Moving on from the boys… there have been a few other things going on in the past few years. Lucas has moved in… which is highly annoying… but I couldn’t exactly begrudge my mum the option of having him around. Let’s face it… my boyfriend lives here… as well as the three boys that we basically adopted… well… two boys and what is now a grown man. My mum has been incredibly accommodating… and he makes her happy… so I must endure his presence. He is good with the boys too… to be fair to him… I just wish he wasn’t… intimate… with my mum. Fortunately, his presence on the farm is still somewhat limited as he is often away performing his knightly duties.

  Nomius has built a little wooden house in the top field. We weren’t using the top field due to lack of people to utilise it. So now it is Nomius’ domain. He’s a pretty nifty craftsman really. It took him a couple of years, but it is a lovely little place. Olly and Dolly helped him out and seem to live there four days of the week.

  As much as I am loathed to admit it… it would seem that Kiyui’s ridiculous matchmaking plan seems to have worked. Not that I can vouch for any of the sexual side of things. But the three of them do seem to get on incredibly well. They may just be very close friends… although their house does seem to be a clothing optional establishment… but my house seems to be that way as well, so that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

  Olly and Dolly have both learned Nomius’ sign language very successfully. In fact, pretty much everyone on the farm has now. Which I think is definitely a reason why Dolly likes to be here on his days off from prostitution. It must be nice to be around people who he can actually talk to. Most of us sign out of habit, even when he isn’t present now.

  The three of them have filled what remains of the top field with sheep and they have gotten into the wool business. Which brings a pretty solid additional income to the farm.

  Oh… and I found out their actual names. Olly is actually Oliver Ashdown and Dolly is Oliver Nash. Their birthdays are in July and August respectively. They aren’t even from the same part of town originally. They never even met until they were eleven. They realised how similar they looked and have been rolling with the twins thing since they were teenagers. Insane how much they look alike, given that they aren’t even related.

  Olly has also been giving the boys art lessons… which has been quite amusing. I did have a go once, but my artistic skills are a tad lacking. Alexi is very good at drawing what is in front of him… the detail he puts into his paintings is amazing. He can’t do anything that requires imagination though. Svampe is rather the opposite… he likes to draw quite imaginative pieces… albeit rather dark and depressing looking things. Tadwick… well… he is like me… has no real flare for art… but he doesn’t let it stop him. Olly describes his work as “abstract.” Which I think is a very sweet and delicate way of putting it. Tadwick just likes getting covered in paint, so ya know… as long as he’s having fun. If anything, I think the other two take it too seriously.

  Damecus has also done very well for himself. Since he took over the botanical gardens, they have become very popular. Initially, I thought it was because of the novelty of a lizardman being in charge there. But is seems that the interest has been maintained.

  I went when he first took over and ya know… it was nice… looked pretty… had some nice places to wander about. But Damecus has planted some truly wonderous and insane looking plants. Loads of kids go there to play hide and seek and things.

  Thinking about it… the fact he made it free to enter probably has a lot to do with the increased popularity. He had a café built within, so that visitors can buy food whilst there. He has started growing that shalnack root stuff. So, they now sell shalnack paste from spring through summer. Which has put a lot of people’s noses out of joint.

  The medicine men in town used to have a good business selling sunscreen that had to be reapplied every few hours as well as all sorts of balms for helping with sunburn. They lost a big chunk of income to the shalnack paste. They tried to get the paste outlawed because it was damaging to the economy. But obviously, Damecus has friends in high places and Chlamydia got rid of that problem in a flash. During the summer, there are a lot more people out enjoying the sun now, instead of wrapped in veils and protecting their skin. On hot days, most little kids are just plain naked now… which saves on laundry, I suppose.

  Him and Cathy seem to have really settled into their slightly odd family life. Verity seems much calmer now too. Being in one place with a consistent routine for so long seems to have done her the world of good. Cathy enjoys working as a gardener and has even been co-running things whilst Damecus is away.

  Oh yeah… probably should have mentioned that before. Damecus has travelled back to Sawtooth Village as it is now the end of his tal voshack thing. He needs to go through some kind of ritual to officially make himself a man in the eyes of his clan. He said he would return once this was done and assuming all went well, he should be back in the next week or so.

  Cathy has been co-running things with a woman called Dietrich. Her first name is Marlene but she never goes by that. Always just Dietrich. I don’t really know her that well. Damecus decided to keep his hand it at the adventuring and he formed a mini-party with Farrow. They helped Dietrich out on a quest and ended up absorbing her into the party.

