Weekly Digest 137 - (#431 - #433)

Doing Great

When I woke up, the lights were dimmed, and I could hear several people making various sounds they were usually too dignified to make while awake. It wasn't just snoring. There was snorting, whistling, loud sighing, bubbling tongue flapping, and… was that babbling? Yes, someone was talking in their sleep, the words slurred and indistinct because their mouth wasn't forming the words properly. It sounded like Tae.

…

Yes, that was definitely Tae, she just said 'Good morning, your Bindership'. Why was she dreaming about greeting Lori 'good morning'? Although maybe she was just practicing saying it in her sleep. That also seemed like something Tae would do.

For a moment I just lay there, staring up at the stone that was far too close to my face and not thinking 'where am I'. I'd never really had any trouble recalling where I was when I woke up. I have had trouble getting up when I wake, but that was usually because it was just so comfortable to just light down and go back to sleep.

Unfortunately, I had the not-really-an-honor-at-all-just-mostly-annoying of being the lord of this demesne, I couldn't really indulge in just staying in bed, doing nothing. I had to get up and make sure the dungeon was in good shape on behalf of Lori, see to it that everyone was sufficiently occupied so they wouldn't come up with any mischief, not turn prematurely gray worrying what trouble Lori has gotten into…

Also, while my bed was usually just comfortable enough to want to stay in bed, that was on a wooden bed, with four bedrolls and blankets acting as padding. At the moment, I only had a single bedroll to separate me from solid rock, which was just barely comfortable enough to sleep on as long as I fell into the dark quickly. Waking up in it was another matter.

I didn't move, staying on my back as Umu breathed deeply next to me. Her front was pressed against me, one arm on my chest, her cheek on my shoulder. One leg was draped over my shins, no doubt to keep me from kicking in my sleep. She was very warm against my side, and although we were both fully clothed, I couldn't help my reaction. But…

Craning my head, I tried to look past Umu, who'd laid her bedroll out on the wide bench that was up against the sleeping niche. I couldn't see Mikon in the niche and bench opposite us, or in the niche and bench opposite the alcove's opening, so… she was probably sleeping on the floor next to Umu's bench. Straining my ears, I thought I could hear her breathing.

Lying there, I let myself slowly resign myself to having to properly wake up and enjoyed the feeling of Umu sleeping next to me. I'd have to wake her to get up, and I was all but certain that would also wake up Mikon, so lying back like this wasn't procrastinating, it was being considerate!

I shifted shoulders and back slightly against the bedroll to be more comfortable, then settled back and was considerate

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I actually dozed off a little, and might have been snoring slightly when I felt a fingertip on my forehead. It was a gentle touch, not pressing, but I could feel it even through the light sleep I was in. The finger began to move back and forth across my forehead, moving and left right across my brow. It barely touched my skin, yet I could feel it there, slowly moving back and forth, the fingertip slowly tracing spirals as it moved.

One eye reluctantly opened, and my neck just as reluctantly turned. The lights on the second level were still dim, but it was enough to see Mikon's face looking down on me and Umu. She had a fond smile on her face as she continued moving her finger, which had stopped making spirals and was now slowly moving down my nose. "Good morning, Mikon," I said softly.

Her smile grew. "Good morning, Rian," she said as she moved her finger to the tip of my nose. "Next time, please sleep on the floor so we can both lie down next to you."

"Sorry," I said. "I forgot."

"I know," she said. For a moment, the two of them stayed like that in companionable relative silence, Mikon's finger now tracing circles on my nose.

Eventually, I said, "I should probably get up and take over the night shift, shouldn't I?"

Mikon nodded. "You should. Shana is still awake upstairs waiting for you." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "Well, she's upstairs waiting for you. I don't think she's next door, in any case."

Should you really call it next door when the alcoves do not, in fact, have doors? And that finally made me decide to get up. Shana would stay up waiting for me, because for all that it was a terrible idea for her to choose Lori as someone to emulate, she had taken well to copying Lori's more obvious positive traits such as her sense of responsibility and work ethic, and seemed to have no inclination to now pay attention to people's names. Of course, that same sense of responsibility meant she'd keep waiting for me to show up, and it might be a while before she thought to send someone to retrieve me.

