Diary of a Teenaged Mimic

Dear Diary,

I'm really hoping that pulling the biggest of triggers on Mega Bear hasn't put a permanent crimp in my relationship with the local M-Space crowd. I don't really want to call them 'Gods', because if I remember the stuff I read right, they're not, really. Not the way folks raised in the USA think of them anyhow. They range between ancestors and forces of nature, and most of them are definitely personifications, but I know they're not the same somehow. Of course, I could probably ask Conrad about the technical differences, but there's a problem with that. If he doesn't know for certain, that's just gonna encourage him to capture a local, I guess they'd be Spirits? Capture a local Spirit or God-equivalent and take them apart. Possibly using The Machine, to spread their innards all out like outards so he could see how they work.

It still makes me shudder not just knowing that my son has a vivisection machine that rips Souls out for ease of examination, but that I've been through the process and lived to tell the tale. At least, I'm still here and talking. Not that I know how to shut up, as anyone who's ever had to deal with me can tell you. Y'know, with people like us, and I'm referring to those of the Divine persuasion specifically, not just Spirits or Fae or other folks somehow connected to M-Space, how would we even know if we die? Like, as far as I know there's not usually an afterlife where dead Gods hang out, although I could be wrong on that. Not like I've done a lot of research. But I do remember Loki telling me that Gods who die wind up coming back a lot.

A lot is an overstatement, but Gods, especially Primordials, have a history of not staying dead. Hence why most of those with Divine enemies tend to imprison them somehow.

Like you and your kids?

Me, my sons, Prometheus, the Titans still contained within Tartarus. Even Baldur, still trapped in Hel to this day.

Wait, what? Isn't him being dead the reason you're, y'know, chained to a rock and shit?

Indeed.

The actual fuck? So he's just chillin' in Hel while you're getting tortured?

That is, in fact, about the size of it.

So why the fuck doesn't one-eye just Revive him and be done with the whole charade?

I'm certain that you would be forgiving of any who hurt Isnomi, or Maze, or any of your other girls, once they were Revived. Look at Ria, for example. You've clearly forgiven The Morrigan entirely.

That left me kinda speechless for a bit. Uh, yeah, okay, I get that part, maybe, but why the fuck is Baldur still down in Hel?

Because he has not yet been Revived, and my daughter is not about to let him wander about on his own recognizance.

I thought about that for a second. Did you tell her to keep him locked up?

Not exactly?

Why did you kill him, anyway?

I'm sworn not to say.

That got me. Like, okay, I get keeping oaths and shit is important to Gods, but Dad's usually trickier than that. If I guess, can you confirm or deny? I got no answer to that. Okay, Dad. Just remember, I'm still working on springing you. In a 'nobody who doesn't deserve it dies' kind of way.

I recall. However, just at this moment you've a meeting to attend.

I do. Thanks for the reminder. You're the best.

I know.

So I looked over at Marie and half begged, "can't I even get a snack for the road?"

She just shook her head and pointed. So without further ado I stepped to Grandmother's Village. I really needed to figure out what the locals called it, but somehow that seems like something I should have asked a while back, and now it just seemed awkward. Honestly the whole visit felt a little awkward, and I really wasn't in the right mood to deal with Silk or Panther at the moment, so I stepped to the very edge of the village's cleared space, then stepped across to M-Space before anybody saw me.

I could have stepped right to the middle of the M-Space side of the village, but something told me my hosts weren't exactly feeling warm and fuzzy and welcoming to me, and jump scaring them just seemed kinda rude. So instead I walked. I debated whistling, or humming, or maybe calling out 'hello' or something like that, but something about M-Space's perpetual near but never quiet silence made that feel kinda weird, too, almost like a violation. So instead I just dropped my Blend all the way down, so that even if they weren't paying much attention they'd hear me coming as I trudged my way into the center of town.

When I got there, Rabbit squatted next to a ceramic pot bubbling away in the fire. Like, buried in the same soot that braced the burning logs, with some coals right up near it. Lily stood in the third row of benches around the central fire, pacing back and forth. I got the idea that she didn't often settle down, and that I wasn't likely to see it if she ever did. The moment I cleared the innermost ring of houses she froze, staring at me. Rabbit looked up after I'd taken like two steps into the open space, her perpetually smiling mouth dropping open to call out a greeting before she, too, froze. I took in the scents wafting out of the stone cauldron as I walked forward, surprising myself when I recognized them.

"Y'know, my mom always said you've got to keep stirring succotash until you take it off the heat. It burns way too easy otherwise."

Rabbit's head tilted sideways. "Your... Mother." I nodded. "The incarnation of Primordial Night, of Privation?"

"Oh. Uh, yeah, no, I see your point. Not that one."

