Demesne Weekly Digest 4 (#12-#14) (Patreon)

Working with Tools

Even though they had decided to send a group with Rian to Covehold Demesne to somehow acquire things the settlement needed and wanted– and to be honest, most people expected him to have to rob the bank– that didn't mean they would leave the very next day. Supplies needed to be gathered and preserved for the trip. Preparations would have to be made, since they wouldn't have Lori with them to provide water for cleaning, fire for cooking or stone for wheels. Attempts to dissuade the young women going with him would have to be attempted by their families. Sadly for them, no one seemed to mind that the astrologer or the idiot intent on getting his barrel back were leaving.

Part of the delay was that, upon their arrival to the current sight of Lori's Demesne, they'd started dismantling the water wagons they'd been traveling with for wood. That meant they'd need to inspect the remaining water barrels still functioning and pick the one that could still roll and needed the least repairs to make it water tight so they'd have water to wash off the Iridescence with.

"Wait, why do we need a water wagon?" Rian said when this was explained to him. "Can't we just make a boat and travel downriver? I mean, Covehold's on the water, so if we just follow this, it's bound to come out near there eventually. And this way we'll always have water to wash with."

…

Part of the delay was that they needed to build some kind of boat. Lolilyuri couldn't really help with that. Controlling wood wasn't a Whisperer thing. At best she could control the waterwisps in the wood, or set it on fire, but actually reshaping it was something only a Deadspeaker could do. Well, a Dungeon Binder could do it as well, but as she still hadn't worked out how to do anything besides Whispering, the matter was in practice irrelevant. It was very strange. A Whisperer could use Earthwisps to control the form of coal from the ground, but not its close cousin charcoal and wood.

Well, they had a means of travel, and possibly even a means of getting back, once they worked out sails and oars. Still, it would take time. While they had several skilled carpenters (probably, Lori's only experience with their work was her bed), by their own admission they didn't know how to make a boat, and it would require a lot of work to cut the beams and frames a boat would need.

"Can't we just cut a big tree and hollow it out?" Rian said. "I mean, that way we wouldn't have to worry about it leaking."

…

At which point Lori just put Rian in charge of making the boat that would take him to Covehold and let him figure out everything.

Lori herself was, of course, busy. Stone tablets containing the new laws that she enforced were placed in prominent areas, such as into the wall of the dining hall, in the shelters and on the cliff side next to her cave. For some reason, the law against public urination seemed to draw a lot of amusement. Did they think she was making all those latrines because she liked it? Fortunately, after what happened the last time, they seemed to understand she meant business, and aside from the occasional small child running into one of the bushes while in the midst of seeling, everyone used the latrines.

She eventually just placed a latrine with stone lining the bottom to prevent seepage near where the children liked to catch seels. Flogging a child would probably be fatal, and she couldn't Deadspeak yet. She even put some bushes in front so it would feel familiar.

Lori had to put making new houses on hold to build the new… she supposed hospital was as good a name as any. And with that being the case, she figured she might as well make it strong and permanent. She dug upwards into her cave, making stone flow like wet clay as she increased the height of the ceiling of her current abode, reinforcing walls to prevent collapse. So close to the dungeon's core, she could quickly imbue a lot of magic into the stones to make them be strong, though she'd need to remember to imbue them again every few days. She was probably doing something wrong. Given the things you read about that Dungeon Binders did in their biographies, they probably didn't need to do this much maintenance of their dungeons themselves. Still, she didn't have enough wire to test her theories right now. So this brute force, manual solution would have to do.

At least she now had a nice, high, vaulting ceiling out of it, which made everything much more airy.

She made sure to pick a spot where the bedrock was close to the surface, using the varying sensations the earthwisps were giving her to judge. Lori had tried using the same technique to differentiate between rock and metal ore, but so far no luck. She built the foundation first, since this would be an above-ground building, making dirt flow aside until she reached the bedrock, then making the stone she'd removed from her ceiling pile on top of it. The first time, she did it wrong, and ended up with a significant air bubble, so she had to open up the stone to fill in the gap. It probably wasn't that all significant, but the perfectionist in her was annoyed by it anyway. She built up the stone until it was a hand span above ground level– or possibly dirt level– before she began trying to smooth it down to something smooth and level.

