mother

Paloma had one aesthetic. Leather. Nothing but leather really. Maybe vinyl boots sometimes, but it was always in black. Actually, now that she thought about it, maybe the aesthetic was just all black. If she started adding color into her wardrobe, she wondered how that would look. Would anyone even recognize her anymore? That was too much for her to think about, but at least Meera seemed to love what she was wearing now. "I can always buy you it. I remember exactly where I got it from," she said as she fished her phone out of an unseen place. "Did you see us perform? Be honest, how great was I?"

Meera put a hand to her chest, "Would you? Oh that is so good of you, it looks like it would be much too expensive, I could never ask you to do that." She was a very famous window shopper, much better at talking someone's ear off than breaking out her card; she wouldn't ask Paloma to buy it for her but she would certainly accept the gift. "Paloma, I threw my bra on stage. What do you mean? Did I watch you perform?" The girls were in fact wild and free under her blouse right now but that was okay, she only wore one so she could throw it on a stage.

Nirvaan had gotten another link this morning from his mom with another thing he was sure that she wanted, but he wasn't sure how he was supposed to get it. He didn't have any money. Nor did he have a job that really paid him any money. Well, maybe he could use the old five finger discount to get it. All he had to do was feed Assan and the demigod would probably help him. If he wasn't sleeping of course. Speaking of, he had to go meet up with the tiefling now. As soon as he got past his mom unsuccessfully. "Oh, I was just..." He paused because, well, what lie was he going to tell her? He couldn't even if he tried. Not that he ever wanted to lie to his mom in the first place. Hadn't he told her about anything that ever happened in his life? Like literally everything. "I'm going to meet up with Assan. You know...Lupercalia," he said with a smile as if she wasn't giving him that look.

Lupercalia, yes of course, party party party who let the dogs out, she understood what he wanted to do. Nirvaan wanted to go goof off with his handsome boyfriend and leave her here to do all the work. Meera gestured broadly around, "And I suppose I will have to clean this whole place up by myself then? Hokage's too busy to take out the garbage?" She picked up a laundry basket she'd left perched on the corner of the couch for precisely this moment; nobody could say Meera's timing wasn't meticulous. "And I suppose this ashen skin is just going to fold itself?" She stepped towards him, happy to do it all for him as long as she got to guilt trip him about it; Nirvaan didn't know how to fold a fitted sheet and with Sehanine as her witness he would never have to learn. "And you're just going to leave without the lunch I packed you? No goodbye? No kiss? What? The Hokage is too busy to tell his mother he loves her?"

"Oh, I believe you believe it!" She said, chuckling heartedly. Diana wasn't against the ins and outs of the modern era, the only thing that truly irked her about this day and age it was the lack of true warfare. What was glorious or honorable about bombs and drones? Funny cat videos though... Diana had always loved her animals. She managed to actually grin at the videos, genuinely amused that anyone was affectionately recording the antics of their feline friends. However, she had no idea what Tiktok was. "They say he's a funny one... Clearly they were right. How many cats does your little one have? Reminds me of Thanatos. And how he has the time to care for so many and video them with all his new responsibilities... A Warder and work among the Giants?"

"According to my son I cook like a mom in an anime," Meera didn't know what that meant but Nirvaan seemed to enjoy it because he was constantly stuffing his face at a comical rate until he gave himself a stomach ache. "When he was a baby he used to eat so quickly he'd end up with gas," Meera giggled a bit to herself, "I used to have to peddle his little legs to get all the gas out and he'd laugh and laugh." She loved telling that story. "Oh, haven't you heard? He will be Hokage someday, my son, The Hero of Frozenfar. Hokage doesn't have time to fold his laundry, apparently." Meera knew very well what it meant to live a life of adventure, the perils and the tribulations that went alongside it. She knew that they'd all nearly died on that damn expedition, and she also knew a warder's job was to put his own life second to the life of their chancellor. There was a brief pause where her expression faltered before it returned to the fries before her. She took another bite, eager for a distraction. "Tell me something else, something new; I heard you left and went into the Otherworld recently, what happened? Where did you go?"

She was a God, but she was no mother. Diana knew what godmother meant, but, thank the Fates, Meera's wailing baby boy had grown up and was way past the age where he'd need to be raised by someone else. And thank the Fates Meera hadn't passed because Diana wasn't sure she would have been able to deal with putting a booster seat on a pegasus. She probably would have handed him over to some nymphs. She only smiled indulgently at the mention of such a title. That little man was another woman's responsibility now, another blessed fortune.

"No no I can cook now I swear - you never believe me!" Meera couldn't lie and still Diana was still sitting there in disbelief, it had been nearly two thousand years since the fish fiasco and Diana was still not letting her live it down. "Besides, what better things do you have to do?" In case it wasn't obvious, Meera was phishing, she'd put her entire life on hold for the last four hundred years, and now Nirvaan was grown. He'd always be her baby but she'd had her life of adventure, then she'd had her life of motherhood, so what came next for her? What was Meera's next great adventure? She had lived such a wonderful life and she owed Diana a good deal for that. Meera's phone buzzed and she looked to see a message from Nirvaan, it was another TikTok so immediately she opened it and laughed before she leaned over to Diana. "Look at what my son sent me," it was another fail compilation video of cats missing jumps.

Priyanka Chopra for Zoe Reporter, 2023

closed starter for @xmeerax location: jewelry stall at the market note: don't pull the assan five fingie discount

The market was always bustling and alive; they moved indoors in the dead of winter. Merchants with their wares, local greenhouses with fresh produce. Naturally, the courts would like to say that what they had to offer was so much better, but Meera liked to come here because it helped her feel connected to the history of this place. The long stories of the fey who helped guide the hands of mortals were her story; however, long ago that might have been. At the moment, she had a snack that she'd just procured in one hand and some azure earrings that she was lifting with a local jeweler; Meera was a well-known face around here because she rarely ever actually bought anything.