Hunter Or Huntress

Chapter 16: Tom The Nanny

Tom had thought he would have to help with the children, which he was perfectly okay with. They were cute and all, but apparently, he was going to be sleeping in the big room with all of them… Well shit. That wasn’t entirely what he had in mind when thinking about getting a place other than the infirmary.

He really needed a place to store his stuff. All his things had very graciously been flown/carried up for him and placed in the big hangar space. Most likely so he wouldn’t start going up and down the stairs all the time to grab things. Nunuk was still very adamant he move as little as possible after all.

His quadbike had been moved to one of the barns for the time being. So he just needed a private room to unpack in. That was apparently a big ask though. Sapphire had just answered you needed to respect privacy to get privacy… Oh, come on!

So there he was lying down in a room full of kids, wondering what exactly he was supposed to do now. From what he had gathered, once Nunuk deemed his wounds were fully healed he would start training with the guard. That sounded fun and all, but he guessed that meant training with a sword, shield, and arrow. That was probably smart though, just in case he needed to defend himself with the locally available means. Besides he had yet to decide if he wanted to impart weapons technology on them. Though it seemed inevitable that if he taught them about machining and chemistry they would figure it out themselves in time. He just didn’t want to jump the gun on that point.

He still needed a place to keep his things, currently, he didn’t even have a weapon on him trusting that everything was going to be fine, that didn’t sit quite right with Tom, Sure he was probably in the safest place in the keep but what if… he had no clue what kind of dangers were out there. There were guards posted 24 hours a day though so something definitely he thought to himself.

He decided on bringing his little lockbox into the kid's room, stuffed with a revolver holster and ammo, along with a flashlight and knife. that would have to do he thought to himself.

During the following days, he had been doing as much conversation with the kids as he could, hoping the old saying you need to hear the truth from kids and drunk men held true. It had proved sort of correct, he had learned a lot about how things worked here. The huntresses were the main source of meat during the spring, summer, and autumn, the animals they kept were for the winter. With their diet being primarily meat they got through quite a few animals. The female warriors formed the huntresses with the males making up the guard, though everyone here was combat trained to an extent, like a militia he guessed.

The huntresses and guards would help out with odd jobs when not on duty. Like when Fengi and that one guard caught him making breakfast, it was apparently their turn to do so. And they hadn’t even said thank you.

The kids also confirmed what he had begun to suspect. The women were all a bit larger and stronger flyers. The men were smaller but still sturdily built, coming close to matching the women in sheer strength. Their society was also dominated by females, thus making Dakota the current heir to Nunuk, or Lady Bizmati íf one was being formal.

Kiran was apparently Dakota’s son, she had cared for him herself for the first year plus the time on the nest which sounded to be like half a year. So they were born as eggs, interesting. After the first year, Kiran joined the kids in the nursery. School started when you were 3 and lasted till you were 10. Then you would join part of the keep to learn a profession. Damned quick process Tom thought, even if they didn’t learn much besides what they needed in their day-to-day lives. Besides the school was more like a kindergarten with classes. According to one of the older kids, if you wanted to pursue a more formal education, you had to leave for one of the larger cities, as Apuma had done. Apparently, Dakota had a smaller sister currently in the capital undergoing such education.

Tom had asked how old they get. One of the older kids had heard the tale of an old lady who was over 140 years old. This was apparently rare for them though, so a bit longer lifespan Tom had concluded not too much though, it made sense with them being cold-blooded after all.

Kiran wanted to be a guard when he grew up. The second in command of the guard, Anchor, was his father after all, so why wouldn’t he want to? When Tom had said he was going to start training with the guard soon, Kiran had insisted on coming along, going as far as to not let go of Tom's legs till he promised.

Tom had continued his questioning of the kids, Dakota had two sons Kiran and Holdey who was a bit older. Holdey wanted to be a blacksmith the little guy seemed like a pyromaniac to Tom so yeah that fit, he needed to check out the blacksmith he thought. The little girl who had started crying during storytime was Esmeralda’s daughter, Anatashi she was called. She and her brother were both 4 years old, and seemed very gentle, just like their mother.

One big family then Tom had concluded. he wondered how they got around the whole sweet home Alabama situation but that wasn’t really a conversation to have with kids he thought. He had been a nanny for a few days by now, and it honestly hadn’t sucked as much as he had feared. No diaper changing they were remarkably tidy, and he was otherwise occupied for both his lessons with Sapphire and extra lessons with Apuma.

