Home of Dreams

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Kail was sitting by the fire in the new home that he shared with both Ilta and Shy after taking care of a young dragon. The home was a large sized farm house with a expansive property area. On the inside it was really cozy and warm. But at the moment he was not sure what his goals were, do to being a fated. And took a few days to center himself and relax, since he had some wild adventures. The house its self was a two floor house that had a small dining area, kitchen, a living room, and two bedrooms. The second floor had two more bedrooms. The blond had taken one of the bedrooms on the second floor. Since he did want to hear anyone above him moving around during the night. Since things were not well sound proof.

None the less the land had a lot of space to add on to and he was planning put a few addtions on in the spring. Kail was absent mindedly stroked a cat that was in his lap.  The furry thing had seemed hungry and he gave it a few left overs one night. In the morning it left a little gift of a dead rat at the door step. Seeing that it was taking care of the rats now. He let the fluffball in and it would stay with him by the fire in his lap. "What should I do now? Or where to go from here.....although you don't care since you got a lap to curl up into" he said to the cat and it started to purr more loudly.

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Ilta’s own bedroom was on the first floor due to its convenience. It was nice to have a place to call her own instead of staying in taverns. It wasn’t quite home, but she could live here. That was what was important. All things considered, the house itself wasn’t too bad. She grew up in a house similar to this. Now, all they needed was a small flock of sheep, and she would start feeling like maybe she was back in her home village.

Having unloaded all her things, Ilta is reminded just how few things she owns. At least her clothes were organized instead of being tossed inside of a travelling bag. Exiting her room, she spots Kail talking to a cat. “Seek out your own purpose perhaps? It’s what I planned to do. That and maybe some exploration.” Looking down at the cat, she adds, “You let that thing curl up in your lap too long it will forget how to do its job. It looks like it would be a good mouser though.”

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The black cat uncurls its self and gives Ilta a glare and stretches a bit before it gets up. And does whatever a cat does during the day. The blond gives a laugh "Well aren't you a buzz kill" he said and turns to the dragon lady. But gets a bit serious though as he gets up and puts another log on to the fire. "Well honestly, I don't know what to do with myself. I know the occational job to put food on the table. Or something along those lines" he said and drank a cup of water he had with him. He did have a thoughtful look on his face. "I mean....I have a few goals in the spring for a few things. But.....should I focus on the long term here, under the assumption that I can not go back to my world" he said. Honestly needing a small amount of guidance about what he should do.

"I mean what are you planning to with the rest of your life Ilta" he asked her. Since he wanted to know what she was going to do. As the woman seemed to be a warrior type of person.

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“Smart too,” Ilta says as the cat hops of Kail’s lap. She has to wonder if the thing actually heard her. She used to be good with animals, but her sudden arrival in this world had her magic a bit out of sorts. “It’s probably happy that you let it in. You know what they say, black cats make milk curdle. I guess we don’t even have any milk to curdle though.”

She crosses her arms and leans against the wall as Kail goes into his troubles. “I’d focus on improving your life here. I don’t think either of us will ever go back to our worlds.” She was in the past now. The future to which she belonged had yet to even be written and was therefore subject to a lot of change. Maybe she asked for this restart with her wish at the Falls, but she certainly didn’t mean it to happen like this.

She shrugs as he asks her what her plans are. “I honestly don’t know. I would like to make sure things certain things don’t come to pass like they did in my world. However, I’m not quite sure where to start with that. In the meantime, I suppose I’ll look for work and train.” Unfolding her arms, she asks, “So what were your goals for spring?”

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Kail has a chuckle about the cat as Ilta gave it an odd look. He does nod his head about letting it in. "Well it is paying its rent by taking out the rats. Even then it was so cute that I had to let it in" he said but got all serious when she mentioned on focusing on bettering his life here in Nova. The blond was afraid of this, as it seemed to be true. But what was interesting was that something happened to her world that ended badly. And was going to change it. This raised a slight eyebrow from Kail as it seemed that Ilta was perhaps from the same time line as Aria. Or something similar of that nature. As it was something to ponder about later on. Then Ilta asked what he was going to do in the spring.

