Weekly Digest 13 - (#39 - #41) (Patreon)

Runaway

The day had been full and exciting, and by the end of it Lori felt gritty and unclean. Not the gritty and unclean feeling the Iridescence left, which felt like being covered in fine, needle-like sand that had managed to embed itself on your skin, slowly penetrating inside you into your brain and entrapping her body's wisps, but the other kind, made of sweat and dust and too much exertion and excitement. She had gone out to the river with one of their seel-skin buckets to get water and use that to give herself a brief scrub in the small room she was to sleep alone in, the doorless doorway blocked by darkwisps and dire threats of violence, but it just wasn't the same as a proper bath. Still, it made her stop feeling too grimy to sleep, even if she still had to wear the same clothes.

She also found that Rian was a surprisingly fierce haggler as he quibbled how much 'very little' bread amounted to. It was surprisingly a lot, almost a 1/16th wedge of a round flatbread! Ugh, the man had better guard her door properly.

When it was time to sleep, the curtain of darkwisps came up again so she wouldn't have to put up with anyone staring at her when she slept. She put it in front of the window too. It wouldn't last long, barely an hour, but it was the principle of the thing!

It took a while to fall asleep, since the darkwisps obstructed light, not sound, and so she had to listen to the talk coming from the other room, low as it was, as Deil, Tackir and Rian repeatedly tried and failed to remedy Landoor's colorbrained belief he was now Lori's heir or something until she finally put the cloud of airwisps around her to use and bound it with the darkwisps to block out sound. Only then did she manage to fall asleep.

Lori and everyone else were awakened in the middle of the night– the bindings of both the darkwisps and the airwisps had faded away– by the sound of fierce knocking on the door of the wooden house. As Lori fumbled for her staff, she heard someone stumble awake and head for the door.

"Did Grem escape?" Rian said, his sleepy and tired. "Or did Binder Shanalorre run away from home?"

Lori rubbed her eyes to clear them as a suspicious voice said. "How did you know that? Did you do something to her?"

She heard Rian sigh. "Lori, their Binder ran away from home! I'm going to help them look! That all right with you?"

"How did you know she was gone?" the suspicious voice demanded again.

"Because she's an upset little girl who's just had a terrible day and probably wants to get away from a lot of things," Rian snapped back. His good cheer had apparently been diminished by the late hour. That, or he just couldn't be bothered to put up his usual cheerful act when he'd just been woken up in the middle of the night. "Now come on before she falls into the river and drowns. You three, with me. Yes, you too Landoor, stop trying to see through your nose, Binders can't do that and real ones don't bother. Get up, there's a little girl who might be in trouble. "

For a moment, Lori considered going back to sleep and only getting up when the demesne collapsed so she could find someone to tell her where the core was. Then she sighed, sat up in the dark, and pulled on her boots over her fresh socks. Throwing on her rain coat against the chill of the night and grabbing her bag full of lengths of firewood, she stepped out of the house, following the distant sounds of people and the light from the fire that had been made near the base of the central tree. People were gathering around the fire, some trying to make torches using wood and wax. The moonlight was dim, most of it blocked by the dome of living wood above,

There were only a few lanterns, filled with seel fat and smelling because of it, which didn't really do a lot to dispel the darkness. Vaguely-familiar militiamen were directing people to form search line, sweeping from the dome and outwards up the hill, while two other groups were being directed to search along the riverbanks.

Lori breathed in, going through the familiar exercises of gathering and building up magic before she channeled them up to the lightwisps in her eyes. Carefully, she imbued them, careful to keep them in her body, and the night slowly got brighter and brighter. The formerly insufficient lamps blazed bright, and from above bright shafts of colorful moonlight glowed though openings in the dome. With everything more visible, she looked around, looking for Rian or anyone who looked vaguely like one of her people, sticking to the shadowed edges of the crowd. She found that idiot Landoor, standing around looking lost and ignorant and not paying attention to the voices giving directions, one of the other men with him, who was paying attention. Granted, Lori wasn't either, but she wouldn't be searching with the group.

Eventually she saw Rian, walking quickly back from the direction of the river. He walked up to the militiamen organizing everyone with something closer to his usual self-confidence and assurance. "We checked our boat," she heard him say as she got closer. "It's still there, so she didn't use that to get away. I have one of my men stay with it, just in case. I looked as best as I could, but I couldn't see any signs that someone might have fallen in the water."

