Weekly Digest 16 - (#48 - #50) (Patreon)

The Next Level

Lori began constructing the next area of her Dungeon.

Technically, she'd already started by putting together a plan of what she intended to build rather than just digging out space and hoping for the best, so that there would be less risk of the ceiling collapsing, as well as refining her first floor so more of the actual structure bore the weight instead of relying on reinforcement by earthwisps, but now she was getting started on the actual digging.

The hallways she'd been expanding that lead to the reservoir-turned-dark room before it had collapsed– she hadn't been in it, but had seen it happen– was fixed now, the ceiling arched instead of flat to keep it from happening again. She still glanced up warily as she passed it. People were still eating behind her as she made measurements with a length of knotted rope, measuring out paces and feet, marking them on the ground with black charcoal. The wall next to her intended stairs, meant to be a reference held the many, many, many sketches and diagrams of arches, pillars, and how levels were to be positioned. Thankfully, the children had stopped drawing on it, adding their own little additions like stick figure people, castles, trees and little houses.

After marking off the area, she bound the earthwisps inside her lines and made the stone soften, her handy stone-smoother and leveler tool in hand as she made the stone flow out, revealing a square depression that was… well, unevenly deep, but she'd expected that. She'd had a visual reference for the length and width, but not for the depth of the stone to be bound. Still, it wasn't meant to be perfect right away. Marking off a line, she bound and softened again, pulling up stone from a slightly smaller plot. Bit by bit, she made stairs that descended downwards.

She'd originally been thinking of just cutting a ramp down and adding stairs to it later, until Rian had pointed out she'd need to make stairs anyway if she wanted to get out from the bottom of the ramp at the end of the day. So, slow, painstaking stairs it was.

Lori began to dig into the stone that made up the wall so she could continue her stairs, making sure the ceiling was a load-bearing arc to distribute the weight down, and using her stone-smoother tool to square off the corners between floor and wall when they were too obviously off for her satisfaction. The next level was intended to be larger and able to comfortably hold more people when a dragon came. Comfortable, in this instance, meant they wouldn't have to sleep on the floor. Personally, Lori wasn't sure about Rian's suggestion to make sleeping nook, since it would still be stone they'd be lying down on, and not matter high off the ground it was, sleeping on stone was still uncomfortable, but she supposed it did beat sleeping on the floor where people might step on you.

Every so often, she had to stop digging to drag out the stone she'd excavated outside, piling it for later materials. The settlement outside was boisterous with the sound of all her new dependents finally all putting up roofs on the houses she'd made seemingly so long ago; cutting trees to clear land according to the plan she, Rian and the farmers had worked out; carrying those cut trees to the saw pit, cries of pain as they tried to tend to sweetbugs they'd found nesting within the demesne, and others sounds of demesne life.

The relative silence except for the sounds of food being prepared and lunch being cooked as she entered her Dungeon again to get back to work was wonderful.

Lori double checked how deep the bottom of the stairs was– six paces– before finally moving horizontally and beginning to excavate. She kept an eye on the lines of cleavage, the layering, and the composition, in case there were any spots where the sudden release in pressure would cause the stone to shift and potentially collapse. However, instead of making a large open space with random pillars of stone, they were placed in a deliberate grid pattern, with supporting arcs in between to bear the weight of the ceiling.

She'd excavated a decently-sized room, with a ceiling higher than she could reach even if she jumped, by the time Rian called her up for lunch.

"So, how's the new dragon-survival shelter?" Rian asked as they sat down and he brought her lunch.

She stared down at lunch, poking it with the wooden spoon. After months of use, the wooden spoon was decently smoothed out. "What is this?"

"What's what?" Rian said innocently.

She held up her bowl. "This," she said, pointing her bowl at his face. "These… bits."

"Oh, that," Rian said. "Shelled and crushed ropeweed seeds."

Lori put the bowl down, looking at it skeptically. "Ropeweed seeds?"

"As a general rule, the seeds of most plants are edible and nutritious, and the ones that are poisonous are surprisingly rare and usually obvious because you want to spit them out," Rian said placidly. "Grains are seeds, after all."