"Well since we have a lot of property area. I was considering making a workshop in back. Like a small forge, perhaps a kilm, and a few other things. If I am going to be here in the long haul. I'm going to try and make things to make my life a lot easier. Either by making some contraptions or other items. Heck, I want to learn magic" he said showing some kind of long term goal for himself.

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Séanait didn't trust the house. It was so big and well made that there had to be something wrong with it. Rotten walls, maybe? Or salted earth? Perhaps a haunting? She didn't know, and all the land that had come with the house made her all the more uneasy. You didn't just give someone that much land in addition to 450 gold. You could be a decent little cottage for that, with a good half acre to grow some vegetables and all. And, so, after setting up shop in the other upstairs bedroom - it had good lines of fire - she'd surveyed the little farm.

There were a few minor issues with the place. It didn't seem to have been used in a while, with the bottom layer of the woodpile having begun to rot and some bits of plaster over the redbrick walls obviously needing a bit of repair. The slate roof was in good condition, though, and the well had good clean water. The fields didn't seem to have been ploughed in the last few years, with grass covering everything. The animal pens and the barn needed a bit more work - the wickerwork had been broken and damaged by the weather and the barn's thatch needed replacing.

Ghosts, too, had been conspicuously absent and, not seeing any burial mounds nearby, Séanait had been forced to conclude that there were no obvious signs of why they'd been given the property. Perhaps the house was merely the remnant of a minor lord's estate, the rest having been divided up or sold. Still, you'd expect a village headman to live here and not give it to problem solving strangers. So she checked the cellar for any sign of someone being buried there, and found nothing once again.

She was just coming up from the cellar when she heard Ilta and Kail talking about what sounded like improvements to the farm. Shovel over one shoulder, she peaked into what Kail called a "living room" and added her suggestions.

"If we're talking about making improvements, I think we should start with the barn, and perhaps rent the land out. I've got no particular taste for farming, but it seems like a waste to let it all lie fallow."

It was only a small lie. She did have a taste for farming, but no inclination for it just yet. Not when she was this young, and definitely not when Breasal wasn't here. That had been their dream, to buy a good sized farm together. Now it was part realised, except that Breasal wasn't there. The though made her temporarily forget her suspicions.

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Ilta smiles at the mention of the forge. “A forge would be nice, but do you have much experience with them? If we make enough money come spring, I’m willing to help in such an endeavour. And I’ll teach you how use it yourself. However, we’ll also need to get good materials if we are to make any use of it.” She was meaning to pick up some better armor, but it would good to make it herself. She was more talented at this than your average smith after all.

Ilta looks at the cellar door as Shy emerges. She can’t help but agree the barn needed some work and the land was useless to them. “True. Farming takes too much time for any of us to really put this land to work unless we wanted to devote ourselves to it. There are a few low maintenance options. Chickens and goats for livestock. Root vegetables and tubers for crops. However, renting it is probably better.”

Looking at the shovel curiously, she can’t help but ask, “What were you doing with that? Did you learn of buried treasure underneath our cellar?”

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Kail sees the redhead Shy walk out from the celler and gave a nod on renting out the land. "I was thinking on the same lines as you two on renting out the land. But if we wanted to do a small personal just for our selves. But trying to maintain a full farm would be out of the question" he said and drinks a bit more of his water. He then starts to answer Ilta's question on the forge. "No I don't if you can teach me that would be nice. As for materials though, if we do jobs where we have to escort people from being attacked. We take there weapons and smelt them down for materials" he said and gets up and walks over to the kitchen and sees it was mildly stocked with things.

"How would I kill for a decent oven to bake things. Or a stove to cook on......" Kail said lamenting something from his own world and sees Shy's shovel. "You know Shy, if you sharpen the edges of that shovel. It could be a nasty weapon" he said remembering something from his world yet again.