  She seems very polite and pleasant during conversation… however… violence does tend to be her solution to most problems. As well as one of her go to fun activities. The first time I met her, she appeared out of nowhere and just attacked Damecus. They were rolling all over the place on the floor trying to pin each other down. I was about to attempt to help him, when I realised that they were laughing about it.

  She is an absolute beast of a woman. To equal Damecus in a wrestling match you have to be. She is tall and muscular. But not muscular like Chloe… the muscles aren’t clearly defined. Many would think her fat at a glance. But she is unbelievably strong… even stronger than Chloe. She has the same beautiful olive skin that Tilda had. Dietrich however, has quite a wild look to her… she shaves the sides of her head so she just has a strip of white hair sticking out of the top of her head and one of her nostrils is pierced… and such piercings are not very common in these parts.

  About town she normally wears quite expensive looking custom-made dresses… always black. Black is very much her colour. I saw her in her adventuring gear once… that was all black too… and quite imposing looking. The helmet is rather unnerving… it looks like it has scales carved into it and has a snake coming out of the centre. I can’t think of any practical purpose for that… I imagine it is for intimidation purposes.

  Damecus informed me that she is a blood knight. Which is not something that I had ever heard of. So, I ended up researching it. They are very rare and they are very much a class that you must be born into. Basically, she gets stronger the more pain she is experiencing. By which I mean physical pain… not like, depression or anything. Damecus told me that she has intentionally broken her arm in combat before to get a strength boost.

  No matter how badly damaged her body gets… she can initiate a kind of hyper-sleep thing that allows her body to fully heal all of its wounds… provided none of them are fatal, obviously. And I mean all wounds… she has grown back limbs and all sorts before. The drawback being that once she initiates this, she is out of commission until she is fully healed… and the worse she is injured, the longer this will take. Which means she needs to be somewhere safe before doing so.

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  Which reminds me. Damecus isn’t the only one who is away at the moment. Nomius has taken Tadwick and Alexi away on a rowing/camping trip kind of thing. The whole thing was Grant’s dad’s idea. They’ve been doing it for about eight months now. They take all eleven of the boys places… teach them outdoor survival skills and stuff. The boys love it by all accounts. This is the first time that they have been away for longer than a day though. It is in my nature to worry, but I am trying not to. They all know what they are doing… and let’s face it… the amount of travelling and outdoor nonsense that Tadwick has endured previously was way more extreme than anything that those guys are going to be getting up to.

  Phoenix has had two daughters. Which she named Violet and Rose. They announced their first pregnancy a few months before Rosario’s thirteenth birthday. I’m not sure when they started trying… but knowing Phoenix… I imagine she put him off for as long as she could before eventually accepting it needed to be done for the sake of the alliance.

  I did rather expect them to stop after the first one, but then Kiyui pointed out that in the equine kingdom girls can’t inherit titles. So, I imagine they are being pressured to produce a male heir.

  That being said… Rosario is sixteen now… and he is a very strapping and frankly handsome young man. His hair is borderline hypnotic. He has a lot of female admirers around town. So, who knows… maybe his affections are actually reciprocated by Phoenix now that he is a bit older… then again… she isn’t exactly the type of person who would answer these questions if I asked her. In fact, she would probably try to set me on fire or something. All I can do is speculate.

  I still think their whole marriage is insane and that these kinds of political marriages shouldn’t be a thing. But at the same time… I do acknowledge the fact that it averted a war and the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of people… so basically… I don’t know… I don’t like that it happened… but I understand the reasoning… to an extent. I mean… surely, they could have just put an agreement in place and then the marriage could have gone ahead when he was officially an adult of fifteen.

  Sorry… I digress… their daughters are lovely. Both appear human… except they have Rosario’s rainbow hair… and the younger one of them has a horn. Neither of them inherited the wings… which is a shame. Violet will be turning three soon and the Rose is about eighteen months old.

  Agaroth made a joke that it was nice of her to have two girls so that the boys will have some beautiful girls to marry when they are all older. Which he then followed up with the line “unless a course your lads end up fuckin’ each other that is.” Urgh… I did point out that they are brothers and that would be vile. To which he said “it’s only incest if ya blood… n’ even then… only a problem if ya have kids.” Which is quite frankly a vile standpoint. I’d rather they married Phoenix’s kids. Well… actually… I’d rather they just all kept their genitals to themselves… for at least another twenty years. Grandkids are not something that I wish to be dealing with in the imminent future, thank you very much.

  Obviously, we haven’t seen much of Phoenix, she has been rather busy with her new children. I admire her for that… most women of her position just palm the children off on the nanny and a wet nurse. But Phoenix was having none of that. Rosario is a really loving dad too. In fact, I’m pretty sure that he does most of the hands-on stuff. Although, to be fair… with Phoenix’s arm, it does make sense for him to do more of the physical side.

