how are you so burnt when you're barely on fire?

Yeah...



It hasn't been the best day.

Taking a mental health day today, I think, so if I log onto the grid, it won't be for long. I have things to do Saturday, and a reading at the Chelsea Hotel to do on Sunday, so I'll do that, but right now...yeah, I think I'm good just hanging out for a bit and going to bed.

I'm also putting the same behavior into practice on the blog, right now, that I've put into practice on Twitter right now: if you disagree with why the court decision bothers me, you're free to comment, but I will then delete your comment, and it will not cause me one single iota of regret. Cheers.

and all I can taste is this moment, and all I can breathe is your life

(Roleplay, somewhat more intense than some.)



The day had come. Instinct was driving her, step by weary step, and she made her way to the small place in the castle she'd created. She could not reach the Duke; she'd left a few messages in the likeliest places, scattered through eras he was most often in. She'd sent another message to Justine, in the form of a cortex send to Haven. It was the best she could manage, before she had to make her way to the birthing hut.

She had changed into something that would not interfere with the birthing, but halfway across the chill castle stones, she had to pause, curling her arms carefully around the precious treasures within. Gods, everything was starting to hurt. Getting shot with iron-tipped arrows was the only thing she could remember having hurt worse.



She collapsed after toeing the door nearly closed, panting, trying to catch her breath. There was no time. No Duke, no help, nothing if things went wrong...just her. She sternly lectured herself that women had done this for thousands of years and been just fine...but she never had. In all her years, in all her various forms...she'd never gotten pregnant before.



Finally, she felt she'd recovered enough to get settled in place. She staggered upright, foot tangling in one of the purple velvet pillows padding the floor, and felt a warm gush of fluid down her legs, the temperature of blood. For a moment she panicked, thinking that's what it was, but she looked down and realized. This...was part of the process. She'd read up on this. This was normal, right?

Right?

Right. Olive pillows it was. She crawled to the other side of the little room, collapsing when she was clear of the small pool soaking into the rug.



She had no idea what to do. She had no idea how to breathe. She tried not to make noise, because she was in the castle, and there were still...things...creeping through the portals they had not managed to close. But at some point even that failed, and she bore down screaming.

With a sense of profound dread, she watched the door silently creak open...and Justine peered around the ancient wood. She collapsed back against the pillow, nearly in tears, and Justine moved to her side, moved behind her, holding her in place. Soft kisses of encouragement to the top of her head. Good. Good. She was not alone.



The first kitten born was a male, and some small, primal part of her was happy she'd provided a true heir to the line. He was golden-furred, as his father had been when she'd caught in the first place. But she wasn't done. She bore down, pushing, pushing, to birth the second kitten.



The second kitten born was a little girl, but she was only golden--and a leopard--as long as it took to shake some of her fur clean of fluids, and then she shifted. Her round little head, definitely not leopard in proportions, tucked under a weak, unresisting arm, and she felt her lips twitch into an almost-smile at the tiny kitten purr she heard.

No spots on the second one, though, after the first moment of existence. Would she be able to get them back? She had no idea. But she laid back, satisfied, tired, and then...felt something kick inside. Not...just two? But...she'd thought it was just two. There were still...

She did sob, now, when the realization sunk in to her pain-slowed mind. She wasn't done.



She bore down with all the energy she had left, no energy remaining even to scream, and finally, panting, sheened in sweat, she collapsed against Justine, spent. The only reason she was still upright is that Justine's arms--and legs, at this point--were wrapped around her, holding her steady.

The unexpected third kitten had done the same thing as the second--another little girl, the third one, that came out spotted and golden, and turned dappled grey with grey-brownish, uneven spots.



She used the last of her energy to look around the small enclosed space. The golden-spotted boy was laying beside her, starting to drift off. The grey-dappled girl was staring at either her foot, or Justine's, in utter bemusement. And the pale-furred girl...

The pale-furred girl sat with her little head against her knee. She almost wept again. Sentimental idiot, she thought, but...it was done.

Her eyes drifted closed, and the last thing she heard was Justine activating the comm. She made out "priest of Naamah", and "Mont Nuit", murmured into the receiver, but...she was tired. Her babies needed fed, and she would do that, she could stay awake long enough for that, surely. In just...another...mommmm...

In the firelit room, surrounded by old stone and older energies, and the strength of Justine's arms around her, she did what she was later sure many new mothers had done after giving birth: she passed out cold.

in the end, in the end, there's nothing more to life than love, is there?

