One Thousand and One

Disclaimer – I do not own Dragon Ball in any way shape or form. All rights go to Akira Toriyama and associates. I make no money from this.

Chapter Four

Son Goku was out in the fields when Chi-Chi woke up. She usually awoke with her husband, so it had been strange to find her his side of the futon cold. It was even stranger he'd been able to sneak out of the house so quietly, and even more than that – that he had not woken her up to make breakfast.

Breakfast, however, or what was left of it, was out on the side of their house. A giant fire pit had been constructed and a skeleton of a massive river fish was on the spit. Chi-Chi wiped her hands in her apron, getting some cold water and sand to cool the glowing embers.

Her husband's high-visibility orange GI was noticeable from the house, even though he was way down the side of the mountain. He was a long way away, and Chi-Chi wasn't in the mood for walking that far.

They'd come back from the market yesterday with supplies – fresh produce, food and some fabrics she would use to make and mend clothes. It had been a quiet ride home. Goku had gotten some sort of food from a vendor and was eating it on the way back – somehow the lurching and spinning of nimbus didn't make him sick.

Chi-Chi had been deep in thought on the way back. The eyes of that child had haunted her. She'd always wanted children – a whole heap of them. Fall in love, get married and have children – she'd done two out of those things and was more than eager for the last. But how long was okay to have a baby after getting married? She looked to her husband, his hair being tousled in the wind and touched his shoulder gently. Goku bit into his food again.

How long did she have to wait? Chi-Chi sighed.

That night she'd made love to him again on the futon of their bed, her climbing on top of his hips. He didn't mind her taking control of the situation, in fact, she was the one who initiated it most of the time. They'd been married for a few days. Chi-Chi wasn't worried. He would pick up on it eventually.

Chi-Chi went back inside to make some breakfast. In contrast to Goku, she had a juice and a piece of toast with some avocado, and that would suffice her until lunchtime.

Biting into her toast, Chi-Chi's thoughts were on children.

Was it too soon to try and get pregnant? She bit her lip. Maybe.

Chi-Chi shook her head. They had no income currently, and had not even began to put in crops for the season and they would only get paid once their produce had grown and that would be many months away. Chi-Chi sighed. They needed a quicker income.

Heading outside, she saw Goku down in the fields. She couldn't tell what he was doing, but when she finally reached his side she saw him putting rich soil into a large bag. The hole was deep and he'd cut up a lot of grass around it.

"What are you doing, husband?" she asked him cautiously.

"You said you wanted to plant things near the house," he said, winching the shovel into more dirt and heaving it into the bag. "But nothing will grow if the soil is bad. I thought I'd take this soil and put it by the house."

Chi-Chi smiled. "Thank you, Goku – your right, the soil is bad around the side of the house. We should start a compost heap for all our food scraps to feed the ground. I'm sure it would work."

"Sure, whatever you want, Cheech," he said, dropping the shovel for now.

"Can I borrow nimbus?" she asked.

"Are you going somewhere?"

"Yes," she nodded. "I'm just going to go into the village down the mountain. I haven't been yet, so I thought while it's a nice day…"

Goku shrugged. "Well, gee, Cheech, I can't very well come with you. Krillin is coming around this afternoon to help plough out the ground."

"It's all right," she said. "I just thought I'd go down. I know you and Krillin-kun have a lot of work to do this afternoon." She leant in and kissed her husband, but he was still against her lips. He had not learnt of the appropriate times to kiss her, and it took him a little by shock. He was insanely bad at reading body language.

"Well, okay," he mumbled. "Come to me - flying nimbus."

"I'll get some things for lunch for you and Krillin while I'm in town," she said. Nimbus putted to her side and she jumped on easily. "You boys have fun!"

The first thing Chi-Chi did was look around the small village. It is indeed small – not as big as the village around Fire Mountain but there is a little bit of everything here.

In the middle of the town is a small shopping strip with modern facilities – just because they're in the mountains doesn't mean that they didn't have things. Bulma liked to make it sound so dire that 'country folk' missed out on opportunities and stuff that big city people had, but Chi-Chi had always liked the country. She didn't hold it against Bulma. The city was where Bulma had grown up, but hell, she could be a real pain in the arse about it sometimes.

The doors to a pharmacy opened and Chi-Chi wandered in, noting that no one in the town, in fact, knows her, unlike at Fire Mountain. The walls are lined with products – makeup, face cleansers and soap. She grabbed a couple of bars of soap and some hair products, female hygiene products and fell straight into the sexual health section of the store which is professional and discreet. She took a pregnancy test off the shelf and threw it into the basket like it didn't matter but when she exited the store with the test in the bag and the thought of the possibility of being pregnant like right now hit her, Chi-Chi was itching to get home.

