Demesne 146 - The Best Kind Of Advice (Patreon)

The harvest took two days. Despite the rapid, almost unreasonable pace, they didn't finish on the first day. Lori had almost thought that Riz would ask her to bind lightwisps in the air so they could continue working in the dark, but that hadn't happened. Instead, people started carrying the bundles off towards the storage shed she'd built, a stone structure in the same vein as the curing sheds that she had built against the side of the cliff face since she couldn't safely build inside it. Looking at it now, she thought perhaps they'd need more space…

Honestly, Lori felt tired just watching everyone work. They didn't really stop for lunch. The hunting parties had come in with beast parts, and people started setting up fires to roast them. People would stop to get some food, and then quickly go back to the field to work. Fortunately, Riz remembered to bring her food, carrying a bowl of roasted meat to her… and not giving her a spoon or fork to eat it with. At least eating it with her fingers wasn't too difficult using firewisps to keep from burning herself, though it did leave her hand oily. But the bath house was right there, and a little wood ash mixed into the oils on her fingers washed it out nicely.

At dinner, the dining hall was subdued, with the sort of quiet Lori associated with the time just before the last exam of the week, before it was finally over and everyone could relax, as everyone resigned themselves to their fate. It wasn't a perfect comparison, since there was no panicked studying or anyone coming down with panicked screaming fits before a Deadspeaker either forcefully calmed them done or some Mentalist picked them up and tossed them away, hopefully on something soft, but it was close.

The stew they had for dinner had a lot of roasted meat in it, likely what was left of the beasts from earlier, and Lori had to wonder if anything had made it into the cold rooms for long-term storage. Across the table from her, Mikon looked tired. Lori vaguely remembered seeing her on the field, tying up bundles of stalks. Next to her, Riz looked absolutely exhausted, barely opening her eyes and chewing with great effort, as if it was almost too much of a bother to move her jaw.

"So," Lori said with only partially forced cheer. A part of her was taking perverse enjoyment in being the one to force herself on someone who obviously wanted to be left alone and just rest. "What happens next?"

Riz slumped at her words, and she clearly forced herself to look up at Lori. Next to her, Mikon sighed and patted on the shoulder, giving her what was probably meant to be a reassuring squeeze. Lori had never really found those reassuring, herself. "What, Great Binder?" she said, her tone clearly wishing Lori would leave her alone.

The perverse enjoyment was there however. It probably wasn't fair to Riz, taking out on her all the times in her life Lori had just wanted to be left alone, except one of her mothers, some teacher, one of her mothers, some random busybody, one of her mothers, some classmate, one of her mothers, or both of her mothers had intruded on her to inflict some pointless nonsense, like 'are you all right' or 'did something happen in school' or 'stop sitting there' or whatever it was… but honestly, Lori didn't care. "What happens next, after everything's been cut up?"

Ah, that resigned look as Riz came to terms with the fact that Lori was, in fact, talking to her and not likely to leave her alone. She knew those people were just deliberately annoying her! 'Important to socialize', 'want to be friends', 'blocking the way'… hah!

"Um, well, the stalks need to be dried so that the vigas can be threshed," Riz muttered in a 'why is this happening to me' tone of resignation. "Then it's winnowed… then after that it can be stored."

"And all of that will be done tomorrow?"

Riz shuddered. "No, no, only the harvesting will be done tomorrow. The vigas has to be dried first."

"Ah… and how will it be dried?"

Riz sighed. "Well, usually it's left out in the fields to dry in the sun, but with the chokers and the coming winter, and how the farmers want to make a winter crop and need to ready the field quickly, they can't do that… so…"

"So?" Lori prompted.

Riz sighed again. "Uh, Great Binder… can you do something to help dry the grain?"

"I probably can…" Lori said, humming in casual thoughtfulness. "How dry does it need to be?"

Riz stared at her. "W-what?"

"I've never dried grain before, so I don't know how dry it needs to be," Lori said. "Find out, will you?"

Riz closed her eyes, head drooping. "Yes, Great Binder," she said in resigned exhaustion.

"But that can wait until the day after tomorrow," Lori said with almost Rian-like brightness. "Remember to take a bath before you go to sleep." Despite the air circulation she'd engineered to make sure that the air in her Dungeon never went bad, tonight there was a distinctly sweaty pungency to the atmosphere. Lori glanced at Mikon. "Go with her. She looks like she might fall asleep and drown if she's not watched."

Mikon, who'd been frowning slightly, blinked. There was a brief pause. "Yes, your Bindership," the weaver said, nodding to Lori. " Don't worry. I'll make sure your temporary Rian doesn't just fall asleep in the water. I'll even make sure she gets home."

Lori nodded. "See that you do." She glanced at Riz. "Erzebed, tomorrow don't tire yourself out so much. You're an officer, not a glitter crawler. Temporarily, at least."

"Ugh… Yes, Great Binder…" Riz said tiredly. "Can I eat now?"