(Roleplay entry. What else would it be?)



The kittens are coming. It's getting harder to move. With every step, I am aware of the lives within. And...I worry.



I'm having to layer illusion spells, and I worry about the effects. And I wander the winter land and everywhere feels too exposed now, too...bright. Too...open.

The castle calls.



It's...an oddity, I admit. In all the centuries I've spent, moving forward, backward and sideways through time, I've never been pregnant. Outside of one truly unfortunate encounter with someone who wanted more from my succubus side than I wanted to give--and that ended quite badly for everyone concerned--I didn't even think I was fertile, let alone capable. But...sometimes the right person asks.

And sometimes that request is enough to do several months of research, and command the time portal at Sphinx-Templar headquarters, and put an entire lab into service distilling various poisons admixed with strands of DNA...all to just have a chance. Just to have the possibility available.



I don't think I was aware just how fast this would go, though. I thought my genetics would play more into it, but then...my genetics...are sort of all over the place. Sídhe-sided child of a karasutengu and a kitsune, summoned into being for the Unseelie Court as a phouka, transformed via curse into a succubus, an endless shapeshifter who changed forms like I changed my mind...whose genetics would come into play, here?



But...the potion worked. And...I caught. Maybe it was something to do with the overlaid poison extracts, to batter my system into receptivity; maybe it was something to do with the current and ancient strands of Shatner DNA that I included...but now I'm here. So close to giving birth, and I just want to...find a deep, dark cave somewhere, and burrow in, and pull branches over the entrance. Is that normal?



Justine says she'll stand with me. Or be with me, at least, during the birthing. Which might be good, as...I have no clue what to do if things go wrong...or even if things go right. This is all unexplored territory. I don't even truly know how many kittens I'm carrying--I know it's at least two, because I've felt two separate, rapid heartbeats against my palms.



The only thing I'm sure of...is that it will be soon. But when? No idea. I guess...I'll know when it's time. And until then...I wait.

And wait for word from the Duke.

have we put these childish things away? have we lost the magic that we once had?

(Quasi-RP entry, or...it's a roleplay entry, but it deals with things beyond the 'Verse, as well.)

So, Haven's an interesting place. We're still settling in, and up until the happenings I'm going to relate, I had managed to avoid most of the dangers (though I was bitten by a cave spider, and that...was not fun.)



No one told me the electrified snakes on Haven had a winter form.



I mean, look at that thing. The fact that the eyes glow doesn't even register in their normal, desert-hide appearance. But patterned with slow gloss and dapple? Those eyes really stand out.



Thankfully, a friend tipped me to a Blue Sun product, the "Anti-Arc". You can just make it out strapped to my ankle. It gives off a low, not precisely pleasant subsonic hum, but it keeps the snakes away, and I'm perfectly happy with that.

In the meantime, the Duke had an interesting idea I wanted to test out. Considering we're pretty much limited by what we can ship past the UAP, legally, and what's on Haven itself, we're doing a lot of reconsideration on what we can offer the population that they'd want or need. And he suggested it might be possible to harvest Haven's toxic mushrooms and distill them into alcohol. First, it would clear patches of the fungus from places where people need to go, namely the mines, and second, we've done it before with toxic substances, subsuming the toxic elements in alcohol and aging the results.

I figured I'd be the perfect person to check on the toxicity levels, because I was still very comfortable with toxic mushrooms from the pregnancy potion. So off I traipsed to the mines to check. This...was not my best idea.



As it happens, the mushrooms are very toxic, even to a demifae, even to someone who spent the larger part of several weeks inhaling vapors from aconite, death caps, destroying angels and cloud agarics. And here's how it goes: stand too close, and your health drops by half (green to yellow). Stay in place, and it drops by half again. Still stand there, the health bar divides by yet another half and goes red...and that's when I started walking away, but I wasn't fast enough.

Dropped like a rock.



Now, thankfully, I'm still fairly durable, but it unnerved me a bit. I'll have to report back to the Duke that they're too toxic to brew, I think.

One more thing, though...and this one could get tricky.

Lady Justine is trying to teach me to mine asteroids (and I'm horrid at it, is anyone surprised?), but in order to stay completely within the force shield on the little rock hoppers Port Hope provides, she recommended I change out of Haven winter gear into something a little more close-fitting? Well, I happened to have a skinsuit, so changed quickly, but when I caught my reflection...