She passed a small shop run – a china and cutlery shop that looked nice, but old. She was in need of some new glasses since Goku had broken most of the glasses on his first few days being married to her. She stepped in to the shop and a bell rang quietly. An old lady came form the back and sat at the desk.

"Is there anything we can help you with, dear?" she asked.

Chi-Chi smiled, picking up a six-pack of glass tumblers. "Just these, thanks. You have a lovely shop."

The lady brought up the price for the glasses.

"You're not from around here?" she asked, adjusting her spectacles.

"No," she said. "My husband is – he grew up here. I moved here a few days ago when we were married."

The old woman smiled. "Welcome to the area, dear. You're young to be married – but very beautiful."

Chi-Chi laughed. "Thank you. I was wondering if I could ask you a question?" she handed the woman the money she owed and put the glasses in a small carry bag. "Are there any small jobs going at the moment in the village? I'd be interested in picking up some work – perhaps on some farms, or in town?"

"Wait one moment, dear," said the old woman and disappeared to the back of her shop. There was a small murmuring between another person who must have been back there before the woman reappeared.

"Masao and I own this shop," she said. "Next week we want to visit our daughter in the city. We were going to have to close the shop, but it would be better to keep it open. Do you think you could do that for us? We will pay you to keep the shop open."

"Oh wow," Chi-Chi said. "Yes, definitely. I used to work at a little shop when I was a girl. Thank you so much -,"

"Atsuko Tokiko," she said.

"My name is Son Chi-Chi."

"Son Chi-Chi?" she said. "Wife of Son Goku?"

Chi-Chi groaned inwardly. Oh no. And here she'd hoped to stay anonymous in the small town for at least a while.

"That's me."

"We watch your husband on the television – he's world champion. And you. You are world champion, too! You the strongest woman!

"Yes," she said softly. "That's us…"

The old woman is laughing, perhaps a little star-struck. "Okay, I will call you. Leave your number and I'll speak with my husband. Thank you Son Chi-Chi."

Chi-Chi left quickly, a little mortified that she'd been recognised. She quickly grabbed some stuff for a soup and bread she'd make for lunch before calling Nimbus to go home.

Passing over their fields, Chi-Chi spied her husband as the cloud came to land. Krillin was beside him.

"Hello Krillin-kun, it's so nice you have visited us," she smiled.

"Thanks Chi-Chi, it's real nice to see you too," he replied, bowing – he was always a gentleman. "Goku's a real lucky guy to have you as a wife you know. I was just telling him that. Look at your beautiful house."

Chi-Chi nodded. "Thank you, Krillin. Come on in in an hour or so, I'll have some lunch made and you can take a break. Thank you for coming over again, Krillin."

"Are you kidding?" he said. "I love spending time with you guys and the digging up the mountain reminds me when Goku and I trained with Roshi when we were kids."

Chi-Chi smiled and bowed her goodbye before making her way up to the house. Like good men, Krillin and Goku got to work promptly, digging through the dirt and smiling and talking along the way.

Chi-Chi dumped her purchases on the dining room table before grabbing the pregnancy test and heading up stairs. She couldn't exactly try for a baby unless she knew she wasn't pregnant, could she?

With shaking fingers she took the device out of the box, read the instructions and carried out the test. Eventually she rested the test on the mirror's shelf, face down and counted out the minutes with her watch.

What if she was already pregnant? What was she going to do?

Chi-Chi groaned. Well, she knew what she would do. They did have the money from the World Championship Goku hadn't blown. Thank god he was nothing like some of his friends – Yamcha blew most of the money that night having a wild party in the city. Krillin was a little more level-headed.

But what would Goku do. He understood that sex made children – made babies, she'd told him that a few nights ago with an elaborate metaphor. He'd caught on slowly. She was sure it didn't bother him that when they had sex, they could have made a baby. He'd only just discovered that he could feel that way.

Chi-Chi looked at her watch. A minute and a half had passed. She sat down on the lid of the toilet and huffed.

Two minutes had past.

And then, just when Chi-Chi thought her head was about to explode it had been just over three minutes. Three minutes and now she was scared to turn the test over.

She took it in her hands, keeping it face down.

I just have to be brave and do it, she thought determinedly. Closing her eyes, she flipped it over. She opened her eyes.

One stripe.

Negative.

