The house was quiet when Chiaki headed to get a bath. Qianhuang had been really pent up and now she was sticky. Did guys of this world not masturbate? Slipping into the water she decided that they probably didn't... or her mates had been highly restrained while at the feast. They had clearly been effected but she never saw them touch themselves at all.
What a rough life. She blew bubbles in the water. No wonder they all were sex crazy. Eh, she wasn't going to be the one to introduce the idea to them. She'd probably turn the world on it's head and find herself hated by every female on the planet.
"Too much drama." She said to the empty room.
She was going to miss it being warm enough to just let the bath water sit at room temperature in the tub. It was a wooden tub though and heating it with fire would be a difficult thing. To keep the fire just right so that the wood wasn't harmed.
She washed quickly.
Stepping outside the house Chiaki was greeted with a beautiful and troubling site. The first frost of the season covered the ground. While the whole world sparkled in the morning light, this was the first true sign that Winter was drawing ever closer.
Qianhuang appeared behind her with a fur wrap. "It's cold. You should stay inside." He said as he wrapped the fur around her shoulders and picked her up.
"Well, I'll stay in for today." She agreed. "Let's get me a Winter outfit made so I can be outside."
With the amount of large and small prey animals they had hunted over the past two months, the supply of tanned and cured leathers and pelts was more than they'd ever had at one time. Chiaki picked out a pair of deer hides, and used a scrap piece of hide and a charcoal stick to sketch out the shape she wanted the outfit to look like.
Between her and Qianhuang they got the soft leather cut into the desired shapes and sizes. She would ask Curtis to sew them together that night with his abnormally strong hair. "What about a hood?" Qianhuang said.
Chiaki dug through the pile of hides. "Ah-ha!" She pulled something free from the bottom. "I still have the Wolverine Fur lined hood from last Winter!"
Qianhuang blinked. He hadn't realized his mate had kept a seasonal clothing item. Typically they would get tossed out or reused after the cold-season ended, so a new one would need to be made the following year.
Chiaki sniffed it and tried to unfold the hood. "It's a little worse for wear, but it hasn't dry rotted. If we rub some oils into the outer-side it should get rid of the stiffness and be fine to use for this Winter." She looked over at Qianhuang. "Though we might have to make another one for next Winter."
"I didn't know you still had it."
Chiaki tossed the fur hood over towards the cutout parts of her new Winter outfit. "Yeah, as long as it wasn't ruined I packed up all the stuff from our home in the leopard village." She began to rummage through the pile again. "The first thing that I had to toss out was my clothes from Earth. You kind of did a number on them on our Wedding night."
"Wedding night?"
Chiaki paused, half covered in leathers and furs. "Sorry, the night we became mates." She waved a hand in the air, holding a foot covering from the Winter before. She gave it a toss without looking and it fell short of the mark. "Anyway, Earth cloths- at least the ones worn everyday like what I showed up in- aren't made to handle the rough life. They're made out of things like cotton instead of leather." She sat up, causing the pile to suddenly explode around her. She was holding the other foot covering.
"Cotton? But-" It had looked nothing like cotton. It had been brightly colored like the feathers of a Peacock.
"Well, I think I was wearing something made form Polyester, most of the clothes I liked on Earth were, because they were softest." She shrugged. "The processes to turn raw cotton into cloths isn't something I'm ready to tackle teaching you guys. I'm only half sure I even know enough to try. We'd have to grow a whole crop of cotton and I don't want to waste the effort on a plant that isn't food."
"Your world must be even more advanced that I thought."
Chiaki came over with the foot covering, collecting it's mate along the way. "It's more advanced that I thought it was. I guess my people have started to forget just how hard our ancestors lives were." She studied the foot coverings. "I can reuse these, but let's add another layer to the sole of these boots. One made out of hard boiled leather should help them from soaking in melted show as I walk."
By the time the the rest of the males returned home, Chiaki and Qianhuang had added a soft leather cloak to the list of items needing to be finished. But they had also prepared most of dinner, just waiting to see if anyone came back with a fresh kill. Kimba, who had apparently been asleep in his room had joined them when the smell of cooking woke him.
All the males could see that Chiaki was in a much better mood than she'd been in for many days. She'd put on a light colored wrap that covered her from the breast to the middle of her thigh, leaving much of her on display that caught all of their eyes. She was flitting around between the main room of the house and the side room where all the cooking was done, she called it a Kitchen.
The smell of roasting boar drifted into the room as they ate the other parts of the meal. "What is this?!" Winston asked as he took a bite of a yellow fluffy item.
"Powdered corn. Cornbread, with nuts and apple slices mixed in, then baked." She'd shown Qianhuang what the odd chest high little door in the farthest wall in the Kitchen was for. She called it a stone oven. It's existence in the house alone would have convinced her that the person who built the house had been from Earth. They just couldn't know when that had been.
"I could eat it every day!"
"I know this smell." Skye said as he sniffed the warm beverage he'd been given. "It's mint!"
Chiaki nodded. "Mint and dandelion tea." She couldn't help the wide smile that the scene gave her. She'd finally put all their hard work to good use and pulled together many of her great-grandmothers recipes. The old woman had passed away a few years before Chiaki transmigrated to this beast world, and she'd had plenty of time to know her. Her grandfather, son of her great-grandmother, knew them all too. Hopefully her cousins would lean them all too, or they may only be passed down in another world!
The slabs of boar steak came out of the Kitchen on beds of leaves, still sizzling from the fire. She'd cooked them over a high fire, giving the outside a ring of cooked meat and crispy edges while the middle of the meat was still uncooked and juicy. The combination, along with some herbs and spices she'd hadn't seen them use before caused an uproar. They scrambled to be the first for another as the second wave of steaks came out of the Kitchen!