This ended with abject failure. While fluids would naturally find an even level when left alone, stone being softened by earthwisps to act like a fluid didn't naturally act like that, moving more like clay or molten glass. What resulted was a bulging mess not unlike candle drippings. And while she could will the stone to move, there was no way to be sure she was willing it to be level.

Lori sighed. She needed a tool.

After finding the carpenters– who were not the sawyers, despite also working with saws and wood– and specifying what she needed, Lori left the floor alone to build up the walls, which at least she knew how to keep straight. A weight on a cord as a visual reference, and then she just had to force the stone to rise, create a lip and then sort of… drip downwards. With the right fluidity, the surface along the inside edge would be perfectly flat. Then she just had to thicken it and made sure the strata would bear weight instead of cleaving diagonally or something.

The building wasn't finished yet by the end of the day, but Lori considered this good work.

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The next day, Lori came back with her tool. One of the planks of notes Rian had left behind that she'd already finished transcribing to a stone table has one of its edges cut straight and carefully rounded, lashed to a relatively straight branch with cord made from seel skin and held in place by all sorts of clever joinery. One could have thought it a simple shovel, or wooden ore, or even some sort of sign post.

For Lori, it was her stoneworking tool.

Holding the tool in both hands, the straight, rounded edge flat on the stone, she willed the stone soft again and dragged her new tool across it, then squatted down to see the result. It looked much flatter than before, though… She softened the middle of the stone, drew a deep line across it with her finger– it felt very much like working with strangely cold, dry clay– hardened the stone, and then pulled water out of the air, making it condense to fill the line. As she suspected, the surface of the water and the surface of the stone weren't in line.

Well, at least the stone was flat. That was something…

Eventually, she worked out a method of using water-filled lines and careful sweeps of her new tool– she had to stop every so often to pull off the stone building up on the tool's underside– she was able to get the stone floor mostly properly flat and level, and was even able to use the tool to even the walls a little. When she was done, she… well, she was standing in a large stone box without a lid and a doorway knocked into one wall, but it was a very even box with mostly flat sides. She was just glad it hadn't rained that day, though from the thunder in the distance that was unlikely to last long. Still, it had a stone foundation, and stone walls. That seemed pretty good.

Dinner was not poisoned, and was hot enough it was unlikely to matter if it was spat on. She sat in her cave, transcribing more of the notes into stone– everyone had a lot of things they said was essential for the Demesne to have– listening to the falling rain and having vivid, painful flashbacks to all the nights she'd had to copy down notes from reference books while hiding from people she'd clubbed from behind. They were unlikely to know it was her, but they'd definitely recognize the book…

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After removing the water that had pooled on the stone floor after the night's rain, Lori sighed and added some texture to the stone in case anyone came in with wet feet so they wouldn't slip and hurt themselves. She softened a thin layer of the stone on top, and used another rock she'd found to gently press textures down on the floor like a stamp. That took some time, but hopefully it would be a good safety investment.

After consideration, she also made some internal rooms. A storage room, two side rooms big enough to house a bed and some other furniture so the doctors would have someplace private to sleep, two lavatories– she'd figure out how to deal with the waste later. Maybe just pull it out of the base and replace the stone?– and place where she built a water cistern, with a packed-earth stove. Technically it was a fire pit, but as it was elevated above the ground to be level with a table, she felt justified calling it a stove.

These new internal walls and doors still left plenty of room for beds for sick or injured people. Certainly more than what they currently had in the shelters, even after she finished knocking holes in the walls for windows and putting in fireplaces and chimneys. It still lacked a roof, door and windows, but she felt her part was done.

