Husband of the Goblin Tribe

Chapter Thirty-six – In which Ark spends some much desired quality time with Lily and the newest additions to the goblin tribe.

So, it’s… become a family trait?

Let me explain.

Prima had come back with meat. Lots of meat, actually. Of course there was fire meat for both Lily and I to eat. Berry, bless her sweet self, fuckin' loved chomping down on a piece of fresh bloody meat. So, Lily wins out when it comes to who’s plate I’m most likely going to share from. Prima and Jewel are both firmly in the bloody meat faction, Vera seems to be in the is Husband feeding me~♥? faction, in which she will only eat fire-meat if that is the case. But as for Orchid and Lilac? When Berry tried to feed them a piece of freshly hunted bloody-as-can-be raw meat, they instead went for the cooked meat that I was feeding Lily.

Yep. We've got civilized goblins up in here!

It’s adorable to watch them eat. You’d think being only a few hours old, all they’d be able to do is cry and shit. But nope, they are born with teeth sharp enough to tear meat from bone and it’s like watching a puppy gnaw on a chew toy. Well, maybe land-piranha is more visually accurate a description.  Lily had expressed a single reasonable concern about having two strong ones to feed now, and that involved hunting enough rabbits to feed them both.

Lily was a runt, and therefore could survive on a single rabbit a day with hardly an issue. But if these little ones were going to be as hungry as Diana, it might become a problem for her. She might be mama number two, but hunting anything bigger than a rabbit would be a problem for her. And since I am confined to the cave, I can’t even help her out.

Goblins are semi-obligate carnivores, thankfully. Meat has to be in their diet, but it doesn’t have to be the only thing in their diet. They can supplement a bit with fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, fish, leaves, tree bark, whatever’s handy. But they get most of their main nutritional intake from raw meat. This is now a divergent thing because Lily, Orchid, and Lilac have the disposition to enjoy cooked meat.

Lily still had to be taken care of and cleaned up a little. Yes, she wasn’t exactly able to hobble to the shit-pit, so as a responsible Husband I cleaned up after her when she couldn’t help but go. She’s a good girl, there’s no shame in that happening after giving birth to something that quite literally crawled out of her. She gets a pass until she can walk properly again, which according to Berry is about a day and maybe a half away.

Yes, the little ones also needed some cleaning up, too, so thankfully I was able to use a spare tattered cloth Lily had laying around as a clean up nappy. Jewel put it on Vera to return the ruby when everything was done here, and left. I didn’t know it until Prima said something, but apparently all three of them had gone hunting together and Vera had been fairly useful for a change. She was aware of the runes necessary to shift land, so she made a few pretty powerful magic circles that allowed her to activate pitfalls. That led to Prima and Jewel herding a few beasts to the right spot where Vera lay nearby in waiting to spring the trap.

She’s a precious prodigy of mine for sure. I guess Prima has accepted the fact that her little sister can use magic now. I hope this won’t force Vera to have to go hunting alone now because of this revelation.

Vera wasn’t a very strong goblin though, so Prima and Jewel still had to do the heavy lifting to transport them back. I guess I should start teaching Vera how to levitate things with wind rune formulations. Honestly, I’m only an entry-into-intermediate level student of the formulaic magic discipline, so she’s going to have to work hard to learn the stuff I don’t really know all that well. If I had an emerald focus orb, it would be a cinch for me, but I’m also not allowed into the forest. I have to stay five steps from the surrounding tree line whenever I’m allowed out for sun every few days.

It’s tough being under house arrest.

Berry had taken a small portion of raw meat for her and Diana to have as some kind of goblin gratuity. It’s a new concept to them, so I don’t really know how to explain it all that well. Think of it being a pay-it-forward-so-you-can-pay-it-back-later kind of thing? It sounds like a trade, but it’s more of a planned future reciprocation. Whatever, it was a nice thing to do as far as I saw it.

Berry departed for a little while to take care of her own affairs. Prima said we would talk later about a few things, to which I got the hint that her discovery of Vera’s sudden use of magic was going to be the main topic. I was absolved of choosing tonight as promised due to circumstances, and Vera was left in my care while Prima ducked out. She was going to tell the Old One that things were fine here, and now I was finally (mostly) alone with Lily.

The raised bed I made in Lily’s bedroom being elliptical was a fantastic move on my part, since Lily could sprawl out and our two daughters had plenty of room to do the same on either side of her. I had stayed close to her side, just showering her with as much affection as I could, and aside from it being a cycle of sleep, feeding the babies, and a short talk before she went back to sleep because she was tired, I was just happy to be a part of it. I missed out on Berry’s actual birth, coming in later, so this was important for me. Plus, I did like Lily quite a bit. She was playful and mischievous and that was her charm.

Of course, I wasn’t going to sell Vera out by ignoring her, so she was allowed to sit on my lap while we just hung out. During Lily’s downtime, or when I wasn’t trying to amuse one of my goblin daughters who thought it was fun to stare at me for some reason, I was teaching Vera some more basic formula magic spells and letting her experiment a little with them.

