Husband of the Goblin Tribe

Chapter Twenty-eight – In which Ark happily babysits Diana Artemis along with Vera, while trying to give Berry a much deserved day off.

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?”

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“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.

Let me say this clearly… I suck at games of memory. But again, today is not about me. It’s about having fun with my daughter, and seeing how she’s developing. Vera was a lifesaver to have here with me, and she also took a great interest in the game, to the point I had to make sure she wasn’t cheating.

Those two were neck and neck on each and every game, with Vera winning as much as Diana. Vera had a good memory, but Diana had more instinct or pure luck in drawing the right squares with the matching runes. Either way, they played so many games that I didn’t even know Berry had come back into the breeding cavern.

Turns out it was just a bit of motherly worry. Berry wasn’t worried about Diana so much as she was worried Diana would run me ragged. Berry had sat down with us and was proudly cheering her daughter on as Diana won yet another game from Vera.

It then became an accidental game of rivalry then, with Vera dragging me over to her team.

Well, as long as it’s friendly, it’s okay.

I took the chance to ask Berry about making some blue water, in exchange for the bone I got which let me make this game with Vera’s help, so she agreed to prepare some, but that it would take a couple of days. After losing two more games in a row even with me helping, Vera quit. I didn’t think she’d be a sore loser, but maybe it was something else?

Since Berry was here, I asked Diana if she wanted to show her mommy how good she was at throwing the dirt balls into the bucket. Berry looked on and was quite astonished to see her daughter’s accuracy.

“Diana Artemis be great huntress.”

“Think so, too? She’s got a good memory and instinct.”

“Maybe… teach Diana pick berries not smart? Maybe ask Prima teach how hunt more soon.”

“No. Right now is the time for her to have plenty of love from her family.”

“Love? What that?”

I sighed. I guess… it’s not something goblins know.

“Love is the greatest care you can give another person. You want to be with them and you both try to make each other better, stronger, smarter, and happier.”

“Husband… love Diana Artemis?”

“Of course. Husband loves both Berry and Diana.”

“Other goblins too?”

“I’m sure over time I will come to love more goblins. Maybe not all of the goblins here, but even if I don’t love them, I won’t treat them poorly. Especially not the strong ones they have.”

I pulled Berry close and hugged her.

“We’re fine here, so you can go relax more if you want to.”

“Can… Berry stay?”

“Sure. I just thought you would like a little time to yourself. I know how hard you are working, trying to raise our daughter.”

With Berry sticking around, I pestered Vera for one more game to be made from the dirt. Ten small dirt cylinders as pins and a bigger dirt ball. I made a bowling lane with side bumpers so there wouldn’t be gutter balls. All four of us took turns sending the ball rolling down the lane to knock over the compacted dirt pins.

There is not a person alive who doesn’t find bowling fun. I often played it on the weekends in my previous life, and while I’d never managed a score past two hundred, just playing it was a great way to waste time. I often played with my older sister who wanted to unwind and drink a lot when she was able to leave her kids with our parents or a sitter.

Diana, again, was an extremely competitive child. I would need to think of more games in the future to make for her to better develop her thinking and motor skills. But thankfully she’s still a child, and her internal battery is like one in a brand new smartphone. It lasts a long time at first, but once it hits zero percent, out like a light she goes.

Berry decided she had spent enough time with me, and by she I mean Diana, not Berry, though it was kind of the same thing. I brought the rune memory match pieces with me as we walked back to her room, and carefully put them in a corner outside of the bedroom for Diana to play with on her own in the living room whenever she wanted.

As for Berry…

Well, we have already sealed the deal. Now that she could get it again, she wanted more loving from me, and I just couldn’t bring myself to say no to my baby mama.

I returned back to the breeding cavern to find Vera having made a duplicate of the memory match game and she was giving me a grand idea for a game we could play with just us, magician and disciple. A magical version of the game Scrabble. It would be formula magic spells that we connected with little squares with runes carved on them.

It went over very well with her.

Prima had come in to visit, bringing some extra food for both of us. I was deep in a match with Vera, but since the breeding room had been partially converted through land magic, I let Prima believe that Jewel had been present. I explained the ball toss and the bowling lane, to which Prima had experimentally tried both. She was better than Diana, but that was to be expected. She was the guardian of the goblin tribe and by all accounts the best hunter among them.

But well, you can only have so much fun alone, and I was in a heated game with Vera who was actually giving me a run for my money. Prima had come to the table where Vera and I were sitting and playing and she was looking on with curiosity. I explained this was a game where the markings had to be placed in a certain way to make special words, and that Vera was playing really well.

Vera ended up winning by shutting me out of being able to place any further pieces and I was more happy that she won over the fact that I had lost.

“Want!”

Vera had grabbed me and dragged me and Prima over to the raised bed. I guess I was in for a penalty game. There were two goblin sisters waiting for me to pay up. Prima didn’t seem to mind being roped into her little sister’s ploy, and so I had a grand old time with some goblin sisters who couldn’t be more different.

I would be seeing the sun tomorrow, Prima informed me after our coitus. I wonder how lazy guard was doing with her exercise practice? Was she keeping up?

Prima’s belly had gotten a tiny bit bigger and I had given it a kiss before she left.

I had Vera help me deconstruct the ball-toss setup, but since the bowling lane was against a far wall and mostly out of the way, I left that alone. I had decided to renovate this cave slowly, to make it an inviting place for everyone of the girls who wanted to come visit. I couldn’t fuck them all at the same time, but at least they would be entertained.

Honestly, the freedom they had to just share me so publicly was hard to accept sometimes.

They were far more possessive over their things than me.

But that’s fine. There was plenty I had to give them, especially for the ones who were good to me afterwards.

Also, I wasn’t going to be picking a goblin tonight.

Prima had something she wanted, and she was willing to pull rank to get it.