When she went to the sawpit– really, they couldn't blame her for getting the carpenters and sawyers confused, they worked right next to each other!– she found them all standing around Rian, who was pointing at a drawing scratched out on the muddy ground.

"–that way we have a wider, more stable base and are less likely to capsize," he was saying as all the men tilted their heads to the side, as if trying to understand what they were seeing. "We'll have to make two hulls, but this will give us the capacity to– oh, his Lo– er, Binder Lolilyuri," he said, finally noticing her approach. "Hey, quick question, how good are you at controlling fire? Because the fastest way we can hollow out this trunk is to set fire to the insides and scrape off the burning bits once they've gotten soft."

Lori blinked, her inquiries about when they'd be able to put the roof on the hospital now that she'd finished putting up the walls and other bits slamming into Rian's… Rian-ness. "What?"

He explained, gesturing towards the drawing on the ground, which seemed to be of… two boats side by side, with poles connecting them together, and some kind of floor laid on the poles, which supported a shelter of some sort? Apparently, the two boats would be made by hollowing out tree trunks– Rian apparently already had a tree in mind– and was meant to give both buoyancy and stability so they could comfortably travel down the river to the coast. The platform built between the two hulls would allow them to carry cargo and let everyone have plenty of room to sleep in without crowding.

"Won't this be extremely heavy?" Lori said.

Rian nodded. "Yeah, but that won't matter once we get it into the water."

"But definitely heavier than four people can carry, right?" Lori said.

"Well, yeah… but they have docks in Covehold," Rian said confidently.

"Are you sure it will go down the river, though?" Lori said.

"Well, it's not meant to be that long," Rian said. "Or wide. The drawing's not to scale."

"What about rapids?" Lori said.

Rian stared at her.

"Rapids?" Lori repeated. "You know, when rivers get really rocky or have a sudden drop and–"

"Yes, I know what rapids are," Rian said, turning to stare down at his drawing. "Um…"

Lori left him to it. Instead, she turned towards the carpenters and sawyers. "The hospital's ready, it just needs a roof," she said. "Thank you for the tool, it worked exactly as intended."

Leaving Rian to his drawings– he seemed to be drawing wagon wheels on his boat– Lori went off to have lunch. And a bath. They had a bath house now, and she still had some soap. A bath sounded wonderful…

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Advancing Building Techniques

Days had passed, and Rian had yet to solve the 'what if there are rapids' problem. On the other hand, the hospital got a roof. Lori had to raise up stone pillars to support the ceiling beams, but that was simple to do.

She had to raise a bunch of support pillars in the middle of the houses she'd built, too. Apparently, while making them roomy and spacious was all well and good for the families that would be moving in– there was a priority list Rian had drawn up– it made it hard to put in roofs. Now with the pillars up, the roofs had something to rest on besides just the flat-topped walls. Lori took the hint and started adding in holes for posts to the edges of the stone walls so the roofs would have something to anchor to. Really, people should have just said so sooner. She was a wizard, not a mason, she couldn't be expected to know about these things!

"Maybe there aren't any rapids?" Rian said hopefully at lunch.

"Well, I'm glad you're so confident," Lori said, enjoying her bowl of stewed everything. They'd tried making varied kinds of meals, but had run into the problem of lacking spices, or even salt, and so everything came out a little bland unless they threw in a little of everything. Then it came out thick and flavorful. Unfortunately, it was all the same flavor. Even Lori, who liked a little predictable monotony in her life, was getting sort of bored with it. "And I'm sure if you're wrong you can stop the boat and turn it around in time with your years of sailing experience. You doknow how to operate a sail, right?"

"You're made your point, can you please stop being so smug about it now?" Rian sighed. "Maybe we should send someone downriver to see. If they stick near the water they should be pretty safe, right?"

"Until a beast tried to eat them," Lori said. "Or a bug starts laying eggs in their ear while they sleep."

"That's not going to happen," Rian said.

"Oh? Why do you think I used to sleep with my hat covering my head?" Lori said. "You realize no one's going to volunteer for going downriver, right? You're going to have to go yourself."