"You want me to eat ropeweed seeds," Lori said uncertainly.

"It's food," Rian said. "Besides, we're trying to see if they'll make for good bread."

Lori blinked and looked down at the crushed seeds mixed in with the stew in her bowl.

"Ropeweed grows everywhere along the river, so I've been having the clearing parties gather them up and bring the fibers for rope and weaving, and the seeds for food and replanting," Rian said. "I don't know how well they store, but we can eat it before the stuff we know will store for longer, so we don't feel tempted to keep getting from winter stores. Though once the Dungeon's expanded I'd like to see if we can grow it in here. It's a relatively prolific plant, so hopefully it won't be too hard to grow underground. "

Warily, Lori took a spoonful and chewed. Well, at least it changed the flavor of the stew enough to be different.

"How is it?" Rian asked.

Lori just grunted, proceeding with eating.

"So, while you're here and can't get away," Rian said brightly, "you should know we had a few altercations. There were… well, I'm pretty sure there were fights, but everyone around swore that there was no fighting and people were just 'arguing enthusiastically'. " He sighed. "So I'm pretty sure I'm being given the officer treatment."

"Officer treatment?" Lori asked.

"Kept in the dark and told plausible stories," Rian said, "so that I don't press any further, and so the men can deal with the problem among themselves. You really need to raise a new lord from among the Golden Sweetwood people. This is the sort of thing that damages your authority."

Lori paused. "How?" she asked intently.

"It sets a precedent of non-interference on your part," Rian said. "Which isn't bad, if it means you don't manage and control every part of your people's lives, but it also means a culture of 'anything is okay as long as the lord and Binder doesn't hear about it' can set in."

Lori pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Do you know what they were supposedly arguing about?"

"Shana and whether Grem is right," Rian said. "No one's actively wishing she were dead, but they either blame Lasponin for setting her up or Grem for screwing up killing her. They didn't say as much, but I could read the mood."

"Does anyone think I should have killed Binder Shanalorre and taken the demesne regardless?" Lori asked.

"If they did, they survived," Rian said, "so no one probably outright said so. And if anyone thought it, they're keeping it to themselves. Though a few seem to think the new level of the Dungeon is to make space for the people of River's Fork when the next dragon happens."

"That's absurd," Lori said. "That's… absurd! Why would I care about what happens to people River's Fork? They're not my responsibility."

"Because you're friends with Shana?" Rian said.

"Binder Shanalorre," Lori corrected. "And don't you be absurd too. We're not friends. We're simply two Binders who've decided not to directly kill each other and just wait for the other to die to claim their core."

"In a lot of places, that's considered very friendly, between two Binders," Rian said.

"Well, we're not in those places, are we?" Lori said. "We're in the middle of nowhere."

"I remember someone saying something about being in the middle of nowhere increasing people's inclination to murder other people they didn't like," Rian said. "Who said that, I wonder…?"

"Rian, shut up and eat."

––––––––––––––––––

Construction continued after lunch, expanding the new space and reinforcing the ceiling with pillars. On looking back, the pillars weren't perfectly aligned, but they were close enough for the ceiling to hopefully not collapse. More and more stone was excavated out, and rolled along outside to be piled up next to the Dungeon's entrance again. It was quickly becoming a large pile.

Lori had to bind more lightwisps outside and bring them in with her to illuminate the new level as she continued to build it. It was much slower than her original construction of her Dungeon, since she had to stop and specifically shape the supporting pillars and arches, but that was better than having the stone collapse on her. After all, she'd have to pass through here a lot in order to build all that her Dungeon needed. Best she make it safe for herself.

By the time Rian came down to get her at about mid-afternoon, she had a little chamber about ten paces long and five wide, though all the sides but the one that had stairs up were a bit rough since she still intended to keep expanding, and so there was no need for her to smooth or flatten them.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, his voice echoing slightly in the enclosed space as Lori looked up from pilling the soft, excavated stone into the middle of the hollowed out room. "Lost track of the sun. It's time."

"I'll be right there," Lori said absently as she rolled all the stone she'd excavated together. It made for a sizable clump. She was really glad she had Whispering to do this. She didn't want to think about how arduous digging up a Dungeon would have been if she'd been a Deadspeaker.