Rabbit glanced at Lily, smirking a little as she did. "Not that one? How many mothers do you have, then?"

I couldn't help it, something about Rabbit's eternal smirk tugged at my own sense of humor. "It's complicated." Her lips curled despite themselves, so I pulled out my very best 'oh, shit, I'm caught' voice and said, "you see, what had happened was..."

I'm not sure what Lily was about to bark at me. Something about, "this isn't a laughing matter!" But Rabbit kinda spoiled that by barking out a laugh of her own, then waving me forward.

"Will you sit with us?"

I shrugged. "Sure." I walked over to the bench nearest Rabbit, which just happened to put me between her and Lily. I nodded politely at Lily before I sat down, leaving my back open to her. Right about then I realized that my shadow stretched more or less straight back toward the Homestead. I thanked whatever instinct had led me to go around the fire the way I did, so my shadow never fell across Rabbit. Not like it'd do anything to her, or at least I don't think it would, but it just seemed kinda rude. Like ripping off a fart as you walk past somebody making dinner. "Smells really good."

"Would you like some?"

"Yes, please."

Right about then I noticed she'd laid out some simple stoneware plates, and each of them had a few still steaming corn tortillas She scooped up a solid serving of succotash onto each of three plates, then pulled the cauldron a bit away from the fire before settling a lid on it. "So it doesn't burn. Lots of mothers know that."

She brought the plates over, handed me one, then coaxed Lily forward with another. She sat down just outside of arms' reach next to me on the bench, then stared at me with her plate in hand while Rabbit settled on my other side. Out of casual reach, but not clearly outside of my potential ability to lean over and grab her. I picked up one of the tortillas and curled it into a scoop. "Aren't these a little, y'know, southern?"

Rabbit just smiled as she did the same with her tortilla, using the curled flatbread as a spoon. "They are. But the recipe is simple, and works so well with so many other things."

I scooped up a big bite of succotash, savoring it as I chewed. She'd definitely hit the sweet spot on all the right portions of the recipe, although it had something in it, some kind of thickener, that I didn't remember having in succotash before. Something that added a different kind of sweetness than I expected from the corn, but it went well with the sweetness of the beans. Rehydrated beans, definitely; I preferred fresh, but almost never got them even back when my mom still had the energy to cook. Whether the onions were fresh or stored through the winter, Rabbit had definitely taken the time to caramelize them. Not something you can do at the drop of a hat. Also something I'd gotten used to whenever Marie cooked, at least whenever the recipe called for caramelized onions.

I realized right then that my palate had been forever ruined by Marie. Seriously, this was some top tier succotash, created by some kind of Spirit of Grandmother's people, and all I could do was say, 'damn, this is almost as good as my wifiest of wifes'. Then again, I guess it's not that big of a social faux pas to prefer my wife's cooking to any other random chef, right? "This is good," I said between bites. "Thank you."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Rabbit nodded. "It's nothing. Although I'd hoped you were..." she sighed. "Perhaps a little more like your southern neighbors. It would make us both feel safer."

It took me a second. "The Fae." She gave me a questioning look. "Like Ria and Maze."

She nodded. "Yes. I don't think Ria would be able to harm someone who'd just fed her."

"I hope to hell not. That'd be rude as fuck, and I'm tryna raise my girls to be polite. I mean, basic politeness is just the bare minimum, right?"

I think Lily snorted some of her succotash at that, but when I slowly turned my head her way, trying to keep all of my motions slow and non-threatening, she just glared at me. Rabbit cleared her throat. "Speaking of bears..."

I nodded. "Yeah. Kinda thought you'd want to talk about that."

She took a minute to arrange her thoughts, and I just sat there patiently savoring the succotash. She'd given me enough to be a solid meal for somebody her size, which meant at least a decent entrée for me or Lily. After a while, she nodded and spoke. "Could you have done that to the bear that attacked us here?" She nodded toward the hill we'd killed the last Dire Bear on.

Wonder of wonders, I took the time to think about my response instead of just blurting something out. "If you're asking if I had the power to do that? Then yeah. I had Vulcan along."

"Why didn't you?"

I snorted and looked around the village. "Kinda would have defeated the point." When she just stared at me, still asking, I sighed and said, "my whole reason for being here that day was to protect this village. You'd been nothing but welcoming to us, and it wound up blowing up in your faces. I needed to fix that, but even after that, that fuckin' bear would have wreaked havoc in here. So it had to die, but I couldn't nuke it from orbit."

"But you just claimed you could have?" spat Lily.

I rolled my eyes and turned to her. "Yeah, I could have hopped up to low orbit and vaporized it. Well, it was kinda big, I probably would only have vaporized half of it. But still, yeah, I could have done that, but even if that didn't flatten the village, this whole area would be unlivable for a little while."