"Let's hope she didn’t'", a vaguely familiar man said gruffly. "Demesne's still up, so good chance she's not in the river. Get ready to move, we'll start with a house by house search and then sweep up into the woods."

"I'll see if I can beg for some better lights from my Binder," Rian said.

"Better you than me," the man said.

"She's much nicer once you get to know her," Rian lied, thought Lori couldn't understand why.

Rian stepped away from the man, looking through was must have been confusing light and shadows. Lori stayed exactly where she was, standing next to an empty house at the edge of the space. Finally, Rian seemed to spot her, and began walking towards were she was standing.

"There you are," Rian said. "I don't suppose you have any magic that can conveniently solve this problem, do you?"

"Why would you think that?" Lori asked, confused.

"I don't, but I felt I had to ask in the infinitesimal chance the answer was yes." He seemed to have managed to recover his mask of good cheer and enthusiasm. "I think I managed to convince them that we have nothing to do with this. Though it would help if you'd shed a little light on the situation."

Lori gave him a withering look. He just smiled.

She reached to her side for one of the lengths of firewood, handing it to him. "Light the end of this and get back to me," she said.

Rian grabbed it and did just that, coming back with… well, it could be considered on fire. Little flames were licking on the wood, but it was hot and that was what mattered. She took it and held her staff diagonally, touching the fitful flames to the coalcharm on the end of her staff, which was in turn connected to the wire that ran along its whole length. Lori breathed in, gathering magic and passing it through her core, her muscles, out her hand and through the wire. At the last moment, she remembered to close her eyes with its bound lightwisps before binding the firewisps in the wood and causing them to burn.

The temperature of the firewisps shot up substantially, fueled by the magic she'd imbued, and the end burst into open flame, consuming the fuel available to it to feed the sudden heat.

Eyes closed, still breathing, Lori drew in magic, filling her lungs again and bringing the magic up to her eyes. She let the binding there dissolve as she pressed the staff to her face, pressing the wire to the thin curtain of her eyelids. Magic flowed through the wire of her staff and into the blazing light of the flame, and began gathering and binding the lightwisps emanating from the flame to her will. The end of the crude torch started to blaze with light, so bright she could see it through her eyelids.

"Nothing to see here folks, just a little magic," she heard Rian say as she kept imbuing with magic so it would last some time. "Why are you looking here? There's a little girl out there who needs help, remember?"

Finally, she pulled the staff away from her eyes, warily opening them to see the bright torch of light she'd bound to the end of the length of wood, which was still fitfully burning at the end. "Here," she said. "Is this enough light for you?"

"Is there any way you can have all the light going in one direction?" Rian said. "So that, you know, I don't blind myself using it?"

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The lightwisps now bound to send light in a cone so that Rian, as he said, wouldn't blind himself using it, the search parties went off, Rian and three others equipped with torches of bound lightwisps as they went traipsing through the dark.

Lori, of course, didn't join them. She might hurt herself, after all, which would be terrible for Lori's Demesne. And if that girl died suddenly, then who would claim this demesne in her stead? Obviously, the safest place for Lori was to stay behind.

She'd gotten a lot of colorful looks at that, but so what? It wasn't like what those people thought mattered.

Not that she was the only one who'd stayed. Several of the younger people had stayed behind to watch over the children and get the ones who'd woken up from the excitement to go back to sleep. Neither of the doctors had gone with the search parties, Binder Shanalorre's uncle among them. She'd gotten a very colorful look from him in particular before he resorted to pacing around the bonfire in the front of the tree. The other doctor, a much less cantankerous man, had found a place to sit down on one of the stairs of branches around the central tree and had gone back to sleep, seemingly confident that if someone was injured enough they needed him, they'd wake him up. Very intelligent fellow, that one.

Lori had found her own place to sit, her back to one of the wooden houses, trying to stay awake since without Rian she didn't want to risk sleeping. At least she'd gone to sleep early, as was her custom, and so she was actually fairly well rested right then, even if she wanted to go back to bed and sleep the remaining night away.

She stared up at the central tree, covered in strange, shifting shadows from the light of the moons shining through the dome of interwoven branches above. In one of the artificial, Deadspoken bulges on the tree that were being used for living space, a light shown from a window, probably some kind of candle. People had climbed up and down the tree, systematically searching every each of the built levels for the Dungeon Binder, before dispersing to do a door to door search of all the buildings that Lori hadn't bothered to join. The fact there didn't come back with the girl in question meant it was a smart decision, for the search would have just been a waste of energy on her part.