"I should probably get up, then," I said.

"You should," Mikon agreed, her fingertip now slowly moving over my cheekbone.

I remained reclined. "I'm going to have to wake up Umu, aren't I?"

Mikon nodded. "You will."

I sighed. Stupid necessary evils. One shouldn't have to wake up someone sleeping so comfortably!

Of course, there were ways to do this relatively painlessly, but…

Watching me, Mikon pouted her lips and started kissing at the air, her eyes not leaving mine.

Yes, that. Her encouraging somehow made things more awkward. Yes, all of us had been naked together. Yes,  I'd been intimate with all of them. Yes, Riz and Mikon had started being much closer and mutually intimate with each other, and yes, when Umu's bell had been rung she tended to be so disoriented Mikon could get away with cuddling with her and helping her ring her bell further, but still, it was awkward being actively watched and encouraged to kiss someone to wake them up!

However, there wasn't really a way to wake up Umu at this point that wasn't… well, inconsiderate. Normally, I'd carefully extract myself and try to rise from the other side of the bed, but since I was in a stone sleeping niche… well, that wasn't an option unless I was capable of Whispering and willing to try and excavate through the stone to the alcove on the other side of the wall. As I wasn't capable of Whispering, my willingness to excavate through the wall was pointless.

All right, kissing her awake when she might want to keep on sleeping might also be inconsiderate, but I was fairly certain she'd regard it as romantic. Giving Mikon one last look that tried to convey both a desire for her to look away—however silly that was—and annoyance she was being so pubescently juvenile about this, I set about waking Umu enough to be able to get her to move so I could get out of bed.

Suffice to say, I succeeded, though it took some time. Fortunately, it wasn’t a noisy endeavor, and so we only had an audience of one before Umu was satisfied enough to let me go. Mikon knelt there the whole time and watched, seemingly enjoying the whole thing, though it didn’t seem to be in the voyeuristic sense—well, not entirely in the voyeuristic sense. After that, it was only fair I give Mikon the same treatment—even thought she was already awake, and clearly had been for some time—while Umu caught her breath.

All right, it was an enjoyable way to go from ‘sleepy’ to wide awake, even if it was a little frustrating that such was the extent of what they could do. But now that I was awake… I had work to do. Leaving my bedroll in the sleeping niche—there was really no need to roll it up—I headed upstairs to the dining hall.

It was mostly empty at this time of night, although there was someone at the kitchen keeping a single large pot of food warm to feed the night shift. As expected, Shana was indeed there, sitting on a bench near where the night shift guarding the door were gathered and looking achingly like a little girl trying to stay awake. She was so tired her face was slipping from its Lori-like resting glare position, and she actually looked her age for once. On the bench with her, lying down upon its length with her head on Shana’s lap was Yoshka, somehow managing to stay balanced on the narrow plank.

 “Shana—Shanalorre,” I greeted. She blinked sleepily and it took her a moment to turn and face me. “I’m here. You can go to sleep now.”

“Ah. Lord Rian. Good, good…” she said, rubbing at her eyes briefly. “Nothing of significance to report. The air coming in through the vents remains cold, but only in comparison to the recent summer heat, and is not yet freezing. Wizard Taeclas has results to report on the experiments she conducted, although she is currently…” Shana paused in her report, opening her mouth wide and only remembering to cover it with her hand partway through as she yawned hugely, “…currently retired. Wizard Lidzuga is still resting, though it is probably time to rouse him, as I can no longer continue functioning as an active Deadspeaker…”

“Your report is noted, Binder Shanalorre,” I said, deciding to meet her with formality she was still insisting upon. “Do you want any help getting Yoshka downstairs?”

Shana blinked up at me, then back to the little girl on her lap. “That would be appreciated, thank you.”

