Chapter 564: Chapter 564 - A Mothering Architecture That Altogether Seeks Renovation, Innovation, & Imitation

"Yatrel had our staff set up one of the guest rooms for them. The one nearest the kitchen, so that she wouldn’t have to be far for anything."

"Hm. Well, that’s also the noisiest part of the house so-"

"We thought about that little one. That room is silent as a whisper when it comes to sounds from below, now."

That response made Elua’s expression wobble into something between ’approval’... and the kind of ’irritation’ that she reserved for a particular matter. Situations where someone else had already solved a *crafting* problem which she fully intended to solve herself! Though in her case it would have been done with sigilry in the same way she had selectively soundproofed her own room - and she was rather sure that no one else on the continent was good enough to do that.

’Maybe Dima? Did I teach her too much? No, I barely taught her anything. Wait... what was in that book I gave her again? It did have certain Sound things...’

Qat felt the flickers of feeling through the fragment as much as in her wife’s spirit wrapped around her. Tendrils squeezed back reassuringly and made the artisan realize she was using a lot of mental effort for something that could just be questioned out loud. She’d grown a bit too used to building whatever, whenever, and planning silently. Because if she mused out loud then Madrigil would derail her if he was nearby.

"How can that be?"

"Your mother."

"Why, that’s hardly a complete answer. Are you trying to be funny?"

Glancing back over his shoulder at his adult daughter being carried in such a strange manner, one he was sure that the girl’s mother would tease him about trying out if she saw it, the man pretended that everything was fine, and normal, and good, and not at all as dramatic as can be.

"Isn’t it an answer? You’re the one who gave her those books. Believe me, she had been doing little else beyond experimenting with architectural principles since she returned. Even if it means tearing up the flooring... which I remember paying a renowned carpenter for like it was yesterday."

There was love as well as bitterness in the end of his sentence. Ondua er Goltbred wasn’t much of a miser, nor was he entirely resistant to change... but he could be quite sentimental when he wanted to be. And the flooring that had been in the guest wing was quite possibly one of the few things left in the house from its original point of construction.

The last feature left which he had picked out entirely by himself after being granted the land. At least, at Yatrel’s urging that he should have things like that in the house - things that had been completely left up to him. Now that final flooring had been torn out and shaped to strips!

He was starting to feel like the women in his family life wanted nothing more than to love him *just* as much as destroy him softly. Even he had to admit it was *better*, now, objectively.

"It’s very pretty up there. If she had not gotten so busy with the work on her Guild headquarters, I’m sure she would have had us do more than just the single wing."

Reinforced with acoustic muting principles on the structural layer underneath... and resurfaced with an entirely new style of flooring. A hybrid-parquet of interwoven materials, the old and still slowly darkening cherry wood was gradually turned into woven tile grids. All by a helpful youngster who decided that the Dame Goltbred’s idea was amazing enough to spend two months visiting the estate - and working for hours on end.

Between the slats of wood, that were set in something of a basket-weave pattern, were smaller squares of banded, brownish crystals. Specifically a variety of Tiger’s Eye that had been quarried within the family holdings and refined further by the Crystal Element cultivator himself. Though his wife was sure to tell her husband that he didn’t need to work as hard as the Wood manipulator was.

A cunning bit of reverse psychology in anyone else’s hands! But the woman had truly meant it. Each tozzetto was beveled extra carefully to sit flush after being melded into the stone structure below with a moment of combining the parent’s abilities. There they served as anchor points, with the alternating half-lap joints in the tessellating wood keeping the flooring components snug.

The join between floor and wall was a nice, easy to clean curve that the construction specialist had seen her daughter prioritizing to prevent dust buildup and keep everything sanitary. She made up for its simplicity of shape compared to the usual fluted and busy looking molding, which appealed at the time when trying to embody the expected level of affluence they had attained... by choosing a glassy, tea color quartz for the wall base’s material.

It wasn’t as expensive at all, especially considering her husband fused them into solid shape. But she was finding as she’d grown older that having more of a hand in making everything themselves was a lot nicer of a connection to their home than just using the money they had made to purchase something.