In her opinion, it was a futile endeavor. Binder Shanalorre no doubt possessed some kind of awareness of the demesne that would allow her to know where everyone was, and could use that to hide accordingly. It would be a simple matter of her hiding where no one had been yet, then going around them to where they'd already searched. They wouldn't find Shanalorre if she really didn't want to be found. Everyone was hopeful she could be found, however. After all, the Demesne was still up.

Still, Lori had to wonder: where could she be? The Dungeon Core? The Vyshke woman and her husband had said they had checked there– implying it was within the dome, and possibly under the main tree– and hadn't found her, although she really wasn't sure if that man actually would tell anyone if he found his niece…

Lori yawned, then grimaced and stood, pacing back and forth herself to stay awake. She stayed away from the pacing doctor. Beyond the dome, she saw the light's she'd made sweeping back and forth piercing through the darkness. People were still searching, then. She shook her head. If this were her demesne, they'd have found the girl already.

But then again, if this were her demesne, the girl might not have had reason to run away. She'd have just been an ordinary girl. All right, she'd have been a Savant, and one who'd lost her parents, but she wouldn't have mattered.

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Eventually, the sun rose. The Dungeon Binder had not yet been found.

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Fruits of the Morning

Lolilyuri waited. And waited. And waited.

Eventually, as the sun continued to rise and everyone continued to sleep with no sign of anyone bringing them food, she had to face the terrible truth.

No one was bringing them bread for breakfast.

How ungrateful this demesne was! She'd allowed her citizens to stay up half the night helping them look for their Binder, she'd even contributed with light, and no one so much as showed up with breakfast? Truly ungrateful.

All the searchers had straggled back in by morning, not long after Lori had woken up from her restful sleep, reported their complete lack of findings, and then finally crawled back into their beds. In the light, Lori had finally been able to tell where the house all their stuff was in was located, and had helped Rian and the others go to sleep while she'd waited for breakfast. Alas, there was none.

Well, at least they still had travel rations. That was… something.

…

Maybe they had a centralized cooking area she could get bread from.

Faced with the alternatives or doing nothing and eating travel rations (she never thought meat would ever lose its appeal, but eating nothing but had managed to accomplish the impossible), Lori decided to risk going and finding some bread she might be able to beg off someone. Taking her staff, in case she had to hit anyone, she slipped out of the wood house.

Actually, was it a hut? It was one whole piece of wood with an outside like tree bark, with a rook that was simply the walls coming together in a dome. That was a hut right? You probably needed more right angles to be a proper house…

Outside, Lori's disappointment grew. Despite the sun being well up in the sky, she seemed to be the only person out and about on the streets of River's Fork Demesne save for the two militiamen– a different pair from earlier, both looking tired and just sitting around outside– guarding Grem's prison, who looked at her warily but didn't challenge her. She shook her head, adjusting her hat to block the glare. Did these people have no work ethic? No matter how late they'd stayed up the night before, there was work to be done, civilization to be raised from the ground up, food to be cooked, guests to be fed…

Stomach grumbling, she headed out to walk around the town, smelling for bread, trying to catch the elusive smell of baking. Or… was it cooking bread? It was a flat bread, probably heated in a pan, so it was cooked rather than baked, since baking needed an oven…

Sadly, she only heard the sounds of snoring through the open, unglazed windows of the other wooden homes as people slept in, wasting the day away. So disorganized. Was the greeting they'd gotten yesterday, with so many people up and about, an aberration of some sort? No smoke blew from chimneys now, unlike yesterday.

Movement caught her eye and Lori turned, finding herself looking at one of the tall trees whose branches wove part of the wooden dome above. Smaller branches were already growing from the weave, making the pillar look fuzzy and freshly green. Several children here climbing the woven branches of one particular tree pillar, while others stood below, holding the bottoms of their skirts and shirts out to make an impromptu net and walking underneath the climbers or calling and pointing at something above. Bewildered, and sighing at seeing children left dangerously unsupervised– what if something happened to them?– she made her way towards them.. As she got closer, she saw they were apparently picking fruits from the tree, some sort of small blue fruit with… yellow tendrils?... that grew in clusters hanging beneath the branches, and which the climbing children were carefully picking and dropping down to the ones waiting below. A lot of the fruits hit the ground instead of being caught by the nets, but from the resulting laughter and how they were picked up and added to the nearest child's catch, this didn't seem to adversely impact the fruit's edibility. Some of the younger children, who apparently possessed less impulse control, had peeled some open, revealing a translucent, pale yellow flesh around a long red seed. The flesh they ate with great relish, while the seeds were all thrown into a pile.