Chi-Chi gasped and threw the test away. Oh god, she wasn't pregnant. She wasn't pregnant at all. Her head sunk into her hands and she closed her eyes. What? Why wasn't she pregnant? They'd been having unprotected sex for a week now. She'd heard it didn't take long – in fact, one of her friends in Fire Mountain village had gotten pregnant from one night.

Was there something wrong with her?

Chi-Chi shook her head and got up. She was angrily upset, and felt foolish. She felt horrid. All day she had worried about being pregnant and now she felt disappointed she wasn't. It was a stupid emotion and she knew she was foolish for feeling it, but that didn't make up for the fact that she was – and that she wasn't pregnant.

She so desperately wanted to be pregnant.

Krillin and Goku came in dirty to the aroma of a pot of soup – pumpkin and potatoes and onions. Chi-Chi was at the counter slicing up a beautiful long roll of bread and smiled at them.

"Wash your hands guys and come down for some lunch." She eyed the dirt they'd walked through on the floorboards and bit her tongue. She was going to sweep the floor later anyway.

"It smells delicious, Cheech, and we really worked up a great hunger," said Krillin.

"That's great, guys – did you get a lot done?"

Goku didn't reply until he came back into the kitchen, his hands clean. He sat down at the dining table.

"Yeah – three paddocks," he said, getting a bowl from Chi-Chi. She smiled gently and leant down to kiss him. Goku tried to scramble away, turning his head as a spoonful of soup tried to wedge it's way between their lips. Krillin sat down by the table, helping himself.

"We'll get the others done this afternoon," said Krillin.

"I might go out and make up this vegetable patch on the side of the house," she hummed, eating a bowl of soup herself. Goku went for sixths before he said he was contented, eating soup and most of the bread loaf. Then, the two men, snickering and joking amongst themselves went back out into the sun to continue their work. Later in the day they would head down to the river and swim, then Krillin would go back to kami's house – Goku would have offered nimbus, but Krillin couldn't ride it.

Chi-Chi for the rest of the afternoon tried to cultivate a garden. She thought it would have been best to start with herbs, just to see if anything would survive there – tarragon, oregano, parsley and coriander were easy to grow and they used them a lot in their soups and stirfries.

She finished planting the herbs and walked around the side of the house, noticing the old temple Goku had once lived with his Grandpa. Curious, Chi-Chi approached the small structure, entering the wooden hut with a small squeak.

It was tiny. There was a storage trunk that had a few clothes – obviously Goku's old clothes, because they were old and small, a thin blanket and a mattress. There was a small pillow that Goku had said his grandfather, the fourth dragon ball, had sat on. He truly did not believe the ball was his grandfather now, but he knew the fourth dragon ball did still mean something to him. It was atop their mantle piece at the moment; a memento to his grandfather. Chi-Chi knew Goku thought it was like him watching over them, to have the dragon ball near.

Chi-Chi sighed and exited the temple. The evening had grown dark and she needed to start dinner.

"Cheech," Goku said as he came up to the house.

"Hey sweetheart," she smiled. "Krillin has gone back to Kame's?"

He nodded. "What were you doing in there?"

She shrugged a little. "Just thinking about your grandfather."

Goku gave her a strange look. "Oh, okay," he shrugged it off. "Sure. What's for dinner, Cheech, I'm starved."

She smiled and approached him. He was dirty all over.

"I'll find something," she smiled. "Why don't you have a wash? Thank you for doing all that today."

"It's fine," he smiled and began to disrobe in the cool air. He kicked off his shoes and pulled off the casual white tunic. Chi-Chi watched her husband's rippled back, and then nude form as he approached the cold barrel. He hadn't bothered to heat it up yet and Chi-Chi was about to protest when he stepped in it.

Suddenly, he flared his ki rapidly and the water began to bubble gently and steam. Chi-Chi smiled as Goku sighed and relaxed, sitting back.

"That's a handy trick," she said, walking towards him. "Mind if I join, Goku?"

Thanks to those people who reviewed the last chapter! I'm honestly overwhelmed by the amount of feedback I've gotten for this story. So thank you to everyone. I try to update this regularly, but alas, life get's in the way.

I'd love it if you could post a quick review before you go. Some people have been commenting about the story how Goku and Chi-Chi have such normal lives. When they're not saving the world, fighting aliens and such, they're humble little farmers. Also, I know it's supposed to be that the first time the group sees each other is at Kame house before the sayian saga, but really - who doesn't see their friends for five years when they have a flying cloud that can take them wherever they want? I thought that was a little unrealistic, and also it's a real pain to write a multi-chapter story with only essentially two characters.

Anyway! Thanks for reading! I hope you leave a review before you continue about your daily lives. Have a wonderful day, friends!

~ Arlia'Devi