"It's looking pretty good down here," Rian said with a nod as he looked around the excavated room, and at the thick pillars supporting the ceiling. "Definitely a lot more space than we had last time. Though now we're going to have to block this place off, or else people will start sneaking in here while you're out to get into all sorts of trouble."

Lori blinked, then sighed as she realized her lord was right. She looked at the last load of excavated stone. "I suppose I can use this to block off the stairs," she said.

"That will probably keep people out," Rian nodded. "By the way, the stonemasons want to talk to you about the big pile of rock you've been leaving outside."

"What about it?" Lori said.

"They want to know if they can cut it up for building material," Rian said. "With you busy building the Dungeon, and the houses so far not nearly enough for all our needs, they want to see about building their own."

Lori sighed, but it wasn't a bad suggestion. "I'll review their proposal first," she said. "I want to know where they plan to build. I might need to wait until we can clear more land for it."

"I'll tell them," Rian said.

Making the stone flow, Lori headed for the stairs, Rian falling in beside her as the excavated rock followed after then, and Lori used it to seal off the stairs she'd just made to keep people out of her new construction. "What was it again? Wood curing?"

"Yeah," Rian said as they climbed the stairs. "The curing sheds are full again, so they need you to cure the wood so they can use them soon…"

––––––––––––––––––

Other Business

While Lori had to expand her Dungeon, there were still other things she had to do to keep her demesne functioning. Doing maintenance on the wisps she'd bound, making minor repairs to the stone walls of the houses she'd made because the stonemasons had needed to gouge out a divot or something to fit the roof more securely, double-checking on things like the water temperature in the baths or the amount of light her bound lightwisps were generating so they wouldn't be blinding… things of that nature.

A lot of it was tedious, minor matters that took up more time walking to them than actually doing them. It was frustrating. She felt there should be a way for these things to maintain themselves. Technically, she could do many of them without needing to move to where they were, but as Rian had said, some things she actually needed to perceive to adjust properly. The firewisps in the water could make it hot, and she could maintain those at a distance, but she needed to actually see and feel the result to be able to know if the water was dangerously scalding hot. And the lightwisps needed to be adjusted according to the time of day, since it would be hard for many to sleep if she kept them shining all night.

It was something she could probably get better at adjusting remotely, with practice, but it was occasionally frustrating she had to do it at all. Surely not all Dungeon functions had to be manually supervised daily? Was this what wizards employed by the Dungeon Binder really do? Just…go around all over the Dungeon, adjusting wisp outputs and settings, so the Binder didn't have to do it, like working-student part-timers? That was… that was…

That was a horrifically plausible scenario, Lori realized, to her mounting dread.

"So, I've been thinking," Rian said, breaking Lori out of her terrifying reverie. "Could you make wheels?"

Lori glanced at him. "Did you hit your head?" she said. "Of could I can make wheels. How do you think we got here?"

"Sorry, wrong question," Rian said. "Would you please make some wheels? We've got a lot of stone for it, and I think we might be needing some kind of handcart soon, if only to make emptying the latrines more sanitary and less malodourous. Most of the ground's firm enough you shouldn't have to pave it… and even as I say it I'm starting to think of places it could do with a little paving."

"If people want paving, they could put it all down themselves. I'll give them the rock," Lori said.

"You mean 'rocks', right?"

"No, rock. They'll get one big rock, they have to quarry the paving stones themselves."

"Ah. Well, it's better than a single small rock, I suppose," he said.

"I'll see if I can make some while working on the curing shed," Lori said.

"No, you get some rest," Rian said. "It's not urgent yet."

"Then why bring it up?"

"I wanted to tell you before I forgot about it," he explained.

"See, that's what happens when you waste your memory on remembering names. You don't see me having problems forgetting important things," Lori said.

Rian looked at her sideways. "When was the last time you did your laundry?"

Lori opened her mouth to reply… then paused, trying to remember.

"Laundry's not important," she declared.

"As the one who sits closest to you during meals, I beg to differ."