"I know. That's part of the reason I'm delaying," Rian said. "I don't want to leave everyone alone with you."

"I'm not going to kill them," Lori said, insulted.

"I'm more worried about what would happen if you had to talk to them," Rian said.

"…all right, that's fair," Lori said. "Well, keep working on that. We still need supplies." She was pretty sure some of the sick people in the doctors' care were just lingering on their way to a slow, painful death, but you could say that about anybody, even the Deadspeakers who'd found a way to keep functioning after dying.

After lunch, she went back to building an expansion to the dining hall. The children had been catching a lot of seels, and while they had a lot more skin than meat, it all added up. Between them and the beasts Lori got called to kill, they actually had a surplus. So Lori was building a cold room. This way they could store the meat for longer. After all, they had plenty of water to make ice with, and this didn't affect the taste.

She had to quarry her Dungeon again to get the stone for it, and decided to carve out another room while doing so. This meant she finally had two rooms to her Dungeon.

When she finished building the simple box of stone, she dragged dirt up and over it on all sides to cover it so the sun's heat couldn't reach it. When she was done, the pile of dirt she'd made from building the shelters had shrunk slightly, and the dining hall looked like it abutted a small hill.

She walked away to get water from the river to turn to ice, and then paused. Then with an impatient sound, she turned and eyed the doorway into the cold room she'd molded. Then she recessed the top and bottom of the doorway slightly, just wide enough for a wooden beam to secure the door to. Nodding in satisfaction, she went to get ice.

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The next day, she had to come back and put in drainage, because ice melts.

Then, as everyone was busy putting on roofs, she finally seriously worked on her Dungeon.

She'd heard stories about famous Dungeons, the strongholds of famous Binders. They were generally underground, built under the cities they protected or deep within mountains next to them, built by ancient Binders in ancient times and meant to be able to house whole populations in times of war or dragons. They had guards with bodies of stone and hearts of fire; incorporeal sentries made of the spirits of the dead; twisted halls and chambers where people walked on the floors, walls and ceilings; furnaces where the very power of the core could be directed to create any substance the Binder needed; Hedon's Heart Demesne famously had a lake and a tropical island deep underground (not that she wanted one…); and even the smallest of Demesnes in the old continent could raise a shield to protect themselves from sudden dragons. Well, protect the important bits that mattered, anyway.

Lori wished they'd found a decent mountain to build next to, but she supposed over time she could just build up this cliff side into something comparable. She'd need to steal the lands around her Demesne to build up her mountain, but that was a price she was willing to pay. Still, she a long way to go before she could build things like that.

Still, no time like right now when she didn't have to build anything else! She might not have any idea at all about how to do any of the interesting stuff– or even the simple stuff, like basic Deadspeaking, Horotracting and Mentalism– but she knew Whispering, and so she'd start there. If there was one thing she could definitively say Whispering could do better than the other branches of magic, it was megalomaniacal building projects!

Treeshade Demesne notwithstanding, of course. There was probably a good reason why only one Demesne in the world had their dungeon be a giant, living/unliving tree, and it wasn't because Deadspeaking was better than Whispering.

First she moved her bed and table into the room she'd excavated while getting stone for the cold room, so that people couldn't just immediately enter her bedroom. Then she took a moment to completely encase the core in stone, so that no one could just get to it.

After that, Lolilyuri began to reallocate dimensions.

Aware of the great weigh of the rest of the hill pressing down on her little dungeon, Lori worked carefully, making sure to have earthwisps reinforce the walls and ceiling at all times. High, vaulting ceilings were filled in by flowing stone pulled up from the sides of the open space, reducing her overhead clearance but expanding her floor area. That done, she raised up walls to define rooms. She made a darkroom, its opening closed into a narrow slit, and then another room to act as a storage room, when she actually had her own stuff to store. She thought about making some sort of experimental space, but really, without any materials like glassware or wires it just wouldn't be worth it.

