Emery

I had been a little bit worried about introducing Kord, Briar, Karn, and Enrik to Cierra and Stena. It wasn't that I was worried it would be dangerous or something like that, but rather that things would be awkward and would lead to poor relationships going forward.

It had been something in the back of my mind for a while. It was pretty easy to get just Cierra and Stena to see each other as sisters because they had been 'alone' and taken into a new family. That wasn't the case for Kord, Karn, Enrik, and Briar. The biggest concern I had was that the four would end up trauma bonded to one another and not want to open up to outsiders.

That worry had been tossed aside pretty quickly. When we got back home, Vale, Cierra, and Stena had been waiting for us outside the house. The girls tackled us, happy that we were home again. In the end, we had only been gone for a little less than a month, which wasn't bad considering how long many Cultivators were gone for training.

Avuri and I had both vowed not to take long trips like that unless they were truly necessary, but this felt worth it. Even if a month was about as long as I was willing to take on a single trip.

Once we had removed the girls from our legs, Cierra quickly took the lead. Rather than start spouting off all the things they did while we had been gone, she turned to introduce both her and Stena to the new kids. The sudden change in who she was addressing caught the younger kids off-guard, but Kord tried to smooth that over.

In the way that kids do, it only took moments for Cierra to suggest that everyone come to the barn to look at the pigs, and the younger kids were immediately on board. Whatever tension I had been worried about had been delightfully blown away by kids being kids, and I couldn't have been happier about that.

"Mom, can we?" Cierra asked, already having promised to take everyone to the barn. I smiled and held back a laugh.

"You've already said you would, didn't you? Come on, let's go." I was planning to take Cierra's hand and walk with her, but as soon as I gave permission, she darted away. Her enthusiasm was infectious, because not only did Stena take off running after her, so did the other kids.

Avuri slipped her hand into mine, gripping my fingers tightly. "I'll walk with you."

I leaned into her and bumped the side of her head with my forehead. "Yeah, that sounds lovely."

Behind us, Vale cleared his throat. "I should probably warn both of you. While you were gone, we made a few…additions to the barn."

"Additions?"

As if on cue, I heard Stena shout excitedly, "Oh! And you have to see Yaya. She's a big dog, and so fluffy!"

"You got us a dog." I said flatly.

"It's an older herding dog. After you left, the piglets were getting restless over nights, and Tulo was being obstinate unless I showed him my Domain. They didn't cause any real problems, but getting a farm dog stopped pretty much all of it. But, she's been living in the barn, not the house, so you don't need to worry about that. Or, well, we built her a dog house inside the barn, and she lives in that."

"I guess that's fine." I sighed.

"If she's well behaved and good with kids, I have no issues." Avuri said. "I always kinda wanted a dog, but my family never allowed it."

I turned to her, mildly shocked. "Oh, really? You never mentioned it."

"Didn't I?"

"You didn't. I suppose you did suggest getting one. A number of times. But you never said you wanted one specifically."

"Huh. Well, I did. Or do."

I shrugged. "Since we apparently already have one, I don't have any complaints. Originally my main concern was talking about getting one would set the girls on a warpath until we had one. The issue was never about having one."

"Sure, sure." Avuri said lightly.

"Sorry." Vale said.

I looked between them. "No, really. I have no issue with dogs. You don't need to apologize, Vale." I said.

"Well, in any case, you have one. She's a little older, so she's already well trained. Depending how things go from here, you may want to consider getting a younger farm dog, too." Vale said.

"I will keep that in mind." I nodded.

As we walked up to the barn, the kids had already gone inside and gotten the animals all worked up. Mila and Tulo, the cow and bull, had walked closer to the barn in their pasture, watching from the fence. The chickens had also mostly congregated in one spot nearby the pig enclosure, but didn't seem to be paying much more attention than that. They were probably expecting food.

The girls were already playing with the piglets in the main section of the barn. The four piglets were happily trotting around all six kids, and all of them, kids and piglets alike, were already covered in mud. I fought the urge to sigh, and just leaned forward on the fence to watch them all play.

"They've been in there for maybe a minute. How did they manage to so thoroughly coat themselves in mud already?" Avuri sighed, taking up a spot on the fence next to me.

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"If those girls have a talent for anything, it's getting dirty." Vale chuckled. "I remember you being the same way, Emery. You, Kota, and Demi anyway. Talya and Ieji always kinda acted above getting dirty, but Rylie absolutely refused to go near mud."

Avuri snorted. "I can picture all of that."

"I don't ever recall literally rolling around in mud, though." I said.

"No, but you little monsters did have mud fights. It all amounted to the same thing."

I felt my face heat up a little and I looked down. He wasn't wrong; Kota, Ieji, Demi, and I regularly had practice matches and played games that revolved around pelting each other with balls of mud, trying to stay the cleanest. No one ever came out of those little scuffles even remotely clean.

"Well, no reason to teach them," I motioned toward the children, "to throw mud the same way we all did."

