Dear Diary,

  So, yeah. Today was pretty boring, really. PT with duBois, partnered with Saffron for most of the day. Some of the stretching and posing brought some heat to my cheeks from more than exertion, but if he noticed he didn't say anything. Kind of an interesting side effect of what happened between us yesterday, although I'm not sure if I like it or not, yet. At one point when I sat there, legs splayed as far out to the sides as I could get them while she threw her weight into shoving my torso as flat to the ground as it could go, she screamed, "C'mon, Diaz! I know you're more flexible than that!" I couldn't even glance around, what with her using my face to polish the pavers, but nobody did so much as chuckle. She wasn't the first to holler at her partner by any means, and after a moment I realized that the only reason I really found her words embarrassing had absolutely zero to do with bedroom fun and everything to do with the fact that I was kind of slacking, since her weight really wasn't enough to force me down if I didn't want it to.

  Yesterday. Okay, yesterday I went on at length about the results of the night before last, and while I would be lying if I said we hadn't played some serious tonsil hockey last night after lights out, we spent the night together with Sister Siobhan's knowledge and blessing. Literally in that latter case, and it seemed like a real insult to her to spoil it by not getting the sleep she knew I needed. I had one nightmare, and in the morning woke from another dream of boredom so endless it seemed almost worse than the screaming terror from midnight, but overall I woke rested and ready for a day of PT, as did Saffron.

  Yeah, I know I'm kind of telling this backwards, but My Diary, My Complete Lack of Anything Resembling Rules.

  So we wound our way around to the Infirmary, taking the long way to avoid having to walk past Sister Trease's office. The frequent pauses on the steps that evened out our heights in the near abandoned back stairwell had absolutely nothing to do with it.

  When we got there, Sister Siobhan took one look at us and arched an eyebrow, expressing the sentiment of 'Really, Diaz' more eloquently than anyone else ever had. Before Siobhan or I could say anything, Saffron stepped into the breach.

  "Good morning, Sister. I brought Tabitha along to meet Isnomi and grandma, but before then we need to talk to you about some stuff that I'd really rather not discuss around her."

  Sister Siobhan just looked heavenward for a moment, shook her head, and replied, "It never fails. I assure you, girls, no matter how intense your love for one another, nor how fervently you express it physically, you cannot make one another pregnant."

  My mouth dropped open, and Saffron gabbled wordlessly for an endless half second. Right about when I burst out laughing, she finally found her voice. "I know that, Sister!"

  "Oh, thank you, Canta." She shook her head again and said, "You have no idea how many times a year I'm forced to disabuse some girl or girls about that notion. I shudder to think what Doctor DeLeon must go through with the boys." After a moment or two to catch her bearings, she moved over to a desk against the wall, spun the chair about, sat down, and said, "Now, your grandmother and daughter are waiting, so I'll stop making mistaken assumptions and let you two tell me what you need." She lifted a hand before either of us could speak and said, "Just because I'm required to report any 'impropriety' to Headmaster Miles and," unaccustomed venom filled her next two words, "Sister Trease, your Patron is Diana, yes? Nothing improper with the two of you according to my understanding of her doctrines."

  I raised my hand, only just now realizing Saffron held my other one. "Uh... Sister?"

  She looked at me, suddenly suspicious. "Yes?"

  "Artemis isn't my Patron."

  She and Saffron both winced a little at my casual use of Diana's other name. "Who is?"

  "Loki."

  She actually spluttered a little at that, looking around like she wanted to be sure the man himself wasn't hiding in a corner, waiting to jump out at her. She rallied, saying, "I have little idea as to the details of his doctrine. Something about him not having a High Priestess here in Phileo City, or in any other City that I'm aware of. Does he approve of your actions?"

  I shrugged and thought, Hey boss, you got a problem with what me and Saffron got up to this morning?, thinking about the part where we kept setting one another off just in case he missed the whole encounter.

  He replied almost immediately, acerbic amusement laced through his tone. Tabitha Diaz, I fucked a horse in order to con Wotan's general contractor out of his rightful pay. I am the last deity who would find fault in my devotee's choice of partners, nor with any particular activity they find themselves engaging in, so long as they both agree and find the acts amusing. The only fault I find in anyone at this moment is in your Sister Siobhan, who is presumptuous and incorrect; either alone I could forgive, but both together must be corrected. Inform her. Before I could do so, he appended, Oh, I also have unintentionally misinformed you in the past, as my third wife has refused my offer of divorce, so it seems I only have two ex-wives. Carry on.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  I looked Sister Siobhan dead in the eye and said, "Yep, he's fine with it. He says you're presumptuous and incorrect though."