I nodded, looking towards the nightshift volunteers. Ten people awake, including Yhohim who was probably left in charge, and sitting near the dungeon’s front door. The rest were curled up and asleep in their bedrolls nearby so that they could immediately respond if something finally tried to force its way inside. I caught Yhohim’s eye and pointed down at Yoshka, indicating she needed to be carried.

Yhohim nodded, getting the attention of one of the men waiting near the door—Lamos, I saw, one of the former militia from River's Fork, though were they really 'former' militia at this point—who stood up and started towards us. "I'll take care of her, Gr—Lady Binder," he said, but waited until Shana gave a bleary nod before he began picking up Yoshka. Shana got to her feet, letting out another polite yawn before leading the way down to her alcove.

I watched her go downstairs guiltily, before turning to walk over to Yhohim near the dungeon's heavily barred entrance. It was time to get to work. Still, I spared a moment to think of Lori, and hoped she was all right. Even if she was in a better position than we were because she had Whispering… well, I worried.

At least she had a book to read if she got bored, which was more than I could say for myself. Actually, why was I worrying? She was either finding work to soothe her perfectionist soul, and she was indulging herself in finally having reading time. She was probably doing great.

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Lori's hand shook slightly as she wrote, trying to get the flow diagram down on a still-blank corner of the current sheer of paper that she had carefully drawn a line around to separate it from the other notes, flow diagrams, and random stains on the paper. Her eyes wanted to droop, and she could feel the strangely empty feeling of having been up reading for far too long, but she couldn't stop. She had to note this binding down while she still could, before the dragon created the next—

Her finger slipped, smearing the still-wet ink and she let out a frustrated growl as she smudged out the diagram she'd been drawing. Not all of it, but enough that she didn't have space to redraw or annotate the thing. Best to start again. She blearily looked across the paper again, but there was no more space, not without making other diagrams confusing to read…

Carelessly resting her pen on the pile of straw under her—there was a dark stain from the ink, but since it was already there, she might as well keep at it—Lori reached  out for another sheet of paper, balancing it on the plank on her lap. Her hands rose to rub her eyes, and she just barely remembered to check for ink before she did so. Uh, she'd been awake for… ugh, she didn't have a clock, so the exact number was hardly relevant, but it had probably be a while.

Lori should probably get a little sleep before Riz called her for breakfast. It would be agonizing if she had to ceck up on everything tired. She should put down the paper,  cap the pen, move the straw a little so it didn't stain her bedroll, and—

There was a knock on the door. "Great Binder? It's time for breakfast."

Impossible! She'd practically just finished dinner and dimmed the lights on the second level for people to sleep, it couldn't possibly be breakfast yet!

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Yup, Lori's probably doing great.

Lidzuga came upstairs not long after Shana had left to retire, looking much more well-rested, and carrying a pen, ink bottle and notebook some loose sheaves stuck into it. The cover of the notebook was plain and unadorned, which was probably intentional because I'd seen him using the book as a drawing board.

"Lidz," I greeted. "Did you have a good rest?" When I'd checked with the Daising—who'd volunteered to keep an eye on the waterclock, joking that all medics did that anyways as they waited to go off-shift—it turned out I'd been asleep for a probably little under ten hours, or at least as close as we could figure from the clocks. That was probably the longest stretch of uninterrupted sleep I've had in months, and Lidzuga had slept for longer. I'd checked on him before I'd gone to sleep, and he'd been dead to the world.

He gave me a sleepy smile. "I did, thank you for asking. Sorry for last night, that was… irresponsible of me.."

I nodded. "Don't do it again, all right? Or at least do it only on your own time when we're not relying on you. While I understand losing sleep about something you're enthusiastic about, now really isn't the time."

He winced. "I understand, Rian."

"Good. If it happens again, I will not be nearly so amicable. Now come on, let's get some breakfast." According to the water clock, it was still about an hour until the time everyone woke up and those working the kitchen actually got started on making breakfast, but there was a put that still had warm food in the kitchen, and breakfast was when you ate it. "How's your research coming along? Did you at least lose sleep over something good?"

