Sword and Snow

Avuri

I wasn't sure exactly what had gotten Emery in such a reflective, subdued mood, but I was glad to see that a little snuggle brightened her spirits. It was rare that she got too contemplative without a reason, but I didn't think that it was such a bad thing on its own from time to time. Being able to clearly see where you were and what was around you sometimes meant looking back to see where you came from and what you used to be, and that was fine.

But I was also immensely satisfied that she was not only satisfied with how things were, but seemed to be genuinely happy with it. Especially since I had thought things had been going swimmingly. Vale was away on one of his trips, so proving to ourselves that the two of us could handle six children on our own was important, and we were proving to be up to the task.

In addition, we had even solidified some guiding principles for the kids' training, which would no doubt be useful in the future if we ever took in more children. Which, if I were honest, I had little doubt that we would. I suspected that as soon as everyone seemed settled, Emery would get the itch to do something again.

I was beginning to expect that such a cycle was the norm for her. When a hunt and rescue went well, she'd be satisfied for a while before feeling the itch to do it again. I wasn't sure if I would go as far as calling it a 'hero complex', because I didn't think Emery felt like she needed to be viewed as a hero in her own mind or anything like that. It felt more like she needed to regularly prove it to herself that she wasn't useless in some way. If nothing else, it felt more deep-seated than something as 'simplistic' as a hero-complex.

While dealing with her feelings may become important at some point, I was comfortable with taking things as they were for the moment. Because with how tumultuous every single member of our family was, taking joy and solace in the slower, more intimate moments of life seemed important.

"We really should get the kids into the bath." I said, muffled by the way my face was shoved against the crook of Emery's neck. We hadn't done anything too strenuous ourselves that day beyond running the kids through their own exercises, but it was still enough to work up just a bit of sweat. It left Emery with a bit of her natural scent, and I smiled at it. While I loved when she smelled like any of the myriad of oils we kept around the baths, her natural smell was just as comforting.

I felt Emery take a deep breath as my arm laid over her midsection rose with her breathing. "Yeah. Yeah, we should."

"But lazing here is really nice." I chuckled, speaking what we were both thinking.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is." Emery echoed. "What are they even doing right now?"

"Hm?"

"The kids."

"Oh. They were playing with a ball in the playground. Trying to keep it in the air."

I felt Emery's concentration spike with just a hint of Qi moving through her body. It was a simple technique for strengthening certain senses beyond even what a normal Cultivator body was capable of on its own. And given we were quite a ways from the playground, on the other side of the Basin and looking at the sky and clouds, I suspected I knew what she was doing.

A slow, satisfied smile crept over Emery's face. "Yeah. They're playing and laughing."

"No better sound in the world?" I asked jokingly, given the reverence and comfort in her tone of voice.

Emery seemed like she was about to agree, but then her contented smile changed into something a little more suggestive. "I can think of a few?" She snickered and waggled her eyebrows.

I just laughed.

"That's one of 'em." Emery said confidently. And when I went to rebuff her for the probably-not-joke, she kissed me to keep me quiet instead.

"Alright, everybody, time to get cleaned up." Emery said as we approached the playground. I shuffled along behind her, still not quite satisfied with the way I had retied my robes. I just couldn't get them to sit right after Emery literally snapped two of the ties by accident.

The kids all made the expected 'Aw's as their game was getting brought to an end. They were remarkably still fairly clean, despite the dirt floor of the playground. Usually, a lot of their play ended up with all of them coated in dirt from rolling around for various reasons. But it seemed that their game for the day had kept most of them upright. Except for their legs, anyway, which had all sorts of skid marks, probably from sliding while trying to get the ball.

"We were thinking of a big family tonight. How's that sound?" I asked, which immediately turned the mood back around as they all cheered. We had gotten in the habit of doing shorter, separate bath times, splitting up the boys and girls, but they had collectively been asking for more baths together. Cierra was insisting on bathing clothes though, so that was a stipulation we made everyone agree to.

Mostly, the kids just wanted to play around in the huge bathing pool together in a group. Which meant either Emery or I would split off with the boys, make sure they were fully washed, then remove the divider that temporarily split the large bath into two. We honestly really needed to renovate the bath again for a more permanently usable solution for men's and women's baths now that we would have more long term male inhabitants, as opposed to just Vale who would often wait and simply bathe alone.

"Do we need to go get our bathing clothes?" Karn asked.

"Nope. Already have them on us." Emery said, wiggling her finger that carried a storage ring. "So we can go straight to the bath."

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"'Kay."

"And we'll eat a late dinner after, too. Something special for tonight after a nice, long soak." I added, before anyone could ask. It was getting to the later end of the afternoon, and would likely be dark by the time everyone was tired of playing in the bath.

"What kind of special thing is it, Momri?" Stena asked, excited.

I very dramatically posed with my finger tapping my chin in thought. I hadn't planned that far. "Hmm. Well, we have to have fresh, cold milk after a long bath, don't we?"

"Yeah!"

