Her Beasts

Excavating

The next day, Caspian was still passed out, but his condition had more or less stabilized. Basil assured Iris that Caspian had made it through the worst of it. Iris was still nervous as she reluctantly left Caspian's side. She had slept beside him, wrapping her body around his large muscular one all night long.

Iris walked over to the mountain side and explained to Ember and Basil

"Since we don't know where the resources are, we will have to mine the mountain out blindly. I think it would be best to start at ground level and then excavate a level or two downwards.

It'd be a shame to just hollow out the entire mountain and leave it useless to others. Besides that, the mountain might collapse if all the integrity is lost. So, let's just carve out two crisscrossing tunnels through the middle of the mountain first.
We can then add a few additional hallways before digging out several large sized rooms with open doorways. Kind of like the homes most use in the artic wolf tribe.

We might have to have the first room excavated near the entrance used for stairs descending to a lower level. Since there is no guarantee of where the resources will show up, it's best if we try looking on multiple levels at once. Be sure to maintain a good distance between floors and keep thick walls for support.

We will need to make a lot of large bins to put the excess stone in outside the mountain. It takes a few hours just to mine out a single large room so it will be difficult to complete this in time if only the two of you work together. I might have to join in as well just to maintain some semblance of speed....."

Ember and Basil thought Iris's plan was solid, but neither felt comfortable having her do the hard manual labor. Iris had convinced her mates in the past to be allowed to do things like sewing and cooking because they were confident she wasn't likely to get hurt from it, especially with them there.

However, they were uncomfortable with the idea of Iris trying to mine and potentially getting hurt. If the mountain collapsed they had a better chance of making it out alive than their mate would. As for the labor itself, the broken chunks of rocks could have sharp edges or Iris could miss when swinging the pick and accidentally hit herself in the face.

Ember was the first one to speak up

"No, absolutely not. I agreed we could do this for you, but you can't help. You could get hurt in any number of ways during the process and we'd constantly be worried about you. We can work faster if we aren't stressed you'll get hurt, so stay out here and watch over Caspian."

Basil gave a reassuring smile as he offered

"You can rest beside Caspian. You can make some tea for him and feed it to him. If he wakes up, you wouldn't want to miss out on the opportunity to be the first to see him, right? Don't worry, we will do our best to complete as much work as possible today."

With that, the two immediately got to work. Ember used the antler picks to outline the area he wanted to knock out and then used his strength to break the rocks. They easily cracked and shattered under his fists and crumbled to the ground.

Basil used his sharp claws to claw and tear away the stone. It was like a hot knife going through room temperature butter as the stone easily gave way. Having thicker and more durable claws was clearly superior for such tasks compared to Ember's thinner sharper claws that were more suitable for tearing flesh.

Iris sighed and got to work on making tea for Caspian. Iris pulled the firewood from her bag and piled it up in the fire pit before using tinder and her flint & steel to light the fire. Then Iris brought out a clay jars filled with water and untied the vines and took off the lid.

Iris didn't know as much about herbal medicine as Basil, but that was likely okay. Iris just wanted to ensure Caspian's rest would be peaceful so that he could heal faster. So a nice chamomile and lavender tea with honey would suffice. Honey was known to have natural healing properties too, which certainly couldn't hurt.

As the tea brewed, Iris stroked Caspian's face, enjoying the peaceful look as he slept. Iris quite enjoyed how handsome her mates were and hoped she would never become immune to their good looks. After all, all beastmen could objectively be considered quite good looking in the beastworld. It was just that Iris cared about more than good looks that kept her from taking every male she met as her mate.

When the tea came to a boil, Iris pulled the boiling tea water away from the fire with an animal hide to protect her hands. The tea was then carefully poured into a stone cup so it could cool faster. Iris had to manually scoop the herbs from the tea with a spoon. It wouldn't be good for Iris to choke Caspian with the flower petals when she fed the tea to him.

While Iris waited for the tea to cool, Iris worked on studying the beast continent map she had. Now that she knew for sure where she was, it was a lot easier to figure out where other things were in comparison. Iris wondered how many other beast tribes and cities were out there.

Iris knew it was unlikely that she'd get to travel much in this world. It would likely take her the rest of her life to see even a portion of this continent with how slow travel was. That was no way to spend ones life either as it would prevent Iris from enjoying any real luxuries.

No, Iris would be much happier if she could live in a tribe with many friendly faces. Iris also knew it was likely she could end up pregnant at any time. There was no contraception in this world and Iris had always had very few health issues. With the possibility of having a family with her mates, Iris could only hope to build a comfortable life and settle down in a good tribe.

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