While Meryda spent most of the morning with her two new Monsters, showing them the farm and telling them what they could do to help, Craydon prepared the lunch together with Rusha Banei.
The noise of claws brushing on the floor called Craydon's attention, and he turned back, only to see the Salamander with his notebook in his mouth, looking at him.
Craydon smiled, grabbed the notebook, opened the place under the stove where wood was burning, and waited for the Salamander to get comfortable in there before closing the door again. Rusha frowned as she noticed the fire coming from the top holes of the stove increase, and she quickly placed a pot with water on top of one, while Craydon put a pan on the other hole to fry the meat they were preparing.
Before she could ask why the Salamander entering the stove increased the flames so much, the sounds of different voices laughing outside distracted her.
The group of kids entered the kitchen, and Pof Grinun asked, with a big smile on his lips, "What is the food today, Mister Craydon? We have been working until now, and we are starving!"
"You will see in a moment. Shouldn't you guys be at the market? Nothing to sell there today?"
Tetil Stog slithered to get next to the stove and answered while sniffing the frying meat, "We sold everything! After lunch, we were all thinking about going to the city and checking what Quests are available at the Guild. Those envoys went away already, and we talked with the Guild Master. He said they sent a messenger to the Ooman army, telling them about the Fae warning."
Craydon pointed at a drawing in his notebook, making Tetil curious when he said, "I was thinking we could try to build this. Considering we always have so much corn and wheat, if we could grind it, we would have flour to sell as well."
Tetil looked at the notebook and showed the drawing to the other kids. Meryda took a glance at it and immediately asked, "You want to build a windmill? I noticed there are a few farms that grind flour with animals going around and rotating a round rock over the other, and a guy pouring the corn in a hole in the middle of the rock on top. It looked like a lot of work and kind of slow."
"It is slow and tiring for the animals and the guy pouring the corn. But with this, we can empty the bag with corn into a box on the top grinder, and the wind rotates it. It is semi-automatic, actually."
Meryda looked at the drawing, with Pof Grinun also looking at it over her shoulder, and she said, "I am pretty sure my boars can make two round rocks and cut the wood to make this. The spiders can help build the house and the sails for the masts. We also need a hill to put on top the windmill to get more wind on the sails, but my boars can make one near the forest."
Pof Grinun pointed at the drawing and said, "I suppose we can also help, but how the heck did you think about this, Mister Craydon? I never saw anything like it!"
Craydon flipped one page of the notebook, and while pointing at another drawing, he said, "While you kids build the windmill, I am going to make this. After working all afternoon, I am sure everyone will want to have a nice, hot shower."
Pof frowned at the drawing of a weird dark bag hanging on a tree branch with a hose connected to it, which ended in a weird tip that was dropping lines of water. A person was underneath it, washing his body, with a three-walled screen around the person and a curtain in front. There was another similar contraption on another branch, and a little girl was under it, taking a shower as well.
While pointing at the new drawing, Pof asked, "What are you going to use to make this dark bag?"
"Skin from those big snakes the Gigantic Spiders hunted a few days ago. I thought dark snakes were too weird, but for this outdoor shower that uses sunlight to heat the water, it will work just fine."
Pof flipped the page and said, "I guess it could work." He then looked at the next drawing, and his jaw dropped. There was a room with some sort of large, deep tin inside, filled with water. A Salamander was inside of it, and the water was bubbling, and steam was going up. "What is this? Is this some sort of… room to have a bath? Why is a Salamander inside a tin of water?"
Craydon returned to the stove to check the food and said, "I kind of got enough of having to heat water on a pot over the stove, then take the hot water to pour on the large tin in the bathroom outside every time I wanted to have a bath. With that, Lyzy can heat the water with his body, and when the water is hot enough, I can have a nice, relaxing, hot bath. I can then take the cork under the tin and let the water flow to a canal on the ground, and the water can go outside to irrigate the back garden. Considering the soap we use is very natural, the dirty water, together with the soap, won't damage the garden."
"This is so cool! I want to have a bath in this when it is ready!"
"It is mostly ready. I just need to build a canal in the garden. As it is right now, the canal pours the water into the back of the house. Then, I have to convince Lyzy to heat the water because that weird Salamander doesn't like water that much. Every time I want to give him a bath when he gets too dirty and smelly, he always tries to escape and makes me run after him!"
Pof Grinun said while still looking at the drawing, "You can just tell Lyzy to spit a small Fireball into the water. That should do the trick. But really, having Monsters at your disposal makes things a lot easier! Bone Boars to take care of fields, Gigantic Spiders to hunt and make clothes, ropes, and all sorts of things with their web, and a Salamander to heat water for baths!"
The Slime jumped next to Craydon's feet, making him bend his body to tap gently the gelatinous Monster. "And you, Jelly, my sole provider of Slime pieces to make hard marbles for my crossbow! And my official dishwasher! And potato and manioc peeler!"
Meryda sat at the table and said, "You know, considering we are earning so much money with the sales of our crops, and it is almost time to cut the fur of all those cows, what about if we donated some of our harvest surpluses to the farms around us that didn't have a good harvest this year? We have been dividing evenly among us all the money we get, and with that, we all have a tonne of money saved, so we can help others. Just a thought!"