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Séanait nodded at Ilta's acknowledgement that renting out the land was probably a better option than even doing low maintenance farming and then shrugged at Kail's suggestion that they keep a small section for themselves. She didn't think he had much experience with this sort of thing.

"We could do that, or else we could make a certain amount of animals and vegetables part of the rent. We pick one of the larger and poorer families and tell them that they can have what they need to live off, plus half the net profits. We can subtract what animals and vegetables we use from our half of the profits. They should be happy enough with that arrangement."

When Ilta asked if she'd been looking for buried treasure, Séanait laughed a little sheepishly. She knew she was being paranoid, but she just couldn't help it. There was something off about this, just as there had been something off about the reward for killing the mysterious dragon.

"Ha, no, I was looking for bodies. This place is worth far more than 450 gold, so there's got to be something wrong with it. Why else give it to us?"

Kail's comment about her shovel made her shake her head and grin. It was a thin piece of iron that got all it's strength from it's shape. If you hit someone over the head with it, you'd probably but a dent in the side. If you hit someone in armour, you'd need a smith with a hammer to get it back into shape.

"You've got a lot to learn, laddie. Shovels might work where you're from, but here you'd be better off with an axe than a shovel."

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Ilta considers the option of having a certain amount of crops or livestock given to them as part of a renting arrangement. It would certainly make her feel like a minor lord then. “I guess we wouldn’t go hungry with that solution. I think I rather just have the gold, but I am alright with either solution.”

Ilta shakes her head, “No, I don’t think we could set up a blast furnace, and I’ve never worked one of those things before. Besides, I doubt you would want to deal with all the smoke. Smelting might be out of the question. Also, in the case of weapons, you already took the metal out of its ore. However, we can maybe find some to give us some decent metal.”

“Kail, we have a stove,” she says pointing to a place where a cauldron can be set over an open flame. She had no way of knowing that wasn’t what he meant. “I mean, it may not be the greatest stove, but it’s alright. As for the oven, we’ll have to find a lot more money if we want to live in a place with one of those.”

Ilta looks back to the cellar that Shy came from. If there were bodies down there, she should probably bury them properly.  “Did you find any? Bodies, I mean.”

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"Eh, well it was just a thought and I don't know any better on something. Just trying to make due with what we got" said Kail as he tried to go with the cheaper option at hand. He had no idea on how some real life smithing and melting of ores and metals. The male was going off of what he had seen in games. But when he saw the stove that Ilta was mentioning it. He sighs slightly as this was not the thing he was picturing. "If cast iron was invented in this era...I could make so much more. The things you two would be eating.....ah well" he said lamenting a bit. He would need to get some fire spells and maybe weld something together. But again had no magic that he could use.

"Shy I was trying to be sarcastic, although back in my world. That could be done with a few alloys of metal" although hearing about the bodies he got serious. That did beg the question and the blond chakked it up to sickness like a plague or something along those lines. "Maybe there done in by a plague, if there dead bodies. If not any dead bodies, they must have abandoned the place. Like either bad soil or the area had some kind of ill omen" he said and pondered on what he could do with the harth at hand. Since he would need to make something to jury rig a stove that he would be familure with to cook on.

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Kail's talk of "ovens" and "stoves" made little sense to Séanait, although from Ilta's reply it seemed that "stove" was another word for a cook fire. Why their's wasn't sufficient, with its swinging pot and spit roast escaped her. Why on earth Kail wanted a bread oven was beyond her, though.

"If you want to make bread, I can show you how using the fire. It's easy enough, once you get the hang of it."

The issue of cast iron also bothered her a bit. What was so special about it? Was it some kind of iron that made food taste better? That didn't seem right to her, but who knew what they thought in strange lands.

"Does this 'cast iron' make the food taste better?"

