“It is high on my list,” Trel groaned. “You were wonderful yesterday. I never thought I’d say this about a male, but I want you even when I am not ovulating.”
“Uhhh, yeah,” I said as I felt my cheeks warm. “I had a really good time too. You were great.”
“Of course I was,” she scoffed. “The amazing thing was how good you were. Just let me compliment you without trying to brush it off.”
“Thanks, Trel,” I said. “I’m glad that you and I are together.”
“Me as well, you’ll be very happy when you see our children. You worry about recruiting more people for our fort building activity, but soon we will not need to worry about that.”
“Uhh, how many will you… ummm make?” I asked, even though I still didn’t believe that she would actually get pregnant.
“My last brood was forty,” she said.
“Forty?” I gasped. “Like four and then zero? Like ten times four?”
“Yes, Victor,” she said as her eyes narrowed. “Why do you seem so amazed? That is how my people give birth. My numbers are a bit above average, but that is because I am a duchess.”
“I just… uhhh… How does it work?”
“Victor,” Trel said with a sigh. “I showed you how it worked yesterday. I’ll show you again tonight, but you really need to pay attention this time.”
“Ha,” I said as I saw her grin. “You are fucking with me. What I meant is how do you have that many children at once?”
“They are born as small eggs and pushed into the corpse of my dead mate,” she said with a shrug. “How do your kind give birth?”
“Just a single birth, sometimes twins happen, but the baby is between six and ten pounds normally,” I explained.
“That sounds incredibly painful,” Trel said. “It is already difficult forcing that many small eggs out of my womb and vagina. How do the women of your world do one giant egg?”
“Okay.” I laughed and shook my head as we reached the gate. “Let’s talk about it later. I’m going to grab our axes and start cutting down trees. You are going to do everything I told you to do. Got it?”
“Yes, Victor,” Trel said, and we parted ways so I could grab our stack of axes. We had eight now, and I carried them back across the field so that I could get to work on the trees. Bob and Hope continued digging the trench while I was grabbing the axes, and I realized that I wasn’t really thinking about their job anymore. It almost seemed as if I could issue them an order and they would just do it until it was done.
I decided to test the theory by focusing on cutting down the trees for a bit. The work was a bit slow without Sheela’s swings on top of mine, but I’d gotten pretty good at lumberjacking after a month of using the stone axes, and I soon had the large tree felled.
I turned around to check on the progress of the two parasaurs and was happy to find that they had continued the trench digging. Bob was moving about twice as fast as Hope, but they were both somehow maintaining the correct distance from the walls of our fort.
“What do you think?” I asked Sheela as she jogged over to me.
“It is impressive,” she said. “Your ability grows more powerful.”
“Or I’m just learning how to use it better,” I said. “I know two things for sure.”
“Oh?” Sheela asked as her golden eyes met mine.
“Yeah, first is that this is going to go way easier than we thought, and second is that I’m going to tame a lot more of these dinosaurs to help.”
“We will need more room to house them,” Sheela said.
“We’ll figure that out,” I said. “Just look at how fast they are digging. If we could just figure out how to get them to chop down trees, we would be set.”
“Hmmm.” Sheela nodded and then glanced at the axe in my hand.
“Anyways, let’s get to cutting. I’m going to guess we need about a hundred and fifty of these. We’ll probably clear half of the younger growth by the time we are done.”
Sheela nodded, and we got back into our tree-cutting rhythm.
The morning passed quickly. Kacerie actually came out with our breakfast and the jug of water, and we spent a few minutes chatting with her while we ate. By the time lunch came around, Sheela and I had taken down our fourth tree, and our parasaurs completed digging the trench around the entire fort. I hadn’t even bothered to look on the other side when they worked, but I got the feeling they were done and then walked over to find them both nuzzling each other. They had made a perfect circle around our fort, and I felt a little amazed that my commands worked so well.
Trel finished the saddle for Bob a little after lunch, and she showed Sheela and me how to tie it around the massive lizard.
“I built this one with two seats and a back storage area,” Trel explained as she showed both of us the saddle. “I used straight wood pieces that are about four inches in diameter as the side supports. These run parallel to his back ridge and are the platforms for the seats and stirrups. They attach under his belly using this webbing, and they are tied up to his ridges using these pieces of wood as support.”
The saddle had looked complicated when she carried it in her arms, but as soon as she set it on Bob’s back, I realized that it was just like Hope’s, only with two extra support straps on the bottom, and thicker logs on the seat instead of stacks of dried leaves.
“If I had some leather, it would be more durable,” Trel said after she attached everything. “But this should work just fine.” Trel gestured to the platform behind the second seat and then showed where the cordage rope was kept coiled up. “You can tie a basket or pots down here. I’ve got a bunch of the rope threaded through the loops here. So you can carry up to eight jugs.”
“Damn,” I said. “This is great, Trel. We’ll be able to get three days of water in one run.”
“I know,” Trel said. “I’m amazing, and a genius. Don’t forget it.” She smiled as she bragged, and I laughed.
“Oh, and speaking of my genius, I also figured out how to add handles to our clay jugs. The latest batch of four is drying by the fire right now. Galmine and Kacerie are working on the next batch, but I used the last of our cordage. If either you or Sheela can go get more, I can hang out some of the sinew to dry. Or, I can do it, if you two just want to keep playing with your trees.”
“We’ll take a break from chopping,” I said. “Our axes are pretty dull, anyway. We need to make another set of those soon.”
“I’ll take them in so that Galmine and Kacerie can sharpen them after they finish with the clay,” Trel said as she gestured for us to hand all the tools to her.
“Let’s go get more ferns then,” I said to Sheela, and we both grabbed four baskets before we mounted on top of Bob and rode deeper into the redwood forest.
The job was actually a bit harder with Bob than with Hope. The male parasaur could hold more, but getting the baskets up on his high back required Sheela standing up on her tippy-toes while I reached down to snag it. We had the process figured out by the time we filled the fourth basket.
Sheela and I returned to the fort with four times the amount of ferns that we would have harvested with Hope, and it only took us ten minutes extra. The new dino was really helping us, and I felt some pride surge in my chest. I was feeling kind of like a badass when we walked back into camp, but then Kacerie stormed out of the hut and stomped toward me with rage showing in her light blue eyes.
“We need to talk,” she growled at me.
“About what?” I asked.
“Not here,” she said as she gestured to Sheela. “You said I could go out with you and gather ferns, but you went without me.”
“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “You were busy.”
“Can you take me to get water and more clay?” she asked as she crossed her arms over her chest.
“Uhhh…” I started as I stared at Sheela. I didn’t see Trel or Galmine around, and I guessed that both of my lovers were still in the hut. “I was planning on heading back to the lake anyways to get water and tame another dinosaur. I guess you can come.”