Lori eyed the tree. She didn't know what kind of fruit it was, but it was clearly edible. She wondered if it was native to the region or if these settlers had brought it with them from somewhere else. That tree though… she looked down at her shoes. They were scuffed and rather unsuitable for climbing trees. Indeed, on a second look, the children were climbing barefoot. Still, even if she copied them, she doubted she'd be able to pull herself up the tree like they could. Maybe she could use jets of water to get some to fall off? But she'd have to go back to the river first, since she could hardly just pull vapor out of the air here…

"Tah! Stranger! You with the hat!"

Lori blinked, and it took her a moment to realize she was being spoken to. She look around, but no one seemed to be facing her way.

"Up here!"

She moved her gaze upward, following the voice. Near her, on an outstretched branch that honestly looked too narrow to bear his weight, was a boy who for some reason gave a strong brat-like impression. He was hanging upside down by his legs and one arm, his dark purple hair pointing at the ground as his other arm held a huge cluster of the blue and yellow fruits.

"Can you catch this? It's too much for anyone else and I can't hold on and throw it down at little bit at a time," he called.

"Do I get to have any?" Lori asked.

He gave her a strange look, made harder to identify from being upside down. "Why wouldn't you?" he said. "It's not like anyone owns the tree."

Well. All right then. Perhaps she'd found breakfast. Carefully setting aside her staff, she considered trying to catch it with her hat… but no. It was a useful hat, and if she tore it, there probably wasn't a milliner for taums. As the boy swung impatiently, she took off her raincoat and held the lapels and hem, making a depression. The boy threw the cluster of fruits, which she barely caught, almost having it roll off her raincoat. The fruit was a bit heavier than she had assumed, and she adjusted her grip on her coat to any subsequent fruits wouldn't fall off.

For the next little while she walked back and forth, following the boy and, when other children saw how much her coat could carry, others as they called for her to walk under them, throwing pieces of fruit in and cheering when they managed to get it into the growing pile she was carrying. At first she was worried one of the fruits would break open, but the skin turned out to be much tougher than she had assumed. Very firm, certainly. Thankfully, breaking off the fruits didn't seem to release much sap, for which she was grateful.

Eventually she had to put down her coat, as her arms were tiring greatly from holding it up. She sat down at the base of the tree pillar, the roots of which had apparently been shaped, most likely by the late Deadspeaker, into surfaces at the right height to function as seats. Lori noted that on closer inspection the trunk itself had convenient-looking spurs, as if from the stumps of branches, for climbing up to pick the fruits. She wasn't alone, as the girls and boys not adventurous enough to climb the tree themselves sat with her, dumping the fruits from their skirts and shirts and beginning to crack them open with great appreciation and relish.

Up close, while the yellow-tipped tendrils were… well, slightly disturbing to look out and mildly unnerving to touch, it wasn't that bad. On closer inspection, the dark blue of the skin had a dry, leathery appearance punctuated by the tendrils, which were actually quite soft and pliable. She held the fruit between two fingers like the children were doing and squeezed.

Nothing happened.

"You have to put more force into it," the boy who'd first called out to her said as he sat down opposite the pile of fruits, tucking his bare feet under him. The pile was much smaller than it had been when she'd first sat down, since other children had taken bunches for themselves. Despite that, it was still a sizable pile. He picked up one and twisted it off the stalk it was still attached to. "Like this," he demonstrated, squeezing hard. The skin tore open, and the fleshy inside nearly flew out of the skin. He barely caught it, then popped the whole thing in his mouth, chewing carefully, before turning his head aside and spitting out the seed so it flew with precision on the pile nearby. "And you have to put the seeds there, so it can be planted again."

"Noted," Lori said, examining the fruit in her hand before turning it slightly and trying again. This time the skin tore, revealing the translucent yellow flesh underneath. She raised it to her mouth using the skin to hold it and, rather than popping the whole thing in, took a careful bite.

