Dan builds a larger home for himself, with plenty of room for all his adopted sons and daughters, with plenty of extra room for more kids to come and have someone to help and care for them. Melody helps where she can, when she can, and the kids start to learn what it's like to have a home, and a family that loves them no matter what.
@internutter/challenge-03063-h155-handcrafted-hearth -- Fighting Fit
After the fifth morning of waking up under a blanket of sleeping junior Tieflings, it was past time for Dan to admit he needed better accommodations. A little one room hut near his workshop and a single bed were clearly not going to cut it. Especially not when Summer rolled around and that layer of Tiefling kids would prove physically uncomfortable.
Gittowt had sharp elbows and knees, and burrowed in his sleep.
Dan had provided enough of the basics for the new Tiefling settlement, and there was time enough, and lumber enough, for a bigger project. A project like, say, turning a one-room hut into adequate accommodation for himself and roughly fifteen regulars. Including little Harrow.
It was quite a thing to be a sudden Da to fifteen. The older ones still fussed over him, despite being long over the attack. They weren't over it by a long shot. Every single one of those fifteen kids came to share his bed because of the nightmares caused by those idiot soldiers. Well. Fanatics in armour.
The kids needed a place where they could feel safe, and that meant something more secure than rough planks and a rope hinge for a door. It meant more safety than one bed too small and a single adult buried under their tiny bodies.
He got the older kids together at the planning table, and announced, "We need a bigger home. Something a bit more fortified than what we've got. Something roomier." Dan indicated the drawing of their plot, with the existing hut, the workshop, and the yard as it stood. His quick pencil crossed out the little farm they had going and the area where they left the lumber to cure. "I was thinking we could build right up to, and even over the workshop. Give some of you places of your own. Let you have some privacy when you need it."
Kindness was already doodling on a spare scrap of bark. "Some of us don't like being alone, but if it's a bigger bed for the crowd-sleepers, then... um. I've been thinking about this."
Dan had seen double beds before. He had also seen bunk beds. This was a conglomeration of the twain. A double bunk bed. Or a bunk double bed. He couldn't be sure. He could begin with the idea of a four-poster... make sure the uprights were sturdy enough...
"That is a good idea. But I am going to go overboard on the rooms because time changes minds. Some of you are at an age to be embarrassed about yourselves, so..."
Alms had their hand up. "Can we get a covered walkway to the privy? Since we're building things?"
"Aye, I can get you that as well." Dan sketched the idea of it onto their grand plan. "We have an outdoor hearth now for assorted nonsense... I don't know kitchens, but it seems like the place to have one. We do lots of our cooking there anyway."
"You'll be bumping elbows if you leave the hearth there," said a warm voice that always lifted Dan's heart. Melody! Dan literally dropped everything just to smile for her. The audience of teens and tweens giggled and ooohed at the spectacle. "I heard you were plotting something. Glad I get to stop you doing something stupid for a change."
"Stupid is a matter of perspective," Dan appreciated the view as she made her way to the table. Bards tended to appreciate life's pleasures and now that the assorted disasters were over, Melody was getting some padding to her form. More of her to hold, should she ever let him. "I don't think coming here was stupid at all."
"And that's why Wisdom is never your strong point," Melody picked up the pencil he'd dropped. "For outdoors, that hearth is fine," she drew a wall, "but once it's inside, you're stuck in a corner and hemmed in by everyone. Better to move it to the new wall and have workspace and storage spaces in the corners."
"And a skylight so people can see what they're doing," added Dan. "I remember me Ma complaining about the dark corners."
"Huh. You can be sensible."
"I have my moments," he allowed. "Care to stick around to stop me being stupid for a while longer?"
She kissed him. Very briefly. On his cheek. "It's starting to gather appeal as an idea."
Dan could fly for the rest of the day. Just on the power of that kiss.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Anke]
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