I think she was more fascinated by the newborn goblins.

She didn’t even try to coerce me into any kind of sex. She was entirely well behaved, which was good because I was still bottomed out down there. I mean, I felt a hell of a lot better having gotten to eat a piece of cooked meat, and actually ate far more of it than I expected to. Vera had, in her limited vocabulary usage, said that there was more if I wanted her to go cook some more for me to eat, but I was good for now. When Lily and the kids get hungry again, we’ll eat then.

There was still no sign of Doll coming to see me. She had to have woken up and learned about Lily by now and that I was here in her cave-hole, but she never stopped by, which meant I probably burnt a bridge with what I did to her last night. I decided I would feel bummed out about it later on when trying to make amends. The rest of the day was all about spending it with Lily and the new extension of my family.

What would be something fun my daughters could play with? Blocks were probably too complicated… ah! I know! I took the rag I had been using for cleaning up Lily and scooped a bit of dirt into a pile and put it into the rag, then wrapped it up and dunked it into the water in the metal pot that was my alchemy set. I then used the rag to mold it into a ball shape, and then I twisted it closed and asked Vera if she would keep something a secret.

I still had the topaz stone on hand.

I raised up a pillar of dirt and compacted it as I designed a hooking loop at the top. Lily had some flexible vines in one of her cubby holes that I appropriated, and so tied the vines around the top of the twisted rag and then threaded the other end of the vines around the loop on top of the pillar and voila. It was a makeshift ball-shaped sandbag-tetherball!

“Game?” Vera had asked.

“Yep.” I said, batting it a few times with light slaps from my palm, watching the vine slowly wrap around the compacted dirt pillar.

When Orchid and Lilac both woke up again, I had brought them down to the ground and showed them how to bat it. Both of them sat there staring at it for a moment until Orchid crawled to it and reached up with a hand to slap it. Well, she clawed it actually, but the rag was durable enough to survive it without tearing. Once she saw her older sister doing it, Lilac also joined and the two were taking turns slapping it, though they did try to slap it at the same time and ended up landing on their little butts from the recoil. Perfectly normal for kids to do, though by that I mean human kids of at least a year so, followed by giggling fits.

Comparatively, goblin children are impressive.

Lily had woken up again, so I offered a hand in order to help sit her up a little bit so she could watch our children playing.

“What that?”

“Just a fun game to help their hands and eyes work better together. And they can practice hitting things. That sounds like a thing goblins might do, right?”

“Strong ones…”

“It’s what you wanted, right?” I whispered to her and she looked on at her daughters with a light smile. Every parent worthy of being called one wants their children to be better than they are.

I won’t say that I had wasted my day off with Lily, because I didn’t feel it was a waste in the slightest, but after sharing a second meal of fire-meat, I was feeling my mana slowly being restored to a reasonable level. My junk was still broken down, but I’m sure that’s something that’ll fix itself by the time it’s needed tomorrow night. Outside of a single trip to the shit-pit for myself, I spent the night in Lily’s room. I didn’t chase Vera off, but I think she realized that a bit of truly private time was desired between us, so she disappeared.

All I did was lay on the same bed together with my petite goblin wife, spooning Lily on the outside with my back to the bedroom door while making sure our two daughters were safe from any kind of falling, resting on the straw with Lily’s body in front of me and the wall behind them which curved slightly keeping our daughters mostly contained.

When I woke up, it was to find Lily doing her motherly duty while our two daughters did theirs; Drinking well.

Berry had come again, mostly to tag in and give me a bit of a rest, too. She had Truffle and Ivory to help her after her birth, but Lily only really had Berry and I. Yes, Prima providing food was worth noting and appreciating, I won’t sell her short, or Vera for sticking around as well.

I felt like I needed to be proactive today. It was time to make the breeding room into a much more welcoming place!

Returning back to my room and finding it empty, finally allowing myself to feel bummed out that I had basically done a hit-and-run on Doll, I was determined to make it right with her before it was too late. But for now, I needed to get to work on some planned renovations. I popped inside Vera’s room and took the bone to etch Runes and got to work.

I decided to claim the newly made room next to Vera’s as my own. As it felt like our rooms were at what I would consider the Northwest corner of the room, then following the wall south on the north side would be where I begin construction of the communal bath. Further south of that and reaching the Northeast corner of the room would be the kitchen, partially due to its proximity to the already built table we all eat at.

I considered making some kind of wide open space meant for the times I might spend with more than one goblin at once at the Southeast corner, since fucking one in front of the others just made them more horny. I guess it would be something like an auditorium made for entertaining groups of them. Should I call it the concubine pit? I am the concubine here, by the way. The Southwest corner I would eventually make into some kind of recreation area and maybe find the space to make an exercise zone as well. It’s where the bowling lane I made for Diana was now, but I might end up removing it. I’m not in a specific rush to do so, however.

Okay, my plans were laid, and now it was time to go find Jewel.