"So why didn't you?"

God, this bitch could not seem to get it through her head that I wasn't looking for an excuse to execute her people in job lots. Before I said anything, I closed my eyes and counted to ten. By the time I hit eight, I realized that maybe, if she was old enough, which she might well be, she'd seen that shit happen in the past. Her people killed off whenever a Europan God decided it wanted to harvest some Souls or shit like that. I opened my eyes and looked at her. "Because, Lily, y'know how I said I had a couple moms?" She nodded, confused by my return to the earlier topic. "Yeah, one of those, the first one I remember, the one I grew up with for thirteen years? She, and her people, my people, wound up getting screwed over by people who thought we were easy targets too. Fucked over by powerful, wealthy men who didn't even see us as people. Just... animals. Or maybe worse, numbers in a book that told them how much more money they'd have if we all died."

"So you'd have us believe that you take pity on us because you were once oppressed?"

Look, I have my limits, and she'd just kicked over the last of my reservoirs of patience. "No, you nerf brained thirst trap, I would have you believe I'm gonna treat you like people because I'm a decent human being!" Lily just stared at me, mouth dropping open, sort of working like she wanted to say something but couldn't force words out. A moment later Rabbit barked out a laugh, then kept snorting until I turned to face her. "What?"

"You'd have us think you're Human?"

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. "Okay, fine, Human Adjacent. Human enough to be polite, to respond to good faith with good faith in turn. Human enough to see people hurting and try to make them maybe hurt less. Human enough to see someone in danger and want to protect them. Also yeah, Human enough to maybe get a little pissed off when someone keeps acting like I'm a heartbeat away from catching them and eating them alive while I listen to them scream just so I can have dinner and a show."

"Like you could catch me," Lily muttered, and something in me just, I dunno, snapped.

I slammed my Blend up to maximum, whipped a tentacle around that wasp waist, and slid myself under her, dropping her into my lap, one arm wrapping around her chest, the other across her lap like a seat belt, my tentacles wrapping around her forearms, around her calves. Then I dropped my Blend again and whispered, "Lily, if I wanted to..." I trailed off as the scent of her hit me. Then before she or Rabbit completely unfroze, I said, "okay, yeah, also Human enough that any references I make to eating you from here on out will absolutely be talking about tongue fucking you until you can't walk."

"Let. Me. Go."

I took a deep breath. "No more snippy comments about how the only reason I haven't caught you and eaten you is because you're obviously so much better at running away than I am at catching?" She nodded. "No chance I can maybe get you to admit that if I wanted to make a snack out of you... Fuck. Shit. No, you're totally a fuckin' snack. Yes, that is intended as a compliment about your appearance and sexual desirability, not a threat that I'm going to consume you. Fuck, Lily, why you gotta be so hot?" I shook my head, then reversed the entire process I'd done, Blending, sliding out from under her, setting her gently on the bench, then picking up my plate and scooping up the last of my Succotash before letting her go and dropping my Blend again. "Sorry."

Rabbit snorted. "Sorry for...?"

"That was kind of rude of me."

She nodded. "Not uncalled for though."

"RABBIT!"

Rabbit just looked at Lily, and I realized that a subtle tension Rabbit been holding had dissipated entirely. "You haven't even tried to be polite, Lily. You've accused and distrusted and taunted. Just now, she showed you she could have done all that you accused her of and more, but didn't."

"I still want to know why not," hissed Lily.

Rabbit shook her head. "I think she's been telling us that. But one of us hasn't been listening. Just in case I'm wrong," she turned to me. "Why, exactly, would you do these things? Or refrain from doing them?"

I nodded, savored my succotash a moment longer, then swallowed. "Because of who I choose to be. I choose to be a Hero, to make the world a better place than I found it, for everybody living in it."

Rabbit nodded toward the hill. "The bears might disagree."

"The bears, specifically the Dire Bears, aren't exactly doing the 'live and let live' thing. A normal bear would walk away from a big Homestead like ours. At worst it'd, I dunno, raid our trash piles or something. But it wouldn't come at us unless it saw us as food or a threat. Meanwhile these big bastards see anything looking like the works of Humans and they attack."

Rabbit sighed. "It... They were not always so."

I turned to her, toying with my last tortilla, using it to scoop all the remaining succotash juice into one spot. "Care to tell me why?"

She looked torn, so I just fucked around tryna get the last of the succotash sauce into my mouth with my tortilla. After a bit she sighed. "It... it is a story from... not before my time. But near its beginning. Once, a people lived along the shores of the lakes. More to the north than the south, but some on both sides of each. They were neighbors of my people, and the great bears, the children of Bear, protected them."

