Her Beasts Volume Four

Making Camp

The process of traveling to the Mermaid tribe was both easier and more difficult than other trips that Iris had taken in the past. She was far better prepared this time and had proper food and was able to reuse her old tents and sleeping mattresses in order to make their travel more comfortable. The distance was also fairly short as the mermaid tribe was even slightly closer to Blue Springs City than Red Wood City was. So, with the good fortune of having two flying beasts for mates, Iris was able to complete the trip easily in just under three days, arriving at the ocean side in the late afternoon on the third day.

Iris did not, however, see Pearl, even despite their promise to meet up. Iris could only chalk that up to them not being able to agree to an exact time and place to meet up. Iris decided to make a more permanent campsite that could last them the rest of their stay and to worry about looking for Pearl the next morning. If Birk and Ember both went flying high in the sky, in the immediate area, they were likely to find Pearl and her group sooner or later.

Iris had no way of knowing just how long they would be required to stay in the area, so she could only plan for the worst and set up lodgings that would be able to last them. Basil helped to set things up by digging up some sand and setting up a proper campfire with the stones, sticks, and other campfire materials Iris pulled out of her dimensional bag. She hadn't even bothered to get rid of the materials from the last time she had gone traveling since her dimensional bag space seemed to be unlimited and she knew that nothing would deteriorate so long as it was kept in the bag.

Meanwhile, Birk went off to hunt for various edible plants and prey while Ember checked out their surroundings in order to better ensure their safety. As a member of the Owl Tribe, Birk was very familiar with forests and could easily identify several edible species of mushrooms and plants as well as being an especially skilled hunter. This was common in his tribe since their flying beast form gave them an advantage compared to most land-bound beasts and their sense of community meant it was common for the elders to pass down their knowledge of hunting and foraging to the younger members of their tribe.

Of course, while neither Birk nor Basil had mentioned the fact to Iris, Basil had also had a hand in teaching Birk some new knowledge regarding foraging. Since they had the "Ancient Flora & Fauna" book from Iris's system and Basil had practically memorized its contents, it was easy for Basil to teach Birk about all sort of new plants. In return, Birk not only watched after their young cubs, but he also had been helping Basil with his new gardening experiments, as promised.

Iris was happy as she watched her husbands working hard. She felt it was quite nice to have them all work so well together, even while doing their own things. There were some things that Iris quite liked to do for herself still, like cooking, but there were still plenty of tasks that Iris was happy to leave to the others. While she watched her husband's working hard, Iris took stock of what supplies remained and what they would have to sort out.

One of the biggest concerns, of course, was going to be water. Ocean water would require far more than just boiling it if they wished to make it safe to drink. The natural saltiness would only become more apparent, should they boil it, and it wouldn't do anything to sate their thirsts. If it was the rainy season, Iris would have just set up a container to collect rainwater and boiled it to make safe drinking water, but it was now the hot season. It was unlikely that it would rain and something else would have to be figured out.

Iris had been a pretty big nerd in the modern world and read books, manga, or even played video games. So, any knowledge she had about survival situations was mostly theory she had learned from playing survival games or reading lightnovels and manga with survival themes. The only way that Iris knew of to make ocean water drinkable involved boiling the water and collecting the condensation. This was usually done using some sort of plastic in the process, but that wasn't exactly an option in the beastworld, so Iris would have to get creative.