The kids nodded at her, and Hazer Cemim said, "My sister and I don't need any products. Our parents earn money from our Fur Cows and the fields. Our harvest was not that good this year, like all the other farms, but we are giving half the money we earn to our parents to help them."
"Okay, so we all agree? Nice. Then, half of us can go send things to the other farms, while the others help my Monsters build the windmill. And father, you will be in charge of making the hot baths for us to use when we finish, so you better not take too long to build all that!"
"It's a deal. Now, everyone, go wash your hands because food is almost ready!"
Pof Grinun flipped one more page and frowned at the sight of a high canal, which was constructed over wooden pillars and was taking water to a field.
At the beginning of that canal, there was a house that had a wheel with buckets collecting water from the river, elevating the water that was then poured at the beginning of that elevated canal. "This is a weird contraption! What is this for?"
"To help farms when there is not enough rain. It collects water from a river or a stream nearby, takes the water up, and empties the buckets at the beginning of that wooden canal. The canal has a bit of a slope, so the water goes all the way along the canal and reaches a farm to irrigate the fields there. A similar method to the water canals we built with Meryda's boars."
The Centaur siblings eagerly looked at the drawing, and Hazer Cemim said, "Sister! This would be awesome for our farm! Mister Craydon, can we use this idea?"
"I don't see why not. Maybe you guys can go tomorrow to your farm with Meryda and her Monsters to make that. One entire day should give you a nice start to building that. Maybe you can finish it in a day if the river is not too far from your farm."
Hazer scratched his cheek and said, "The river is a bit far, and that means we will need a lot of tree trunks carved in the form of a canal to build this, but with Meryda's boars and spiders, the work will be a lot faster than if it were only my family doing it! My mother might faint the moment she sees the Bone Boars or the Gigantic Spiders, but considering everyone in Amberstar already knows what happened here when those envoys came, Meryda's secret is not a secret anymore."
"Yeah, I figured everyone in Amberstar would know by now. No one asked too many questions when you went to the market this morning?"
Meryda shrugged and answered, "Not really, but a lot of people smiled and waved at me and said they were glad a Monster Tamer was in the City because that would mean no Monster was going to attack while I was there!"
"I see… Well, wash hands, then come set the table! Less talking and more movement, people!"
Pof Grinun grumbled as he was leaving the kitchen, "We were leaving, but you kept talking, and talking, and talking! Shut up, already, you distractive person!"
…
The entire afternoon was a lot of work for everyone. Even the Emptiness was helping by dissolving the tree branches the Bone Boars put into a pile to turn them into manure for the fields.
While the Centaur siblings were leaving with the open waggon full of surplus harvest and Tetil Stog was carrying two full bags over her shoulders, Meryda and Pof Grinun were carrying tree branches to the Emptiness Monster.
Rusha Banei was helping Craydon build the canal to the back garden, and the Bone Boars, together with the Gigantic Spiders, were cutting in rectangles large boulders of solid rock that the spiders were getting from a hill inside the forest.
Another group of boars was piling the rectangles to make the walls of the windmill on top of the high hill made of earth and rock that the Bone Boars pushed with their heads. Leftovers from the cleaning of the fields, of course, which were lying around in piles around the farm until Meryda and Craydon decided what to do with all that rubble and pieces of wood and soil.
The spiders had previously glued the entire hill with their web to turn it into a massive and solid base for the windmill that was being slowly built.
Slowly at first, because as soon as the ground that was going to serve as a base for the windmill was finished, the first wall was erected in a flash, and more walls appeared, one after the other, with Meryda guiding the boars and the spiders and checking if the height of the windmill was according to Craydon's drawing.
While the boars were bringing the wooden poles to be attached to the wooden wheel inside the windmill, which in turn would be connected to the grindstones, Craydon was finishing his first dark bag made of a Gigantic Snake's skin. There were three more pieces next to him to make more bags, and one spider was also there, helping by gluing the skin together to make a bag and connecting it to a skin from a thin snake the Bone Boars caught.
Rusha came to them, holding the tip of a metallic watering can she had just finished sawing. The tip had tiny holes and a long metallic hollow pole, which Craydon said would be perfect as the shower tip.
She gave him the metallic nozzle, together with a metallic wine barrel faucet, which she had washed thoroughly. Craydon put everything together, the spider glued with web, and then Craydon hung the dark bag on a tree branch in the sun after filling it with water from the hole on top of the bag that he quickly corked.
The spider grabbed a pile of nearby branches that the boars had placed next to them, and she began cutting the branches in similar sizes and glueing them together to make screens that she then put around the area under the outdoor shower, which was going to serve as a shower area with those screens for privacy.
When the spider was putting the last screen in place, Pof Grinun arrived, looking dead tired, and he smiled at the contraption. "Now the sun heats that dark skin, the water inside gets warm, and I can take a nice, hot shower like you called it, right?"
"Yes, that's the idea."
Pof laid on the floor and said, "I will be right here… Tell me when it's ready… I need to rest for a while..."