For the Record

The days are slow right now. Between caring for the emotionally scarred Izahne and ethereally scarred Artemis, I guess I don’t have much more on my horizon.

I never really did have much I wanted to accomplish, outside of survival.

Although… I suppose building my plane was entertaining enough, at least. It let me watch the ants parade around their hills, so to speak.

And… my “chosen people” are still there… the nightwalkers and gorgons, in their combined planned communities, led by dungeon subcores…

I can only imagine the chaos that would have erupted if I’d inadvertently destroyed Rose’s core when I was… well. When I wasn’t myself, and at the same time too much myself apparently.

Maybe the entire planar dungeon would have collapsed, along with all the residents.

…

That wouldn’t have been… what’s the word…

I guess it would have been really, really annoying… Even just thinking about having to rebuild the whole thing again piece by piece is…

Wait, why do I even care? Why does any of this matter?

Ah.

Right.

It doesn’t to me. But it does to us, I guess. The… everything I inherited from Astraea loves this place.

This is where she grew up.

This is the first place she conquered, and she made it her own.

Her home.

The home she built with Olive.

Her everything.

And I’ve destroyed it once for sure, almost twice… and allowed other gods to destroy it yet another time.

UNACCEPTABLE.

…

And somehow I know that isn’t just the new old part of me feeling it. I’ve had enough of being stepped on.

I’m strong now. Ridiculously strong, even. Strong enough to be a threat to Artemis, or at least enough to bloody Grandmother’s nose… though I’m pretty sure she’d still squash me like a bug in the end.

This is why I choose my battles, at least when I’m in control.

But I digress. I’ve been standing on this same overlook at Arty’s treehouse, gazing out at the night sky for the past few hours and simply contemplating…

Everything. Everything that’s happened.

…

Ah, right. It’s been over a month and I keep forgetting. But since I’m thinking about it now… I turn on my heel and…

No, I can do better. I can tell from our link that the fox goddess is resting, but not actually sleeping… she’s simply lying still, doing who knows what. Maybe gazing out that window in her bedroom.

I’m coming in, I project to her. Don’t be scared or surprised.

Without waiting for a response, I traverse the threads of reality to pop out in her room. It was really a convenient discovery, that I can close a rift from the inside… now I don’t even need to possess one of my kin to do it, and it functions almost like a slightly delayed teleport Skill!

…Except it’s not a Skill again, not unlike the words of creation.

And as I exit, I notice my wife immediately recoil from my appearance.

…

“What is it?” I ask curiously. I… genuinely didn’t think this would bother her.

Or at least not like it did right after the ‘event’… maybe this is going to be an ongoing issue.

One that I don’t know how to solve, let alone treat. It’s a shame Astraea didn’t have any experience providing therapy or whatever, all she usually did was keep talking to them and wait for her Charm passives to take effect and make the target friendly to her again.

But I already know that’s not going to work here, and I’m not even sure how I feel about using something like that on my own wives… I’ve already managed to turn it off, for whatever that effort is worth.

Anyway, I know exactly what the problem is; it’s the feelers. The strongest memory she has of them looking smooth and almost rubbery is when the queen of hunger almost ate her.

…

When I almost ate her.

And that terrifies her, and the fact that it terrifies her terrifies me.

I… have no idea how to help her with this. It’s no different for Izahne, but at least with her I know the emotional scarring isn’t from something I’ve done.

I lost control.

I can’t lose control again.

Immediately dematerializing my feelers… or I guess sucking them back into whatever non-space around me they extend from, considering they don’t come from the ash of my body anymore… and my body doesn’t even seem to be made of ash now… I slowly and calmly drift toward Artemis and set down lying next to her to gently pat her head.

“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m sorry, I keep forgetting.”

I keep forgetting a lot of things, it would seem. I wonder why?

Some amount of hesitation and residual fear colors the link between us, but she doesn’t pull away and instead accepts my affection. Which is still a net positive in my book…

If I had a book, anyway. I used to have a lot of them in the castle, I think, but it’s all long gone.