"Yes, go ahead." Lori said, waving a negligent hand. Her sick fun over, she focused on her own food. The beast meat was a little tough, but very juicy. Today was probably the least work she'd ever done in favor of watching people do work. Across the table, Riz looked relieved to finally be left alone, while Mikon hummed as she ate her dinner, a cheerful, unreadable smile on her face.

––––––––––––––––––

The next day was more of the same, for everyone else at any rate. Lori, however, went back to building the new addition to her Dungeon. In hindsight, she should probably have worked on it yesterday as well, but… well, she'd never seen a harvest before.

But now she'd seen one, so now it was back to work. With the balcony-like air intake in place, she put in the ceiling and roof over that. That meant more arches, since it would have a lot of stone above it to be able to withstand dragon scales and islandshells falling on it during dragons. Well, small islandshells, anyway. If a full-grown islandshell fell on it, it was probably rubble. But that was a problem for when an islandshell actually fell on her Dungeon's entrance. For now, her problem was it not falling by itself.

She was careful not to stand under the arches as she built them, making an arch so she could extend the upper part of the incomplete wall over the side passage, letting her enclose the back of the balcony with more arches until she was able to meld the stone with the cliff face itself. The arches and structures were solid, but she couldn't help but worry…

After that, it was all a matter to making arches to support the rest of the roof between the two walls. She almost ran out of stone, since she had to make raised pillars to stand on so she could get up high enough to properly build the arches. It was only as she almost finished did she think to find out if the demesne had any ladders. The remaining stone from the pile, she used to add bulwarks to the outsides of the walls so that the pressed inward and helped support the arch on top, keeping it from pushing the walls outward.

Riz brought her lunch again, another bowl of roasted meat. She was clearly feeling much better, since she remembered to bring Lori a spoon this time. By the time Lori finished with the walls and had reduced the stone pile to something barely taller than she was, it seemed the harvest had finished, the fields cleared and stalks bundled together.

The dining hall was still subdued at dinner, but it was filled with an undercurrent of relief. The exam was over, and everyone could just pass out and stay in bed sleeping all day, unless they were unfortunate enough to have some sort of assignment still due.

Even Riz was looking much better. She still looked tired, but she at least had no difficulty keeping her eyes open this time.

"Erzebed," Lori said as they waited for dinner to be ready.

Riz sighed resignedly. "Yes, Great Binder?"

"Tell everyone to rest tomorrow," she said. "No working unless they feel like it. Tell them they should just stay in bed and sleep, or go swimming, or just rest."

Riz blinked. "Everyone, Great Binder?"

"Everyone," Lori said. "that probably means no one will be cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner, emptying the latrines, or cleaning the baths, but if they're tired, they should rest. They can just complain about all those things not getting done the day after."

Riz chuckled. "I'll… tell everyone, Great Binder. They'll be glad to hear it."

"I'll help," Mikon volunteered. "Then we can go to the baths afterwards."

Riz sighed in relief. "Thanks. I appreciate it."

Mikon reached over to squeeze her shoulder as Lori rolled her eyes. The weaver glanced up towards the kitchen, where people were starting to line up to get their food. "I'll go get it. You sit down and rest."

Riz didn't argue, doing just that as Mikon rose to get their food.

"You're being quite competent, Erzebed," Lori commented. "You're not Rian, but you're being as competent as you were when he was around."

"Uh, thank you, Great Binder?"

"And I'm glad to see you haven't let the flirting between you and Mikon get in the way of your duties."

Riz blinked at her. Slowly, her eyes widened, her mouth opening slightly. She glanced down at her shoulder as if seeing it for the first time. "Wait, that was… no, that wasn't…" Her eyes opened wider. She groaned, and let her hands fall down into her face.

Lori stared blankly at her. "Did you… stop paying attention, or something? It wasn't like she got any more subtle."

"I was busy," Riz said, her voice muffled through her hands. "Oh, Great Binder…"

"Yes?"

Riz twitched. "Er, not you Great Binder. I was… uh… "

Oh. Lori thought about it, and decided she didn't care one way or another. "Well, be careful when you use it as an expletive," she said. "I'm right here, after all. It might get confusing"

Riz nodded, looking embarrassed.

Briefly, Lori debated giving her advice. Her own mothers had given a lot of advice when she was growing up, theoretically for exactly this sort of situation.

She decided against it. All the advice had seemed bad then, and just thinking of them, they didn’t' seem any better now. How was 'showing an interest' or 'being encouraging' supposed to help, anyway?

Still, she did have something practical to say. "Mikon's help… has been invaluable to you, hasn't it?" she said.

"She's the reason I'm managing to get everything done," Riz groaned, sighing. "I don't know how Rian did it…"

"If you need her assistance, then you'll simply need to resign yourself to the fact that you're going to have to accept the flirting," Lori said. See, this was advise: a workable, practical solution to a problem… such as it was. "You've managed to so far."

Riz groaned again.

"It's only until Rian comes back," Lori reminded her. "Then you can reject her advances and focus on obsessing over Rian."

Riz groaned a third time.

Yes, a workable, practical solution, the best kind of advice.