A Princess doesn't get their paws dirty

Her tone was probably intimidating to anyone else, but Stratum knew when there was proper venom behind Kite's words. This wasn't actually anger, just copping an attitude for its own sake. He snorted softly, a grin making its way onto his face. He hummed thoughtfully when she mentioned that she'd been out sparring with her companion in the woods lately, glancing her way as he shuffled the furs and skins into different piles to be arranged later. As he worked, the dun coloured youth made note of anything that looked like it had been sitting around for a while. Soon he and his siblings would be getting their own dens, and maybe he could get away with pilfering the unused tools and bedding from this storage room to decorate with. "Smart move, I guess it helps to have some shade so you can get better at fighting outside of the caves without blinding yourself completely." he admitted absentmindedly, nodding to himself at the assessment. It seemed like his sisters all had their shit together already, and had everything planned out. What was he doing? Tinkering, mostly. Long term planning wasn't exactly his forte.

"I've been thinking of asking Ruga to mentor me in smithing," he offered, his own attempt at sharing how his training was going. That's what they were doing, right? Playing catch up, talking about what they wanted to do now that they're both grown? Probably. "not sure I want to spend much time guarding the market, I'd rather get to make stuff and then sell it off." he added, more to himself than anything. He replaced the worn hides in the overturned basket, and tipped it back upright. Pushed it into the alcove that served as a bottom shelf. He folded a few of the sheepskins up, and piled them beside the basket of hides on that bottom shelf. There was a huge mess of stuff beside him, poorly hidden against the back wall of the cavern. Maybe.. maybe he should sort that out before getting too invested in organizing the shelves. Otherwise he'd probably end up rearranging everything to fit the contents of the mystery pile into the shelves.

Plunking his rump down in front of the heap of mystery items, Stratum set to work shifting everything into smaller piles according to his own arbitrary categories. Cleaning stuff, food stuff, crafting stuff, bedding stuff, and.. miscellaneous? He wasn't sure what some of this shit was. "Are you excited to get your own den? Seems like you've been itching to get away from dad and us." he asked next, tone neutral and carefree. He wasn't too upset that his sister was independent, she dealt with a lot more bullshit from their family than he did. Her disinterest in playing games or going hunting with the rest of the siblings.. that hurt a little more. Perhaps he was trying to gauge just how far she had distanced herself from him and their siblings, to measure just what kind of wall he might need to scale before he could draw her back into cuddle piles again. After everything that they'd been through, he wanted the simplicity of infancy again. Demanding attention and food from someone else, smushing his siblings beneath his pudgy frame, and slobbering on his sisters. All the while this bounced about his skull, he continued to move dried meats and packaged preserves into the cache that had been dug into the wall.