––––––––––––––––––

Lori resigned herself to needing to do her laundry later that night. She supposed it was about time to change clothes anyway. No matter how hard-wearing her clothes were, being made of tough cloudbloom, there was a limit, and she didn't want to have to go around wearing rags. That would be bad for her dignity as the Dungeon Binder.

She made a note to see how well weaving ropeweed into fabric was doing. They should have enough threads by now, right?

She sat on a pile of compressed dirt next to one of the curing sheds filled with cut lumber, overseeing the bindings of air-, water-, fire- and lightningwisps needed to cure the wood quickly, having just finished inspecting the temperature so the wood wouldn't warp or catch fire. The large tree trunk Rian intended to hollow out into a boat lay not too far away, in its own binding. It seemed a waste to cure the whole trunk if they were just going to burn and hollow it out, but this was Rian's project, and the outrigger they'd made for Lori's Boat had already proven the concept.

Lori listened to the comforting sounds of wood being sawed through as today's latest tree was cut to size. The last curing shed was being opened with some regularity to keep putting new planks in, which was why she had to be present to keep adjusting the bindings to deal with the altering heat, humidity, and so that people wouldn't die from the lightningwisps. This occupied her for the rest of the afternoon as she regularly went from shed to shed, examining the wood and adjusting the bindings.

She was adequate at this, if she did say so herself. Very few of her planks came out split or warped, and the thick blocks the carpenters were asking for so they could make pulleys and other tools were cured all the way through in only a few hours.

Lori had to do this several times already, as their new arrivals proved themselves much more adept at building than her original people. Rian attributed it to their militia experience, since their original demesne before they'd left for this new continent had apparently used their militia as a mobile engineering brigade to deal with blocked roads, landslides, avalanches, collapsed bridges and other excitements. They had a lot of experience with building.

Needless to say, they went through the wood in the curing sheds quickly, meaning more wood had to quickly be cured by force. Fortunately, they had their own sawyers, and so the number of sawpits cutting, and the number of curing sheds, had increased to accommodate the new demand, even with one of the sawyers taking his saw (and wife and family) to River's Fork.

As the day drew to a close, the day's wood was all loaded inside the sheds, and Lori was finally able to stabilize the conditions inside so she could set the wood to cure overnight. Which didn't mean they'd be unwatched. A shed had been set up for a few men to sleep near the wood in case of fire, with buckets of sand and water just in case. Lori was confident enough in her skill that this was probably unlikely, but she'd rather not lose several sheds worth of wood, so there they were.

As the men talked and joked and congratulated each other on a day's work, Lori went to do her rounds, adjusting he brightness of lightwisps in the shelters and the dining hall-turned-shelter now that the natural light was fading, increasing the amount of water that was being drawn from the river to the baths because of the sudden influx of bathers, and then adjusting the firewisps heating the water to account for the increased volume.

Rian passed her and gave her a nod, informing her that all the children were accounted for and back from seeling before he continued on to whatever else he was doing.

Only then did she head back to the Dungeon, bind and will the stone blocking the way to her new rooms to move aside, and head up to her bedroom to take a bath.

She sighed as she sat naked on the stone bench along one wall of her private bath and let the bathwater, pulled from the river, to wash over her from above. The water was warm, of course, and it felt good after a long, sweaty day of work. Willing the flow to cease with a thought– why bother with plumbing fixtures when you had Whispering?– Lori grabbed her river rock, smeared some soap on it, and started to scrub herself down. After a long day, it felt good to get clean. Especially in private, where it was peaceful and quiet, and she didn't have to put up with anything.

Still, even in this solitude, her mind couldn't help but wander to the things she still had to do. Finish excavating the new level. Put in ventilation tubes and bind airwisps to keep the air moving, and keep the temperature even as well. Put in the sleeping spaces and new emergency bath and latrine facilities. Dig out a new water reservoir, one that, at Rian's suggestion, would be above the facilities meant to use it so the water would flow because of gravity instead of waterwisps. Check the progress of the fixtures that they'd be using for this, since she didn't want her Dungeon to leak. Make drainage, for when it inevitably doesleak. Start the underground farm as soon as possible, so they'd have more winter reserves. Build wheels for carts to lug around the dirt the farm would need, since using earthwisps to move soil tended to ruin the soil…

Lori realized she was just sitting there, her rock motionless. Instead of going back to scrubbing herself. she let the rock fall, and it narrowly missed her foot as it clattered on the stone floor of her bath. She watched as water moved towards the drainage hole she'd made, which was covered by a stone grill to keep things from falling in.

