33. Medusa

I woke up before Pax. I was born during a time people rose with the sun to feed livestock and take care of crops before it got dark. There were times I slept in, especially if I was exhausted, but sometimes my body still thought it was a Greek peasant and woke up grotesquely early. Getting back to sleep was sometimes impossible, especially if I was stressed.

I usually went to one of Dionysus's gardens to gather what I needed to make tea, brewed a nice cup, and then cooked this big elaborate breakfast that was ready when Dionysus woke up. We tended to spoil each other, and I had a feeling it was going to be like that with Cas, Pax, and Benji.

They'd been cooking for me, massaging my feet and back, and snuggling with me when I needed it. I was feeling much stronger with the ambrosia I'd been eating. I was going to make them a huge feast.

I padded out into the garden, but I could hear someone talking. It sounded like Benji. I didn't know why he was awake or what he was doing out here, so I used my fury magic to portal to him. Benji shrieked and put his hand over his heart. Then, he fell out laughing.

"Fuck, is that what it feels like when people aren't expecting a shadow demon to show up? That's fucking hilarious. I nearly shit my pants. I'm going to have to do that a lot more often."

He was sitting in front of a pretty, fancy smaller cabin and talking to two cats. One was black, and the other was orange.

"Who are your friends?"

"This is the Feral Shack. I built it for the freeloading degenerate cats that keep showing up. This is Lilith Murder Mittens and Shitlord McButtstuff."

I smiled because I knew people took cat names to weird places, but I had questioned.

"How did one get named after a fierce god and the other get stuck with Shitlord?"

"Um, because one is a girl and the other is a boy. That's legally how you're supposed to name them."

"I don't think that's how it works, Benji."

"Maybe not, but this one is totally a Shitlord. He's got air conditioning and a memory foam mattresses in there and he's still an ungrateful little asshole."

"I think little Shitlord is your favorite."

Benji pounced and covered my mouth with his hand.

"Shh. Don't give him any ideas. He wants to move into the big house but he likes messing with snakes and I don't want the graphic murder scene I had to clean up going down with Pax's familiar."

"Pax's familiar is a little bigger than the average garden snake."

Pax's familiar was a python. I'd wonder how a python ended up in this valley, but she was a familiar, so she was magical.

"I don't want Pax's familiar murdering Shitlord either. I know what she eats. Lilith is Shitlord's girlfriend. She'd never forgive me if I let him be snake food."

I had Benji pegged. He loved those cats, even if he pretended like he didn't.

"What are you doing up? Sometimes, my sleep schedule thinks it's still Ancient Greece, so I was going to make everyone breakfast. Want to sit and chat with me while I cook? I'll make you tea."

"Will you break up with me if I told you I keep trying to like tea, but I only like it with lots of sugar and Boba unless it's magical and I'm going to get something out of it? I would love to sit and talk to you while I drink coffee, though."

"Good to know. I promise, I'll only make you tea if it's sugared up with boba. I'm pretty good at that."

Benji leaned forward and kissed Lilith and Shitlord on the head.

"Be good little degenerates. I know you want to be wild and free, but poop in the litter box instead of the garden. It ruins everyone's day when we try to pull a weed and grab a cat turd. I know you think that shit is funny, but it's only funny when it happens to Pax or Cas. I'm at risk of getting cat shit on my hands, too, and that's morally reprehensible."

I knew I could easily walk back to the kitchen, and I often took walks to clear my head and center myself. I still portalled to the kitchen because I was trying to practice this new ability and frankly, because it was still pretty cool that I could do it in the first place.

Benji appeared next to me in a cloud of smoke and went straight to the coffee machine.

"Can I just say how utterly divine it is that you and Dionysus can portal? We're all a lot safer and if I ever freak out and accidentally poof myself somewhere, you can follow me and bring me home."

"Does that happen a lot?"

Maybe there were downsides to this new portalling ability. Because as much as I tried to have my shit together, sometimes I very much didn't. I was a hot mess sometimes. My fight-or-flight instincts were completely unreliable. Sometimes, I wanted to fight, sometimes, I needed to run. Other times, I just completely shut down and couldn't move. It was a toss-up which one it was going to be.

"Oh, not in ages. Pax and Cas know my birthday is always the worst because the Coalition crashed my birthday and took us so they break into my bedroom and comfort me so I don't. Oh, don't worry. You've basically been able to portal this entire time, even if you didn't know it. If you haven't accidentally ended up somewhere when your brain is in the middle of a shit storm and you don't know if you want to stay or go, it's probably not going to happen."

"Did you just Glinda the Good Witch me?"

"Man, fuck that. Glinda was morally reprehensible. She was a fucking witch. She could have done everything herself, but she exploited a child. I get child labor laws are probably different in magical fairy tale lands, but who was the real villain of that story? The Wicked Witch of the West just wanted a family heirloom back after her sister got murdered and was the wizard really doing anything wrong if everyone thought he could help them? I was hoping in one of the sequels, the Munchkins rose up at ate Glinda, but it never happened. It was so disappointing."

"You have some strong opinions about it."

"My mom read me the books when I was little. The movie wasn't out yet, and I missed it while the Coalition had me. My mom was a big bibliophile. She read to me constantly. I got my love of books from her. I've devoured everything from the classics to Chuck Tingle. It's a good thing when I have a deep, visceral reaction like that, even if it's not what the author intended. It means it made me feel something."

"You're going to have to give me your favorite book so I can read it."

"Girl, I can't pick. I like different things about them. I like romances with relationships like ours. I used to hate reading books with two love interests and she picked in the end because she never picked the one I liked. But there are books now with relationships just like ours.

"Sometimes, little random things will trigger memories about my time at the Coalition or make me miss my parents. My mom wore Egyptian Musk perfume. She got it at this corner shop run by a family of immigrants. Some of the Egyptian Musk perfumes available now don't smell the same, but sometimes I'll smell it and desperately want my mom. Reading brings me back to when I was little and she used to cuddle me while reading to me."

"Maybe we could snuggle up and read together sometime while we're looking for your parents."

"I'd like that, little monster. What are you making anyway?"

"Well, breakfast was usually simple when I was younger. We had bread with figs, but there's a kind of pancake called Tiganites. They came from this Greek physician who wrote a lot about gladiators' diets and farting.

"They aren't like the pancakes you're used to. It was always my favorite and Dionysus adores them. I make some savory and some sweet because you can do both. Luckily, there's feta in the fridge for the savory and I can improvise on the sweet, but you top them with honey."

"Oh, the feta is from a family of demons that has a massive sheep farm. They sell the wool to the people who make clothes. They are old as fuck and obsessed with cheese. They've learned to make it in several different countries. They have a barter system going with people who have babies and kids who are lactose intolerant because they are shitty with computers. People help run their website and resets their password when they need it and they get free sheep's milk for their kids."

"That's actually awesome. I still need to see most of the village."

"We can do that after breakfast. I'm still waiting to hear back from our mystery woman."

"Awesome."

Because I really did want to see their village. Well, our village. I could call this place home. There weren't a lot of supernatural places left in the world.

I felt settled here. I just needed to take out the Coalition and some angels.