Brit shrugged. She'd seen nekomatas at the last Expo, so maybe once she got back to the ranch she could see about proposing an exchange, or something. And nekomata kittens could be sold whenever, so long as they hadn't bonded to a person already.

"We'll figure something out," Hazel said. She was looking forward to the Expo, now that she had something to sell. It would be interesting to see what happened.

Brit nodded. She was looking forward to the Expo too, already thinking of possible exchanges and contacts they could make. Because that was never a bad thing to have, just in case.

The social didn't last too much longer as the other women ran out of juicy gossip to exchange. Tea parties like this never lasted more than a few hours; just long enough for everyone to fill up on both tea and talk before going back home. It meant, however, that Hazel had to let Brit go again.

Brit looked at Hazel one last time before she smiled a little and nodded, indicating she'd see her soon enough. And then she let her aunt herd her back into the carriage so they could go again. Her aunt nearly had a heart attack when the two phoenixes moved into the carriage too, having been sitting on top during the social. Kal couldn't help but snicker at that.

Hazel almost snickered, as well, but managed to maintain her composure long enough to get into her own carriage.

"Seems like now I have to start making plans to host an event of my own," she commented to Kaladin.

Kaladin nodded. "Yeah. Well, you had said you were going to anyway. This is just... extra incentive, if you will. Besides, I can help."

"Well, I think the first event should be something formal," Hazel mused. "A sort of re-debut. I'll definitely have a new gown made for it, since I'm hosting it... The manor will need to be deep-cleaned. There is a whole list of what needs to be done." She looked at him. "I can't make you help, but..." She trailed off, looking at him hopefully.

Kaladin snorted. "Don't look at me for cleaning; I'm no good at it. But I can help arrange things, move things around if you need that done. And I know you mentioned having some of the pygmy sheep there, so I can do that too."

"The servants can take care of getting the manor in order," Hazel replied. "I'll make sure they get a bonus for getting it into formal order, since it's outside of normal day-to-day work, but they can handle that part. I was hoping you would take care of the sheep, though. Not many, perhaps a dozen at the very most, but I think we should bring as many colors as we can."

Kaladin nodded. "Alright. Well, I'll get one black, one white, probably a gray, and then one of each of the other colors. Except maybe that lime green one, it's still too small to be away from its mother for very long."

Hazel blinked a bit.

"I hadn't realized there was one that color," she said. "I knew about the lilac one, but I didn't know about the green one. Did we end up with any other colors?"

"Total, we've got two shades of blue, the lilac, the dark purple, two pink, one green, one mild orange, and an almost silver one. It doesn't even qualify as gray, it almost sparkles." Kaladin shrugged. He really had no idea how all those came about, but he was going to have fun finding out how to get more.

That was a lot, Hazel had to admit. And it gave them plenty of breeding options a couple years down the road.

"We're keeping the silver," she decided promptly, regardless. "A color like that is pretty, and even if we can't breed other metallics out of it, we can still get more silver."

Kaladin nodded. "In a few years if we end up with a yellow I might try crossing it with the silver. We might get gold out of that. And by the time this litter is able to breed, we should have lots of options. We can probably get a lot of different colors out of them."

"This could end up being a very good thing for the ranch," Hazel mused. "Although we may have to look into a bigger enclosure, maybe separating the monochromatic pygmies from the colored ones..." But she could definitely see the colors going over well, especially at the Expo.

Kaladin nodded. "Expanding the enclosure they're currently in won't be hard," he said quietly. "And it will be fairly easy to add a divider, unless you wanted to keep them totally separate."

"It may be a good idea to separate them if the herd gets much bigger," Hazel said. "And depending on what we end up wanting to do for breeding next year."

Kaladin nodded again. "Alright. Well, when the time comes, I'll see what I can do. Like I said, it shouldn't be too hard, and you do have lots of unused space on the ranch."

Hazel nodded.

"Just let me know if anything needs to be done on the grounds," she said. "I'll make sure it's taken care of."

"So far, everything's holding up," he said with a little shrug. "The selkies are happy with their pond, the rest of the fences are doing fine, and everything seems to be pretty normal. For the moment, at least."

Hazel nodded. Shaking out her skirts a little, she shifted in her seat a bit.

"Well, for now I'll focus on preparing for the socials," she said. "We have one to go to in a few days, and I need to get to planning mine."

"Alright." Kaladin settled back for the trip back to the ranch. "You know you can always let me know if you want me to do anything else." And the glance he shot her showed exactly how much "anything" included.

Hazel couldn't help but blush at the look he sent her. She wasn't used to being looked at like that, not at all.

"I'll let you know if I need anything," she replied demurely.

Kaladin grinned briefly and nodded. The carriage stopped a few minutes later, and he got out first to offer her a hand.