The wolves near the border [SKZ fanfiction] | HanJisung

Chapter 11

But if they made their walls like this, the clay would be too heavy, Jisung pouts to himself when his tiny construction collapses on its own weight.
He has been up for over two hours now and although he had nearly not slept enough, he was wide awake in the morning and couldn't wait to start working out the mysteries he saw yesterday night.
"But if they built their frame like this—,' he mumbles, before being cut off when someone blows in his ear and Jisung yells out loud, smashing his work in progress.
He holds up his hand to protect himself and lowers them grumpy when he hears Heikin laugh out loud.
"Oh man, you were off in your own world, huh?" she snickers, crossing her arms with a wide smug on her face.
"Go away, you savage!" Jisung grumbles, trying to wipe a smudge of clay from his face, only making it bigger with his dirty hands.
Behind Heikin he sees Nelaya happily walking to Felix and showing him a delicate weaved flower crown. She asks the alpha to put it on for her and Jisung's stomach makes a weird tumble when he sees him placing the crown on her head with much care. He looks up when he sees Heikin and Jisung looking at them and with red ears he awkwardly waves before walking over. Nelaya follows him with a big smile and the flower crown framing her soft face.
"Ah, Hi Heikin. Ji, did you need help with warming up the kiln?"
Jisung withholds himself from rolling his eyes and wants to tell him he saw them flirting blatantly, so why be ashamed. Instead he shakes his head and tells him Changbin promised to help.
"But Minho wanted help in the garden," he tells him and Felix seems to weigh his options here. He decides to go help Minho and says goodbye while Nelaya follows him, brave enough to cling on his arm and happily conversate with the alpha whilst making their way to the garden. Jisung huffs seeing the two lovebirds walking away and Heikin chuckles behind him.
"Won't take any longer," she mumbles.
Jisung raises an eyebrow at her remark, but keeps silent. He pokes with a stick in his now flat project and ponders if he should ask Heikin about their home or not.
"Straw," she says and Jisung jumps up again with her voice too close to his ear.
She's crouched on the ground next to him and points at his sad turd of clay. "We use a mixture of straw, clay and dirt to form a paste. When dried up, it is pretty light, holds up well and is pretty waterproof."
Jisung stares at her with a blank stare, wondering how she managed to guess his thoughts.
"For the frame, your pack leader helped out by cutting some trees. We use those as a foundation. The whole thing is lifted a little off the ground like that. Prevents a cold floor and makes it more ventilated to prevent mold from building up to the walls."
Jisung is captivated with the explanation. Heikin has picked up some sticks and shows him what she means. "There's also logs on the roof. They give support to make higher ceilings and with this shape, water will fall off the sides instead of weighting the thing down."
"How did you lift those?" Jisung asks with much interest. "I know alpha's are strong, but I've only seen Chan hyung lift whole logs on his own."
Heikin whistles between her teeth impressed and shows Jisung how they lifted without needing much muscles.
"We use the construction as a balance point. It still is a pain in the ass, but even Nelaya is able to bring up a log like that."
Jisungs eyes must pop out of their sockets while Heikin laughs at his face.
"That's genius! We used that same technique when we had to move big rocks out of the cave, but to use it to build your own house, that's amazing!"
His hands are back to the tiny construction on the ground trying to reconstruct what he saw. "And why did you build that tiny wall around it? Is it for protection? For marking territory? Or something else?"
Within his babbling he realizes he's mentioning parts he couldn't have known, but the female alpha doesn't seem to notice and simply shrugs her shoulders.
"We use them to keep the birds in and the unwanted guests outside."
"Birds?" Jisung asks.
Heikin nods and licks her thumb to wipe the dirty streaks on Jisung's face away. The motion is simple and Jisung scrunches his face like a little puppy. She grabs his face with her other hand to keep him still whilst wiping.
"Yeah, we told you there are a lot of pheasants around, right? We tried to domesticate them. We have around four walking within those walls. We give them food and shelter, they give us eggs and feathers. Pretty decent exchange, don't you think?"
Jisung's ears flare up with the alpha being so attentive to him, but his curiosity wins. Domesticating animals. Benefitting both ways like that. Never in his whole life would he have thought of that. He tried to befriend tiny animals when he was younger, but they almost always ran off.