"Bear. Like you're Rabbit?"

She smiled. "Oh, no. I am Rabbit, but... not exactly a rabbit. Even if I like to think myself perhaps near as clever as one."

I'd scooted closer as she spoke, and suddenly realized why. "No other rabbit-like proclivities, huh?"

She just rolled her eyes. "Wouldn't you like to know? At any rate, Bear. Bear is... bear. I was Human, once. Still might be what you call 'Human Adjacent'. Bear was not, although its said some of Bear's children were of the People of the Lake."

"Whoa. Getting it on with the Bear God. Spirit. Whatever. Somebody's brave."

She just nodded, her serious face reminding me of Isnomi in that moment. "Yes. Very. They all were brave. It... may have been their undoing as a people." She paused, then breathed out, "none of them ran."

"Ran from...?"

She shook her head. "I cannot name it. I cannot even refer to it. It is... ancient. I think your people would call it Evil."

"Yours wouldn't?"

She barked out a humorless laugh. "Is the coldest Winter freeze Evil? Is the driest Summer drought Evil? The fiercest storm?"

I managed to hold back my initial response long enough to think. Definitely long enough to think about there being a Mor Primordial of Famine. Of there being a Mor Primordial of the Sun, who sure as shit would cause droughts. Fuck, when it came to storms, even if Odin's son the God of Thunder wasn't in play at the moment, the fuckin' rapist shitbag King of Olympus, God of Lightning, sure as shit was. "Y'know, if it's got enough personality and personhood to care? To actually actively seek out people and hurt them? Then yeah, those fuckin' things are Evil."

Rabbit just stared at me. "You say that like you would fight them. Like you would stand against the sun and sea and wind and waves and..." I just stared at her as she went silent.

From behind me I heard a whispered, "you would."

"Against a normal storm? I'd get people indoors. Same with the sun, normally. Maybe get 'em a drink of water." I looked over at her. "Maybe see if I couldn't ride out the worst of the heat with a tall drink of water my own self." I shook my head. "I'm not great with the whole 'helping' thing. I try. I do my best. If it's simple, like a Cure Spell or a bucket of water to haul, I can do... A lot, really, but it's my wife, Saffron, who can sort that shit out better than me. Make sure nobody starves. Make sure nobody freezes." I stopped, shook my head. "But the moment those things have a person behind them? Oh, it is on. And so far I've been beaten, burned, stabbed, cut, stomped, slashed, drained by Undead and told to die by the Primordial of Death himself, and you know what?"

I realized right then that at some point, Lily had shifted just the tiniest bit closer to me. I looked her in the eyes and saw that mesmerized look I'd seen when Menace worked her mojo on somebody to keep them from hurting. To keep them from thinking.

To keep them from running.

I smiled at her. "The knife broke. The Priestess died. Her Goddess died. The Army broke. Its General didn't die, because I didn't fucking let him. Still won't. The. Fucking. Plague. Died. As did both Plague Gods sucking on its power like some perverse kind of mother's milk. The Death Gods... one died, the other wishes she had." I thought about it a second. "The fucking formerly Human Lich is in a cell in Tartarus, unless my Murder Mittens found a nastier place to bury her." I thought about my first day here, and since. "The Dragons," Rabbit gasped, looking like she wanted me to shut the hell up right the fuck then, but I steamrolled forward, "one of them I crushed to paste and buried in a shallow grave in the bed of the Delaware. The second my troops ripped the skin off of to make armor and shields. The third..." I smiled, and let every ounce of cruel, vindictive, even lustful satisfaction fill that smile. "The third splattered across the Chesapeake; Lich or no Lich, it died." I paused, looked at both of them, savoring their emotions.

Rabbit looked like she wanted to rabbit, but somehow knew that the safest place she could find was right here, within reach of me. Almost like she didn't realize she was doing it, she'd scooted closer to me, her plate forgotten in her lap, even as it clinked against the plate in mine. I didn't even have to turn to feel Lily's warmth behind me. I didn't have to think to feel the heat that had overridden every bit of her fear, burned it clean out of her. I took a deep breath, realizing right then that this was Worship, or something so like it that I couldn't tell the fuckin' difference.

"Do you wanna know what else?"

"Yes," Lily breathed down my neck as Rabbit's head jerked once in a convulsive nod.

"I'm still fuckin' here. So if that storm, that sea, that wind, that wave, if any of them, or anything else, comes at me, and mine, or any of our friends, or fuck it, any Human or Human Adjacent person who hasn't done me wrong? I will absolutely fight it. I will fuck its shit up so bad that the echoes of its memories will be nothing but Terror and Regret."