Astra PoV
"Alright come on, be serious. You want to make a what?"
Pouting, I dangled my legs over the edge of the support beam and stared down at Rhefia, who was currently raising a brow at me and giving me a rather exasperated look as she waited for me to explain myself yet again.
"I want to eventually make a small town, somewhere a little ways away from here. Somewhere that we can just... call completely ours, with an overabundance of space. Somewhere that isn't beneath the shadow of a castle occupied by some Goddess that proclaims her love for her people only to turn a shoulder the next moment.
Maybe we could go back down to Geard and clear out a large swathe of land for ourselves, maybe we find a nearby mountain or something that's unoccupied and carve ourselves a nice home. Perhaps we find ourselves a nice lake and I just make an island somewhere in the middle. I just... want to be away from here... eventually..."
"Astra, baby, you just..."
Letting out a sigh, Rhefia pinched the bridge of her nose and stared at the ground for a moment before looking back up at me, taking a breath so that she could say "Astra, this isn't a horrible idea but you just got finished being impregnated by four people that you met *because* we are currently living here. The fifth one we found on the way to this place."
My pout deepened before I sighed too, swinging my legs some more before pushing myself forwards and into her arms, dropping down and enjoying how she easily caught me before immediately patting me on the rear.
"And again, you literally just popped out four babies and an egg, Astra. We don't really have that sort of luxury as of right now, y'know? Plus we're coming up on the end of the first third of Spring, so that means Summer is inching ever closer."
Leaning into her and nodding, I didn't bother adding the fact that Renna and I had just set up a business, I was hoping to soon open that club, Aethisia had just found herself a woman who was staying in the city...
All of which were strong reasons to stay and not think about moving, but the urge to do so anyways was also pretty strong, though I was definitely willing to chalk it up to some post pregnancy emotions as of this moment.
"I know, I just..."
She nodded and hugged me before murmuring "You have a lot of trouble maintaining attention on a single thing... unless it's dick, in which case I don't think there is anyone else in this world that is as hyper focused as you are.", earning herself a 'punch' to the side.
Letting me go and smirking, my wife took a few steps before pausing as I asked "What do we need for Summer..?", getting her to think for a couple of seconds, her head tilted back to stare at the beautiful cloudy sky.
"An abundance of food, an overabundance of water, some skin creams, more water, some flame resistant clothing... maybe some potions for overall health as well? Honestly, the difference between Summer and Winter is only in the extreme temperatures. Much of the preparation is the same."
"So what I am hearing from this is that we need an extensive underground network constructed before Summer? And that I need to figure out a way to get some air flow to keep things cool down there while also acquiring a large amount of water once again?"
Rhefia just nodded and waited a few moments for another question before giving me a kiss, grabbing a handful of my rear and then leaving me be, knowing that at this point she wasn't going to be able to convince me to stop.
Too much to do, far too little time to do it in, and now I had more people relying on me then before... and the number was only going to get bigger and bigger the closer we got to Summer, and probably grow during it too.
Intense heat caused a plethora of issues everywhere regarding everything, so I was going to need to figure out how to heat proof most of the buildings I had right now while also trying to determine just what I could get done without raising concern from the outside.
For now though I was determined to construct another section of this nursery before moving onto the multipurpose building that would act as the 'barn' for any Cowkin, storage for most of our crops that we wanted to move around and sell, as well as a small living area for people on this side of the compound.
The nursery expansion was something Sadie suggested to me after she watched me watch the three pups start crawling not even a day after their birth, and the Dogkin just told me that a nice, contained, cushioned area would do wonders going forwards, especially since Thalia was a handful.
Having space to tire her out would be key in getting things to go smoothly, and honestly seeing that Bashuk was quite a little firecracker too made this expansion extremely necessary; I was also honestly hoping that Aka would begin to integrate herself with the 'Pack' since she too had boundless energy when she wanted it, which would help me with Thalia.
Not even a full day had gone by and already I was back to working, though it was definitely a blessing in 'disguise' since I had been quite... perplexed with what to do with the partially divine pup, something that I was going to need a little bit of time to understand.
Obviously I treat her like my baby, I knew that much, but I was a little worried about all the implications that came with giving birth to a Goddess' baby, ranging from society to her relationships that she would make here at home.
More so that latter part since people could love or hate her without me giving much of a damn, so long as they didn't try and touch her; what I was worried about was how she would grow up and if there were things I needed to do for her or 'protect' her against...
Though most of those concerns sort of faded when Sadie walked out with the three pups in her arms, each of them sniffing the Dogkin curiously before nuzzling against me when they were offered back to me.
I did ignore the way Thalia snarled at Vesper for getting too close, while also ignoring the immediate bop to the back of the head that Thalia received from Kalliope, who was trying so hard to act like she hadn't just did that.