"They're not afraid? I mean, with the smell of predators around them?"
"Of course! It took us a shitload of work before they weren't that scared anymore. It helps that Nelaya has a soft omega smell and mine is almost absent. Those feathered pests flew away multiple times before feeling provided enough to stay."
Jisung places his hands on the ground and leans back on them while looking up to the sky, thinking of all the possibilities if he could implement the amount of knowledge he gained over the past half an hour.
"Wah, there's so much to learn," he gasps, earning a proud smile from the alpha.
"Well, you're welcome to learn more about our lifestyle anytime you want," she says before standing up.
Jisung watches the female alpha stretch her limbs and can't help feeling a twitch of impatience in his body. It's the thrill of learning new things and the eagerness to immediately jump the gun. His feet make tiny movements and he can't wait to tell the others about what he learned. There are so many things they could implement in their lives and there's even more! It's like he sees the alpha in another daylight now she's not an endless nuisance.
"Oh, before I forget. I have a pretty sharp hearing. You were pretty loud last night."
She winks at him and leaves him baffled, redness creeping up his cheeks.
Scrap that! She's still a menace!



"Hyunjin! Bring those to Jeongin. And Changbin, stop munching and help Jisung mule the rice. Who has seen my useless alpha mate?! Getting water shouldn't take that long!"
Minho is shouting orders around while they're all busy doing tasks in preparation for the annual summerfest.
In two weeks the peak of summer will be there and that means the sun will be up the longest of all days. After that the days will become shorter again and that's why they always celebrate the summer on that specific day.
They'll be eating a feast, dancing around a big fire and lounge to enjoy the sun rays with their pack. It's a big celebration and with that comes the big preparations which are led by none other than their pack Luna.
"Oh, Jisung, can you gather the seeds into a satchel? The girls will be here any moment."
Jisung sighs before handing over the rice muling task to Changbin.
"All eight packages?" he asks Minho who simply shouts back they're placed on the counter.
He finds the neatly wrapped packages and carefully transfers them to the satchel he grabbed next to it.
Heikin and Nelaya exchanged a lot of their cultural inventions with them over the past months. As did Jisung and the others of his pack. Jisung teached the girls how they could grow berry bushes and told him the knowledge of turning over dirt, while on their turn Heikin taught them how they made their pots for growing things inside of their house. Nelaya, Minho and Jeongin got close when they learned the youngest omega had a knack for cooking and used Heikin her knowledge of herbs to infuse those in her dishes. Making the three of them trying out different things and inventing new - sometimes horrible, but mostly - tasty recipes. Nelaya was especially fond of all the different rice dishes as their home pack did not often have rice included in their diëts.
Jisung got to visit the home of the girls twice in the past months. Once when he kept pestering Chan, telling him he wanted to learn how to use the clay recipe by seeing the results up close and once because he had to, because the others couldn't let him stay at home alone. At first he had been a grumpy mess, but after seeing their tiny garden with different kinds of plants and the tamed pheasants, he didn't complain once and kept himself busy figuring out all the mysteries in the small patch of ground.
And now they had agreed to swap out some of the seeds from different crops to try and grow them in their own ways to see the benefits of both methods.
"Got them!" Jisung yells at Minho.
His pack Luna has his arms elbow deep in a big bowl mixing up dough to make different dishes with later on and yells back to keep the satchel with him until the girls would arrive.
"I'm not a coat rack," Jisung whines and with that Hyunjin walks by and places another heavy bag of rice in his arms.
"Hold this then," he chuckles whilst walking outside.
"Emphasizing the not part!" Jisung yells back, but the beta simply laughs at him.
Jisung grumbles and waddles towards Changbin to put the bag of rice next to him.
"More muling today," he pouts.
Changbin just shrugs and scoops up a handful to place between the grinding stones. Jisung watches his muscled arms and wonders if he could bulk up as well if he would do heavy labor like the older omega.
"Anyone seen my flower plate?" Minho yells and Jisung shrieks up to hurry over to the storage room before anyone else can.
