Chapter 20: Chapter 20

Anna caught up to Kai and Artemis when they reached the hive. Kai looked around, proud of how things had grown in the last weeks. The twelve rooms could easily be small houses of their own. Their size made the hive feel like a small village and Kai really felt at home here.

The violet glow of the silk was still strange, but she would surely get used to it. It was also quite useful as it illuminated the rooms and solved the problem of not having a light source there.

Kai yawned heavily. She wasn’t sure how long she had slept before the incident with Artemis, but it couldn’t have been more than 3 hours. 

Anna walked up to her. “I will take care of the rest, my lady. You can go back to sleep now.”

Kai stretched her arms and sighed satisfied. “Allright.”

She looked at Artemis and then at Anna. “Just make sure to get some sleep too, okay?”

They both nodded and Kai walked towards her room. On the way she planned a meeting with everyone an hour after she woke up. The mana brain would tell everyone about it, which made things a lot easier for her.

Still, the meeting wasn’t going to be about happy things. The wolf-dragon had shown her that despite knowing about the hell moths she was underestimating the area around them. They would have to organize a meeting for their defense a few days later to have some thinking time. Besides safety there were also a few other things that had to be addressed to ensure things would work smoothly in the future.

Before Kai entered her room she shook herself and cleaned her feet on the silk. She wanted to keep her dwelling as clean as possible. Then she walked over to the large bed in the back and sat down in the middle of it. She leaned back on her tail and made herself comfortable.

From a human point of view her sleeping position had to look utterly uncomfortable, but Kai had discovered that she slept best this way. She had tried sleeping on her side or belly, but her tail made both positions pretty awkward and what she was doing right now was her version of sleeping on her back.

She moved her fingers through the fur of her tail and started to calm down. If Kai had the chance to get her old body back she would decline. This one felt a lot better and she liked it more, even with the cons it brought. 

She laid there for a few minutes jumping from line of thought to line of thought until she fell asleep. 

 

Kai woke up and opened her eyes. She blinked a few times to chase away the sleepiness and then got on her knees. She had to do this to stand up properly or she would fall on her butt because of the weight of her tail.

Kai carefully stood up and stretched herself with one last yawn. Then she tried to smooth out the fur of her face, but gave up after a minute. She wanted to wash herself in the river before the meeting anyway and could make herself more presentable after her bath.

The hive queen left her room and was greeted by Anna as had become customary the last few days. The two of them walked over to the storage room and took a few fruits for breakfast. Kai really wanted to eat some meat again, but she didn’t want to eat it raw so she could only look at the few dead animals that were mostly eaten by the drones with longing.

After breakfast the duo went to the river and bathed. Anna pestered Kai the whole time about her not having to do this herself and that Anna would happily wash her. 

Kai tried to ignore her, but gave in when it came to her tail. She wouldn’t have enough time to dry herself before the meeting if she had to wash her tail alone. It was just too damn big.

Once that was done they waited at the shore of the river for their fur to dry. Kai really liked this spot, because the sun managed to break through the canopy of the giant trees here in the morning and it felt nice to have her fur warmed by the light. 

Sadly none of the other hive members were using this spot because of her and always went further downriver to clean themselves. It came with her privileges as queen, even though Kai would be happy to share the sun with the others.

After lazing around like a pair of cats for a few minutes, Anna and Kai started to walk back towards the hive and it took them about ten minutes to get there. 

Not having a clock around was really annoying, but the mana brain hadn’t been able to help Kai in this regard, at least not for now. It might be able to do this once her hive was big enough though, which would help her people quite a lot in their daily lives.

The others had prepared a circle of pillows to sit on in front of the hive entrance and were already waiting for Kai and Anna. Only two of the pillows were unoccupied and one of the two pillows was large enough for a human to sleep in. Without a doubt it was for Kai and her tail, so she headed over there and sat down.

She wasn’t fat, okay?

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Kai looked around and noticed that everyone was looking at her in anticipation. Right, she was the queen and had also been the one who summoned them all here. The only problem was, Kai had no idea how to start a meeting like this.

She cleared her throat and fumbled around with her belly fur. “So, uhm… I wish you all a good morning.” That was so awkward.

Kai secretly blushed underneath her fur or not, because the others could smell her embarrassment. 

She sighed and gave up on trying to do this in a professional way. “Allright, let’s not make this something formal.” Yeah, that worked a lot better. “I called you all here because there are a few things we need to discuss for the future.”

She looked at everyone and made sure to meet their eyes. “Before we really start I want to say something important. I might be your queen, but I am still only one person so I will need your assistance a lot in the future.”

The others nodded and she smiled. It was a bit like roleplaying, only that she had to do it while facing the other person. “That also means that I want you to come to me if you have ideas that might help. If you aren’t sure about that you can consult with the mana brain, it will help you figure that out or a way to approach me.”

Kai stopped fumbling around. “Now let’s start this meeting for real.”

Her expression turned serious. “The first thing I wanted to talk about is our security. I haven’t addressed this properly until now because I honestly do not know what to do except for having someone on watch duty.”

She looked at Artemis who was sitting on the other side of the circle a bit to the left. “You all know the hell moths already, but they are not the only threat to us in our surroundings.”

Kai let her gaze wander over everyone again. “I am still of the opinion that they are our number one threat at the moment and will attack us if we continue to build and expand. Right now I see no possible way for us to fight them back.”

She clasped her hand. “I want you all to think of possible things that might help us fend off our enemies over the next two days. Then we will gather again and discuss all the ideas together.”

Everyone nodded again and Kai continued. “Secondly we now have 10 workers in our hive and the number will rise a lot in the future.”

She looked at the 10 of them. “I want the 8 of you that work together to figure out some kind of simple hierarchy to make the organization of projects easier. You don’t have to think of something super complicated, but we need some kind of foundation for the mana brain to build upon. It would be nice to have this done in two days, but you can take more time if you need it.” This was something that shouldn’t be done in haste.

Kai, now finished with the boring stuff, smiled at the others. “Thirdly I want to give the mana brain a name, because calling it mana brain all the time doesn’t feel appropriate. I decided to name it Brian and hope you are okay with that.” Brian because brain, you get it?

Nobody pointed out the stupid name or complained, which disappointed Kai a teeny tiny bit. She cleared her throat and then leaned back. “That was all from me for now. If you have anything on your mind feel free to speak up.”

The others looked at each other and nobody seemed to have anything to share right now. 

Well that was weird. It also made the whole thing feel more like an announcement than a meeting.

Kai was about to end the awkward situation, but Erika meekly raised her hand. “I uhm, I don’t mean any offense, but why don’t we use bones for tool hilts instead of wood? That way we could use the wood to try this meat roasting your highness has told the others about every other time.”

Kai blinked. Could you do that? 

Yes of course you could! Why hadn’t she thought of this before?

A very bright smile appeared on her face and she looked at Erika. “Child, you are a genius!”

They would have to clean and dry the bones carefully beforehand, but damn she wouldn’t say no to some meat. It was time to advance to the bone ages!!