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As Tom’s condition improved Sapphire had started showing him around the keep and introducing him to everyone properly. Right now they were standing outside the smithy waiting for the door, Sapphire having knocked.

“Smith?” Tom had asked

“Yes Tom, smith”

Shiva had opened the door looking down at the two of them. Jackalope's mother was easily the largest of them all, and with a broken horn a missing eye, and a wooden leg, her wide shoulders gave her quite the presence. Tom did a double-take of the intimidating-looking woman.

“Sooo. Now it's my turn to meet the stranger?” Shiva said seemingly amused by the unexpected visitors.

“Hi I’m Tom” Tom went in his best Draconic holding out his hand

“Hi… Shiva” She took the hand after a moment’s hesitation.

“Sapphire, you've been teaching him?”

“Well me and Apuma, he is learning quickly, but there is still quite a while to go. May we come in, I think he wants to look around”

“Uhh sure, does he know not to touch hot things”

“Yes yes hot bad” it came from Tom seemingly impatient to get inside.

“Okay then, follow on in” Shiva seemed surprised he had followed the conversation at least somewhat.

Tom had immediately started going around looking at everything, and was writing things down in a little booklet, even if the thing was made of the finest paper Sapphire had ever seen, he didn’t seem worried in the slightest about bringing it to a blacksmith. For her part, she had just given up trying to understand Tom’s way of valuing things.

“He's almost like the world's worst spy, he can certainly write though.” Shiva mused. “Find anything interesting?”

“Human use, long old” Tom’s amateur Draconic clearly being pushed to its limits “No use no now”

“I think he just called your equipment old fashioned.” Sapphire sounded a bit worried about the reaction to such an insult.

“Well aren't you rude little bastard,” Shiva said with some merriness to her tone, ohh thank the gods, she won’t beat the shit out of him yet, Sapphire let out a little sigh of relief.

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The smithy was much like Tom had expected, a large open forge, and several rows of hand tools. Shiva was apparently the smith/craftswoman around here. She was also the largest dragonette he had seen so far, standing near 2 meters tall, without counting the remaining horn, which added at least another 20 cm in height. She wasn't thin or lanky either. With that eyepatch, pegleg, and broken horn, she looked more like a buff pirate than a blacksmith. She reminded him a little of Jackalope but she was much older, he placed her around 50 to 55 so that was probably more like 75 he guessed.

The kids had said Sapphire was 31 years old. But he had no idea if a year was as long here and he would put her in her early twenties. He decided against asking the smith her age though, she had already seemed to take offense at him calling her tools old.

As he looked around he started making plans, if he was going to make anything useful he would need a workshop. While this place lacked a few things, it was a good starting point. Besides they had some wind-powered automation, driving the forge bellows. Fit for expansion he thought.

“What metal, have?” goddammit these sounds were hard to make, but she seemed to understand well enough. She waved him to follow and walked out into a small storage room, hidden behind a curtain.

There were several small metal bars on shelves, as well as broken tools, weapons, and armor, there was even an instrument or two in the little room.

At first glance, Tom could see steel and cast iron mostly. There was a little of what looked like bronze, lead, tin, and a single brass horn. No precious metals though, they would probably be somewhere else, but he knew they had copper, silver, and gold at least. But seeing the selection did heighten his spirits, they had the most common metals. He hadn't been expecting to find aluminum or something like that anyway. Brass was very important though, and it was in the scrap pile so maybe not that expensive either. But judging by the size of the metal bars, metal was expensive around here, they looked to a pound or two each. He had been hoping for a big stack of large ingots but thinking back that had been quite wishful thinking.

He had asked for the names of each metal and written it down as best he could in English letters, he hadn’t got started on writing Draconic, he barely spoke it yet. To be honest, he felt like a tourist on a guided tour with some locals… At least Shiva seemed to find it interesting to learn what her metals were called in other languages.

With a list of tools and available materials in hand, he could start planning. His first priority should be machine tools, he thought. He needed a lathe and a milling machine first of all. That was gonna be quite the project in and of itself and they clearly didn’t have the materials for it. Not to mention some way of making large castings, the current facilities were clearly designed for forging instead of casting. Those were problems for later though, for now, he needed to focus on learning rather than teaching. Maybe he could get started on figuring out the supply situation.