She felt sotired…

For a moment, she considered just… sleeping. Just sitting there in her bath, naked, and going to sleep. And when she woke up, she wouldn't go downstairs. She'd put on new, clean clothes, lie down on her bed of dirty laundry, and then sleep some more. She thought of doing that for several days. Just stay curled up in bed and let Rian handle everything…

One hand came up and slapped herself soundly across the face. Then she did it again for good measure.

Lori stood up, and a part of her noted how little her body jiggled as she moved. Was that more muscle, or just loss of fat?

Bending over, she picked up her rock and determinedly continued scrubbing. Methodically, systematically, she scrubbed every part of her body with soap, water, and her rock.

––––––––––––––––––

"Hey," Rian greeted her as she finally came down from her room, dressed in fresh clothes and dry socks. "What kept you? Anything I need to worry about?"

Lori waved away his worries as she sat down. "I'm fine," she said.

Rian tilted his head. "Well, if you say so," he said. "So, I've got good news and better news."

"Oh?"

Rian nodded enthusiastically, his smile wide and for once not making her want to rip it off. "The foragers found a bunch of hairy blueball trees, and brought back a bunch," he said. "So we have that with dinner tonight. And NOT in the stew, I made sure to specify that."

Lori perked up slightly. "That is good news. What's the better one?"

"Those hairy blueball seeds I've been collecting finally germinated," he said. "So, uh, I was wondering if we can start growing half in the Dungeon? So we don't lose them all when a dragon comes along?"

Lori rolled her eyes. "Fine, I'll make some pots, you can move them in the morning. Try not to get dirt everywhere."

"Yes, your Bindership!"

He was so disproportionately happy about having some fruit seeds start to sprout. Honestly, her lord was such a child sometimes.

"It will be your responsibility to water them and keep them fertilized," she continued. "At the very least, you have to assign someone to do it. I'm merely allowing you the space and lightwisps to grow them."

This time he rolled his eyes. "Yes, mother," he said.

She reached over and flicked him in the forehead, making him start. "No talking back to you mother," she said blandly. "Now, go get dinner."

"Yes, mother."

She raised a hand to flick him again, but he was already slipping off the bench to get the food with a laugh. Shaking her head– such a child– Lori put her elbows on the table and closed her eyes, listening to the slightly echoing sounds of a flourishing demesne.

Her demesne.

––––––––––––––––––

Laundry Day

Lolilyuri had not been looking forward to this. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"I hate laundry day," she grumbled. She looked at Rian across the table blearily. "When are you doing your laundry? Maybe I can just mix my clothes in with yours and take care of it that way."

Rian, who was tugging on each of his fingers to make the knuckles pop and flexing them in satisfaction afterwards, twitched. "Don't even joke about that," he hissed, leaning forward even as he frantically looked around everywhere, even directly behind him– Umu, Mikon and Riz (and she was annoyed at realizing another name had somehow snuck its way in again, ARGH!) all pretended to be casually talking even as they glared each other pointedly and all they did was flap their mouths and make nonsensical sounds– as if afraid of people overhearing them. "Do you want weird rumors to start?" He paused. "More weird rumors, I mean."

Lori knew she should ask, but… "What weird rumors?"

"You don't want to know."

"Probably, but I'm morbidly curious anyway."

"Well, there's still the one that made you gag," Rian said, listing them on his fingers. He counted strangely, using the whole finger instead of each knuckle. Did no one teach him to count properly as a child?

"Which one was that?" Lori said, before remembering and gagging. "N-never mind, I remembered and wished I didn’t."

"I told you that you didn't want to know," Rian said, not sounding sympathetic at all and seemingly taking pleasure in her pain. "There are the rumors that grow from that, like already being married–" She gagged. "– secretly having children–" More gagging. "– you secretly being a man–"

"Wait, what?" Lori said, blinking.