"Uhm!" he stutters, grabbing the newly made plate and holding it up behind his back. "Haven't seen that one in a while, but I made you this one?" he holds up the new plate and gives his pack Luna big puppy eyes.
"He broke the other!" Hyunjin betrays him whilst walking past them and Jisung immediately glares at the treacherous beta before smiling innocently to Minho again.
"Nice try, pup. Laundry duty for a week. But the new one is pretty as well. Thank you."
Jisung grumbles something about trusting his pack as nothing stays a secret once told and planning on filling the beta's bed with dirt as revenge while Minho chuckles at him and tells him to bring the others outside something to drink.
Felix and Chan are building up the stone edge which will surround their big summer fire. Both of them are sweating in the warm weather and Chan has already dumped his tunic on the ground, preferring to work shirtless. Felix is flapping the front of his shirt to create wind to cool him down as he sees Jisung walk outside holding up two mugs with water.
"Thank the moon. Remind me why we don't leave these stones every year?" Chan says whilst gulping up the liquid in one go.
Felix nips on his and Jisung also hands him a piece of cloth to dab the sweat on his forehead away.
"Is Seungmin almost back?" Jisung asks. "I need to kick his ass for ratting me out."
Felix snickers and Chan shakes his head. "He's out getting more sugarcane. Should be back soon though?"
His pack alpha puts his nose in the air and lets out a loud howl which gets replied in a small moment by none other than the other alpha himself.
"That's weird, did he come back earlier?" Felix mutters, but Chan simply shrugs.
"He is a fast one," he answers. "Almost as fast as Hyunjin."
"If he isn't being lazy," Jisung remarks. "Even I can outrun him daily. He only runs if it concerns his omega lover."
Chan gives him his mug. "Or when Hyunjinnie needs him. But hey, at least he uses his energy wisely."
Jisung ignores the playful jab at him for getting overly excited once they go out for a run and him being the first to always be out of breath because of it. If they would go out more often and include him in hunting trips, he would know how to handle his energy better.
Seungmin arrives and pants heavily because of the warm weather. Felix walks over to him to remove the baskets on his back while the wolf looks over at his pack leader.
"You're back early," Chan remarks.
"Hyung, there were some weird scents up north. Near the waterfalls on the mountain side. They weren't in our territory, but drifted over."
Jisung leans in to hear more of the conversation while Felix stiffens hearing the possible threat. Chan glances over to them and smiles at them before looking back at the wolf.
"If it's not in our territory, I don't think we have to worry. But I'll patrol the border on the north side again tonight if that helps to make both of you feel safe."
Jisung wants to break in, but gets interrupted when two soft howls announce the arrival of the girls visiting them.
"We heard you howl for your member before," Heikin says when she shifts and gets clothed before walking up to them. "Thought it would be wise to make sure it was us."
She greets the pack leader who on his turn nods at them.
"No need to worry. Seungmin needed to come back earlier."
"Ah, that explains. We were almost worried for a moment," Heikin smiles in relief before looking at Jisung as if he had anything to do with it.
"Yeah, don't worry. But what brings you over today, girls? I believe our hunting trip will be later today?"
Heikin looks over to the pack leader and nods with a wide grin. "Of course! I did not forget. But we're here earlier because Minho had some things for us. We came to exchange before the hunt, otherwise Nelaya would've to carry things around all day."
Jisung grabs to his side to search for the satchel around his waist, reminding him of the task Minho gave him.
"Here," he says, handing over the promised seeds in the satchel. "I've also included Black Radish seeds. Should be planted around this time and can be harvested until halfway through the winter."
He hands Nelaya the satchel who has stretched out her hands. She gives him a warm smile and places the satchel in her sister's basket. She pulls out a small package and hands it over to Jisung.
"Some eggs. I know you guys like them," she blushes and glances once at Felix who's staring off into the distance. "If you want, we could make a pie crust with it and use fresh berries for filling?"
With that Felix shifts his attention with sparkling eyes hearing about the sweet treat. He's so predictable, Jisung thinks.
"Sure thing. Changbin is muling rice into flour right now. We could ask him to switch up to grains?"
The female omega nods happily and promises she will find him later today to bake while the others are out hunting.