Séanait doubted Kail's suggestion that he'd been trying for sarcasm with his comment about her shovel being a good weapon, but she didn't begrudge him that. Young men rarely wanted to look stupid in front of a woman. As for his thought that there might have been a plague, well, it was obvious that he was from a kinder world than hers. She shook her head at both Ilta and Kail.

"No bodies. I didn't even find a loose stone. If there's anything down there, well, I'd expect it to be a threshold sacrifice, not some poor souls who died of a plague. Plagues come and go, but ghosts terrify always."

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Ilta looks back the stove to see what it is wrong with it. It seemed perfectly decent for cooking. Could you like a fire there? Yes. Could you stick a pot there? Yes. She shakes her head, “It seems fine. I mean, they use the same thing 1000 years from now. Sometimes, I’m glad to know that there isn’t too much different between now and then.”

Ilta wasn’t the greatest of cooks. Her typical method of cooking was to throw something into the pot or on the spit and wait. However, it’s not like she had much access to exotic spices like people in the south seemed to have back in her world. Food was food though. It didn’t matter what it tasted like, so long as it was edible.

She gives a shrug as Shy asks what cast iron is. “I haven’t a clue. There is probably a blast furnace around here somewhere. I can go ask about it if you are really interested in it Kail. Maybe they’ll have some clue how to make what you want.”

Ilta frowns as Shy mentions ghosts. There were threats that Ilta knew how to deal with. And then there were things she didn’t. Incorporeal spirits found there way into the latter. “Hopefully, we don’t have a haunting. Finding a light mage to help wouldn’t be that easy. And I’d feel uncomfortable using a dark mage for the job.”

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"Cast Iron if used for cooking wear for pots and pans. It distributes the heat a lot more to cook food more evenly. There a few other uses, mind you. For the two of you, I could be talking out of my ass" said Kail as it was going to be really hard for him to adjust to the world of Nova. He did hear Ilta say that she might look into a blast furnace. "If you can Which he would be thankful for but constructing it everything he wanted would be hard. But then hears Shy offering to teach him on how to make bread on an open fire. He gave a nod to the redhead "Thanks....its just hard since, like all of this is like stone age to me. Its really hard to adjust to a world like this, for the two of you its easier. But I am at least trying" he said and then thinks about the ghost aspect and slightly weirded out but could deal with it.

"Anyway.....In the next few days I'm going to do some adventuring. I might look into finding some Fated Items like books or tools that came from my world. I'm sure, that I am not the only one that came from Earth" he said showing some kind of plan at least on what to do with himself.

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Séanait did indeed feel that Kail was talking out of his arse. She'd never noticed any difference between a copper pot or a ceramic one, except that a copper pot was easier to clean and didn't hold a smell half so well. Then again, at home, they'd used the ceramic pot 24/7 during winter, while she'd only used the small copper pot she'd been issued off and on. Knowing that Kail was struggling with the difference in technology and culture, though, she didn't say anything and just nodded thoughtfully.

The boy also showed some interest in learning how to make bread without an oven. Séanait let her eyes wander as the conversation continued, looking for a griddle. She could cook bread on the coals of a fire if need be, but she preferred to use some form of griddle, even if it was just a stone. She spotted a large, black, flat piece of what looked like pottery and filed it away for future reference.

"That's true. You're certainly getting out there and doing things."

When Ilta said that she hoped there weren't any ghost, Séanait agreed with her. The mages of this world creeped her out no end, and she didn't want to have to call on them for any reason. And, if the so called "dark mages" were even worse than light mages, she wanted nothing to do with them whatsoever.

Kail, probably uncomfortable about the idea of sacrifices and ghosts, changed the subject to what he was going to do in the next couple of days, which got Séanait thinking about what she was going to do. For now, she thought, she'd probably stay around here and work on the minor things that needed doing.

"I think I'll do a bit of work around the place, get everything tidied up. I might even look into seeing who would be willing to rent our land."