I stretched comfortably as I rose, walking from the bed to the door out into the nursery. In the short time since I'd been gone from Nievtra, construction on the palace, because that was what it was shaping up to be, had moved apace. Now, there was a room for the children, and it was separate from mine and Sybil's. There wasn't much in the way of solid doors, mostly just roughly cut and tied branches in the approximate size and shape of the doorways, carefully bound together and hung at the wall with vines, but with each day, the Kha were making strides in their production capabilities, especially the Kha'Tal under Ytte's instructions.
As I strode from our bed of piled furs, Sybil stirred and sat up. "No, get some rest." I strolled towards her and gently pushed her to lay back down. "You deserve some rest, and if the children wake up from their naps and need attention, you can do that. No need to take care of any of the other duties of state, I'll bring my uncertainties to you to confer together when it's time to eat. Yes, I realize that I'll have them, and I'm looking forward to working alongside you to fix them."
Sybil squinted at me, her frills shifting slightly as her tail whispered across the furs she was sprawled across. She seemed to make her decision and growled playfully at me while I continued to push her to lay back down. I leaned down, nipped at her throat, and then nuzzled her neck. Just a few seconds later, I forced myself to stand back up to not be drawn back into her embrace, and walked from the room. As I closed the door behind me, my enhanced ability to sense sound carried to me the impression of Sybil tossing her legs over in the bed behind me. I grinned, happy to have given my mate a little bit of rest.
Maybe I was wrong in assigning to her childcare duties, but knowing her, she'd also spent the entire time that I was gone ensuring that the Empire continued to develop in laying down roots and foundations at the cost of her own ability to spend time with the children. She was excited and anxious to spend time with the children, but she would put the needs of our people at large before her own. I suspected that this would be the first time in a while that she took an extended period of time to be with the three little ones without any duties breathing down her neck. And if I was wrong, so be it, I was willing to be wrong once a week.
"I trust that you're not going to make any demands on her until tomorrow, correct?" I spoke directly to Yamal where she stood nearby, and she snapped to attention as being addressed.
"The Zaaktifi is not to be bothered until tomorrow?" She repeated my command for verification. When I flared my frills in assent, she bowed as she turned to two nearby Kha and began issuing commands. Interestingly, half of the commands were spoken to the female on her left while she gave an entirely different set of commands with her hands to the male assistant on her right. A part of my mind was briefly distracted by the thought of being able to entertain parallel trains of thought, but then I pulled my attention away, trusting that Yamal's actions would ensure that Sybil got as much of a break as could be offered.
The two Alqat that stood outside my door bowed as I passed, and the others at the children's door did the same as I approached. When I gently pulled the entrance to my sleeping children open, I could see two little mounds under piled furs and lit by a fire. The palace was far from well-insulated, and it was difficult to keep rooms warm through the winter, even though the snows were beginning to melt and we kept fires burning inside basically all winter long. Even so, it was necessary here and in the nurseries we'd established for the other eggs and hatchlings.
As a concern related to that, the forest was being cleared away from the city's edge more and more, and thoughts about how we'd continue to heat our homes without stripping every natural resource from the surrounding area was more of a problem by the day. This spring, there'd been extensive plans made about expanding our planting efforts to more than triple what we'd done before. Especially given that experiments on how to variegate the spread of vegetables being planted seemed to have borne fruit, I allowed myself to feel pretty positive about it all. Doing so would allow for us to use some of the cleared land, but we couldn't consume everything and expect the land to continue to support us, so something needed to change.
Various possibilities crossed my mind, thoughts on how to warm my people's homes without constant magic use or burning everything that came to our hands, then to continue to feed a burgeoning population I planned to encourage to grow further. This year needed to be a year in which hundreds of Kha were hatched and grew to maturity. Beyond that, there were so many problems and issues that needed my attention specifically that I couldn't stop or wait. I could only continue moving.
"Zaaktif." The whispered greeting from the Kha'Tal caretaker sitting in the room drew my attention. He was a smaller male, though his body sported a surprising number of scars for an individual not focused on combat himself. Instead of entering and disturbing their sleep, I nodded to the male as I looked closer. With only two piles—yes, Hashthi and Thia were piled together, the white and black of each's body blending into an amorphous mass tightly bundled together under the furs. I smiled as I nodded my goodbyes to them and Ragzak, who slept alone to the side while continuing to twitch.
Without anything else to do, I strode from the palace, Brutus immediately falling in stride beside me. I looked up at my towering friend, and as we met eyes, I commanded, "It's time. Gather Took, Percral, Shemira, Shraal, and Ytte. There's much for us to discuss."
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