Her front teeth dug into the juicy flesh, scraping along the seed in the middle, and she tore off and swallowed the bit of fruit in her mouth. It was wonderfully soft and sweet, with a deeper sweet aftertaste. She chewed once and swallowed, enjoying the flavor. It was delicious!

Lori examined the half-revealed seed, which was red and smooth, and covered with yellowish fruit juice. She popped the whole thing into her mouth like the children were doing so as not to waste a drop of flavor, spitting out the seed to place it next to her. In the time she'd eaten one, the boy across from her had already finished four more and was popping open a fifth. What had once seemed like a sizable pile suddenly seemed insufficient for two people as Lori grabbed another fruit and started to pop it open…

For a while, there were only the wet sounds of fruit being popped and eaten, with the occasional spit to the seed pile.

"Thanks for the help, stranger," the brat-esque boy said between spitting out a seed and putting a fruit in his mouth.

"It was nothing," Lori said between one fruit and the next. She spat out a seed and put it on the pile next to her. "I was hungry anyway. No one was making breakfast."

"Yeah, everyone tota and tyatya are still asleep," the boy agreed. "I guess something must have happened."

"Binder Shanalorre ran away from home last night," Lori provided, putting her fruitskin neatly to the side. The boy had been following her example after just tossing it at first, so now they had another pile between them.

"She did?" the boy looked surprised. "Why?"

"I have no idea," Lori said, popping a fruit into her mouth and working the seed out of the flesh, popping the seed onto her hand before she chewed the fruit with gusto. She swallowed. "Everyone was looking for her last night to ask her."

"If she's hiding, no one's ever gonna find her," the boy said with the air of someone who knew what he was talking about. "Shana's really good at hide-and-find. She can climb anything and hide for forever."

"Her aunt will be very distressed," Lori said. She picked up another fruit and began to squeeze. "This is delicious. What do you call it?"

"Hairy blueballs," the boy said with a grin. "Wiz Kosh named it."

"Ah." Lori looked up at the huge tree pillar they were beneath. "Did he do something to this tree besides the obvious? It seems to have a lot of fruit on it."

"Yeah, Wiz Kosh did some magic on it, said it would keep makin' lots and lots of blueballs," the boy said. "A lot of the trees are blueball trees. We go to a different tree a day, and by the time we get back the trees got new blueballs hanging on it for us to squeeze the juice out of." The boy grinned, as if expecting Lori to be shocked.

"Ah. So the name is deliberately vulgar," she said. "Did the late Binder Koshay find it very funny?"

"Oh yeah, Wiz Kosh loved dirty jokes like that," the boy said. "Really scraped Wiz Laven raw though, especially since she couldn't stop people from using the name."

Lori paused. "Wiz Laven?" she said. The name sounded vaguely familiar, like it had come up before but she'd forgotten about it. "I thought Binder Koshay was the only wizard you had."

"Nah, we had Wiz Laven too," the boy said, tapping his head. "She was a mentyist."

"Mentalist," Lori corrected out of habit.

"Yeah, one of those," the boy said. "My tota says Wiz Laven saved us all when Wiz Kosh couldn't, and that's why they're both gone now."

I was there when Laven took his place, saw what she did…

Oh. Ah. Lori should have realized. Shanalorre had mentioned wizards 'like tota and tyatya'. Twowizards. She'd been hearing it, but it hadn't been able to put it together. Binder Koshay was one wizard… and this Laven, Wiz Laven was the other. Both were dead, leaving Shanalorre to be the Binder, because there was no other wizard…

Her parents were Koshay and Laven… Grem had said that, hadn't he?

For a moment, Lori just sat there, and forced herself to imagine what it would be like to lose both her mothers… and immediately stopped. It was too… impossible a feeling.

No wonder Binder Shanalorre had run away. No wonder she had been crying and tired and…

The fruit pile got smaller as Lori sat there, staring at nothing as the boy kept on eating fruit. Finally, only a little bit of the pile was left.

"Well, thanks for the help stranger," the boy said, getting up. He politely kept his bare feet of Lori's coat. Other children were getting up as well, their piles of fruit finished. They took the skins and seeds and carried it with them, its intended fate unknown. The boy picked up the skins of the fruits he and Lori had eaten, but left her seeds alone. "Most old people yell at us and tell us to climb down when we're picking hairy blueballs."