"You are apparently so unfeminine that people wonder if you're a man, and if I therefore prefer men by extension," Rian clarified.

"That's literally the stupidest, most idiotic thing I've heard all month," Lori said.

"And you just suggested mixing our laundry together because you're too lazy to do it yourself," Rian… agreed?

"I'm not too lazy to do my own laundry, I'd just prefer not to," Lori corrected loftily.

"My apologies," Rian said, glancing towards the kitchen, which was just finishing up the food. "I can accuse you of many things, but laziness isn't one of them."

Lori nodded sharply, then paused. "What things?"

"No people skills, bad communication skills, bad at socializing, bad at remembering people…" Rian started listing again.

Oh. She'd thought they were actual criticisms, not nonsense. "That's what you'refor," she said.

"And you're surprised there are rumors we're secretly married," Rian sighed, rolling his eyes.

"What does that have to do with anything?" In her experience, people got married so they could outnumber their poor children.

"If you have to ask, then you're too young to understand."

"I'm fairly sure I'm older than you."

"Maybe, but you're not my sister, so it doesn't count." What? What did that mean?

Rian went up to get breakfast, leaving Lori in peace to put her head down on the table and close her eyes. Once upon a time, when she'd been on a ship heading for this new continent and thinking what she would do once she was an all-powerful Binder, she had decided she would never wake up before mid-morning again. What had happened to her convictions?

––––––––––––––––––

Breakfast was adequate and involved some new fungus that Lori had never tried before, but had apparently been on the late Binder Koshay's List. It was nice and firm and lent a nice new flavor to the stew. Lori made a note to herself to save some spores before people ate all samples of it, since fungus growing was traditional in a Dungeon. Then told Rian to do it so she wouldn't forget.

Then she had to go back to her room, and her private bathroom, to do her laundry.

It was long, grueling work, and she had to keep taking bits of stone from her wall to bind and reform into containers for hot water, soaking water and washing water as she took her scrubbing rock and soap– the runny kind, not the hard kind– to soak her clothes and pound the bits that weren't dirt off. She did this by hand, since even after weeks and weeks and weeks of trying, she still hadn't managed to come up with a binding to clean her clothes for her.

It was never something she'd had to devise, growing up and learning to do magic. She and her mothers had lived in an apartment, and had taken their clothes to a laundry to get them cleaned. The closest Lori had been to 'doing laundry' had been bringing their laundry to the old woman who ran the laundry shop and picked them up later when they were clean.

Someone had needed to teach her how to do laundry after they'd left Covehold and had already traveled for several weeks. They had stopped to do repairs and Lori had imitated the other women doing laundry, getting her clothes wet and hitting them on rocks. Fortunately, someone had taken pity on her and had shown her how to do it properly, using ash mixed with oil, or just ash if nothing else (but that was harsh on clothes), how to scrub the fabric to keep it from being damaged…

The woman had died at some point on the way to where they were now. At least, Lori assumed so. That or Lori had just forgotten what she'd looked like. That was a very real possibility.

Perhaps Rian had a point, and she should put some effort into remembering people?

No, that would be a silly waste of time. The woman probably just hadn't introduced herself. If Lori remembered her, but didn't have a name to go with the memory, the name obviously hadn't been given to her.

She went back to hitting her clothes with a rock to get them clean.

At one point, she thought she heard someone calling her name, but as she was naked and completely wet with laundry soap and water and was getting into a good rhythm, she ignored it. It eventually faded, meaning it couldn't have been very important or they'd have kept bothering her for whatever stupid reason.

Finally, after long, tiring work, Lori finally finished her laundry. It wasn't allher clothes– that would just be silly– but it was still a lot. She had to take care because until they managed to start viably producing some sort of fabric from ropeweed, then the nearest source of new clothes was Covehold and that was a long way off.

While she couldn't devise a binding to wash and clean her clothes, drying them was easy. No messing around with long cords and poles and drying lines. Just binding the waterwisps in the clothes and gently drawing them out, pulling the water out with it, and she was done.

After that came the time-consuming flattening and folding so she could pile it all on her bed and later put her raincoat– which she'd oiled recently to keep the leather from cracking– over it so she'd have something soft to lie down on.

