Dear Diary,

"Lust is a fire on the hearth, Bloodlust, a raging wildfire. Which would you warm yourself at?" - Tabitha Diaz, Doctrine of Tabitha, Book of Bloodlust

In this, the first Verse of the Book of Bloodlust, Tabitha makes clear the difference between lust, which most adults are likely to feel at some point in their life, and bloodlust, which might not touch any but a simultaneously blessed and cursed few. For to feel lust, we only need be exposed to one with whom we long to engage in physical intimacy. But to feel bloodlust, not only must we have an abundance of lustiness, it must also ignite when we desire to bring harm to another. Lust is a normal, natural part of life, one which empowers both Bloodlust and Passion. Bloodlust, on the other hand, is far more powerful, far harder to control, and far more likely to result in unfortunate consequences. As Tabitha says, Bloodlust is not the tame fire of a hearth, but the untamed inferno of a wildfire. It does not gently warm us, comfort us, or nourish us. It destroys. Yet, as has been noted in earlier Books, just as there are times for sowing and times for reaping, there are times for building and times for destruction. It is in those last where Bloodlust comes into its own. - Priestess Most High Above All Others, Archmage Imperator Saffron Aetos-Diaz, Commentary on the Doctrine of Tabitha

Bloodlust is definitely the most embarrassing of my Domains. Seriously, Justified Homicide and Vengeance are both dangerous, but they're like carrying a knife, or a gun. You might seem a little out of place at the function, especially if it's in church or at school, but if you say you have to walk home through a bad neighborhood, most of the folks watching are gonna frown and suck their teeth, but not point and laugh. If you keep them in your back pocket and don't go flashing them around in polite company, nobody sane is gonna throw a fit that you have them. They're things that need to happen, maybe, and folks who are proud of them might need some side-eye, but folks who just happen to have done them aren't inherently cringe.

Bloodlust, on the other hand, is like a fuckin' great sword, or maybe a fifty caliber machine gun. Yeah, both of those have a purpose, one they were designed for, but waving them around at a block party is not one of those. 'Bloodlust is one of my Domains' is something that even other war gods are gonna maybe look askance at. Seriously, I know the whole 'a soldier who won't fuck, won't fight' thing, but so many of the war worshipping edge lords back in the day were all about not admitting to any kind of desire. Like lust was a weakness.

Shit, maybe that's the problem with Bloodlust. Not the blood part. Tell somebody you're a murderer, they might be scared of you. Tell somebody you're a slut, they despise you. Blood is seen as scary, but Lust is stigmatized. Okay, it sure as shit was back in the day. Even here there are sections of society that seem to frown at open displays. I'd say 'upper crust Dan', but apparently Larry straight up said that shit was stupid. Then again, if Bonnie were wanting to ride my face like a bicycle in the Tour de France, I think I'd be willing to say 'fuck it' to social stigma as well. Shit, that's pretty much what Saffron did.

Okay, now I'm kinda wanting to grab the two of them and Saffron, toss my Kitten and Bonnie on the Bed, and settle back on the divan to watch. Two girls four volleyballs. A magnificent mountain range of mammary goodness. Yeah, I think I came by the Lust part of Bloodlust honestly, at least, and what with my core competency being 'wrecking shit', Bloodlust is just, like, one of those merge games where I put two things together and something new comes out. Kind of like what I'm not fantasizing about doing with Bonnie and Saffron, which is just not cool, because it's pretty clear my man Larry isn't into the whole poly thing.

Okay, if I find out he's changed his mind, I'm definitely gonna make that particular voyeuristic fantasy happen. Of course, I'd have to do it without any alcohol. Not that I'm against 'get me drunk and have your way with me' in the abstract, so long as everybody knows going in that drunken sex is on the table. And the bed. And the divan. And the floor. And... you get the picture. If everybody's down for sex, and everybody gets drunk because it's a drinking party or they wanna let their inhibitions down or whatever, that is an entirely different story to trying to turn 'no' into 'yes' through the power of alcohol.

Speaking of the power of alcohol, as Marie and I carried dinner and our head-of-state partners home, we also stepped a pair of us to the old Aetos place in the Yards. Marie scratched at the door, one of her sisters answered, and after the two stood there staring at one another for a few moments, they embraced, smiling. Then her sister turned to look into the house, creaked out, "come," and a dozen Maenads, some of them wearing Maid togs, some in casual wear, one in nothing but fur, carried a bunch of rug rats to the entryway.