Lori shook herself out of her stupor. "Well, you said you'd give me some," she said. "And I was hungry."

The boy grinned. "I'm Vari," he said, holding out his hand.

"Your hand is sticky," Lori noted.

The boy looked at it and tried to wipe it on his shirt, but that didn't help. "We'll shake some other time," Vari said. "What's your name, stranger?"

"Lolilyuri," she said.

"That's a long name," he said. "Don't you have a shorter one?"

"Lori."

"See you around, Miss Lori," the boy-brat said with a wave. "Maybe you can help us get some blueballs again." He walked off, still in his bare feet.

"Vari," she called while the name was still fresh in her mind. He turned, walking backwards to face her. "Where are your shoes?"

"Don't need 'em," he said. "Climbers climb with their feet! Shoes make you fall off."

The children all walked down the streets under the dome, leaving Lori to her little pile of fruit.

She looked at the pile, then took off her hat and put them all inside, supporting the cone of the pointy hat with one hand. With so little, it was a much better fit. Then she set it down and pulled on her raincoat.

As she looked back over River's Fork, she saw smoke starting to rise from some chimneys. Finally, people were getting up.

Shaking her head, Lori picked up her hat and staff and headed for where Rian and the others were probably still sleeping. Hopefully the lack of breakfast would be corrected with some lunch. It was either that or… rations.

Maybe she should keep these blueballs for herself…

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The Promise of Breakfast

Rian and the others weren't awake yet by the time she got back, so she left the fruits on top of the pile of supplies next to them, resolving to eat the blueballs if she came back and they were still there.

Then, still with nothing better to do, she wandered out again.

She sighed regretfully as she walked about River's Fork. The remaining damage from the dragon– the large boulders still lying around, the destroyed houses, the holes in the dome, the precariously shattered trunk of the tree barely being held up by its place in the weave of branches– was such a marked contrast to her nice, restored demesne. Really, if she'd claimed this place, given it a nice new name like Lori's Crossing, and established her authority, she could be spending her time clearing everything, reinforce that shattered trunk with earthwisps so that the dome would be less likely to fall, maybe get started on more fireproof housing or at least a dedicated kitchen area so more people could be fed efficiently.

Ugh, she really needed to get back to her demesne. Now that there was no core to claim, this was all just a terrible, pointless waste of her time

She found herself back in the space in front of the central tree. In the light of day, it was obviously some kind of central gathering space, maybe for community meetings or something of that vein. The remains of the fire was a pile of ash now. She looked around, debating, and walked towards the central tree, climbing the stairs sticking out of it so she could see above the houses. Despite the smoke coming from some of the houses, there didn't seem to be that many people rousing, though beyond the dome she could see some people seemed to be tending the field of grasses. Crops of some kind? Is that what the plant that grain came from looked like?

"Good afternoon, Dungeon Binder," she heard the Vyshke woman say from somewhere slightly above her.

Lori turned and found the woman a few steps up. In her hands was an empty leather bucket. "Barely," Lori said. "It's almost noon."

"So it is," the Vyshke woman said.

"Do people usually sleep in this late?" she said.

"Everyone must still be tired from looking for my niece," the Vyshke woman said, giving her that scary mother look, the one that said mother disapproved about something.

"She's fine. The Demesne's still up, isn't it?" Lori said.

"That's all you care about, isn't it? The chance to take this place for yourself?" the Vyshke woman said.

"Why else would I be here?" Lori said. "The world-famous local library? The many centers of learning? The theaters with its famous actors and shows?"

"And is your demesne any better?" Vyshke said.

"Yes," Lori said simply. "My demesne has a Binder who knows what she's doing."

The woman gave her a level look. Then she began to make her way down the stairs. When she reached Lori, the wizard stepped aside. Purely to be polite of course, not because mothers were scary or anything.

"Have you eaten yet, Great Binder?" the Vyshke woman said.

"Not yet," Lori said. Fruits didn't count as a proper breakfast in her opinion, which was the only one that mattered. "I'd rather not break out the travel rations if I can help it."

There was a look of what seemed like sympathy in the woman's face. "Then come with me. You help me cook, I'll make you breakfast."

Lori eyed her, then looked around. Still little in the way of movement that wasn't leaves in the wind. "The library is closed anyway," she shrugged. "Why not?"

She fell into step beside the woman, her staff joining her feet in a familiar three-step tread.

