Pear woke up quite satisfied, and so did I. I thought she'd want a morning quickie for good measure, but she was much more interested in having breakfast. So, she stuck around, eating fruit when Prima had come with my morning fire meat. Yes, it's kind of heavy having only meat every morning, but I have to be grateful that I get anything.
The table was full of goblins, and I couldn't be happier to have a dedicated place to sit and chat.
Lily and Vera were sitting on either side of me, Prima sat across from me with Jewel next to her, while Truffle and Pear sat a bit away. The latter two traded food, two juicy fire mushrooms for one of the juicy apples she had brought last night.
Berry had dropped by with Diana, and we were quickly running out of space at my new table!
Pear didn't lie. Those two were good friends by the look of how they were interacting. I offered Diana a piece of fire meat, and she chewed it for a while before swallowing it, seeming rather uninterested in it in the end. Well, if she's going to grow into being a strong goblin, she probably needs the heavy nutrients found in bloody meat. I live by the principle of at least trying something new once.
Vera opened her mouth as well, prompting me to give her a piece, though whether she liked it or not was debatable. I think what she wanted was my attention more than anything else, and I made sure to give her some. Lily had her own piece of fire meat she was eating, and I had explained to all the goblins gathered that I was going to be watching Diana for a good portion of the day so Berry could take a break.
Every single goblin present looked at me with wide eyes, save for Berry.
Aside from the revelation that I could use land magic to remodel cave-holes into proper rooms, I don't think they really expected more from me than only being used to give them big seed.
Welp, time to show off what a capable dad I can be.
I don't expect it to be easy, so aside from a potential planned interlude with Vera should Diana take a mid-day nap, I was going to reserve myself from fucking anyone else until tonight. Tomorrow I will make sure to take care of all interested parties.
Lily was a bit disappointed, but she clearly intended to have an appointment with me at breakfast tomorrow. Berry gave me a hug and passed Diana to me before leaving. All the other goblins departed after she did, leaving Vera, myself, and my daughter alone in the breeding room.
It hadn't been long since she was born, a little over a week, but Diana was big. If I had to compare her size with a human, she looked to be about two years old or just a little bit older now. I don't know if this is a trait unique to her due to how she was conceived and born in a single day, or if it was normal growth development for goblins, and I doubt Vera here was going to give me any kind of detailed answer at length, so I guess I would need to learn about my daughter.
Turning her around in my lap, I wondered if she could even speak words yet.
"Hello, Diana. Do you know who I am?"
She nodded.
With a finger leveled at me, my cute little goblin daughter called me "Husband."
Uh. I mean, technically that's not wrong. Berry doesn't know my real name, and everyone in the tribe calls me Husband, so I mean…
"I am your daddy. Do you know who your mommy is?"
"Berry."
"Oh, very good! Do you know your name?"
She nodded.
"Diana Artemis."
Wow, she's able to even say her whole name already!
"Did your mommy tell you why you are here with me today?"
Diana shook her head.
"We're going to play games today, while Mommy rests."
Diana stuck out her tongue at me. I looked at Vera, who was staring at Diana and holding her stomach. Ah, she's having a moment of self-assessment. Yep, you can blame me Vera. You're going to have one of those in a few months.
"Vera. Let's put some of your magic to use."
"Diana?" Vera asked.
"Yep, we're going to make a few things for all of us to play with!"
Using the bone I got from Ivory for drawing some runes on the ground, I made a few shapes that would rise up and harden once mana was supplied to it. I had Vera do the activations, and in short order we had a pile of building blocks.
Diana, bless her chompy soul, was a destructive one.
Everything I built, she knocked over. But she was having fun and growling toothily, so it was all in good spirits. She tried building a few things herself eventually, but they didn't really have any substance or design to them. She was just stacking blocks to eventually knock over herself to the satisfying sound of them crashing down.
I had made a few more things for us to play with. One of them was a beanbag toss… sort of. Basically I made a few square buckets with different sizes, and then made a few compact balls of dirt. With that, I drew a line on the ground and stood behind it, then lobbed one of the balls so that it would land in one of the buckets. The dirt balls were more than light enough for Diana to pick up and throw, think of it like a golf ball.
I drew another line on the ground closer to the buckets for Diana to stand behind and had her throw the balls into them. She seemed to understand the objective after seeing me do it, and had great hand-eye coordination. After about ten turns with six balls, she was able to throw them into the buckets I would point to with about eighty five percent accuracy, I'd say. Well above what I expected her to be able to do. So, since she was having fun, I moved the line further back, and back, and back until she was at the original line I used. I wasn't as good as her, to be honest. But I also wasn't a great sportsman in either my previous life or my current. I'd played basketball and baseball in PE class when I went to school in my previous life, but I wasn't really a competitive sportsman. Sad to report, I was more interested in video games.
Incidentally, Vera also seemed interested in trying, but she was completely NG.
Welp, she's a wizard, so it's best to leave her to games that challenge her intelligence over her physical prowess. I'll raise her up well, too. But not today. Today is all about my daughter and giving her mother a day off.
We took a snack break after the toss game, and had some of the fruit that Pear had left to me. Diana seemed to like it, which if eating berries was similar to fruit, would have been a natural thing, considering who her mother is. Vera also ate her fruit… messily. I need to teach her table manners at some point.
After the break, I had a great idea for another game. I drew all the magical runes I had been teaching Vera inside of small dirt squares and made duplicates of each of them. Vera used her mana to harden them into flat pieces each having a rune on them. I scrambled them up and made the match game happen.