We stepped them back to the courtyard at the Homestead, while peeling off another pair of us to Dionysus' and Diana's Diner. While I snickered a little at the thought of triple D's, which also reminded me of my earlier fantasizing about Saffron and Bonnie, Marie led me in.

"Tabitha! Marie! It's been too..." D stuttered to a stop, taking in Marie's very obvious lack of baby belly or any remnants thereof. "You look good."

She reached a hand out to Diana, who stood and gave her a hug. That prompted the dozen rug rats running around the place to pile onto the Marie hugging, which wound up with her going stiff in that way that told me she wasn't upset, just entirely uncertain how to respond. I slipped my arms around her from behind, leaning my head against her back, just holding her and supporting her. After she managed to get hugged without anything bad happening, she pulled back from Diana, but kept one arm around her.

She reached the other out to D, who looked at kind of like I might look at a dog that is acting friendly, but looks like Cujo. Then she smiled and said, "Come See."

Funny, watching D get reeled in like that. Not even using her D given sex appeal. Just holding out a hand, and an invitation. I held out a hand as well, at least in part because I didn't want my arm squished when he glomped onto us. His arms went around the three of us, his expression a mix of hopeful and scared. Then he noticed all the kids. "What of?"

"Bring 'em along."

Marie nodded when I said that, then for good measure added, "Please Do."

A moment later we landed in the Homestead courtyard. The doors to East House stood open, the Maenads and D's adopted kids just disappearing into the dining room. We followed him in, and I might have had one of me across the room just to watch his face as he finally got close enough to see the middle of the room. We'd set four tables in the middle, with blankets holding them together and bolsters around the edges making things a little less easy to fall off. Not to mention pillows under the edges for when Anise inevitably followed in Big Sister Isnomi's footsteps and auto-yeeted off the side. Not that Isnomi had done that yet, what with her being small enough to sit on the big table with her new sisters and feed them. Daya and David both sat up there as well, holding bowls of meat mush and dispensing it to the kittens while the rest of our girls welcomed the self-mobile visiting kids.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The rest of the evening was glorious, chaotic, acoherent fun. Marie and I and a few extra Maenad Maids had brought home enough food to feed a small army. Like, not even kidding, I'm pretty sure the Expedition had eaten less most days. We certainly hadn't eaten this well after the Drivers' food ran out. We had fried rice, tempura, sushi, panzerottis, pastellilios, calzones, strombolis, stacks and stacks of pizzas, a whole fuckin' salad bar's worth of salad, enough cauldrons of soup that I don't really know how many there were, I lost track of the Maids bringing them in. Also, of course, a dozen bowls of meat mush. Some of the kittens liked it, some didn't. Isadora seemed like she'd clean up anything the others left behind, though.

A half dozen Maenads and Diana each put a crawling aged little one on the table with ours, and if the Homestead women seemed a little weirded by that, the two with little ones of their own that size didn't resist when the Maenads led them up to the table. Marie half whispered, "Play Date," and if the women didn't seem to understand the idea, they certainly didn't seem upset with the thought that we were treating their kids as equal to our own. Which, honestly, I'm glad for. Both that they rolled with it and that the Maenads decided to do that. My girls needed more socialization, and even if they were growing super fast, they still needed to socialize with kids their own age. Which, at this point, meant rolling around and bumping into one another and getting nudged back into play when they came up against the bolster walls.

Of course D just stood there next to the table the whole time, staring, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. I walked up alongside him, nudged him a little, and said, "cute, aren't they?"

"They're more beautiful than anything I've ever seen."

I snickered a little. "C'mon, D. You've got kids of your own now. Adopted, I'm pretty sure, but still."

He nodded, but right about then I noticed his eyes glistening a little bit. His voice quiet, barely carrying to me over the ongoing dinner party, he said, "I... How can I put this? When I made the first Maenad, I made her everything I thought a woman could or should be. I tried to make her... perfect."

I smiled, put a hand on his shoulder, because while I could probably lift him, my arms were not gorilla arms, and would therefore not go around his waist, let alone across his shoulders. "Hey, you nailed it, man. Marie is," I did the 'chef's kiss' thing with my fingertips. "Perfection."

He smiled, and as he did the first tear ran down his cheek. "Oh, I love them. I loved her. I love them all, even as they're each so unique," he tapped at his chest. "In here. They showed me how perfection need not be uniform. That variety is indeed the spice of life. But this..." He looked at the kittens again and sighed. "I thought I'd made a masterwork, and here you've outdone me, eight times over."