The abrupt change of subject seemed to confuse him as I led the way to get us some food. There wasn't any bread, but the stew had added grains in it that served the same purpose. We got some bowls, full of the meats and now-soft vegetables that had settled in the bottom of the pot and got to eating as Lidz hesitantly began telling me about what he’d been working on. Something about seel snout shapes?

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A Worrying Routine

It took over a week for the dragon to finally pass over us, and during that time things just barely had time to fall into a comfortable routine. At least, everyone else got to fall into a routine. The routine I fell into could probably be called comfortable from the outside, but those looking didn’t have my worries.

For one thing, it soon became clear that while Lori was remembering to dim the lights to let people sleep, she was doing so inconsistently. Keeping track with our own water clock, the length of time between adjusting the lights could be as little as eight hours or as extreme as fifteen. Twice, all the lights in the demesne suddenly just went out, including the ones on the rocks that Shana, Tae, Lidz and I had, which Lori had never done before. The lightwisps were restored soon afterwards, but in the moments of darkness, many people had screamed in fear and there had been accidents on the stairs. The second time, Kolinh had tried to use one of the wisplights Lori had made, but that had been deactivated as well.

There had also been that day that the lights had remained dim, but that hadn’t been nearly as disruptive, and many people had taken the opportunity to just stay in bed and sleep that day. Still, it was a worrying sign, implying that either Lori wasn't staying to some kind of schedule or had forgotten to arrange one. The loss of light also implied a worrying degree of carelessness that was normally uncharacteristic of Lori. She might be careless with her clothes, her personal safety outside of work environments she was familiar with—unless she was being excessively paranoid to the point of parody—and what she said at the dining table—though most of that was just utter apathy to anyone else knowing what was being said—but Lori was never careless with her magic save for that one time with the rock. What was she doing that she was deactivating the lights instead of adjusting them?

…

Well, the obvious answer was obvious. The question was why she wasn't getting any sleep. The almanac wasn't that interesting, was it?

…

Yeah, she was probably missing out on sleep from reading the almanac. There was also the possibility that she'd somehow managed to figure out how to finally use the other three kinds of magic, but that was unlikely.

Even as I thought it, I was hoping she'd prove me wrong and return having unlocked the secret to the use of the other magics, but somehow I didn't think things would be so convenient.

Taeclas had managed to figure out the binding of the water heater bound tool Lori had made, using her pot full of water, several cups full of water layed out in a line away from the bound tool's core that did the heating, and some more water spilled out on the floor. She'd put the bead into the receptacle from a distance using a stick with a simple claw that she'd controlled with Deadspeaking, and then had waited for some time before removing the bead and checking the temperature.

"How long, exactly?" Lidzuga had asked.

"Lidz, I wasn't trying to do it to alknowledge standards. The point was figuring if it was safe for us to use the binding for heating the air coming into the dungeon, not whether someone decades from now could repeat and verify the experiment."

"That's not the point, it's a standard that—"

"Lidzuga, next time you can be the one to run the experiment," I'd interrupted. "This is what happens when you stay up instead of sleeping when you should. Tae, go on, please."

The water in the pot had gotten hot, but Tae observed that it had seemingly done so uniformly. The water had not started getting hotter at the bound tool, resulting in little currents and updrafts in the water as the heat originated from one spot.

"I can't be sure because Binder Lori didn't leave behind proper documentation," Tae had said, which had caused Lidz to start grumbling all over again, "but I think her binding uses waterwisps and firewisps so that the binding only acts on water, and only liquid water at that. And from the way I couldn't get any of the water hotter than a certain temperature, the firewisps are set to raise water to that temperature and no further. The binding might actually cool any water hotter than the set temperature, though I didn't bother to test that."

"Why not?-!" Lidz had exclaimed, looking aghast. "That's important information!"