...I am definitely looking pregnant at this point. Which, to be fair, isn't that surprising--gestation for most leopards is 90 days, so if the Duke's genetics hold, it'll be the first week or two of January when I give birth. (Though if mine hold, as said, everything's out the window.) And that wouldn't be a problem, per se, except...

We're playing human on Haven. Because they have no place in their perceptions for a demifae ex-Phouka and a magically shapeshifting synthesized intelligence and occasional demigod. There's not even vocabulary that exists to explain.

So now, the big decision becomes--do I prop up my illusion spells again, as I've been doing at work, and proceed on as if nothing's changing? Do I just go with it but gently deflect questions? Because the one thing I do know, is the kittens cannot visit Haven. Not the least of which is that they will be kittens, at least until we figure out if they've inherited my natural shapeshifting, or not, and that will take some time for them to grow into whatever they'll become. And I do not want to field questions on why the human CSO of a shipping company has given birth to two leopard cubs. Thanks, but no.

would you change who you are if you could?

{Why yes, roleplay entry. But first, two things: the upcoming Dune movie is going to be goooood. Also, have some typewriter poetry.)

Now then. Where were we?

24 August, 1928



The basket next to her is loosely packed with layers of spirit-soaked gauze and various wild-harvested items: a variety of deadly mushrooms, some brilliantly yellow shelf fungus, one particularly spritely slime mold, a green stick of yew, seven oak leaves, a handful of wild white strawberries. She creeps up behind the last of her acquisitions: an animated Amethyst Destroyer, engaged in sniping with a nearby patch of low-hanging mistletoe. She catches it unawares--not undisturbed, it was already disturbed--and slices it free from the base. She quickly turns and packs it into the basket, wrapping a separate square of gauze around the seeping stem. She leaves the forest carefully, but quickly, and returns to the Black Moth, dialing in the coordinates three 'verses over, and one to the left, and Gearhaven. Home.

This is her third trip into the hinterlands, but she thinks she has everything now.

30 August, 1946



She has spent the time since her return, a week and eighteen years forward, in the Red Queen's castle, chopping, dicing, scraping, peeling, soaking various amounts of various botanicals in spirits of vodka, gin, Strega, and absinthe. She's made a simple variant of Kyphi incense while she sat in circle, mortar and pestle in hand, grinding the wet ingredients into paste, pulverizing the dried ingredients into dust. She's kept a worn and tattered journal next to her, most of the pages loose, many of the pages older than the Black Moth, sketching when she needs to wait on a particular distillation or fermentation to properly develop, cutting out articles that contained helpful information, noting pages in the copies of Dr. Moreau's journals, acquired haphazardly over several decades.



Finally, she thinks she's done. She packs everything into small jars, vials, stoppered bottles sealed with wax, oiled parchment envelopes tied with striped twine. She drags the medium-size cauldron into the airship, heavily coated in an iron-defeating resin, and timeslips to the island. It's a short trip down to street level, where she lugs the heavy cauldron up the narrow stairs above Lecora, to the Sphinx-Templar Syndicate's satellite office. It takes a bit to set the cauldron up proper, and even longer to add in the neutral solution to start everything, and then, slowly, ingredient by ingredient, hour by hour, adding in everything she's collected and processed. No incense now, but there's always wisps of sage and cloves and cinnamon, cardamom and old bones, rum and wax, drifting up from the shop downstairs. She chants a simple spell to heat the cauldron, because starting a fire on the wooden floor of the building would definitely cause the rental association to seize their deposit.



And then the first moment of fear as everything began to heat, the liquid starting to swirl in glowing, occasionally pearlescent streaks: several small, whipping purple tentacles emerging from the mix, shocking her to her core: because no sealife had gone into the mix! She rapidly scanned her notes, checking amounts, times, preparation notes, but--nothing.

She looked dubiously at the cauldron, but knew she potentially had only one shot at this, because some of her ingredients were only available in certain times, every century--and for some others, every other century. She had to let it cook for the prescribed seven days. She had no other choice.

6 September, 1946



At last it was done. Ready to be decanted. Apparently no one on the island had noticed the purple vapors drifting from the upper floor of the building, something she was supremely grateful for. But before she poured out the mix into the waiting carboy, she ran to the desk, sweeping the books off in a rush and laying out the last two pages, the more esoteric and direct mix. If she'd done everything correctly...if she'd made all the proper adjustments for her fey genetics and the Duke's feline descent through the Moreau line...Well, then this would be the easier path to children.