"Has Binder Shanalorre made her presence known yet?" Lori asked.

"Shana hasn't reappeared, no," the woman said with a blatant lack of respect. "If she's safe, we might not see her for days. Her father made sure we had a lot of fruit trees around the demesne. She could walk to literally any tree for something to eat."

Lori sighed. "So the issue of Grem is unlikely to be settled any time soon, then."

"I think the men had already mostly decided to hang him," Vyshke said with undertone of… something. "They just have to wake up and get everyone together. You will, of course, be invited to witness, as you requested."

Lori nodded. "I'm glad Binder Shanalorre was able to delegate the decision to someone before she made herself unavailable."

For a moment, they walked in silence.

"You're going to insist on this, aren't you?" the Vyshke woman said. "You're going to insist on having my niece judge a man who bounced her on her knee before she'd learned how to walk, so he can escape justice?"

"I don't give a breath whether he lives or dies," Lori said. "She's your Binder, and as a Binder hers is the only decisions I'll respect. Whether she judges him herself or she gives you permission to do it for her, all I care about is she said it be done that way."

"And why is that?" the Vyshke woman said. "Why do you care that her will be done?"

"Because that's the way a sane world works," Lori said. "The Binder is obeyed. Otherwise there are consequences. It doesn't matter she's a child. She's the Binder. As a fellow Binder, I can't recognize anything that subverts her power. It'll seem like I'm trying to subvert her demesne."

"You stated it was your intention to claim this place should she fall to the next dragon," the Vyshke woman said.

"That's just common sense," Lori said. "She'll be dead, after all, why waste a perfectly good place to establish another community? But while she lives?" Lori shrugged. "I'm not a murderer."

"Merely a scavenger," the Vyshke woman said dryly.

"You say that like it's somehow worse than being a murderer," Lori said. "Would you rather I had tried to kill your niece?"

They walked in silence.

"You are right, Great Binder," the Vyshke woman said quietly. "I apologize."

"Show your contrition with bread," Lori said.

They reached the outskirts of the dome, and came upon an open shack, inside of which firewood had been stacked in orderly cords. The Vyshke woman gestured for Lori, and she held out her arms, holding her staff between them as firewood was stacked for her to carry. Lori was annoyed but not surprised she ended up carrying the larger stack. If asked, she'd probably be told there was no one to stack wood in the Vyshke woman's arms.

At least the pile wasn't so high it blocked her view. Arms already burning– was this any way to treat a guest?– Lori followed the woman back to the central tree…

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After Lori had helped the Vyshke woman with the firewood, bringing them up the large central tree to the house where she apparently lived near the top and used some lightningwisps from her quartz to make a flame for the woman's stove, Lori was allowed a moment to rest her arms before being drafted to help knead the dough for the bread while her host prepared the rest of breakfast. A breakfast that was late enough to be considered lunch, judging from the sun.

As she'd guessed, they had nothing to make the bread rise, so there was a lot of folding and kneading involved. She was still kneading as the smells of some kind of meat and wild vegetables filled the air. Lori kept on folding and kneading as ordered.

Behind her, she heard some noises that indicated other people were waking up as well. Lori didn't turn as she heard footsteps behind her that stopped abruptly.

"Lasp, put a shirt on, we have a guest," the Vyshke woman said. "Yoshka, wash your face, there's still some water left. Verik, we're out of water, put on your shoes and get some more."

"What is shedoing here?" she heard the doctor's voice said.

"Being a guest, what did I just say? Now make yourself presentable, you're supposed to be a doctor, not a yard worker!"

"Speaking as a former lumberyard worker, we were expected to be presentable too," Lori said, not looking up from her kneading.

"Hear that? You look worse than a yard worker! Go put on a shirt!"

There were grumbles that stalked away, presumably to put on a shirt.

"Were you really a yard worker?" the Vyshke woman asked.

"I had to pay for school and supplies somehow," Lori said, still kneading.

"And now you're a Dungeon Binder."

"It's apparently not that hard out here. Even a child can be one."

There was a snort at those words. The meat and vegetables were taken off the heat and the pot was placed on the table near Lori. She was handed a spoon.

"All right," the Vyshke woman said. "Here, let me show you how to stuff the dough…"

Lori followed the woman's example, making a wrapper with the dough, stuffing it with the meat and vegetables, and pinching it shut. She, the Vyshke woman and a young girl who seemed at least half Binder Shanalore's age and was introduced as Yoshka all worked to fill the dough with the stuffing, and then the excess dough was put on a hot pan to cook and become bread.