She also finally made a private lavatory, delicately making piping through the stone that would bring the waste outside. Not right next to her cave though. She made an underground hollow in the dirt with stone reinforced sides to keep it from collapsing. Then since she was messing around with pipes in the stone anyway, added a stone cistern she could fill with water so she could take baths, a hole for water to drain through, and made a private bathroom for herself.

Being able to bathe and relieve yourself in the comfort of your own home. Finally, her Dungeon was starting to be civilized.

She had to make proper air holes along her door, since she was uncertain if sleeping in a new room far from the door could potentially asphyxiate her. Lori had a responsibility to her demesne to stay alive, after all.

When she left to go to dinner, she found a seel hanging outside her door. She'd long added a hole in the cliff wall from which someone could hang a branch skewering a seel. She noted it seemed a rather large example of the species. Not a juvenile then. She was getting an adolescent today. She supposed the hunter's skills were increasing. That or they'd just gotten particularly lucky.

Shrugging, she took it to the kitchen so it could be part of her breakfast tomorrow.

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"I have good news," Rian said as he joined her for breakfast.

"Someone found a metal ore we can mine?" Lori said.

"Better."

"One of the doctors found an introductory textbook on Deadspeaking?"

"Fine, just news then," Rian said with a sigh. "One of the sick children seems to be getting better. The doctors say they hear less fluid in his lungs."

"Oh good, we'll have a new worker soon. They can go seeling with the others"

"That's what you're taking from this?" Rian said.

"It's not anyone I know," Lori said. "All the people I know are at this table."

"You're making me both annoyed and sad for you at the same time," Rian said.

"That's none of my business," Lori said. "So, how goes finding a way to get to Covehold?"

"Well, the more I think about it, the more I think we should send someone downriver to scout," Rian said. "Given just the bends we can see, we need to know if the river is actually going away from Covehold. Also, if we're sharing this river with anyone else, I think we should know before they just show up."

"Seems sound," Lori nodded.

"And I think you should come with me when scout the river," Rian said.

"Absolutely not," Lori said. "I risked my life to finally have my own Dungeon–"

"We all did," Rian interjected.

"– and I'm not letting you take me away from it," Lori finished firmly.

"You've traveled before."

"Yes, and it was horrible. So I'm never doing it again. I will stay in sight of my cave all the days of my life from now on. "

"You're being dramatic," the hypocrite accused. "We survived, didn't we?"

"Yes, and I have no intention of jeopardizing that," Lori said. "What if I die and the demesne disappears?"

"What if everyone else dies and you're left here by yourself?" Rian said.

"I can learn to catch seels. It's not that hard."

"You’ve never even done it before," Rian pointed out.

"I'm sure I can learn," Lori said. "How hard can it be? I mean, we have the children doing it, so it's certainly doable."

Lori paused and titled her head. "Actually, there's nothing I urgently need to build today. Maybe I will go learn how to catch seels."

"Please don't make the river explode," Rian said. "The children work very hard every day and they don't need you exploding their place of work."

"I wasn't going to," Lori said indignantly. She definitely had been planning to make the river explode. Shockwaves killed very well in water, after all.

"Hmmm…" Rian 'hmmmed'.

"Actually… do you know how to go seeling?" Lori said.

"Are we turning this into a contest?" Rian said.

"Don't be silly. This is a needful survival skill, not some kind of game."

"You realize the children compete to see who brings in the most seels, right?"

"Good. We can never have too much food and soap."

"Oh. Too bad. I guess you know you're going to lose."

"Just because I intend to learn a child's job doesn’t actually make me a child, you know. I'm not going to agree to explore the river with you if I lose."

"Well, unlike you, I'm busy. I have a lot to do before I quit being a lord today."

"Ah. Well, I'll see you later then."

Finishing her breakfast, Lori went forth intending to find some brats and figure out how to catch seels. It couldn't actually be that hard, could it?

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Lori Goes Seeling

It was not, in fact, that hard in theory. Or even in practice.