"Hey, Marie did most of the work. I just helped out a bit. Which means you get some credit for this too, what with you laying down the original Maenad design, right?" He just stared at the kittens, smiling and crying, until a certain Menace nudged Anise around until she noticed the big guy standing at one side of their little impromptu playpen. A few seconds of rooching, and I leaned over and scooped her up. She wriggled until she realized I was helping her get to her target, at which point she settled and reached for him. "D, this is our daughter Anise. Anise," I couldn't help myself. "This is grampa D."

He froze in the act of reaching to take her. "Grampa?"

I snickered. "Uncle doesn't quite seem right." Then I got the Worst Idea Ever. I watched him wince as Anise decided she needed a little extra grip on him and maybe poked his arms with her claws, and right as he focused on her I said, "Maybe Uncle Grandpa?"

He rolled his eyes as I kept giggling at that. "Grandpa is fine, I suppose." He hoisted Anise up until she lay along one of his big beefy arms, then wrestled with her paws a little with his other hand. Every now and again he winced as she managed to snag him with her claws. Not enough to slice him up, just a kitten not knowing quite when to pull them in. He shook his head. "This one reminds me most of her mother."

Gotta give him credit, while he jumped a little as Marie's arms snaked around him, he didn't lose his grip on Anise in the slightest. "How So?"

He smiled, kissed Marie on the cheek, and replied, "she is fierce like you, my Champion."

"Wanna meet the rest of them?"

He chuckled, handed Anise to Marie, who made wrangling her look easy, and scooped up Felicia, who'd followed her sister like always. Over the course of the impromptu feast I introduced him to each of our little bundles of fuzz and joy. When the women wandered by to pick their kids up, and everybody who lived at the Homestead started drifting out to the other Houses, D sighed.

"What's wrong, big guy?"

"Would that I could spend more time with them."

I shrugged. "You got anything pressing back in Phileo?"

He blinked. "No?"

"Kinda figured you'd spend the night. Or maybe two or three. Spend some time getting to know the new rug rats. Maybe some time with Marie's older kids, too. What with you being Grampa to them now too."

Hilarious watching him try to work up a response to that. Even funnier watching him bathe little kids in the showers before hitting the bath. He was so overly careful with them, which I understood, and appreciated, but it was like watching a mastiff with kittens. Utterly unsure of what he could do, but still trying his best.

The kids had loads of fun in the tub with him. Mostly he just floated around like a big hairy island, and they played around him, but occasionally they tried capsizing him. The kittens, of course, tried climbing atop him. Eventually he wound up with Isadora, Borysthenis, and Calliope all curled up on his chest.

Of course, with plenty of not-drown-proofed kids, we couldn't exactly sleep in the Bath, but we had plenty of spare beds and bedrooms. Once we got everyone settled, including our bakers dozen plus two in our bed, we settled in our own selves. Saffron and I bracketed Marie, who had a nursing kitten on every teat; apparently they still wanted more than meat mush. Enough that I had a pair as well. Probably why I was distracted enough not to notice Marie's odd melancholy look of longing. Fortunately, my Kitten is perceptive.

"You want to go to him, lovely Maenad?"

Marie actually blushed a little. "Yes, Please."

Saffron giggled and nuzzled Marie's nape. "You don't need to ask, dear Marie. That is part of who you are, and we love every part of you." She giggled a little. "Although I'm not sure I'm going to be up to nursing six kittens in your absence, but I'll try."

"No Need." Marie leaned over the bed, kissed the two of us cuddling her, then stalked away. Not even a sashay, this was motion with intent personified.

I think the wide screen beside the Maw is perma tuned to the Bedroom or something. Marie and D got up to some shit that practically defined 'wild abandon', all while my ladies alternated between cheering them on and critiquing some of the more esoteric shit they tried. Their discussions wound up being a little disjointed at times, because I was absolutely popping them in my Maw like popcorn.

Woke up to a bed filled with purrs and a pouting Siobhan.

"What's wrong, Ice Pop?"

"I want to purr."

I smiled, kissed her forehead, and said, "maybe Saffron can work with you on hyoid bone Shapeshifting or something."

"That'd be nice," she muttered as she fell back to sleep. Of course she didn't stay asleep once the kittens got to rooching.

Apparently Felicia has her sister's knack for trying to get milk from lactose free boobs.

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