I'd had Lidzuga work out his outrage of such shoddy scholarship by asking him to put together a shelf we could put the pot and bound tool on top of should it become necessary for us to start heating up the air coming in through the vents from outside. He'd taken two  of our ladders—which to be fair were not really being used at the moment— and paired them together into a triangular frame, with the pot sitting on a plank between the topmost rungs of the ladders. Thankfully, the ladders had been made to more or less the same dimensions, and it only took one piece of scrap wood secured to the top of one rung to make the plank lie evenly.

Once that was in place, the pot had been filled with water, the bound tool had been set, and the volunteer militia had moved an additional pace back to keep from accidentally toppling the ladders by accident. While the pot of hot water didn't seem to have much of an effect, since the movement caused by the bindings Lori set in place to circulate the air added an additional degree of cooling, the air from the vents seemed a bit less cold. Still comfortable, but no longer chilling the skin directly exposed to for some time. Lidzuga would no doubt be upset that my experiment was simply holding my forearm to the vent, counting to twenty, and then feeling how cold my skin was after, but we hardly had a more accurate way to measure the temperature.

Well, Lori probably did, but she wasn't sharing. Why share and have less when she could keep it to herself and have everything?

Beyond that, everything seemed to be progressing well. The children were rambunctious as ever, but that was a ’dealing with children’ matter, and so was the purview of Shana and ‘should probably be a lady but Lori doesn’t like giving children work’ Karina, who kept them in line with a mix of letting them play and having them help with the farming. All they did was water the plants, but that was one more matter that the farmers and those taking care of the plants didn’t need to take care of.

There were a few incidents, which was only to be expected when you put two hundred people together for eleven days in a building they couldn’t leave, but fortunately no blood was shed, and while there was colorful language it was at a restrained volume. I simply had to separate the people involved until the calmed down, and didn’t even need to have follow up on them resolving the issue.

There were also no incidents of physical altercations—even among the children, and with only a limited number of little wooden toys that had to be borrowed and returned such an altercation should have been inevitable, even if only among the youngest—which was probably explained by how everyone was enjoying the novelty of being able to dance to music at any time of day. Often, people were just playing music with no dancing. The instruments were simple, made of cords stretched out across buckets for sound, folded leaves carefully removed from the crops growing in the dungeon farm, drums made from pots, and even a woodwind instrument someone had painstakingly cared from a block of wood that had been secured together with cord. The sounds they made, however…

If I could somehow convince Lori to give it all a listen, she might… well, not enjoy it, but at least acknowledge its positive aesthetic qualities instead of just calling it noise. People knew they had a very limited amount of time to do this and were making every moment of it count as the sounds of the instruments were refined and the playing improved. It helped keep people occupied and out of trouble, and thankfully they followed the intention of Lori’s law about music, and stopped playing when most people started going to sleep. Mostly. There was the occasional note of a plucked string, but it was brief and quickly stifled by what sounded like some kind of balled-up cloth.

There were no noise complaints.

And of course, during this time, I developed a worrying routine. First, I worried how long Lori would forget to alter the lights from bright to dim, or from dim to bright. Then I worried about Lori and Riz’s safety, and if they were taking care of themselves, and if someone in River’s Fork had finally decided to try attacking Lori, and if Riz had gotten hurt protecting her…

That last look a while. It was a time-intensive worry.

After I finished worrying about that, I worried that River’s Fork had enough water stored to last them however long the dragon would be here. I worried about Lori trying to kill everyone to keep the water to herself if it looked like she had to drink water reclaimed from unsavory sources. I worried the almanac would be too worn for me to read by the time Lori finally let me borrow it.

All my usual Lori worries.

It wasn’t all worrying, of course. As the dragon dragged on, Tae became worried about the transplanted crops. While we had managed to dig perhaps two thirds of the crops still growing on the fields, there hadn’t been enough time to do more than pile dirt on the still-bare portions of the third level—although there was very little of that left, if you didn’t count the excavation tunnels—and lay the crops down on their side with their roots lightly covered in wet soil, which was apparently an old trick for these kinds of situations. It was the sort of mess that would have had Lori twitching, so we could only do it while she was away, but it was hardly the best way to keep the crops alive. They weren’t getting nearly as much light as they needed, for one thing. Tae, Lidz and Shana conferred and decided the best way to salvage the crops was to forcefully mature them to the point they could be harvested.