At least, that's what Lori told herself.

Finding where the children did their seeling was simple. She'd put a latrine near there, after all.

Figuring out seeling was done by using long, pointy branches to catch the seels was easy. All the children stood on rocks above the water near patches of swaying reeds, spears raised and ready above their heads and looking intently into the moving, rippling clarity of the flowing river. Some held that pose for a long time. Some jabbed their spear down often, seemingly on the basis of more attempts increasing the likelihood of one of the attempts being a success. A few seemed to have lines tied to the end of their spears, with the other end tied to their wrist, seemingly for retrieval.

The brat wasn't one of the latter, standing there with her arm raised and her spear ready, a comical look of concentration on her face.

They were being watched, of course. Two boys and a girl in their teens were spread around with the children between them, using knives to carve little wooden hooks. Every so often, one of the children would manage to spear a seel. If they didn't manage to subdue right away, one of the teens would help them so they wouldn't get pulled into the water. They'd then take care of draining and gutting the seel while the child went back to river to catch the next one. They also kept an eye on the adult seels nearby. While the juveniles the children were seeling were only a little bit longer than Lori's arm, the adults were bigger, almost twice as long as Lori was tall and very thick. More than enough to knock even an adult into the water and possibly rip them apart with their teeth. They didn't seem inclined to come to the beach and rocks the children were seeling on– Lori supposed the water was too shallow and the rocks uncomfortable on their bulk– but given their proximity it was better to watch them. They were killing the seels' children, after all.

Even from Lori's vantage point, they weren't likely to run out of seels any time soon. The water writhed with seels, the long, slinking bodies of the freshwater fursh moving in smooth, side-to-side motions to propel themselves through the water. The surface of the river rippled as the things went up to take breaths, their dark fur looking sleek against their bodies.

They moved fast, and it was all Lori could do to focus on one through the refraction of the water, the similar creatures around it, and its sinuous, confusing movements. It didn't help that there were constantly diving into the reeds and other plants growing in the water. They seemed to be feeding on small slugs and little shelled squid.

Lori took a moment to consider the cyclical image of juvenile slugs and squid being hunted by juvenile seels being hunted by juvenile humans. Was it a cycle, with the humans being eaten by the slugs at some point, or was there a level above that where the juvenile humans would be eaten by the juveniles of something else?

She considered that and decided the thought was too morbid even for her and went to find a branch to cut and sharpen.

Most would have wondered why she didn't just use her staff. Most people were idiots. Her staff was a well-cured hardwood. It had wire wrappings to better channel her magic, inlays of quartz for lightningwisps, more porous woods molded in to hold waterwisps, and a little coalcharm to hold a live coal for when she needed firewisps and didn't have time to rub her hands together. It had been with her for years, it was a trusted and reliable tool, and it was too heavy for any of that throwing around the children were doing.

Lori found a tree with branches that seemed sturdy enough, and used waterwisps to make a high-pressure stream of water to cut of a promising branch. She found a convenient rock and bound the earthwisps in it, forming a serviceable knife blade. She might not be any good at making flat walls and floors, but after weeks of traveling, she'd gotten good at making knives and similar shapes without a mold.

It took her four blades to strip the branch of offshoots. She was fairly sure she'd done something wrong with the rock, like forming it so the cleavage lines were pointed the wrong way. Still, it was faster to just make a new blade than stop right then and figure out the rock's properties. In the end, getting the branch stripped was important, not the quality of her rocks.

She hefted the stripped branch, finding the point where it balanced. After trying to cut a point into one end, she'd just given up, found an already reasonably pointy rock, hit it with another rock a few time to see if it was hard enough not to break, and just used more rock to wrap it around one end as a point.

"You shouldn't do that," a voice behind her said.

Lori turned around. It was the brat. Now that she wasn't being rained on and had to wear a beast hide as rain cover, her bright orange hair had more body to it, and were secured with wooden hair ties. She had a long, sturdy looking wooden spear, one end cut into a simple narrow point. "Why not," Lori said.