Maybe I should rebuild it sometime.

…

Why did I come here again?

…

…

OH RIGHT! The really important thing! The thing I haven’t told her yet, that is probably really really important!

And not the other thing.

…

Maybe I’ll get that one out of the way first.

“You know, sweetheart, I had a sit-down meeting with… myself, I guess, myself now anyway. Between us and the current me… I… sorry, it’s just going to be like this. And I asked myself to say something, so I’m going to relay it… although I could just as easily just say it myself, since I’m, uh, me… and everything…”

I trail off for a moment, but my slowly relaxing fox wife lets the silence hang and instead wraps her arms around me and pulls me close.

Which is not entirely a bad situation…

Something about it feels incredibly desirable, and comforting, and…

Distracting, probably. But that’s fine. She’s relaxed now, and that’s something she needs for her recovery.

I think it helped with mine anyway, and I can’t imagine this kind of soul damage is that much different from when we drained me dry of divinity. Looking back, I’m kind of surprised I survived that.

“I could lay like this with you forever, you know, but I really should say it.”

So I take a deep breath before continuing.

“I’m sorry, Livvie. I’m sorry I lied and left you behind. I wanted you to live, and you definitely wouldn’t have if you fought that… that me. I’d have unquestionably killed you and obliterated your soul entirely. There were… extenuating circumstances that kept that from happening to my own, but only because I specifically volunteered for them… I’m quite certain I can’t offer more detail than that without both of our memories being wiped of this conversation, so I’m going to have to leave it there. Please just trust me. And I won’t leave you again. I couldn’t keep my promise before, but I’m not who I was then. I’m strong enough to keep it now.”

…

…

She won’t look at me.

…

I have no idea how to read that, other than that she’s flooding sorrow again.

After a long silence and eventually some muffled sobs I can tell she’s trying to suppress, she finally speaks.

Very quietly.

“Sacrifice,” she says in a shaky voice. “Again, never.”

I don’t hesitate at all to reply. “I promise. Maybe it sounds strange, but if it’s really what you want… if it comes to that, we’ll die together.”

That must have been the perfect response, because while the sorrow is still there, now it has an unexpected swirl of hope running through it.

And I’ll take what I can get, even if this isn’t remotely a happy conversation.

…

…

Was that what I came in here for?

…

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t…

Maybe I can retrace my thoughts. I know I was thinking about…

“I’m going to rebuild my castle again. It was stupid of me to wreck it and let the remains fall to ruin, it was such a nice castle. I already told myself the residents were fine, apparently I didn’t kill them, the maids or the knights or even the rusalka… although I guess I could have killed Dipshit then, that would have been fine. Anyway, it was such a nice place, and I want it to be nice again. I guess that doesn’t really have much bearing on you or your recovery, I just wanted you to know. It was on my mind and felt like sharing it.”

Artemis tilts her head for a moment before returning a simple nod.

Acceptance. Alright. I didn’t really expect much of a reply anyway, it’s mostly just small talk.

…

Seriously, what was it!?

There was something important. Think, me! Think!

I was… I was on the balcony, looking up at…

The…

The moon.

“Okay so, this is even more important. It’s something else I told myself when I met me for tea in the gazebo in the garden in my mindscape that wasn’t actually there and I think it was all probably an illusion…”

It’s convenient that I don’t actually need to breathe, but I still find myself having to take a few breaths after that long stream of words…

“…So I told myself that while I was unconscious or whatever happened to me after I was put back to sleep that I hid my main body in the moon. I was concerned that you could feel it there or that it might feel weird, but I genuinely couldn’t think of a safer place for it where nobody would bother it, especially not with as terrifying a guardian as you. I hope that’s alright, sorry for not asking first.”

As soon as I mentioned ‘inside the moon’, her eyes shoot open with recognition.

And then she starts shaking not too unlike my other wife in my presence.

…

Wonderful.

Just wonderful.