She's going to lose her goddamned mind.
It's not the first time she's had this sudden and rather inescapable thought.
Every day it's the fucking same. Roars and noise of annoying males that don't let her have her much-needed rest. Even if they are chased away, there will always be some that can't understand that she's not interested in such weak males as mates and come pestering her.
She thinks she may start to understand why so many celebrities hate paparazzi so much.
Being a female is too hard sometimes.
Soon the noise quietened down. Good, my boys must have beat some sense in those tick skulls that don't understand that when I say no, then it's a no.
But I'm still pissed off now.
I can be quite grumpy when someone disturbs my sleep.
I just get up with a huff and search for my males.
They help me freshen up, and we have breakfast together. They must figure out I'm not in a good mood, since they are less pushy and don't ask or say anything that could annoy me.
I tend to be a snappy bitch when I don't get my sleep.
"Sera, should we go to check on the fish baskets?" Jason reminds me about the baskets we put in the river yesterday after he and Jared finished making a few.
"Ok, let's go."
Jason shifts in his panther form and I get on his back with Jared's help, and then he also shifts in his beast form and we go.
The river is not far from the village, so we didn't take long to arrive there.
"Do you think we caught anything?" I asked while getting down my mate's back.
The males shift and tie their fur skirts around their waists. I insisted a lot that I wanted to see them clothed while in their beastman form.
"We'll take them out to see."
Then Jason pulls out a basket out of water, but there's no fish in, and it also seems damaged. I think it was waved too loose, and the fish got out of it.
Jared also pulls one out and I rush to him to look at the basket. There are a few fishes the size of my palm.
"I think the entrance was made too tight and only smaller fishes could get in." I say my opinion after looking at the basket.
"Then the next time we will make the entrance bigger." I nod at Jared ad we continue to take our baskets out of the water.
Two other baskets managed to catch fish and a few crabs. The others were failures.
I was excited to finally have fish to eat.
"The fish is enough to feed us all for one meal. This fish basket is easy to use, and we didn't put any effort in catching the fishes. We should make a few more later."
Jared and I also agreed with him. The only effort is in making the basket, and after it just need some bait and after a while we can get lots of fish.
The males removed the fishes scales, gills, and innards as I instructed them, and after putting all of them in the two good baskets, we returned home.
We kept busy the rest of the day, with the males doing more baskets and working on some other projects from my list.
I feel like I am demanding too much from them, but they are delighted with me ordering them around and telling them how to do the things that I want. I would like to help, but they insist that I should just let them do all the work.
In this world, females are not expected to do any kind of work, that's a male's job. A female working would make her males look incompetent of taking care of her.
I don't care what others think about me, but I don't want to put my males in a bad spot.
These days are pretty good. Watching my males flexing their muscles while cutting trees and carrying things around is a welcome sight.
My toilet in coming around with both of them working on it. I will soon no longer need to act like a cat and dig in a sandbox to do my business.
I almost shed a tear when I finally took a piss in a proper toilet. Oh God, you never know how to appreciate the common day-to-day utilities until you lose them.
I was so pleased that I gave each of them a big smooch that left them smiling like fools for a good while. Jared was so surprised at me that he was just standing frozen on the spot for a few seconds until he came back and became a blushing and stuttering mess.
Sera can't help the small giggle escaping her lips.
How can someone be so cute and hot at the same time?
"You two did a great job."
"It's nothing. You told us how to make it, and we just followed your instructions."
"But you did all the hard work, I couldn't do it myself, even if I knew what I wanted. So just let me praise you." I wrap my arms around Jason's waist, and he pets my hair and drop a kiss on the top of my head.
"Alright, everything you want, I will give it to you."
I let go and also gave Jared a hug. He smiles and hugs me back.
We have become much closer recently. I've already decided that I will accept him as my mate. I just can't find the right moment to tell it to him.
"Sera, thank you." He whispers close to my ear.
Damn. His voice so close makes me weak in my knees.
I pulled out of his arms and tried to calm my beating heart. I'm close to loosing my reasoning and just jumping him here and now. And I think he would be more than happy if I actually did it, but we still have things to do. And I feel a bit shy to actually do it with Jason next to us.
I clear my throat and turn my attention to a rack with long strips of meat we let to smoke in the morning.
We dug a pit where we did a fire, after it burned down to coal, we put the rack over it and covered it with some big pieces of leather to keep the smoke in. We would add hardwoods that are somewhat green to create smoke.
I'm not sure how long we need to keep the meat in the smoke for it to be done, so we will let it until tonight. Since it's the first time trying, we didn't prepare too much meat, only a rabbit.
Seeing that I turned my attention to the improvised smoker, the males also look at it.
Jason went to check if there was still wood in the fire pit. When he takes off one piece of fur, a lot of smoke comes out of it.
"That's a lot of smoke." I say the obvious.
Jason puts some pieces of wood from the big pile close to the smoker in the fire and then closed it back. "It is. I hope that we can make the meat right. It would be a lot easier to survive if we could store enough meat for the whole season."
Jared just hums in agreement, and I am trying to remember if we did it right.
I have never seen how to preserve meat like this. I have an idea, but that's it. We would need to figure it out ourselves.
It still early spring so we have enough time for that, hopefully.
We can't know if it works. We need time for that. So we will make a few more batches that we will smoke it for different period of time. And store it separately to observe it.
We used quite a bit of salt on the meat. Our reserves are running low. But the merchants will be here soon, so if we're lucky, we will be able to buy more.
I was able to enjoy a delicious spicy fish for my dinner. The males are getting more proficient at using herbs to season our meals. They also like the spicy flavor quite a lot. We discovered plenty of herbs that can be used as spices at the healer when we visited to buy some medicine to have at home in case we would ever need it.
After dinner, we put out the fire in the smoker and gathered the meat. It's hard and dry with a salty and smoky flavor. It's not bad, but it remains to see if it won't go bad. We stored it in a woven bag and hung it in the house in an airy spot.
Tomorrow we'll smoke more meat, so we all settled in our fur nest. Jared also came inside with us. It's just so nice to have two big fluffy cats to cuddle with.