Her Beasts

Farmland

Since Iris had previously traded three light blue crystals for 2,400 points but only used 2,250 to purchase three items from the shop, she now had 10,150 points. Potato, carrot, and onion seeds cost ten points each while spinach and sweet pea seeds cost twenty points each.

Iris's quest only required her to plant one-hundred seeds, but she had enough to buy more than one-thousand of the ten point seeds. Iris felt that it would be much better to buy as many seeds as possible and plant them all. Extra food could easily be sold at market, which would then allow her to purchase more seeds next time.

It was quite likely that one package of seeds would end up with a decent harvest. For example, a packet of potatoes wouldn't just give a single potato but could result in as much as several dozen. Since this was the case, Iris felt it best to consider which ones would be the most useful.

Storage wise, potatoes were the best option with onions being a close second. Cooking wise, everything but spinach and onions would prove to be game changers. Onions were great for flavor, but weren't something you wanted to use a ton of every meal and could not be a side dish by themselves. Spinach could be eaten without cooking while fresh, but would be relegated to mostly soups after drying.

Thus, Iris bought 250 potato seeds, 250 sweet pea seeds, 200 carrot seeds, 150 onion seeds, and 150 spinach seeds. With her purchases finalized, Iris stuffed the seeds into her bag and left the house with her mates.

Caspian carried Iris to the cave system entrance and then put her on Ember's back after he transformed. Iris felt uneasy on his back and began to panic as he set off. Iris wasn't necessarily so afraid of heights that she would refuse Ember's help, but the fear of plummeting to her death if she fell off was still very real.

Thankfully, Ember was very slow and careful with Iris. He carefully adjusted as necessary to prevent Iris from falling off and didn't complain as she tightly wrapped her arms around his neck. Well, Ember couldn't speak in his beast form and he was too big for Iris to fully wrap her arms around, but still.

Ember flew above the forest until he reached the area above the river then followed it in the opposite direction of Blue Lake City. The forest was quite large, but it still did not take long while flying to reach the other side of the forest.

Soon Iris saw a large plains like area of land with sparsely growing bushes and larger plants. While it would be a shame to uproot the bushes, this was the most suitable location for planting. If she went too far from the artic wolf tribe it would be difficult to make regular trips over after all. Iris loudly exclaimed to Ember

"Here is fine. It'll take a bit of work, but we can go get the others now."

Ember swiftly turned around to go fetch back the others. When Caspian and Basil saw Ember reemerge, they began to chase behind him as Ember led them to the clearing. Ember had to fly much slower in order for Basil and Caspian to keep up. This meant that it was already high sun by the time they arrived.

Ember carefully landed when they arrived and Caspian removed Iris from his back. Iris blushed as she noticed his nudity. Once on her feet she pulled out skirts for all of them and waited for them to get dressed.

Iris pointed to the bushes and larger plants nearby as she explained

"We will have to remove those in order to transform the land to be suitable for planting. I think digging up the land for about two-hundred paces both length and width ways should be sufficient enough space.

Perhaps if you all take different jobs, the work can be finished faster. Why don't we have Caspian and Basil start with digging a trench about a hands depth deep starting along the river and make a square like this around the land. I'll let you know when you've gone far enough in on direction.