EPILOGUE
SIX MONTHS LATER
DAKOTA
I hum to myself as I put a log into the stove and heat the cast-iron skillet.
The theme song from Little House on the Prairie plays in my head, and I’m tempted to pull out an apron and go full-blown pioneer.
But breakfast is just eggs and tan coffee-water, so there’s not really a need to cover my clothing.
I wait for my cast-iron skillet on the stove to warm up, and as I do, I crack eggs.
God, I love eggs.
Even more than the coffee, they feel like a daily luxury.
The coffee is sad and watered down, a constant reminder of what used to be, but the eggs are fresh and delicious every day, courtesy of the chickens we now have on the farm.
We have them for breakfast every morning, and I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of them.
I don’t care how poopy the chicken coop gets or how many times they peck our hands as we pull out the eggs every day. Chickens are magical.
Our flock was initially small—three hens and a rooster that showed up at the barn a few days after we’d moved to the farmhouse.
While Murr and I had worked on transporting cats slowly to the new house, Rabbit had worked on catching chickens and repairing the old coop.
The chickens were easy to persuade with a bit of food and settled in.
It was so hard not to eat the first eggs they laid, but after a few months, we had a flock.
Last month they started really laying eggs like crazy and haven’t stopped.
We are currently in egg heaven.
I’ve pored through old cookbooks, trying to find recipes that involve eggs and no flour.
I do miss bread, but having eggs makes things easier.
The How to Farm guidebooks say that chickens stop laying in the winter (which surprised me) so we’ll feast while we have them and go heavy on red meat when they stop.
It’s nice to plan ahead for the future. I impulsively crack a few more eggs and then dice some summer squash into the mix. Maybe we can make a quiche? That’d be nice.
Rabbit cuts through the kitchen, a laundry basket in her arms. Kermit rests atop the folded blankets in the basket as my daughter sets it down. “Did you know the cats have been nesting in the guest room?”
“Have they? I didn’t check.” I pull a tiny tomato out of our veggie basket and chop it up, too. “Mommy nesting or just regular nesting?”
“Mommy nesting,” Rabbit says. “Shortcake had kittens in there. Four of them. All over the nice clean blankets.”
I grimace. Kittens have been a bit of a problem with so many cats.
We’re in talks with a vet back at the fort to discuss what to do for the future, but for now, we keep getting more kittens.
The fort has been taking some of the cats that have proven themselves as mousers, and Gwen has talked about taking some of the cats to Fort Shreveport, her home fort, because they have a rodent problem.
Murr is happy to keep all of them here, of course, but we need to be practical. I eye my daughter. “You know what that means.”
“Oh, I know,” my daughter says in a harried voice. “Laundry for Rabbit. I hate laundry.”
“You’d hate it even more if Jonah didn’t come this weekend,” I singsong, whipping eggs like I’m Betty Crocker.
She groans all over again, picking up Kermit from the blanket nest and setting him on the floor of the kitchen. “I know. Trust me, I’m on it. Come get me when breakfast is ready.”
“Will do.”
Rabbit hauls the blankets through the kitchen, heading for the mudroom and then outside. Back when we were traveling, it was easier to discard blankets (or use dirty ones). Now that we have a home, I insist on chores. We’re going to be civilized, damn it.
We’ve raided every antique store in what feels like all of North Texas and supplied our house.
Rabbit has an old-fashioned laundry bucket, complete with an accordion scrubber and a crank to wring out the water.
We have clothing lines up in the backyard so everything smells fresh and clean.
Does it make washing things less of a beast?
Not really, but if we’re going to have visitors, I want them to sleep in a nice bed that smells like sunshine and not a fort.
Jonah and Rabbit’s teenage romance is still going strong, six months later.
He spends a weekend here about once a month, with Sleepy (now called Greta) at his side.
Rabbit goes to the fort with Murr when he runs errands or when there’s trading to be done, and Jonah and my daughter send each other little gifts constantly.
It’s sweet, and I trust that Jonah is a good kid and isn’t going to take advantage of my daughter.
I still make sure that they’re not left alone together for any length of time, because they’re still teenagers and I remember being a teenager myself.