"Dungeon Binder," the doctor said as Lori finished washing her hands and, lacking anything else, discretely dried them on her shirt.

Lori turned. "Doctor," she said.

"I don't recall inviting you to breakfast," he said, giving her an unwelcoming look.

"Speak with your wife on the matter," Lori said. She walked around him towards her staff, leaning against the wall next to what appeared to be benches for guests. They were wide, comfortable things, obviously meant for entertaining and obviously made by a Deadspeaker. The legs and seat were made of three different woods braided together. She sat down, trying not to salivate at the smell of cooking food. In the kitchen, the doctor and the Vyshke woman were having a low, obviously intense conversation, with much gesticulating.

Across from her, the young girl sat on the other bench. Like her cousin, she had pale hair, although hers had a light green tinge. She was looking at Lori with polite interest.

"Hello," she said as her parents were gesticulating in the kitchen.

"Hello," Lori said.

"Are you really a Great Binder?" the girl asked. "Like Shana? And dyadya Kosh?"

"Yes, like Shana," Lori said. "Do you know where she is?"

The little girl shook her head. "She's hiding," the girl said. "She hides in her room a lot, or in her house, or just hides. She'll be back."

"People don't seem to think so," Lori said.

"She'll be back," the little girl insisted. "All her stuff is here."

Lori had to nod. Made perfect sense to her. It was why she'd have to go back to see her mothers, someday: to get the rest of her things.

But not any time soon.

There was grunting from the stairs, and pale-haired young man with sleepy-looking eyes came up carrying a leather bucket of water. "Got the water," he grunted. "Yoshka, can you open the urn?"

The girl got up to do as her brother asked, holding the lid of the wooden urn– Deadspoken, of course– as he carefully poured the water into it. Lori continued waiting patiently, breathing in the smell of the bread as the doctor and the Vyshke woman finished their discussion. From the doctor's disgruntled look and glare at Lori, he'd lost.

The little girl made to sit in front of Lori again, but her father said, "Yoshka, get away from her." Pouting, the girl did as ordered, and her mother called her to start helping set the table.

Eventually, breakfast was ready, and Lori sat with the family on the opposite end of the table from the doctor, the sleepy-eyed young man to her left. As the breakfast– flat bread and the pastries filled with meat and vegetables, which the little girl helpfully told Lori was called Empanara– was being passed around, Lori politely only taking as much as everyone else, there was a pronounced creak from somewhere in the house.

As everyone but Lori looked up in confusion– she didn't know what sounds this house made– Binder Shanalore stepped out of one of the rooms, looking tired, slightly dusty, and with some kind of dried, yellowish juice around her mouth.

"Shana!" her uncle exclaimed. "Where have you been all night?"

"Alone," she said curtly. "Good morning dyadya, mushka, Yoshka, kyra Verik." She looked at Lori. "Binder Lolilyuri."

Lori nodded politely. "Binder Shanalorre."

"I have come to a decision about the matter, and will discuss it with you later," she said, voice detached and lofty, as if she was trying to sound mature.

"Answer me, Shana!" her uncle demanded. "We were worried sick, everyone was up all night looking for you, and you were just hiding in your room?"

"I wished to be alone," Shanalorre said. "So I went somewhere I would be. I apologize for any undue worry it caused."

"Undue worry…!" her uncle said. "You can't just do that Shana! What if something had happened to you? You can't–"

"I can do what I want," Shanalorre interrupted him. "I am the Dungeon Binder, and this is my demesne. Not yours, not anyone's. Mine." Lori nodded in agreement.

For some reason, the doctor gave Lori a hateful look.

"Shana…" he said, visibly swallowing some intense emotion. "We will discuss this later. For now, come here, sit down, have breakfast."

"No, we shall not," Shanalorre said as her aunt, and cousins gave her strange looks, but walked to the table and sat down at the empty space next to Lori. "Binder Lolilyuri, be informed that my uncle's opinions and statements are his own and he does not speak on my behalf or on behalf of this demesne. Assistive executive power will be conferred, however, to my mushka Vyshke, decisions subject to ratification by me."

"So noted, Binder Shanalorre," Lori said. "Bread?"

"Yes, please."