  Agaroth has been keeping his hand in at the adventuring too. But in all honesty, we haven’t seen him much either. He set Cathy and Verity up with Damecus… then he has basically just taken on quest after quest and rarely been in town. Not sure why. It may be because he can’t take on as many well-paying quests without us… but I feel like even taking that into account he is taking on more than is necessary.

  Smutisha had a son. Pretty sure she got pregnant on her wedding night because the baby came along almost nine months later exactly. It would seem that the Bracken are very different from the Grim. With the Grim, the baby is always a pure blood Grim… with no qualities of the mother at all. But this boy seems to have characteristics of both races. He is aging at the human rate… which is good… it means he will have a much longer life. He has the appearance of a Bracken… but he is the height of your average human. Which is strange to see. I mean… he is still a toddler at the moment… but still… he is an odd sight.

  He is a sweet little thing mind. Smutisha seems to be sparing no expense in his care. She has a very different approach to motherhood to Phoenix. It mostly involves throwing money and so-called experts at the boy to ensure that he grows up to be “the best that he can be.”

  Thomas on the other hand, prefers to be much more present and hands on. I’m pretty sure he would have breast-fed the boy himself if he was able. He clearly loves his son deeply… which I was surprised about initially, given the whole Brackens being obsessed with purity thing. But when I thought about it… Thomas’ love of human females did kind of hint that he wasn’t so bothered about such things.

  They did try for more kids. Do forgive me if this gets a bit disheartening… she did get pregnant a second time… but the baby came early and was still born. In the eyes of the general public Smutisha bounced back as resilient as ever. That was what I thought at first too. She is a very good actress it would seem. Thomas came to visit us on the farm a few months after it happened. He was really worried about her and didn’t know what to do. Said that she was so happy and jovial in public… but as soon as they were behind closed doors… all she did was curl up and cry… for hours and hours… until she fell asleep.

  He was grieving himself… he had no idea how to help or comfort her. Hell… none of us did. He broke down in our kitchen just talking about it. This kind of thing is so… well… I don’t think I can put into words how much it would kill me inside to lose any of my children.

  Things have got better now. I don’t think either of them will ever fully recover from it. It isn’t something that you can just forget about. I spoke to Thomas a few days ago actually. He said that they are in a much better place emotionally. He did say that they have been trying for another baby for a long time, but nothing seems to be happening. They are worried that what happened the last time may mean she can’t get pregnant again.

  He said that that thought hit them hard initially. But they have decided now that the important thing is to focus on the child that they do have and make sure that he has the best life possible. Which may well be why Smutisha has been so desperate to get the boy the best of everything. Money and influence are her things, so she will wield them as much as possible for the lad. I just realised that I never mentioned his name. They called him Jacob.

  Before I get onto the subject that I am really excited to talk about, there is only one more thing that I can think to mention at the moment. And that is that fucking stupid bunny guy that keeps showing up. You may remember that he attacked me a couple of times before the wedding… on behalf of Prince Gustav apparently. Well, he is still at it. Keeps showing up randomly… challenging me to a dual… then running away when the tide isn’t in his favour.

  What I really don’t get… is that if the guy is meant to be an assassin… then why does he not just kill me by surprise… attack when I’m incapacitated… jump me on the privy or something? Why these weird duals? He could easily have killed me when I was passed out in that alley during the stag do all those years ago… and if he has been constantly watching me, as he claims, then why not just kill me then? Why wait for me to be fit and healthy and announce his presence? It makes no sense. Honestly, my head hurts just thinking about the guy… just… fucking… why?

  While we are on the subject of unpleasant encounters… Asmodeus… he’s still around… and he still hates me. He is the reason why I generally try to avoid going anywhere near the adventurers’ guild whenever I go to town now. Every single time… he seems to be there… ready to belittle me… argue with anything I say… tell everybody I speak to that I can’t be trusted… spout on and on about how he will never take off his helmet while I am allowed to roam the city, as he needs to be ready to defend the masses. It is just… so draining to be around. Fortunately, I haven’t had much need to go to the adventurers’ guild recently… I only really used to pop in to have a catch up with Damecus at the bar in there. Now that he has built a café into the botanical gardens, we just go there.

  Honestly… there are just some people in this world who will never change their opinion of you… no matter what you do… no matter how hard you try. They have already decided that they hate you, so you may as well just not bother even trying with them.

  Phoenix's eyes should also be grey.

  I am actually pretty pleased with how it handled Rosario. He has had quite the glow up.