"They break," the brat said. "Then the seel gets away and starts bleeding in the water, and then all the seels get angry because there's blood in the water, and the big seels get angry and we have to leave before we get hurt. Making the wood pointy makes it go in easier and less likely to break when you pull the seel out. ."

"I tried doing that," Lori said. "My knives kept breaking."

"Don't you have your own knife?" the brat said. "All the grown-ups have their own knives. My Itay says I can't have a knife until I'm older."

"I have a knife," Lori said. She did too. It was good non-oxidizing steel that she'd brought with her own beads before getting on the ship that had taken her to Covehold. It was currently doing nothing, stashed in the bottom of her pack. "It's just not on me. I don't usually need it."

"You should always bring your knife," the brat chided. "What if you need to make a tool or something? A knife is the best tool for making other tools, my Itay says."

"Well, I have magic," Lori said. "That's my tool for making tools."

"Your tools can't be very good if they keep breaking so soon," the brat said. "We can borrow kuya Vov's knife to sharpen your spear. Ateh Krihs has a knife too, but kuya Vov's is better."

Were those… titles? "What demesne are you from?" Lori asked.

"Lorian Demesne," the girl said.

"No, I meant before you came here," Lori said. "What demesne were you from originally?"

"Our past doesn't matter, because we're going to make a new start in a better demesne where the lords and Binder actually do their colorbrained jobs," the brat said. "That's what my Itay says."

The brat's family sounded worryingly opinionated.

"Do you want me to teach you how to seel?" the brat said. "Is that why you made a seeling rod?"

"I realized it might be a needful skill I need to learn, yes," Lori said loftily.

"Your seeling rod's too big in one end," the brat said. "It can't be like that, or else it doesn't throw right."

Lori gave her an annoyed look.

"Don't worry, everyone makes mistakes," the brat said. "Come on, let's find you a better branch."

Lori glared at her, but sighed and tossed the stick away, and followed her as she explained what the right kind of stick needed to be.

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After finding the right sort of tree branch and cutting it with a stream of water– the brat had gasped with an appropriate amount of awe– they'd taken the stick to one of the young men on watch. He had then proceeded, under Lori's gaze, to methodically strip off smaller branches, then quickly sharpened on a point with a practiced and methodical slash that left the end a simple point.

"Don't rest the point on anything," the brat said. "It'll ruin the point, and then you'll have to cut it again. It's fresh wood, so it's only good once before you need to put another point on it. It'll get better as it get older and dries out."

"That seems inconvenient, having to be careful with a new rod every time you use up the old one," Lori said.

"Oh, we all have branches we've cut already," the brat said. "Mine are drying next to my bed. When I can't use this one any more, I just go back and get one of those."

Huh. She'd been wondering about those sticks in the shelters.

"But a fresh stick is best if you're just starting out," the brat said and Lori could tell she was being consoled. "It's easier to cut a new point when it gets ruined."

"What makes you think I'll ruin it?" Lori said indignantly.

"You've never done this before," the brat said.

And Lori couldn't really argue against that, could she?

She was also advised to take off her boots and socks. After looking at the children and where they needed to stand to be able to hit the seels, Lori reluctantly took off her footwear and rolled up her the legs of her trousers.

The rocks were hot but with her bare feet contacting the stone she was able to get the firewisps to draw out the heat, leaving the ground pleasantly chilly. Standing in direct sunlight like this, she also bound firewisps around her to divert oncoming heat so she wouldn't get overheated as the brat demonstrated how she was supposed to hold the spear-like seeling rods. Lori watched as the brat looked intently into the water, suddenly jabbed downward, then seemingly in the same motion swung her spear out of the water. A seel was impaled on the point, letting out distressing honking sounds as it wiggled desperately. The brat held her spear in both hands, keeping the point upraised as she waited for it to tire itself out. Then she carefully grabbed the seel by the back of its head and slid her hand down until it reached a point a third of the way from the opposite end of its body. The brat tightened her grip as the seel continued thrashing, and carefully placed the seel's head on the ground, holding it in place with her foot. With a twisting motion, she pulled out the spear and put both hands around what Lori now saw seemed to be the seel's hindquarters, where it's spine and tail met, and where its vestigial rear limbs allowed for a firm grip.

