagine and altered them all so much that they couldn't do without me, the very least I could do now was to make sure I didn't abandon them. "Okay."

That got me a round of hugs, during which things got a little dizzy. "Love, I think the children would like to see you."

I Translocated all of us down to the Courtyard, and it turned out more than the kids wanted to see me. More than just our kids, more than just kids. Everyone in the courtyard, kits followed by kids followed by all the women piled into one big hug. I'm not sure how long that lasted, but eventually Saffron barked out, "children."

That got an obligatory round of 'yes, mom' from the assorted younger crowd.

"It's time for everyone to head in and get cleaned up before dinner." She turned to me. "Could you take them, love?" I rather think we'll want the ladies and the children separate at sunset.

I gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. "Sure, Kitten." I raised my voice a little to say, "I'd really like to see all of you there when you're done down here." Then I pulled all the kids back to the Bath.

"Showers first, just like normal." Menace pouted a little, but got her currently fuzzy butt under a shower nozzle when I shot her a look. Then I felt guilty about it, but for all that I can do a lot of things, traveling through time isn't one of them. Instead I just stuck my own head under a nozzle to rinse the assorted grime of Rabies pulping and three days lying in ocean silt off of me. I wound up oddly thankful that the shower floor was the dark local rock instead of white tile, since that meant I didn't have to look at how much of the gunk running off of me was red, how much was brown, and how much was colors that didn't belong on my skin without makeup.

Once I had everything rinsed, I staggered over to the bath and slipped into it, leaning my head against the side. Before I really knew what was happening, I had an expanding island of kids around me, clinging to me. Comforting and being comforted by me.

My eyes slid shut not long after the first of the women joined us all.

I woke up floating near the center of the bath, the core of a ball of kids and women all connected to me, touching me one way or another, whether pressed against me, snuggled atop me, clinging to one of my tentacles that I'd threaded through kid island, or in the case of my little pony girl, clutching me from below like a floating pillow. I still have no idea why my family seems to like snuggling the less squishy parts of me. Yeah, I get it, somehow I'm warping their sense of 'snuggly', but how though.

As I realized the sun had begun its journey across the sky, I made an executive decision that fuck it, this was not the worst possible permutation of 'fucking with people's perceptions'. Go team 'too depressed tired to care about petty bullshit', beating team 'depressed and hating myself' by a narrow margin.

Not long after, once the kids had woken up and everybody who used one was cycling through the toilet, Saffron snuggled into me and murmured, "Isnomi would like to talk to you today, I think."

I tensed up. "You sure?"

"What, that she wants to talk to you?" I jerked my head once. "That you ought do it today?" Another head shake. "That I trust you with our daughter? The one you stole back from Diana, that is as much your daughter as mine?" I nodded the tiniest bit, and she squeezed me. "Absolutely, love. She needs you. Go talk to her."

Which is how, before either of us went down to breakfast, I found myself up in my office, a surprisingly Maze-like Isnomi on my knee. I don't mean she looked anything like my little pony girl, really. She wasn't even the same size, but then her mom wasn't very big either. More that something about her proportions and self-possession reminded me of Maze a little. Okay, the self-possession reminded me of Ria, only not Ria at her best. This was Ria at her most terrified.

"What's wrong, Menace?"

Her words came out in fits and starts. "You... You mad at me."

"No. No, baby, no! Why would you think that?"

She hunched into herself, shrinking as she did. "I... I did bad fings."

I pulled her into a hug. "Did you mean to do them?"

She shook her head, tears flowing, and choked out, "I... I was so mad..."

"That's... That's what she did to us, Menace. She forced us to hurt each other. To hurt our friends."

"Buh... Buh... But you didn't," she sobbed out.

I held her tight. Sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, I did, Menace. I was pissed. So pissed. I did things to her that I shouldn't have."

"Joo poo in her mouth?"

I shook my head, giving her a wan grin. "Nah. Nah, I didn't do that, but I did bad things to her. Things I maybe shouldn't have done. Shouldn't have enjoyed doing."

"Wha did," she stopped, suddenly stopping, whispering out, "I hurted them."

I nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, you did. Now, did you really mean to?" She shook her head. Nodded. Then shook her head again. Then burst into tears.

"I killded them, mama. I hunted them and killded them and they died and now they's scared of me."

I held her, and hushed her, and stroked her hair. "I know, sweetie. I know. But you didn't mean to. The bad Goddess is gone, and she won't make you do those things again, and mama fixed the hurts you did. It's okay, baby. It'll be okay."

She cried, and cried, and cried. I held her, saying quiet nothings as she sobbed herself silent. Eventually, when she went quiet, I nudged her to make sure I had her attention. "Mama?"

"Yeah, kiddo. Did you apologize to your sisters?" She shook her head. "You think maybe you should?" She nodded. "You gonna do that when we're done here?" She nodded again.

"Mama?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"I'm not a baby!"

I snuggled her anyway. "I know. What did you want?"

"Is this a thing you didn't want me to know?"

I sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, kiddo. This is definitely something I wish you didn't know what it felt like."

"You ever feel like this?"

I sighed. "Like I'd hurt the people I love?" She nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I've hurt all of you, all the time."

"Thas silly. You never hurt us."

I sighed again, but snuggled her to me. "Thank you, baby."

"Not a..."

I chuckled, "Yeah, I know. Not a baby. Want me to come with you to talk with your sisters?"

"Yes but, not now?"

I nodded and snuggled her to me. "Whenever you're ready."

So I sat there and held her while she talked about what she had done. Over the course of the day we talked about what it was like to have folks in your head, what Worship was like, what food she liked, what games she'd played with her sisters, and whether she should make her sisters High Clergy or not.

As the sun headed for the horizon, I said, "You ready to talk to them now?"

She went quiet, then nodded, then shook her head. "Dinner?"

I snuggled her. "Yeah. You can talk to them at dinner."

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