She was balling up her socks for last when she suddenly frowned in displeasure. Finally, the worst possible thing had happened. One of her socks had a hole in it.

She'd brought a sewing needle, right? And thread?

She set aside the one sock and its pair– she guessed it was its pair, all her socks looked alike– and folded the rest, checking the other socks for holes too. Fortunately, none of the others had holes in them, which was a relief.

Lori then had to go through her non-clothes things and the spoils she'd liberated when the other two wizards had died before she'd finally found her sewing kit. It was a small, round metal tin with a tight-fitting lid, to keep the contents from spilling out. It had used to contain shoe polish, a long, long time ago, before she'd repurposed it in her school days to hold quartz, coals, and other materials, before she'd been able to afford glass containers and cases. Now it continued her sewing kit, such as it was.

After twisting it open, she found she had more than one needle. She had several, of differing sizes, as well as curved ones for surgeons that she'd bought on a whim, several pins, and some large buttons.

She had to go through her things again to find the tin that contained the threads.

"All right," she muttered, sitting down on her stone chair in front of her stone table that bore no resemblance to any sort of sacrificial altar whatsoever, and moving the bound lightwisps behind her head for light. "How to do sew up socks…?"

––––––––––––––––––

"Where were you?" Rian asked as she sat down irritably. "You missed lunch. You never miss lunch. I was looking for you all day. I was worried you'd gotten secretly murdered and we'd have to send someone to River's Fork for Shana so she could claim the core."

"I told you, I was doing laundry." Lori said, still annoyed.

"It took you that long to do your laundry?"

She gave him a very level, piercing look. "And how long does it take youto do your laundry?"

Rian looked aside. "Okay, that's fair, you have a point, obviously you needed all that time to do your laundry." He sighed. "Maybe you should put up a sign. 'I'm in my room, go away'."

"I shouldn't need to put up a sign, it should be obvious people should go away from my room," Lori huffed, taking out her sock, the needle still dangling from it by a thread, and started trying to sew the hole this time without folding the material.

"Is that a sock?" Rian said, leaning back.

"It's freshly laundered," Lori said. "Don't be dramatic."

She held the sock flat on the table with one hand as she carefully used the needle to pry up the fabric and stitch only the hole and not anything else. She'd learned the past four times, so she was sure she could do it now…

"You have no idea how to sew socks, do you?" Rian said blandly.

"What makes you say that?" Lori said.

"The fact you sewed one side of the sock to the other three stitches ago and still haven't noticed."

Lori stopped, then sighed. Carefully, she began to undo the stitching.

"Are you… trying to get the need back in through the same hole to undo a mistake?"

"It worked the last four times," Lori said.

Rian let out an annoyed breath. "Oh, give it here, or you'll be stuck on that all night!" he said holding out an impatient hand.

Lori paused and gave him a look. "You can't do laundry, but you can sew?" she said skeptically.

"Why not?" he said. "You do it the other way around. Come on, give it here." He beckoned his fingers in a vaguely obscene way.

Shrugging, Lori handed him the sock. She watched as he stuck his hand inside her sock and pulled the fabric taut, then began carefully but confidently stitching in a vaguely circular way. "Where did you learn how to sew?"

"I'm an unmarried man without his parents who lives alone," he said, not looking up from the sock. "The world has forced the necessity of learning upon me. Did you get anything done today?"

"I got my laundry done. As the one sitting in front of me, be grateful. That's what you said, remember."

"Colors. How can I argue against you throwing my words right back at me?" Rian said blandly. "So, I take it those pots for the hairy blueball seeds have been moved to tomorrow?"

Lori stared at him. Then she sighed. "I'll be right back," she said, and headed out towards the large pile of excavated rock outside the Dungeon.

By the time she got back, Rian had finished with her sock and had it folded neatly on the table, the needle keeping it folded like a pin, next to three bowls of food.

She frowned. "Why three?"

"Didn't you miss lunch?" he said.

She considered that and pulled two of the bowls towards her.

"Your pots are outside," she said, and dug into a food.

"Thank you," he said, and joined her.