“The grains aren’t likely to get any bigger at this point,” Tae had said. “The additional maturation so just so they don’t taste funny. Although working on so many at a time… ”

“We have mesh screens,” I had suggested. “Would those help?”

The crops were laid out on the screens in layered sheets, their roots contacting the mesh. A surprising number of crops managed to fit on the one by one-half pace metal mesh, and we had enough screens to be able to do all the transplanted crops in five batches. At that point, it was all simple. Tae and Lidzuga claimed the life of the plants, Shana imbued them, and the two Deadspeakers tamed the imbued life into the meanings needed to accelerate the growth of the plants to maturity. Given all the crops were all fairly mature anyway, it only require one day for them to mature, at which point the plants were all cut to isolate the grains and the grains winnowed.  The stalks were set aside to dry so they would become straw.

It was the smallest harvest we’d done to date, and everyone more or less agreed it didn’t deserve any kind of celebration.

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I was getting ready to go to sleep one maybe-night, helping Mikon and Umu lay out our bedrolls—and politely ignoring Mikon’s ‘idle words’ that the air was just a little chilly and we should put one of the blankets over us to keep warm—when a cleared throat drew my attention towards Shana standing just outside our alcove.

“I apologize for interrupting,” Shana said, though her face was of course it’s usual blank Lori-face and thus didn’t convey apologies at all, “however, something has come to my attention that I believe you should be informed of, Lord Rian.”

“Will it take long?” Trying to discourage Mikon aside, I had been looking forward to going to bed. And sleep, too, later.

She shook her head. “No. I am merely informing you that the dragon has passed completely, and that it is no longer occupying any part of Binder Lolilyuri’s demesne that I am connected to.”

I nodded in acknowledgement, trying not to read any significance into her wording beyond the literal. “That’s good to know,” I said. “Hopefully that means we’ll be able to go out soon.”

Shana shook her head. “I would not recommend it. While the dragon has passed, I can perceive several mobile meanings created by the dragon wandering the environs outs of the dragon shelter. I can only suppose that their equivalent which Binder Lolilyuri can perceive are also loose outside of this dungeon.”

“I’m pretty sure at least one of the bindings Lori prepares before she left for River’s Fork is intended precisely to prevent that from happening,” I pointed out, “but Lori would probably be able to tell better than we can from where she is. Are any of what you’re perceiving near her?”

“Yes,” Shana said immediately. “However, they all remain outside of the dragon shelter, so she is in no danger yet., and as far as I can identify, the doors into the dragon shelter remain shut. And no, the Great Binder and Auntie Riz have not been injured since the last time you asked.” Even her expression of annoyance was Lori-like! That was so wrong!

I nodded. “Well, hopefully this means we’ll be getting out soon.” It shouldn’t take Lori that long to clear out any dragonborn abominations, should it?

It was three days later by the waterclock before the dungeon’s entrance finally unsealed and Lori wrote more words on the ceiling: ‘Go out now’.

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Someday

Just because Lori told us—well, wrote to us—to go outside didn’t mean we did so immediately. For one thing, just because she thought it was safe to come out didn’t mean it was. I distinctly remember stepping out of the dungeon and finding an undead islandshell—an infant one, fortunately—trying to eat us even though it no longer needed to. Fortunately, it had eventually run out of imbuement, proving the superiority of procrastination over other problem-solving methods!

I always wondered why she didn't just turn the islandshell's… shell into a boat? I was fairly certain she could use earthwisps on it—or use the earthwisps in it, however it works—to reshape the shell into a hull, and it would probably be easier for her since she'd be able to anchor her bindings to it as well, but apparently she had other plans for it. Perhaps she wanted her own undead islandshell infant, which… all right, that was fair, I understand that. Though if she ever did somehow manage to learn how to use Deadspeaking, would the islandshell still be in a state fit for converting into an undead? Or converting back into an undead, I suppose.

