It didn't take long for Cyrus to put the carcass down and retrieve his spear. He'd have to divide the meat before it would rot, so he got to work straight away. Using his stone knife, he kept a leg for himself, cut the body into several pieces for several pregnant females, and one leg for the chief. As he had already given a leg to the shaman, the fourth leg was kept for later use, either for himself or someone else. He normally didn't give away most of the meat from a hunt, but he already had more than enough for himself in this instance. While he still wanted to see that certain female, there were other duties to attend to first.
He made his way to the chief's hut and found that it was closed for now. The chief was either out dealing with some important matter or was busy with something in his hut. Unlike most goblin dwellings, the chief's hut had an actual door, albeit one which slid instead of one with hinges. Fortunately, there was a small wooden platform where offerings to the chief could be placed. Cyrus set the leg down in between a basket of grain and a rather fragrant fish. Giving to the chief wasn't mandatory, but it was considered a proper thing to do when one had the resources. Doing so not only would free the chief up to spend more time dealing with the tribe's issues, but would also reduce the amount of food he'd have to take from the tribe's granary and would make it less likely that he'd have to go hunting or fishing himself. Not only could something go wrong in a hunt, but the more time the chief spent outside of the village's walls, the more likely hostile forces would be to attack him. On top of that, the chief was considered a religious figure, or at least, one who had been anointed by the shaman. His words carried sacred significance, and an offering to him was a religious offering, in a sense.
Of course, the chief wasn't the only one who needed the food. Goblin females often needed extra nutrition, given how often they tended to get pregnant. These frequent, multiple-child pregnancies were necessary to maintain the tribe's numbers and to expand, given how high mortality rates were during times of war, plague, famine, or other disasters. Mercifully, few of these disasters had struck recently, and this village had grown so much that it was compelled to send out the surplus population to form new villages two times in the past ten years, and would have to do so again in another year or two if no other disaster occurred soon. The food supply of the village was still ample for now: the grain fields had several good harvests, hunting was going well, and overfishing wasn't a concern as of yet.
Although contributions to the village granary were optional, it was considered socially unacceptable for a goblin engaged in farming not to donate at least a quarter of his harvest to the granary, given that the fields around the village belonged to the tribe itself. A goblin could claim a certain amount of land to farm until a harvest, and no other goblin was allowed to touch this land or its produce as long as the chief gave his approval for that goblin to farm it, and only for a set amount of time. Hunters and fishers were not looked down on if they kept their entire catch, as it took more effort and risk on their part and the tribe didn't own the woods and river in the same manner as they owned the fields; while the woods around the village were claimed by the goblins, they all knew that no one truly owned the forest, and made no effort to enforce their laws once the trees began.
As he had promised the shaman, Cyrus made his way over to the east side of the village, a place popular with pregnant females. Housing in the tribe was simple and could be chosen by any goblin who was an adult from any of the available huts. Hut construction was overseen by the chief, who chose when and where to build huts, as well as their design, number, and materials. He was also responsible for recruiting builders and ensuring that they were trained in the simple methods of construction needed to build them. Once a hut was built, it became available for any goblin or family who wanted it, but only if it was still empty. Huts were allocated on a first-come basis, and scrambles to get the huts were common in the year or two before a village's population grew large enough to require the surplus population to split off. Some huts were built for adult males to live in alone and were generally small. The same could be said for those built for young females, but they weren't expected to stay in those huts for very long, as a grown female goblin was expected to start a family as soon as she could. At that point, she was all but forced to move into a larger family hut, where she'd give birth and raise a litter of younglings. If she was ever alone in a large hut, she could be forced to leave it if a pregnant female needed the room.
It was in this context that Cyrus entered the east side, distributing the meat to three pregnant females. There was Sira, a female he had mated with before. While she was not pregnant, Cyrus knew that she needed the food at least as badly as any of the pregnant females, so he could stretch the shaman's words a bit. Sira recently had given birth to a mostly healthy litter, but two of her six children had issues with their lungs, which required her to care for them most of their waking hours. As such, she had less time to farm and forage for food in the woods. While goblins didn't marry and thus didn't know who their father was, Cyrus suspected that at least one of her children was his, although probably not the sickly ones. Female goblins could have children by multiple fathers in the same litter, given the obvious differences between the appearance of the younglings; out of a litter of six, a female might have one father for each child, or possibly one for three of them one for two of them, and a single one by another male, or any other number of combinations.
Sira was busy nursing her sickest child, who also happened to be her youngest daughter. As such, as was surprised when Cyrus knocked on the wall of her hut.
"I'm a bit busy now! Can it wait?"
"It's me! I've got some food for you!"
"Cy! Oh, uh..." She set her daughter down for just a moment, over the whimpering child's feeble protests. Sira got up and pulled her top piece back on, then met him at the front of the hut. He could see that she was tired, stressed, and not interested in seeing an adult male right now. Moreover, it looked as if she had hardly eaten in days.
"I appreciate the meat, but this is a very bad time for a get-together. Besides, I'm hardly in the mood for-."
"- I was just passing through. Enjoy the rabbit. And please, visit the granary. You look like you need it pretty badly."
"Been there three times in three days. They say I'm taking too much out, so they only let me get a bit of grain. It's hardly worth the time it takes to wait for my ration, so I've been trying to forage and farm. Haven't had the time for that, what with the kids." She paused for a moment, then put her arms behind her back as she pawed her right foot with her left, a sign of feeling awkward among the goblins. "Sorry if I spoke too harshly. If you wanted to come back in a couple of days, I-I wouldn't be against it."
"As much as I might like to, you're not really up to it, I'm afraid. I don't mean to judge, but you really gotta get some meat on your bones before having another litter. If I have another good hunt, I'll be back. Take care, Sira."
The other two visits were briefer, given that the other females he visited were his sisters, or at least, his half-sisters from an earlier litter his mother had. At least, they were very likely his half-sisters. It was possible that one or both of them shared the same father, but Cyrus put that thought out of his mind. In any event, both With the meat delivered, he had to gather the dried wood for Clelk. As such, he went home to retrieve his spear for self-defense and set off into the forest. He wasn't far into the forest when he heard a bear's roar.
Cyrus whirled around to see where the danger was. To his relief, the roar originated farther away than its loudness had suggested. But this meant that someone else might be in trouble. He dashed off in the direction of the roar, quickly finding Talik up in a tree with a brown bear at its base. He knew who the young goblin was, but he didn't know him very well. Even so, the youngling was one of his tribe, and well worth the risk to help.
"Hey! Bear! Get away!" Cyrus poked at the beast with his spear, annoying it just enough to cause it to halt its attempts to attack Talik and diverting its attention. More irritated than before, the bear turned to face Cyrus. The beast kept its distance for now, but if it charged, Cyrus would have little option but to fight. He couldn't beat a bear all by himself, but there was no way the commotion would have remained unnoticed. It was only a matter of holding out long enough for some other hunters to arrive to help.
"Talik! Get clear! Go!"
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