"You know," Emery added, "we have a bunch of ripe fruit that is probably going to go bad soon. We could go with some of the sweet cream instead of milk and add the fruit to it."

The kids all 'oooh'd and 'aah'd appropriately.

"That sounds like a good idea to me." I agreed. "How about it? Cream and fruit for an after bath dinner?"

No one shouted this time, but the various levels of furious nodding made me smile. I turned toward the bath and pointed to it. "Then off we go!"

"Charge!" Emery declared, and speedwalked off toward the bath at a speed that the children could keep up with. I brought up the rear happily, making sure no one got left behind.

It really wasn't that long a walk, and once we were at the little bathhouse that we had made leading into the pseudo-hotsprings, we split into two groups. I went with the boys to make sure they were fully cleaned before we all rejoined again.

Thankfully, all of the boys were still young enough to not balk at being joined by their mother in the bath. They were old enough to wash themselves, so they did that, leaving me really as more of an advisor to be sure everyone really did scrub themselves clean without skipping any important bits.

While it was a little sad, it seemed like their previous lives had made all three of them see baths as novel, nice treats. They treated the chance to wash their bodies with a reverence I had never seen younger boys have. Not once had any of them tried to skip washing under our watch, taking great joy in generally being clean instead.

A far, drastic difference from the boys I had grown up with, who often tried to skip out on baths for no real discernable reason beyond the simple fact that they could.

Given that they never struggled against it, the washing process never took long. I washed myself at the same time they did, scrubbing away the day's built up sweat and grime, before we all rinsed with buckets and then slipped into our side of the split pool. Once we were all sufficiently clean, I popped swimming clothes out from my storage ring.

They really didn't amount to much. The boys all had simple shorts made from the same soft cloth used for towels that would be easy enough to wash and dry later. The girls basically had the same for their bottoms, with the addition of a simple draped bit of cloth to cover their chests. But in both cases, it was enough to conserve everyone's modesty, especially within a family.

"We're all set over here." I called, once everyone was once again 'clothed'.

"We're not quite done yet."

I chuckled and looked conspiratorially at the little boys and said, "Girls and their long hair," scoffing appropriately. As if my hair wasn't the longest in the family by a fair margin. Although Cierra's was getting remarkably close in comparative length. The boys laughed in response.

"We heard that!" Emery called.

"Momri, you're just lucky that Mom likes to wash your hair separately at night in your bedroom!" Cierra shot back.

I poked at the massive, tangled bun atop my head playfully and shrugged. "Well, she's not wrong."

"How long does your hair take to wash, Momri?" Karn asked curiously.

"I wouldn't even be half way done with it now if I washed it here." I said, only half-joking. It did take a while to properly clean, especially if I didn't use any Qi to hurry it along.

"Whoa," the boys chorused.

"Count yourselves lucky that you keep your hair mostly short." I chuckled.

"Okay, we're ready now." Emery said, and the wall began to move. It was a fairly simple foldable wall built out of wooden slats that would be more akin to a dressing screen than anything truly resembling a wall. But it did the job and was easy enough to remove, allowing the children to play together in the large open bath.

With the wall down, I sloshed over to sit next to my wife, who was neatly perched on the edge of the large bath with her legs dangling in the water. Once I sat down, she leaned against me, putting her head on my shoulder.

"Hey."

"Hi."

We didn't say anything more than that as we watched our kids enjoy their bathtime by not bathing at all. While our bath was large, it wasn't quite big enough for six children to genuinely swim in, but that hardly stopped them from trying. They slipped from one game to the next like they were trying on clothes, seeing if something would stick.

First they tried to just swim, which turned into a makeshift game of tag, and then a splash fight. The younger kids, led by Stena, all teamed up against Cierra who was tossing them all around playfully in the water, using the lack of weight under water to her advantage. The younger kids, meanwhile, had taken to Cierra's 'attacks' by flying backwards in spectacular ways, including flipping and spiraling under the water.

Emery and I watched, just keeping an eye out to be sure no one got hurt. The bottom of the bath was mostly packed stone, and someone colliding with it hard could do some serious damage, but the water was deep enough to keep them pretty safe so long as they didn't jump into the water from outside it, which no one tried.

Eventually they tired of their game and began speed walking around the somewhat circular bath in a line to try to create a whirlpool.

It was at that point that Emery and I were instructed to get out of the bath because our legs were stopping the current from getting fast enough. So, banished as we were, we sat nearby with warm water flowing from a couple of Arrays over our backs.

"Do you think they'd get mad at me if I made their whirlpool for them?" I asked, leaning over toward my wife.

"If they knew you did it? Yeah, probably."

"...Should I anyway?"

"If you do it safely, it could be funny." Emery said with a shrug.

A minute later, the kids were cheering when they noticed that they were starting to get carried along in their circle by the current of the water that they were creating.

A few minutes after that, they started getting completely swept along by the current, ending with a rather hilarious scene of all six trying to hold onto one another as Cierra desperately clutched at the side of the bath trying to avoid getting dragged into the center of the whirlpool that they had created. With a little help, anyway.