When we had first opened the dungeon's doors that first time, it said something that while Lori had removed the moat full of boiling water from the entryway when she had told them to go outside, the stone wall that was meant to block access to the entrance of the dungeon was still in place, save for a person-sized opening in the middle. On seeing that, Kolinh hadn't even waited for my orders to have one of the tables laid in front of it to block off the entrance, with more tables and benches set in place to brace it. 

Fortunately, there was still the balcony above the doors of the dungeon, where it'd place that little cup of water back when I'd noticed the air was getting cold. While the cup itself had never frozen, the frost that had collected on the walls of the entryway beyond had been visible through the slats of the air vents, confirming that Lori had placed some kind of binding on the vent to warm the incoming air, even if it was still a bit cold coming in. I suspect she didn't account for the cold of the entryway's walls spreading to the balcony.

From the balcony, one could see out past the entryway, although the view was a narrow one. There was the ground in front of the entryway, a view of the old shelter and the Um, and past that was the aqueduct. Beyond the aqueduct were the trees.

Icicles hung down from the far end of the entryway ceiling. The ground outside was covered with a thick layer of what looked like snow or might have simply been ice, glistening in the light of the entryway ceiling that Lori didn't seem to have deactivated. The curving roof of the shelter and the Um were similarly covered, though they didn't glisten in the overcast sky. Beyond the entryway, everything seemed dim, but not dark enough for night, implying the clouds that had long abandoned them this season had finally returned, and probably explained why the snow—or perhaps ice—had remained for so long even if the dragon, according to Shanalorre, had been gone for three days already.

We had closed the dungeon's doors again to prepare, arm, and wait for brighter conditions, but a day later the outside  hadn't looked much brighter, even at noon.

"We need to go out," I declared when I met with Kolin, Shana, Tae and Lidz after lunch the day after Lori had opened the dungeon. "Dark or not, it's been quiet so far, so hopefully that means there's nothing in the immediate area. We need to go out, make sure, and then get started on getting one of the boats out into the water so we can retrieve Lori from River's Fork. If there is something out there, we need to find out what it is so we can start figuring out the best way to deal with it, or decide we don't need to deal with it to send out a boat to retrieve Lori."

"Uh, Rian?" Tae said,

I turned towards her. "Yes, Tae?"

She pointed at herself. "Why am I here?" On the other side of the table,  Lidzuga looked like he was asking the same thing.

"Because you're one of our few wizards, and I'd value your input," I said.

"What, really?"

"Tae, if anything happened to Lori, you are literally one of three people who could keep this demesne alive. But since we're all going to hope nothing happens to Lori, you know more about Deadspeaking than I do, and what I know comes from plays, hearsay, and what I learned while working at a lumberyard. Maybe you know some kind of meaning that could be helpful to our situation. The same for you, Lidz."

"Ah. that makes sense," Tae said, nodding.

"Also, you and Lidz need to decide who among you will be coming with us outside."

"Wait, what?"

"Well, Shana can't come to be our emergency healer," I said, gesturing towards the girl who unfortunately as a Dungeon Binder. "Look at her."

"I do not see why not, Lord Rian," Shana said as Yoshka took a post lunch nap, the little girl's head lying down on her lap and the rest of her laid out on the bench. "I am perfectly capable of acting as emergency healer. Wizard Taeclas and Wizard Lidzuga cans stay here if they aren't comfortable venturing out beyond the dungeon."

"While I'm… very disturbed by your willingness to just risk your life like that, Shana—Shanalorre," I said, "as a Dungeon Binder, we can't let you put yourself in that sort of danger, especially since you have no means of defending yourself."

"You know, this wasn't mentioned when you were recruiting us in Covehold," Lidzuga said, giving me a displeased look.