She hoped.

Because he'd asked, and because she loved him, and because...maybe it was just time.



She carefully filled the carboy, vanishing the cauldron, and summoned the Black Moth to return her to Gearhaven and her workshop for the final concentration, ending up with a scant few vials for all her work. She shook her head and fell into bed exhausted that night, though, knowing she had done all she could.

8 September, 1946



She checked the notes she'd left on the desk again, comparing them to notes in the tattered journal. She set the vial down, the swirling liquid within casting iridescent flashes on the stained walls. And then she got the call that her Duke had adopted a ward, and she fled back to the Black Moth to return to Gearhaven posthaste to ask what, exactly, that would entail.



Leaving the notes, and the vial, out on the table, unguarded...

you're feral, you're feral

Well, this was...unusual.

[15:16] lyuboffTummyBabygirl: Emilly Orr! Посторонитесь! Потому что беременность у девушки - это репеллент для отпугивания!!! ㋡

What? Translated, that apparently means "Stand aside! Because a girl's pregnancy is a repellent to scare!" And that still makes no sense to me. All I wanted was to hit that store's Advent, get the gift, and leave.

But she wasn't done.

[15:16] lyuboffTummyBabygirl: [Pxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx]! Остерегайтесь девушек в 'интересном' положении! Если вы им 'не интересны', они вас ударят по 'интересному' месту! ㋡

This one meant, "Beware of girls in the 'interesting' position! If you are not 'interested' in them, they will hit you in an 'interesting' place."

What the hell is wrong with this girl?

[15:17] lyuboffTummyBabygirl: [Mxxxxxxxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx]! Держись подальше! Девушка во время беременности- опаснее танка, прет напролом и затаптывает на месте! ㋡

Basically, she's trying to convince us that, because she's pregnant, she's a dangerous animal? This one meant "Stay away! A girl during pregnancy is more dangerous than a tank, rushing through and trampling on the spot". Really?

[15:17] Emilly Orr: You can stop that anytime, lyuboff.
[15:17] lyuboffTummyBabygirl: [Txxxxxxx Rxxxxxxx]! Остерегайтесь девушек в 'интересном' положении! Если вы им 'не интересны', они вас ударят по 'интересному' месту! ㋡

That was the "getting hit in the interesting place" one again. But then she went quiet, and I noticed a CSR in the store, so breathed a sign of relief.

[15:19] Emilly Orr: Thank you to whomever bounced her.
[15:19] lyuboffTummyBabygirl: [Fxxxx Mxxxxxxxx]! Держись подальше! Девушка во время беременности- опаснее танка, прет напролом и затаптывает на месте! ㋡
[15:19] Emilly Orr: or not, apparently she's still here. Wow.

And that was the "rushing through and trampling" one again.

So I pulled up the object profile. Turns out apparently "lyuboff" is the name of the talking baby? (Which is why I left the "name" untouched. And Miss B was the owner of the tummy talker.

[15:20] Emilly Orr: Ah, it's [bxxxxxx], not lyuboff.
[15:20] Emilly Orr: Wow, that's annoying.

So I pulled her profile. She's over a year old, so definitely knows better than to have an attachment that randomly screams at people how insane she is. I mean, I guess in that sense, it's truth in advertising, because what with all the shouting about how unstable she was and how much she was going to punch people, I'd quite easily classified her as a loon.

She had the Lyuboff group in her profile, and, because I was mildly curious for the reason behind all this, I looked it up. Their profile is in Russian (of course):

Любовь, беременность, малыш в животике, роды, семья. Что еще надо для полного счастья? Всё это возможно даже в SL! Для этого и существует LYUBOFF!
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/109532

И если вы все еще не нашли вашу Любовь, пусть эта группа поможет вам в этом!
Чтобы присоединиться, напишите Docs.

And that means:

Love, pregnancy, baby in the tummy, childbirth, family. What else is needed for complete happiness? All this is possible even in SL! For this, there is LYUBOFF!
https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/109532

And if you still have not found your Love, let this group help you with this!
To join, write docs.

Great. So, come to their store, buy the world's most annoying and psychotic tummy-talker, annoy EVERYONE YOU MEET. Oh, and if you don't have a baby-daddy, they'll find you one! Great. Can this not catch on, please?