  She blanched, but recovered gamely. "So what did you want to talk to me about?"

  I tried to speak, but couldn't. Saffron came to my rescue. "Tabitha has been having terrible nightmares. She didn't sleep Wednesday or Thursday, and she only slept most of last night because I sat with her."

  Sister Siobhan deadpanned, "Sat with her."

  My cheeks warmed as I tried to explain, "That happened after. This morning. Swear to god."

  She just nodded and said, "These nightmares. Do you remember them?"

  "Yes." I shuddered just thinking about them.

  "Well, that's a starting point. Are they at all coherent?" I nodded, and she continued, "That's something, at least. Incoherent night terrors can happen for a variety of reasons ranging from physiological imbalances to outright attacks by malign entities, but it is deucedly hard to ferret out the causes without anything to work with. Now, are the events in the dreams themselves the sorts one would normally associate with fear?"

  I nodded. I tried to speak, but leftover fear glued my lips together. "That's actually a good thing. If the nightmares are coherent and inherently frightening, it typically means they are either memories, prophetic, or attacks by particularly unimaginative malign entities. Can you describe them to me?"

  I nodded, opened my mouth, and said... nothing. I couldn't force words out of my mouth. Me, Tabitha Diaz, woman who couldn't shut up, couldn't speak from leftover terror I'd already gotten bored with. I'd just started getting mad at myself when Saffron saved me. Again.

  "She told me about them, Sister. She dreams about the attack on the Aquarium, only in her dreams she died during the attack, but remained conscious despite being dead, conscious and abandoned at the bottom of the river."

  My fury at myself dissipated as Saffron spoke, not because I'd stopped being mad at myself, but because it had been so long since anyone did anything like that for me gratitude overwhelmed me. I closed my eyes, put my arms around her, buried my face in her hair and murmured, "Thank you."

  Sister Siobhan spoke, shudders clear in her voice. "I had never thought of what it might be like to become one of the undead. To the rest of us, they are typically abomination, our fear of death given form, but I see how terrifying it must be from within. Even hearing your nightmare described second hand it is... it is disgusting violation of the most foul kind." She took my hand in hers, pure, cleansing Mana flowing from her to surround first my hand, then my arm, and eventually both my entire body and Saffron's as well. "I know not whether this is your own fear making itself manifest in the most disturbing way possible, or if your nightmares are the result of some malign entity turning your memories against you, but the dream does seem fixated on past events, not future ones. In any case, I have placed a ward over both of you; should it protect Tabitha from a malign attack, the attacker might turn their sights on you as the person closest to her, Saffron."

  "Thank you, Sister," we inadvertently chorused.

  "Now, my recommendation to you is to visit the Aquarium when next you have the time free to do so. If your issue stems from twisted memories, seeing the reality may help your subconscious recognize that you are not, in fact, trapped at the bottom of the river. If you can swim or arrange appropriate magics, you ought even visit the bottom where some part of you may think you still lie, just to reinforce the reality of what is, rather than the might have been that plagues your dreams."

  I nodded, leaned down and murmured, "Will you come with me?" into Saffron's hair.

  She pulled away, shooting me a crooked grin before she said, "Of course I'll come with you, you big goof." She turned to Siobhan and said, "Will that be all, Sister?"

  "Unless you've got more you need to discuss. Your daughter is waiting."

  We walked back to the curtained off alcoves, all the way back to the last one in the corner, where an older woman sat letting a baby play with her fingers. Saffron lit up, a glorious smile stretching across her face as she said, "Hey, baby! Guess who's here!"

  The little one's head wobbled around immediately, her expression mirroring Saffron's the moment she caught sight of her. Saffron rushed to her as the little one held her arms out, scooping her up and cradling her as she spun her about, both of them giggling before she carried her daughter over to me. "Isnomi, this is my friend Tabitha. Tabitha, this is my daughter Isnomi."

  Now, I'm not the biggest fan of crotch goblins in general, but when a baby looks at you, you make with the friendly. I smiled my goofiest smile and held out a finger for Isnomi to grab, babbling, "Hi there, Isnomi!" I kicked a leg back and swung my other arm around in a goofy impression of a formal bow, never looking away from her or moving my finger out of her grasping range. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Isnomi Aetos."

