Her Beasts

The Banquet Part One

Before Iris knew it, it was finally time for the first community dinner night. It had been a long week of crafting and lounging around the house.

All of the acorns had finished their long process of leaching out their tannins and had sat out to dry all night. The grass and cattails were finished drying and Caspian had already bagged them up and put them in the cellar.

The moment Iris opened her eyes, she was filled with energy. She felt excitement course through her body. She was excited to meet more people from the Arctic Wolf Tribe and knew there were still many preparations to be completed.

Caspian carefully carried a bowl of soup into the bedroom and waited for Iris to sit up before handing it to her. Iris smiled gratefully at him before digging into the food.

"Mmm, you're actually starting to get better at this. It tastes like you used pepper this time around and the veggies are cooked perfectly."

Caspian blushed at Iris's praise. The pepper was only added as he had seen Iris use both salt and pepper in nearly every dish she made. The peppercorns had to be freshly ground every time they were used, but were clearly just as important as salt in cooking if Iris used it so often.

"We should have guests here later tonight. I can't guarantee anyone else will show up, but Holly and her mates as well as the three who helped us last week promised to be here."

Iris gave a small nod as she drank a mouthful of broth. She knew it was unlikely very many people would show up and her house certainly isn't big enough for too many guests, but she was hopeful a dozen or so new faces would show up.

"Yeah, I know. Don't worry, I won't pout no matter how few people show up. Besides, you're good company too."

Caspian was sure he couldn't grow any more red. Iris always showered him with compliments but he wasn't sure he'd ever grow used to it. However, he was sure that he was quite lucky to have Iris.

Other females often had several dozen males who had to constantly compete for their mate's attention. Even the favorite males were lucky to be able to have any affection given to them. Instead, being relied on to take care of their mate and being chosen for warming their female's bed were the privileges they fought for.

"Alright, I'm finished with breakfast. I'd like to get those acorns broken up into pieces and then ground into flour. We've got over ten tens of pounds and our mortar and pestle is only so large. I worry that it might take all day, but we also need to finish preparing the cattails so they can be put away properly with the rest."

Caspian smiled, his little mate was always so ambitious. She never liked to leave a task half-done and always wanted to strive for more. It was all he could do to convince her to let him stand by her side and contribute to her efforts.

"I'll likely need to carve the last of the leftover stone we have into containers for the cattail pollen flour and acorn flour. I'll have to carve out another section of wall, but I can gather some stone and make a larger mortar and pestle for the acorns. I'll also take care of turning the acorns into flour, you can just focus on the cattails."

That reminded Iris, she didn't exactly have a large enough pot for brewing a large amount of soup at once. Their stone stove had a pot that could hold a gallon or two worth of liquid but they'd need at least one ten times that size for tonight.

Of course, if they were going to have a pot that large, they'd need something larger than the stone oven to have it propped up on. Perhaps, if they made a hole in the floor just barely smaller than the pot and then placed the large pot directly over the fire?

Iris quickly explained her idea to Caspian before also suggesting

"Maybe you should just dig out a larger dining room to the right of the main room? We won't be able to make chairs from tree stumps, but you could just use smaller versions of the rectangular stone tables to create benches at the tables to sit at.