Chapter 180: More Hands Needed

Chapter 180: Chapter 180: More Hands Needed

The realization hit gradually, the way most practical problems did once the shock of Ignis and Alyanna and the newly merged land had finally settled into something manageable.

"Wait," Aunt Mary said, glancing around the reshaped fields with a expression shifting from wonder into something more pointed. "The cows. Has anyone milked the cows?"

Silence answered her.

"Penny," Erik said slowly, "when’s the last time anyone checked on the animals?"

Penelope’s stomach dropped. "It’s been... a while. Between the flooding, the ambush, Persephone showing up, Killian’s contract—" She trailed off, already turning toward the distant pasture where a small herd of cows grazed placidly, entirely unbothered by weeks of apparent neglect. "Oh no."

"Oh no is right," Aunt Lucy said, already moving with surprising speed for a woman who usually took her time about most things. "Cows need milking twice a day, minimum. If nobody’s been doing it—"

"They’ll be in pain," Aunt Mary finished grimly. "Possibly worse."

They hurried toward the pasture together, and the sight that greeted them was, mercifully, less dire than feared — the cows looked healthy, if visibly uncomfortable, udders full and clearly overdue. Ben, closest to actual farm experience among the younger members thanks to weeks of working alongside his mother’s garden, moved immediately toward the small barn structure they’d built weeks earlier, already rolling up his sleeves.

"I can handle this," he said. "I’ve watched Mom do it a dozen times as a child. Someone else check the chickens."

"I’ll do the chickens," Kai volunteered, already jogging toward the coop.

"And the pigs," Erik added. "And the goats. Has anyone been feeding them?"

Another uncomfortable silence answered that question too.

"We’ve been so focused on the outside world," Penelope said, guilt creeping into her voice as she surveyed the pasture, the coop, the small pond glinting in the distance where she’d once, in some optimistic burst of foresight, stocked a handful of edible fish and shellfish. "I completely forgot how much upkeep all of this actually needs."

"None of us thought about it," Aunt Mary said, though her tone carried the particular gentle reprimand of someone who fully intended to make sure it didn’t happen again. "Time moves so strangely in here. A day outside feels like nothing, but in here, weeks have clearly passed for these poor animals."

"The pond," Penelope said suddenly, already moving toward it. "I need to check the pond too."

She reached the water’s edge and stared, disbelief crossing her face at what she found — the small stock of fish and edible sea life she’d introduced weeks earlier had multiplied considerably, the pond now teeming with far more than she remembered putting in, the accelerated growth rate of the space clearly applying to more than just crops.

"That’s... a lot of fish," Kai observed, jogging over with a basket of eggs already balanced against one hip, evidently having made quick work of the coop.

"They’ve been breeding this whole time," Penelope said, still staring. "We’re going to need to harvest some of this before it overcrowds itself."

Aunt Lucy arrived a moment later, taking in the pond with the same critical, experienced eye she brought to everything agricultural. "And the crops," she said, already turning toward the small plot of land she’d claimed as her own project weeks earlier. "I’ve been tending that garden more out of habit than necessity, but if the growth rate’s been accelerating the way everything else has—"

They found the garden in a state that made even Aunt Lucy’s eyes widen — rows of vegetables grown far beyond what a normal harvest cycle should have produced, some plants bent nearly double under the weight of their own overripe fruit, others clearly past their prime and beginning to spoil where they stood.

"We’ve wasted so much," Aunt Lucy said, dismayed, crouching to examine a row of tomatoes that had split open from sheer overgrowth. "Weeks of food, just sitting here rotting because none of us thought to come check."

"We didn’t know," Penelope said, though the guilt sat heavy regardless. "I should have set up some kind of schedule. A rotation. Something."

Erik crossed his arms, surveying the scope of the problem with the same methodical focus he brought to every crisis. "We need to fix this properly, not just patch it for today. Between the cows, the chickens, the pigs, the goats, the pond, and now apparently an entire garden that’s been running wild — that’s more work than the six of us can manage alongside everything else we’re already doing outside."

"Seven of us," Killian corrected quietly, having followed the group at a slight distance, still visibly processing the scale of everything he’d just learned about in the last hour alone.

"Seven," Erik agreed. "Still not enough, not with supply runs, security, and now apparently a small working farm demanding daily attention."