"I’ll have to go give it a look later. If my most trusted mount takes me that way."

"The fact that you fully mean that is concerning. Go look even if I don’t lead you there."

"Okay~"

"Good. Then we eat first. And talk more about everything after."

The swordswoman’s declaration was met with no argument from the man who wanted to eat and probably rest early this evening - while leaving all complicated matters to Yatrel until he woke. Nor from the eldest daughter that wanted to do almost the same! Though her resting place was pretty much already where she was... and wherever that muscular form decided to close her eyes.

"Can’t we talk while we eat? Or before? I don’t have to be quiet again, do I...?"

Only the young, far from perfectly mannered child had any will to field a comment.

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

The dining hall had always been bigger than needed for only serving the family itself. Even if the times that they could manage to get their closer friends to visit was sometimes quite limited, having the space to keep a sizeable table exactly where it was important to Ondua. He’d grown up in a place where servants were made to bring secondary tables to extend the primary one if guests had been invited...

A choice that looked messy to him, both for the visual aesthetic that often required hiding much of the seams as well as for the trouble it brought to the household staff. This was another reason he was still slightly put out by the many renovations his wife had put them through. The servants had not complained, but he knew firsthand that moving furniture back and forth so much was a hassle for the mortals and even the very few old, barely more than mortal cultivators on the payroll.

The place settings for the dinner this time weren’t formal in the slightest. Practical over presentational. Which meant Yatrel had overruled whatever the Tablekeeper’s instincts would have been when it came to setting up for a daughter who may or may not return that evening - and her territory leading spouse. Who had sent word ahead of time that she would be coming that day, but still had not arrived by the time of the initial preparations.

’Good for them. They deserved some time alone together after everything.’

Watching over the overexcited cook in the kitchen, Yatrel er Goltbred found herself feeling in quite high spirits. The Bloody Duelist had already found that hosting guests that got along with her affable Hero was more rewarding than troublesome, but she’d quickly found that it was another kind of gathering that she enjoyed most. She had not had her whole family around, to sit for a meal together, in *too many* long years.

The way she had grown up - as an orphan from an early age - had meant that such things had not been entirely natural at first after she and Ondua were married. Yet such dinners had become such a staple in their lives after little Elua had aged enough to attend them. It had been hard on the mother just a bit, when her eldest went off to Guild training at the distant Coiled Serpent headquarters.

Following that was the Descent - and with the reincarnator disappeared and other things going on... it felt like there were far less such opportunities to spend as many steady-planned meals with Onya as she had Elua. Leaving perhaps too much of the little raccoon’s care to the girl’s personal servant. Part of her still felt a little guilty about that, even if the youngest daughter hated to sit in one place that long most nights anyway.

Taking the offered sample of a sort of spiced bread, a variety that the mint-eyed woman had not eaten since she’d gone and had her missing eye replaced, she tilted the baked good this way and that before tasting it and smiling tenderly.

"I think this time she’ll be good. Hopefully."

"My Lady?"

"We might have two officially recognized Heroes in the house again tonight, but there’s someone that my littlest idolizes much more. I expect she will be on her best behavior. So feel free to put the things directly on her plate she is usually picky about instead of hiding them carefully like you always do."

"...Are you sure?"

"Yes. I’m curious to see if she tries to eat them in front of Elua. After all, her father and I have told her... about the very unpalatable things she ate in that place. Just to grow and survive. Being in front of that sort of person may make her a bit braver."

At this the cook could only nod. Normally he might be worried, as all good house chefs do, about the waste of good ingredients. Though some of the servants were not all too picky when it came to leftovers, it was just bad form to prepare things for meals that their employer could not eat!

However, that was not a problem tonight. For the beautiful, not-so-little-anymore glutton of their household was back... to make sure absolutely nothing went to waste. No matter who ate which much disliked or what barely tolerated food this evening, he was quite confident that the heiress would come and pick at what was left to be taken back to the scullery.

If *anything* made it back to that room this time at all.