Chương 892: Day Eight Hundred And Ninety

Dear Diary, I can't be absolutely certain, but I think Saffron may be deliberately pointing me at things to make me feel better about not being there for the latter half of the battle. Not actually busy work, it's stuff that needs to get done, but it's not the kind of super urgent things that normally require me to intervene with personally. If I were actually shopping or making gifts, I might feel some kinda way, but honestly I feel better when I get to work off some excess energy.

Shit, that might be why I'm so into sex. No, hear me out, I love cuddling, but after a while I kinda want to start moving, and that inevitably leads to things happening. Anyway, after two days of more or less being back to my routine, I brought everybody home to a dinner made by Marie and I, with the help of our adorable sous chefs. We both got to teach them some more about the finer points of cooking, like how to tell if something is cooking or burning, or how to properly knead dough.

The end result of that meant that while some of the presentation was a little more charming than Marie's exacting standards of culinary perfection, the flavors and textures on everything were absolutely on point. We made a bunch of extra loaves of bread, because while bread we make today won't last to the end of Yule, it means when we make bread tomorrow it'll be for the following two days, and so on.

Marie figures if we wrap the bread and store it out next to my office, it ought to last for at least a week before it starts maybe getting stale. At that point I might see if she knows any of my old stale bread uses or not. Part of me thinks she must know them, because Marie and food, but I'm not sure Marie would ever knowingly and deliberately work with substandard ingredients, or let bread get stale.

Even back in the day at the end of the winter when she fed us stuff made from leftovers, it wasn't, like, bad leftovers. It was more making the best of the tail ends of the supplies, not turning food waste back into food. But while it's been adorable having the kids make dinner for us on their own, I think they appreciated the return of the cooking mamas. Zero leftovers, and the kits even asked for more. Okay, so did a couple of the girls, most of whom seem to be settling in to hibernate.

Either that or they're getting ready for a growth spurt. Honestly kinda wouldn't be surprised if it wound up being both, although if Isadora has a growth spurt she's gonna wind up Marie's height by summer. I may have one year old daughters the size of Marie. That's just some kind of weird that I do not want to deal with right now, so since nothing seems to be on track to fall apart before Yule, I'm not gonna. I'll deal with it after Yule, once I've had some time to rest and recuperate.

Okay, I'm mostly doing that now, but still. Madeline got the long drawn out treatment overnight, by order of the Imperator. I'm not sure what particular leadership role she's leaning on for dictating my nocturnal intimate activities, but it's not like I've got any complaints. Well, maybe the 'I need to feel those magnificent mountainous mammaries' one, but she's made it clear that she's gonna wind up being my Yule present, so I'm not gonna complain about that. Fondle her all night long on Yule, yes. Complain, no.

In the morning, along with all my other by now routine tasks, Saffron stepped me to a tower under construction. Despite the light snow, when I stood at the top I saw Boltophsberg across the bay. I also spotted another tower along the coast, right at the edge of sight.

"Damn. They've done work here." This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. She nodded.

"Indeed. However, construction of all towers has fallen behind schedule. I was hoping you could assist?"

"Okay. When should they be done by?" She smiled up at me.

"I'd hoped to have them all completed, at least enough for everyone permanently assigned to each tower to be in out of the weather, safe and warm, by Yule." I took a deep breath.

"Somebody here who can tell me where to put shit and how to Bond it?" She nodded, pointed me at the construction crew chief, a guy from the Shipwright's guild by the name of Nikola Volkov, then kissed me and went back to Imperatoring. It took me a minute to convince Nikola that I'd arrived to help, not prod him into some kind of unsafe working speed, but once I did his attitude improved immensely. As did the construction speed of the tower.

Without the need to hide the tentacles I slipped in from M-Space to work as cranes, and with my ability to lock shit in place with Mineral Bond, what would have taken the rest of the crew like a week or more was done in like an hour, and most of that was me Mana-Blading rocks to fit perfectly and Nikola showing me where to put them. I stepped him with me to the next tower to speed up the conversation with the next crew chief, then got down to work.

Tower by tower I moved along the coast, turning partially built towers into completed ones. Some of them were already done, and all I really did was reinforce stuff with Mineral Bonds on some iffy mortaring jobs. By the end of the day I'd finished a dozen towers, which wound up putting me like two hundred fifty miles down the coast, more or less. While I worked I thought about more presents.

I realized that the one thing I knew about Madeline was kinda morose, but at the same time she'd leapt into her new role with all the intense fervor of a convert, so I couldn't really diss her about it. Then again, it was like, the biggest single thing I knew about her, and definitely a life altering event, so I maybe leaned into that. I stole her a bunch of Project Semicolon stuff.

I knew that she still struggled with that in her darkest moments, so I figured it might help if she thought she couldn't reach out to me, or more likely if she spotted somebody struggling with the same things she had. Kind of a practical gift more than a fun one, but... Shit, this is another sign that I'm somehow becoming an adult, giving practical gifts and shit. I've been watching Lindsey get a little mopey since she's stuck inside.

The maybe healthier part of that is just sleeping more, because fuck it, that's what humans do when it gets this cold. What we're supposed to do. But she still looks like she'd like to go out and, I dunno, camp or something. So I'm getting her a fancy insulated tent and sleeping bag. Not gonna let her go out alone, but I got the extra large sleeping bag so the two of us can fit into it. Or maybe one of the other ladies if she prefers. Still not gonna let two of my girls sleep outside alone in this weather.

Maybe in the spring if they're out on the roof or someplace else nominally protected from predation. Maybe. I'm not a big fan of combo gifts, but for Hailee and Siobhan I got a really neat book about first aid, like its whole history, with like detailed how to for each technological level of advancement.

Picked up one of those, a bunch of big assed complicated first aid kits, and a few first aid manuals; two ostensibly from the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, one from the US Army, and one that had good reviews when I saw it over somebody's shoulder online. Again, not exactly fancy fun times, but they're both Healers, and I just hope I haven't gotten them a vacuum cleaner or some shit like that. Then again, I'm not sure how Marie would react to a vacuum cleaner.

I figure it's even odds whether she'd lean into her Wifey Wifeness and prance around the Homestead vacuuming all the floors or give in to her essential feline nature and destroy it with prejudice. When the sun was too close to the horizon for me to think I had enough time to finish another tower, I scooped up some smaller scrap wood along with some logs the construction workers had collected for their camp, carried it to the hearth in the tower, laid it out, and pulled on Dad's power to light it up.

Then I hopped back to each of the towers I'd helped finish today and did the same. Went home tired, but surprisingly happy.