Her Beasts Volume Four

The Park Part One

It had now been a week since Iris had returned home. After much deliberation and even more time drawing up plans, Iris finally had a plan she wanted to set in motion. If she wanted to help those from the Rabbit Tribe to settle in and to help her own daughter socialize more, she would need an area to do that. Luckily, there was plenty of room still available in the business district to devote to such a project.

In the modern world that Iris had grown up in, nature was harder to come by. Cities, towns, and townships were everywhere, which meant that it was difficult for children to have a dedicated place to run and play. Some people had a nice, large backyard, if they were lucky, but there were also plenty of individuals who did not have such luxuries. In such situations, a solution was usually offered in the form of a playground or a park.

Parks came in many different styles and different types of amenities. There were nature reserves like national parks where there were miles of naturally growing trees and plants as well as winding trails. There were parks built around Indian mounds with areas for picnicking, community gardens, and even museums that showed off the history of the area. Iris wasn't sure what to think about the morbidity of a large burial ground being used as a place for children's birthday parties to be held, but that was neither here nor there.

The two types of parks that Iris was most interested in were actually dog parks and the sort with playgrounds for young children. While Iris knew it was really not for the best to compare her children to pets, it really couldn't be helped that they were in fact stuck in their beast forms for most of their childhoods. As such, Iris could only draw inspiration from the toys and equipment used to entertain dogs to find something suitable for her own young cubs.

Of course, building a park was easier said than done. Iris had given Caspian the new worker plans and had him deliver the news to everyone the day after Alicia and the others had arrived in their city. All of the new temporary workers had already arrived and were hard at work building roads as well. However, even with moving things around, the amount of workers that had to be dedicated towards building roads and other projects was enough that there weren't many individuals free to help with the more frivolous projects like this.

There were a total of six-hundred-seventy-seven laborers available from their own citizens. This was after subtracting five males who would likely remain home with their females to attend to their needs as well as others, like the males from Fawn's family, who no longer required employment. After adding in the fifty temporary workers from Red Wood City, the number of laborers they had was closer to seven-hundred-twenty-seven, but those workers would have to work on the trade route and weren't free for other projects.

Basil and Alder were both hard at work managing the clinic and pharmacy alongside one of their two apprentices. Hudson had left with Pearl, so he wouldn't be back until the next rainy season. Their workload was much greater than most witch doctors had to deal with, but making their patients come to one location to be treated was certainly making things easier. Occasionally, they would have to leave the clinic to treat others, but that was mostly just in emergency situations where the patients might not be able to be so easily moved.

Quentin was busy working with the bees, but he likely wouldn't have been able to help with any other work anyhow. Holly would need any extra help she could get with how busy her tea shop tended to be. With so many new people joining their city, Iris could only imagine that things would not be slowing down any time soon. However, Iris was happy to note that Holly and Fawn's new shop buildings were helping a good bit with keeping things from getting too crowded and still being able to service a good number of customers at one time.

There were still only two elementals in their city that weren't part of Iris's family. Avel, Birk's brother is, apparently, taking quite well to being part of the team of guards and Ember is even beginning to talk about making him his second in command. Iris supposed it would be good for Ember to have more free time as he certainly needed to sort out his anger issues rather than continuing to push forward despite everything. The other elemental, Brooks, seems happy enough helping in the fields, so Iris didn't feel the need to change his job any time soon.