When Jonah stays with us, his room is right next to mine and Murr’s, and Murr will hear if Jonah so much as breathes differently.
We’ve invited Samir to come and visit, too, but he’s always too busy to get away.
Something tells me that he and Thess enjoy their alone time when Jonah visits us.
There’s not much privacy in that shipping container.
Buttering my skillet, I add the egg mix and grimace as the eggs immediately stick to the bottom.
There’s supposed to be a way to cook eggs in a cast iron without them gluing themselves to the pan, but I have no idea how to do it and the books I have don’t cover that particular bit of context.
The scent of burning eggs fills the kitchen, and I move breakfast to a cooler burner and open the window.
A chorus of meows start up throughout the house. Little feet hop down the stairs, and suddenly the kitchen is full of watchful cats. They like eggs, too, but they mostly like the burned bits I scrape off the bottom of the pan. “Yeah, yeah,” I mutter, scrambling the eggs.
Maybe not quiche just yet. I need to level up with cooking before I try that.
I salvage most of the eggs, scraping the worst burned bits off for the cats, and plate up breakfast. I cover the food so the cats don’t get to it (because they’re spoiled) and then go hunt everyone down. I’m humming to myself as I poke my head out the door. “Breakfast, Rabbit.”
“Be right there,” she says, adding another bucket of well water to the laundry tub on the side of the house.
I close the screen door and head around to the other side of the house.
As I do, I feel a sigh of pure contentment as I look at all of our wonderful things.
The living room of the old farmhouse has several comfy couches to lounge on, and bookshelves line the walls, crammed with the books we brought from the bookstore.
Lining the couches are even more cats, curled up and sleeping piled atop one another.
We brought all of our cats from the fort.
Even the ones that don’t like anyone but Murr now live in the great big barn and have the time of their lives roaming our property.
I pet a few of them as I pass by and then head to the back door of the house and toward the barn.
The chicken coop is near the big barn, a gated and fenced off area with a miniature house set up just for the chickens.
We’ve got an entire flock at this point, with more on the way, and the once-empty chicken pen is now full of white and brown hens, all of them clucking and ruffling feathers.
I find Aggie and Dottie here inside the coop, with Dottie tossing handfuls of dried corn for the chickens while Aggie fishes out eggs from the coop itself.
Stella is at the gate of the coop itself, her wet nose pressed to the chicken wire as she watches over everything.
“Breakfast is ready,” I call to the two women.
Aggie pokes her head out of the henhouse. She’s not wearing a wig yet today—she wears a handkerchief over her nearly bald head in the mornings because she feels it’s “more farm-y.” Did you burn the eggs again?”
“No,” I say defensively.
Dottie shoots Aggie a look. “She’s lying.”
“Neither of you has to eat,” I retort. “Or how about you make your own eggs.”
“They’re just eggs,” Dottie comments, throwing down a few more handfuls of corn and shaking the last of it out of her pail for the hungry chickens. “I don’t see what’s so hard about it.”
“That’s what she said,” jokes Aggie.
I bite the inside of my cheek. “You two suck. I’m going to go find Murr.”
They chortle, and I try to hide my grin as I walk away. It’s become a running joke that I destroy the eggs every morning, but we eat them anyhow. I’m determined to get it figured out, and until I do, I endure the ribbing.
It’s a beautiful day as I head up the hill to the big barn.
In the months since we’ve moved to the farm, we’ve repaired the roof and the interior stalls and swept everything out.
The fences are mended in most of the pastures, and we rotate the cattle between fields so they don’t chew the grass down to nubs.
Murr is excellent at herding the cattle thanks to his drakoni form, but he’s also surprisingly good with the animals even in human form.
It’s like they’ve got a sixth sense that he means them no harm.
I put a hand to my eyes, scanning the distant field for a dragon.
I see cows with their heads down, grazing.
In one of the nearer pastures, our alpacas and goats are playing, with a baby goat bouncing on an old tractor tire.
More farm animals have shown up every month, some wandering in our direction, some found as we scavenge the nearby properties for useful items. Everyone is welcome, even the old blind donkey that hates everyone but the dogs.