Demesne Patron EX SS 5 - Shanalorre's Morning (Patreon)

Shana left the comforting abyss of empty, thoughtless sleep, and everything hurt all over again. Tota was dead. Tyatya was dead. Dyadya resented her, and was angry all the time. Mushka had grown cold and distant, and wouldn't let Yoshka play with her anymore. She was alone…

She lay curled up in bed, fighting back tears and taking deep, deliberate breaths as her hands shook. With each breath, she felt magic filling her, enriching the life within her, energizing her thoughts, even if she didn't want it to, even if all she wanted was to forget…

Shana sobbed, curling up in the too-big bed her parents used to share, huddling under the blankets, trying to deny the world, deny her pain, deny herself…

Eventually, the sobbing stopped, and the blanket over her stopped shaking.

Shana, face still wet but composed, methodically dabbed at her face with the blanket, before sliding off, and beginning to make the bed. She pulled the sheet over the two combined bedrolls—her mother's and her father's—tight, tucking in the corners the way her father had shown her, before folding the thin sheet she'd been using as a blanket and laying it on the single pillow. She checked the people of her town below, most of whom were still sleeping, the rich, energetic sparks of life lying still on their beds. Some were awake though, and she could feel them moving, doing exercises made habitual from their days in the militia. Ninong Grem was exactly where he was supposed to be, locked in the stockade…

She put him out of his mind.

Her morning cleaning done, Shana disrobed and began doing her own morning exercises, her body moving as her mother had taught her. It hurt, but that didn't matter. She could heal.

By the time she was done, she'd worked up quite a sweat. She still had some water, so she used a dipperful to wash off the sweat before getting dressed again, making sure her garments were on straight. Then she climbed out the window.

The sun was slowly brightening the sky over River's Fork as Shana carefully, methodically climbed the branches of the great tree her tyatya had planted and grown over the core, in imitation of Treeshade Demesne. The fecundity meaning her father had tamed to it still held, and Shana awkwardly fed its life, careful not to change the meaning into the meaning of healing that came so easily to her. The life in the tree took in her magic, and her father's meaning held on. It was the best she could do right now, maintaining the meaning her father had placed on the trees, providing them with fruit and food. They'd be fine as long as people kept them watered and fertilized. That and the grain they had harvested would buy them time, but eventually it would all be consumed…

Shana went from branch to branch, picking the fruits of the tree. Her father had grafted parts from several trees to the great tree, which let it sprout many different fruit, and every morning, Shana picked the fruits at the top so they'd be eaten and not go to waste. Sometimes she'd see kyra Verik up here, barefoot like she was and climbing with more care since he was bigger and heavier than her, carefully plucking off fruit and tucking them into the bag he would be carrying. She'd wave, he'd nod, and if he could get close he'd give her a hug and tell her he and Yoshka still loved her, and that dyadya was calming down and would remember he loved her too. She'd close her eyes and feel his warmth and let herself believe it, let herself hope…

That hope kept having to be buried with her tears as dyadya try to 'talk' to 'apologize', but it was always another trick, another try at getting her to do what he said because he was older and knew best. And maybe he did, when it came to medicine and things. But she wasn't medicine.

She was the Dungeon Binder.

The sun was well up in the sky by the time she'd stripped the treetops near the center of River's Fork's dome bare of the new fruit that had grown edible overnight. There were still flowers and buds and little fruits growing, but those weren't ready yet, and she'd get to them later that afternoon or tomorrow. They could always use more food…

Her tota used to do this part, not Shana. Even though she was the best climber, they never let her climb the great tree to pick the fruits so they wouldn't go to waste. Tota did that, lifted up by her own thoughts, weaving among the branches as agile as a songbug. She'd always saved the biggest, sweetest of the fruits for Shana, and every day they would—

Shana went still, her hands gripping the branch she was on so hard they ached as tears flowed down her face. The ground below was so distant, so—

Her eyes snapped closed, and she took deep, calming breath, drawing in magic, letting it fill her, flow through her. She put all that magic to use, healing herself.

She didn't understand what she did or how she did it. She'd tried paying attention to it once, trying to watch what happened as it was happening, tried to slow it down so she'd be able to see the steps, but it both made perfect sense and no sense at all. It was like walking, or throwing a punch that could break a board. If she just did it, she'd move perfectly, but if she did it and tried to think of how she was doing it, every single movement at every stage, she'd end up being awkward, and the healing wouldn't heal, so she'd need to push it through to happen all at once so it didn't become something that could hurt someone.

One of the doctors had told her of blightgrowth, where the body's very cells grew wrong and became a disease that killed from the inside, and needed very careful Deadspeaking to heal because simple healing meanings would just make blightgrowth grow faster. She feared causing that very thing if she slowed her healing enough to see how it worked.