I shrugged. "You don't have to volunteer. We'll just go out there without a Deadspeaker to provide emergency healing if we run into anything sudden and violent. I'm we can survive whatever violent dragonborn abominations out there without you."

"You won't be alone, Lord Rian," Shana said. "I can accompany you."

"Shana, you are a Dungeon Binder and a child," I said, emphasizing each word. "I am not risking your life like that. You are not coming with us. You and Lori might not consider yourself a child, but the rest of us do, and we are not putting you in that kind of danger. Also, you being alive keeps Lori safe in River's Fork. "

"Binder Lolilyuri would go if she were in my place," she insisted.

"Lori can throw fire, lightning, and sink people into stone," I said. "And even outside of her demesne, she still has two out of three of those. She's a lot better suited for protecting herself than you are. Besides, if things get so bad something happens to me and Kolinh, we'll need you to take charge until Lori gets back. People will listen to you. I'm sure you can guess what would happen if Tae and Lidz try." Namely, Lori will assume they killed me and are trying to take over the demesne, at which point she's likely to do something violent to them without me to talk her out of it.

Shana glanced towards the two wizards, then nodded. "Yes, that would be… regrettable. Very well. I will remain here, though I want it known that I protest this. Should you encounter a dragonborn abomination and there are injured, immediate attention would save lives."

Sighing, Tae and Lidz resigned exchanged looks.

“You don’t have to go,” I said, letting some of my sincerity come out. If they didn’t want to come with us, then they didn’t want to. “Just stay here, we’ll take care of things. We can just bring a few of the medics with us.”

Ignoring me, the two laid their hands down on the table.  There was pause, and suddenly their hands shot out, seemingly trying to slap the other’s hand, and it was a confused blur as they both literally tried to get the upper hand. Eventually, however, there was a resounding fleshy smack, and Tae’s hand was pinning Lidz’s down on the table.

“Gah! How are you so strong?” he exclaimed, wincing as he shook his hand.

“Farming,” Tae said smugly. She tilted her head. “Though given how slowly you move, maybe I should be the one to go. You might not be able to react in time.”

For a moment, Lidz looked tempted, but shook his head. “No, I’ll go. Besides, you’re better at plants than I am, and we’ll need more harvests after this. Besides, I might see something interesting…!”

“Don’t bring a notebook,” I said immediately. “Just remember it in your heart and draw it later.”

“… of course, that’s exactly what I was going to do. I’m not a fool, after all.”

Meet my eyes when you say that. I dare you.

“Well then,” I said. “Let’s all get ready. Lidz, I suggest putting on boots instead of those tsinelas. They’d be better for running.”

He looked down at his feet. “You’re right, I better do that.”

As everyone got up—I needed to put on boots too—I turned to the winner. “Tae? A word, please?”

She blinked, then nodded. “Sure, Rian. What about?”

I glanced towards Lidz, but he was already hurrying away. “About that win of yours…”

“Yeah, my farming muscles are impressive, aren’t they?”

“I think using Deadspeaking to push your muscles to move faster than normal is more impressive.”

She went still, staring at me with wide eyes. “Don’t tell Lidz?” she said nervously.

“I won’t tell him,” I said. “But you do the next three things we need a Deadspeaker for.”

She sighed. “Fine… that’s fair, I guess.” Her head titled as she gave me a considering look. “How did you know? That’s internal Deadspeaking. It doesn’t leave any outward sign.”

“Lidz was in pain from how hard you hit him. You weren’t. You must have done something to dull the pain, and that means you could have done other things too.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Ooh… you’re good. No wonder Lori made you lord.”

I shrugged. “Tae?”

“Yes?”

“How does someone who knows the human body finely enough to do that end up a bad carpenter and enthusiastic amateur farmer on the new continent?”

Her eyebrows rose, and her smile widened. “How does someone smart enough to be able to recognize all that end up a lord in the new continent? Well, obviously that’s how, but you know what I mean.”

I tilted my head in acknowledgement. “Fair enough. Someday?”

“Sure. Someday.”

We parted, and I headed downstairs to put on my boots.