Vale pointedly looked at the kids as Stena pelted her older sister in the face with a ball of mud. Before I could do anything about it, Cierra wiped off her face with both hands, shook off some of the mud, then playfully tackled her sister into a particularly wet section of the mud. The four new arrivals looked on with worry as Cierra and Stena rolled around in it, but both girls were laughing as they each tried to pin the other.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Oh, those two…"

Avuri laughed with a big, bright smile on her face. "Oh, let them have fun. Rolling around in the mud like that is only fun as a kid, so they may as well enjoy it while they can."

I sighed. "Yeah, fair enough. You'd better rinse them off before we go back inside."

"I can do that." Avuri promised, as we watched the girls dramatically flop beside one another. The piglets, still small, climbed all over them. Well, three of them did. The little gray one that had sat on my lap the day we picked them out climbed into Briar's lap, as she was seated a little bit away from the mess. Kord had taken up position in front of her to intercept mud flung her way, but he, Karn, and Enrik had all gotten splashed quite a bit.

"I was really afraid that we'd have trouble blending everyone together." I said absently, watching the boys get involved when Cierra kicked mud in their direction. Any doubts I had had before were long gone at that point.

"I was too." Avuri said. "But you already knew that. But I don't think the kids blending together is so much of a concern anymore."

"Not even a little." I chuckled. With a small gesture, I created a small metal plate that intercepted a bit of mud that accidentally got hurled at Briar. She didn't seem interested in the mud fight, and I wasn't about to let her get dirty if she didn't want it.

"I think the concern will be their emotional state, now that you all have made it here." Vale said, also watching with a pleasant smile.

"Hm?"

"Well, you have been on the move since you rescued them, right? It's likely they're still running on the excitement and danger of it all. But now they're about to be fully settled. All that extra energy will fade."

I looked at Vale, confused. "I don't know that I'd say that. We spent the last several nights in a nice inn in the city."

He shook his head. "That's different, isn't it? This is where they're settling. This is their new home. It's not a conscious thing, but their heads are going to start to process all the stuff that has happened now. Or, at least, they will once they feel safe here, at any rate."

I could feel Avuri's incredulous look through our link that matched mine. "You don't think they've already dealt with that?"

Vale shook his head. "I suppose you wouldn't remember much from when I first took you and your siblings away from the old sect, would you? You were all pretty numb to everything for a while. You were upset and stuff when I first dealt with the issue, but we took…I don't even remember now, a month or two before we finally found a place to live."

"It wasn't until we were all settled in that house that you all started to actually process things. Travelling? You were all fine. Three days into living in that house and the lot of you were dealing with nightmares and feeling awful."

I turned back to the kids, trying to remember any of what he was talking about, but most of that time was a blur. I hadn't been very old at the time either. "I do remember moving into the house. And I remember that we all got sick shortly after we moved in…"

Vale smiled, looking back on it. "No one got sick." He said. "Or, at least, no one had an illness in the normal sense. You all could barely sleep and had trouble eating. I'm sure it made you feel sick. But it was just your bodies' reaction to your mind catching up to what had happened."

"Are you sure?" I asked, honestly having trouble believing we hadn't been sick. "I definitely remember several doctors coming to visit and check on us."

Vale laughed at that. "Oh, that's definitely a thing that happened. I was so terrified that I had somehow messed up and gotten you all sick or fed you something bad. It took four different doctors coming to visit for me to believe them - it was entirely a mental issue. And a lack of sleep."

"Huh."

"Bottom line, I hope they don't go through it the way you all did. But, if they do, at least there's four of them and two of you. That's much better than six of them and one of you." He laughed.

"I like those odds." Avuri chuckled.

"You should. They aren't so bad." Vale looked at me a little sideways. "Plus, you're both human. That was a bigger disconnect than I think I realized before then."

"How so?" I asked.

Vale snorted. "Well, for starters, I didn't realize how essential sleep is for you. Dragons - even newborns - don't need much more than a two hour nap each day. And even then, they can go without for a day or two without issue."

"You're kidding." I blanched.

"No, I'm not." Vale said, chuckling at Avuri's mouth hanging open. "Dragons mature slower than humans do, but their intelligence develops much, much faster. Most spend their first couple years learning, and that need for less sleep helps little dragons take in as much information as they can stand every day."

"How have I never heard this before?"

Vale shrugged. "It hardly matters to any of us. But a two or three year old dragon is probably as knowledgeable as a teenage human. With the temperament of a toddler."

"Oh, that sounds awful." Avuri said, imagining it. I tried not to think about it.

"There's a reason I'm more than happy with my adopted kids and have no desire to physically sire my own." Vale said, pulling me in for a side hug. "I love you all as if you were my own, so it's all the same to me when it comes to family. But I didn't need to spend sixty years with you before you were trustworthy enough to be left to your own devices."

"That long?" I gaped.

"Well, it varies, but most dragons compare the fifty-five to sixty-five year old dragons to preteen humans."

"That's…brutal." Avuri muttered.

"No kidding." Vale agreed.

"Suddenly, I think I understand why Lyn and Cyril don't have any little ones running around."

Vale shot me side eye, but remained quiet. I knew that look though. That meant there was at least one other dragon somewhere out there that I might get to know one day.

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