Another few days passed until Chiaki saw Jiu Ruan and Skye. "Where are you staying?" She asked.

Jiu Ruan shrugged. He'd just slept outside because it wasn't cold. "Out in the forest."

"My mother and father still let me and my litter-mates sleep in the cub room."

"I was asking, because... I want the two of you to move into my home before Winter arrives."

"YES!" Skye gushed and hugged Chiaki. "I'll be the first of my brothers to move out! Take that!" His tail thrashed wildly behind him.

Jiu Ruan was less loud in his agreement. "Of course!" She was bringing him into her home! This was it! He'd be her mate any time now! His own tail began to wag. "When?"

Chiaki laughed, still entangled in Skye's hug. "Whenever you can get your things together. -Skye! Put me on the ground!- Winston moved in already, because I found him before you guys."

Jiu Ruan's tail slowed. The four-stripe white tiger male was already living with her?! No! He'd been courting her the longest, surely she'd accept him first! "O-Oh."

"Yeah... and Curtis made a couple of rules. You got to bring enough food to feed yourself through the Winter if you want to move in before the snow starts."

Jiu Ruan and Skye looked at each other. "I'm going hunting!" Both shouted and rushed away.

Chiaki stood there looking at the cartoonish twin lines of dust they had left in their wake. "I-" She burst out laughing. "Oh my god, you guys! What am I going to do with six of you in the house?!" She blushed. Well she knew a few things she was going to do with a house filled with hot guys over a long cold Winter. She shook her head. 'Down girl!' She thought to herself. Now she was the one with sex on the brain!

'I should sort the food baskets the guys brought back.' She thought. She needed to get all the edible plants sorted from the other ones so they could bury the dangerous ones in a pit out away from the city.

Inside the house was warmer than outside now. The Autumn was progressing relatively fast. She looked at the tiny bag of rice she'd been given by the city leaders. The thought of a multi-level waterlogged rice paddy big enough to supply over 800 people was impossible at the technology level the beast men had. To grow enough to feed the ten thousand plus males of the city? They'd have to progress to a higher level of agriculture than they were at right now.

No, simple and easy to grow plants were what was needed here. The fact the the beast men had built such a huge city and were trying to supply it's population off of hunting and gathering... the city would collapse in no time. How it hadn't already was beyond her.

"See the World!" She said holding her hand out over the piles of random plants.

She really needed a stool to sit on if she was going to sort through all this for hours. No time to worry about that now though. Random potato. Hand full of yams. Ew, this yellow berry on a vine would cause diarrhea if eaten. Might be useful as a medication, but not as a foodstuff. Oh, radishes! She'd make sure the guys went back and gathered as many of those as they could find.

"What's all this?" Bai Di asked as he entered the kitchen.

"Sorting the edible food from the stuff we shouldn't eat from the baskets that Curtis and Qianhuang collected in the past few days."

"Hm? Oh I know this one, I've seen rabbit men growing it."

"That's a type of cabbage." She said as she picked up the long leafy plant. "So some beast men know how to grow these?"

"Yeah." Bai Di pointed at another. "That one is used to settle upset stomachs."

"Ginger." Chiaki nodded. "A lot of plants you beast men use only for medicine are also safe to eat more often in foods." As she continued to sort, she drew Bai Di into conversation. "Tell me about the beast men who plant the cabbage?"

"Would you like a rabbit male as a mate? They are very small in their transformed state and stay weak even as men."

'Don't pull any punches do you, Dee?' Chiaki thought. "I don't even know any rabbit beast men. Haven't even seen one. I just want to know about their ability to grow crops."

Bai Di nodded. "Herbivore males are less common than carnivore males, because they don't eat meat and have to rely only on the plants they can gather or grow. Many of them live in the open meadows and plant fields worth of food as soon as the ground unfreezes after the cold-season. I'm afraid I don't know much about the types of food they grow or how."

There was knock on the front door just then. Chiaki paused in her work and went to answer it. "Skye? Ru?" She asked opening the door. It was neither male, but one she didn't recognize. "Oh, hello?"

The two-stripe male was carrying a bag around the same size as the one she'd received the rice in, actually it looked identical. "Hello." He said with a smile. "There was a mix-up the other morning, you see..." He looked down with a blush. "We had some drama and no one gave you your extra gift."

Chiaki raised an eyebrow at the male. "I'm not accepting courting gifts right now. I have many males courting me."

"No, no, not from me! You see, the male who was giving out the rice was suppose to give out these to any female who had giving birth to cubs in the past year. You somehow were skipped." He held out the bag.

Chiaki took it and looked inside. It was... wheat? Chiaki blinked in surprise.

"I know it isn't much." Chiaki looked up at the male. He had several more bags in his hands. "Sorry. I need to go deliver these to the other females that didn't get theirs."

"Okay... Bye..." She said slowly as the male turned and left.