Her healing washed away her tiredness and pains, leaving her muscles just that little bit stronger sooner. The feeling of wellness it left behind allowed her to center herself, and she let maturity and duty take the place of childishness as she began climbing back down to one of the windows of her house, her house alone now, situated at the highest point of the great tree. She slipped in and settled her bare feet on the carefully deadened wood of the floor. The table was overflowing with fruits she'd been picking, and she picked a few choice ones to have for her breakfast before carefully putting the rest in a basket that she would winch down so it could be added to the demesne's long-term food supply.

Some of her new citizens, those who'd survived the journey from Lorian, had spoken of how Binder Loliyuri had built coldrooms so they could store meat for the winter, of the Dungeon she had dug under the thick, protective stone of a hill, which had baths and running water for people to clean themselves and wait out the dragon in safety, if not exactly in luxury.

Shana wasn't the only one to question their sanity for choosing to leave all that behind to live in River's Fork. At best, all River's Fork had was the aborted ore mine, which she'd been told was partially flooded now since they didn't have enough people to maintain it, much less mine it. And given how troublesome a few of them were, like the man who kept trying to ferment fruits in his barrel and had already been beaten at least five times for proclaiming he 'rejected the authority of the binderarchy' while at the same time seeming to find nothing strange about accepting healing from that same Binder, they could very well be madmen who been sent to her to try and ruin her if some hadn't been so adamant they had actually chosen to leave Lorian, and denounced Binder Lolilyuri as a heartless and inhuman abomination they were well rid of. But then again, those same people also had a strange obsession with owning land, asking how much land was available to own, and if anyone owned that field or that hill…

They hadn't been happy when it was explained that Shana, as Dungeon Binder, owned all of that.

Some people, Shana included, had wondered if this was all some sort of very subtle attack on Lorian's part, sending a few lunatics and agitators among the fairly normal people who had moved to River's Fork as an attempt to try and weaken them. Binder Lolilyuri had seemed far too straightforward and blunt for such a tactic, but perhaps it had been Lord Rian's idea. The smooth, fast-talking, too-smiling lord had reminded everyone and their mother of stories of treacherous, evil advisors who whispered poison in the Binder's ear, requiring some sort of cunning or lucky hero to reveal his vile deeds so justice could be served. A few even muttered darkly that trying to assassinate Shana had been his idea, and that he had somehow fooled Grem into trying to do the deed.

Shana hoped that wasn't the case, unless whispered poison took a very strange form in Lorian. He'd seemed nice…

The fruits sorted, Shana went to fetch some water so she could make a little bread. She didn't sigh as she recalled she still needed to fetch more water from the river, and even checked her water pot in the vain hope that her memory was faulty, but alas.

When she opened her front door, however, she found a pot full of water on the platform next to the rope and pulley they used to bring heavy supplies up and done the great tree. She wasn't surprised, even if she wanted to be annoyed. People kept doing this, leaving firewood or water or her flour ration near her door instead of letting her go and get it herself. And they didn't even leave any indication of who they were. How was she supposed to thank people for doing nice things for her if they kept it secret and anonymous? Her thanks were all she had to give, and she couldn't even give people that…

She carried the pot of water inside, and dragged the empty water pot out in its place. This time she left the door slightly open, hoping she could catch whoever came for it in the act so she could thank them properly and give them the fruit she picked. She was no child, to be pitied and aided in secret. She was the Binder, and she would reward people with what she could!

As she mixed water, flour and a few other ingredients into a dough for her morning bread to go with her fruits, Shana reviewed what she had to do for the day. Meet with mushka and ninong Yllian to check if there were any domestic issues that come up overnight, then speak to the other children to make sure she'd been told the truth. Check on the other trees that made up the dome to make sure their meanings were working correctly and full of magic. Watch over the children who'd come from Lorian and who insisted on trying to catch seels in the river, since they were still unused to the waters around River's Fork and tended to slip and fall a lot, and were the ones who needed her healing the most often. Come up here and eat lunch, then go back down and check with the infirmary if there had been any other injuries.

The dough was done. Carefully, Shana used tyatya's firestarter—a clockwork thing of gears and springs—to make a spark that she was able to turn into a fire, since her coal had gone out in the night again. She tended the stone firebox with care, adding twigs and wood—she made a point of remembering to go and collect more twigs for starting fires again, as well as to make more wood shavings— until she had a decent fire going. Then she took tota's cooking pan—her cooking pan, now—and set in on the fire, letting it heat up as the shaped the dough for the flatbread.

It was another morning alone in River's Fork.