  Isnomi looked me up and down, then turned back to her mother screaming like I'd just set her on fire or some shit.

  Luckily Saffron had the magic mom power to interpret a baby's wail, or the kid had enough in common with me that she could apply a surprisingly similar general remedy. Way faster than she'd done this morning, she pulled back her jacket and untied her shirt, slapping Isnomi's wailing mouth onto a nipple. Happy suckling noises replaced the wailing to the relief of all three adults in the alcove.

  Grandma Aetos looked me up and down, then half turned to Saffron. "Taller than he was, at least."

  "MA!"

  Her grandmother just snorted. "If my daughter and I didn't like them short, you'd be taller."

  Grandma Aetos had zero filter and zero chill. I liked her already.

  and because it speaks to who they both are as people that while they're both enjoying the sex, it's not the important part of the scene for either of them.

  literally brings me to tears. Tears of sorrow at what they are forced to endure, both as individuals and collectively. Tears of pride as they repeatedly stand in the face of insurmountable challenges and succeed not by strength, or power, or even by virtue, but by a bloody minded refusal to lay down and die. Tears of resonant pain as their struggles remind me of my own. While I feel literally Called to teach, I have never really thought of myself as a good teacher. I got my certification via a 'we need anyone with a pulse to get in the classroom' program in one of those inner city districts. Almost every teacher I worked with had more knowhow and skills than me, and nobody realized that more than I did. If there is one tiny thing I am personally proud of about my time in the classroom it is this: for every one of those kids forced to be an adult long before the government and society at large recognized them as such, with no access to the support structures adults take for granted, I tried to be the adult I needed and never had, to treat the young men and women I taught and mentored with the respect and agency they'd earned, to listen to them rather than throwing them back into the very situations The Rules said I ought, the situations The Rules are intended to protect them from.

  and being accepted to a college by the end of her Junior year, because the administration refused to allow her to drop a prep course for a Standardized Test she'd already passed in order to transfer into a class which would have met that one aforementioned graduation requirement, an Honors English course where the teacher specifically asked for her to be transferred in, who got so depressed that her only recourse during her 'senior' year, which consisted of two 'required' courses and SEVEN daily periods of not-required-for-graduation electives, was to ditch school after those two courses and go screw her boyfriend on the daily, until, as she said, 'the odds of equipment failure approached unity'; she graduated two months before her daughter was born, denied the honors she would have received the previous year because of six failed courses during her senior year. The young man who stood in as the de facto father figure for his two cousins, whose life goal was to 'sleep with one woman from every country in the world', who intended to use football to get into college and get a degree in foreign languages in pursuit of that goal, who was shot and killed right before his senior year started. The young man who lied about his age on his job application and his rental application, because his mom threw him out because he was inconvenient. The young man who endured endless humiliating mockery on the daily because of BO, because his mother refused to let him back in the house for similar reasons, and he could only shower on days the gym showers worked and he could convince the coaches to let him use them. The young woman whose parents both died well before she graduated, who had the grades and wits to make it into college, but got refused because she couldn't pay for it by herself, because she couldn't prove her parents didn't make too much money for her to receive financial aid, because she didn't have the life knowledge to understand the importance of Death Certificates when her mother died. The young woman who could recreate Iron Maiden covers not only with absolute faithfulness to the artwork of the original, but seamlessly fill in the art under the words, which she omitted because she found them aesthetically displeasing, who nearly got reprimanded and sent to counselling for 'creating disturbing images'. The young woman who acted very much like a child in school, because at home she not only had to care for her dying mother, but also for her 'legal guardian', her older sister who had fairly severe cognitive disabilities; that same young woman wound up being pulled out of her own Graduation Ceremony because her mother was dying, not going to live long enough to see her daughter graduate, and then was left cooling her heels, unable to sit with her dying mother, because she was a minor. The brilliant young woman in my Sophomore Biology course a year early, who couldn't afford the time or money for enough food and rent and diapers and medical care for her daughter, so she collapsed in the middle of the classroom after dismissal because she'd chosen 'food' as the thing she could sacrifice, since her daughter wasn't weaned and therefore she could feed her daughter without buying anything.

  VERY, VERY far from an exhaustive list. It's also what all my students lived through, day after day, their entire lives, with no hope of escape or rescue.

  is, herself, despite any of the legal or social strictures that hem her in and she runs afoul of, a young adult, and I will always do my best to write her as such.