The brat then proceeded to swing the seel by its whole body to club its head against the ground until it finally stopped moving. Then club it some more just to be sure.

"And that's how you catch a seel," the brat said proudly, having never stopped narrating what she was doing. "Now you try!"

Lori looked into the water skeptically. The seels were dark, darting forms, and she knew that where they seemed to be wasn't really where they were, because of refraction. Still, she hesitantly got into place, raising the seeling rod up as she been shown, reminding herself she was supposed to jab it, not throw it. Throwing it meant even if she did hit, the seel would just get away, and she'd lose the rod too.

She eyed the water, trying to account for refraction. She put the end of the rod into the water, noting how much it bent, trying to remember the degree of refraction.

"Don't just concentrate on the water in front of you," the brat said, obviously trying to be helpful. "If you aim for the seel in front of you, you won't hit it. Aim for it before it's in front of you."

"Noted," Lori said, trying to keep her annoyance tamped down. She took a deep breath, and tried to be aware of her peripheral vision as she hefted up the rod, staring into the water, waiting for a seel…

––––––––––––––––––

"And you cheated," Rian said over dinner.

"Of course I cheated. It was my first time, I wasn't going to hit anything!" Lori said. "I'm a Whisperer. If I want to catch something in the water, I'll make the water hold them in place."

"Poor Karina," Rian said, still smiling in amusement. "She tried so hard to teach you the right way to do it, and you cheated."

"Oh please, like you'd have managed it the first time," Lori muttered, taking an angry spoonful of stew.

"Of course not," Rian said, still looking insufferably amused. "I'd need practice. After all, those children have been doing this for weeks. They've gotten pretty good at it. Probably the best. But I wouldn't have cheated. My ego isn't so fragile I need to look good in front of children"

"Well, mine does," Lori said under her breath. "Wipe that smirk off your face."

"I should have bet you," Rian said.

"Oh, like I'd have admitted anything if we'd had a bet going," Lori said. "Now will you shut up about it?"

"Fine, fine," Rian said, still chuckling. "Was it big at least, or did you cheat for an itty-bitty little thing?"

"Fatter than this bowl and longer than my arm," Lori said. Actually, that had just been luck, she'd just had the waterwisps stop the first thing that moved into her view.

"Well, at least it was a big one," Rian said.

"Yeah, well…" Lori muttered. "Does anyone here know how to spin fibers into thread?"

"I think a few people do. Why?" Rian asked.

Lori reached into a pocket and pulled out the piece of stalk she'd cut. She peeled off the outer layer, showing it to Rian.

"The children had been using this to make lines for their spears," she said. "It's from this plant that grows close to the river. Do you think someone could turn this into thread or rope?"

Rian frowned, taking the outer layer and pulling at it, watching as it separated into long sheets of fibers. "Maybe…" he muttered. "People talked about cloudblooms, but there are other plants that you turn into fabric, like tressflowers. Maybe we should see what we have around here before we buy something. After all, cloudbloom might not even grow here."

"I thought those were raised for oil?"

"The stalks get turned into thread and fibers too."

"Huh. So I guess you can put off going down the river a little longer."

"Not too long," Rian said. "We still need medicines."

"What about rapids?"

"If we have too, we'll drag the boat overland," Rian said determinedly.

"And on the way back? When it's full of supplies we need?"

"Then we'll be really careful about how we drag. Besides, if we're somehow successful enough to have all that, maybe we'll find a way to get back up too."

"Ah, there's that annoying relentless optimism," Lori muttered. Somehow, it wasn't as annoying as it usually was.

That night, she carefully placed her seeling rod in an out of the way corner so it could dry, one end cut into a sharp, simple point.