Penelope chewed her lip, already running through the math in her head. "We could set up a rotation. Someone handles the animals in the morning before supply runs. Someone else checks the garden in the evening. It’s not impossible, just — it needs actual structure. We got lucky the neglect wasn’t worse."

"There’s another option," Erik said, glancing at her carefully.

"What’s that?"

"More hands." He held her gaze a beat longer than strictly necessary. "Persephone."

Penelope’s breath caught slightly, though not from surprise — the thought had already been circling the edges of her mind since Persephone had walked back into her life at the dock.

"You want to contract her," she said, not quite a question.

"I think we should," Erik said. "She’s family. She’s proven herself capable — the boat, the crossbow, the ambush story she told us over dinner. And now, apparently, we have a farm’s worth of work that could genuinely use another set of hands, plus the added safety of knowing she’s protected the same way the rest of us are."

"I checked the capacity a while back," Penelope said slowly, working through the logistics out loud. "After the jewelry district haul, before all of this. We had room for up to twenty. We’re only at eight now, with Killian."

"Then there’s no real obstacle," Erik said. "Just the conversation itself."

Penelope smiled, something warm settling into her chest at the thought of her cousin finally, fully joining the family in the same way everyone else had. "I’ll talk to her tonight. She’s supposed to come up for dinner anyway." She paused, something brightening further behind her eyes. "And once Uncle Silver and Dahlia get here, we should contract them too. There’s more than enough room, and I don’t want either of them going without the same protection everyone else has, not for a single extra day longer than necessary."

"Good," Erik said. "One thing at a time, though. Persephone first."

Erik glanced back toward the overgrown garden, the still-unmilked goats bleating somewhere in the distance, the pond practically writhing with overdue fish. "In the meantime, we should probably divide up today’s work before any more of it spoils."

They spent the next several hours working through the accumulated backlog together — Ben and Kai handling the milking and the chickens with practiced efficiency, Aunt Lucy directing the garden harvest with brisk, no-nonsense authority, Aunt Mary and Aurora settling nearby to sort the overripe produce from what could still be salvaged, Erik and Killian working together to properly feed and check on the goats and pigs, who’d clearly grown considerably more insistent about mealtimes than any of them had accounted for.

Penelope moved between all of it, checking in, helping where she was needed most, the sheer scale of the oversight finally, fully sinking in as the day wore on. They’d built something remarkable here — an entire, self-sustaining refuge tucked inside a pocket dimension, capable of feeding and sheltering an entire family through however long this apocalypse dragged on. But remarkable things still required maintenance, still demanded attention and structure and hands willing to do the unglamorous, daily work of actually keeping it running.

By the time the worst of the backlog had been cleared, the sun — or whatever passed for it inside the space’s artificial cycle — had begun sinking low over the mountains, and the whole group gathered near the crystal spring, exhausted but satisfied, baskets of eggs and fresh vegetables and freshly milked cream arranged around them like the spoils of an actual, honest day’s labor.

"We need a real system," Erik said, surveying the group with quiet authority. "A rotation. Assigned days, assigned tasks. This can’t happen again."

"Agreed," Aunt Lucy said, wiping dirt from her hands with obvious satisfaction despite the day’s earlier dismay. "Though I’ll admit, it felt good to properly work a garden again. Even a chaotic one."

"We’ll figure out the schedule tomorrow," Penelope said, watching Aurora babble happily at a chicken that had wandered too close, watching Kai attempt, and fail, to catch one of the pond’s more enthusiastic fish with his bare hands, watching her family — larger now, fuller than it had been even a week ago — settle into the golden evening light with the particular contentment of people who’d built something worth the effort of maintaining.

"Tonight," she added, glancing toward Erik, "I’ll talk to Seffy."

Erik nodded, something quietly satisfied in his expression. "Good. She’ll say yes."

Penelope thought so too, watching the space around her — mountains that hadn’t existed a day ago, a wolf the size of a horse resting near the tree line, a dragon somewhere in his cave no doubt sulking about being left out of the farm work, a phoenix curled contentedly on her own shoulder — and felt, for the first time in longer than she could easily remember, like the family she was building here might actually be big enough, strong enough, to survive whatever the drowning world outside still had left to throw at them.