Demesne 147 - Drying To Thresh (Patreon)

In the storage shed she had made to store the harvest, Lori examined the tops of the thick bundles of stalks from which hung the heads of vigas grain. The individual stalks were thick, just a little thinner than her little finger, and covered with long leaves that Riz had warned her not to touch, since the edges of the leaves were sharp, and the undersides were full of minute, needle-like fuzz that could easily pierce skin without being noticed. The bundles had been stacked high on top of each other all the way up to the curved ceiling, and filled up every bit of free space in the long shed. In fact, the shed itself had turned out to be insufficient to store all the bundles, as she had found out when she had followed her nose that morning and found some of the alcoves of the second level of her Dungeon had been stuffed with them

"Erzebed," she said, "I thought you said the dimensions for the storage shed would be more than enough to store the harvest? That's clearly not the case. And it doesn't look like we actually need those storage vessels the potters made at all." The large clay pots of barrel-like proportions had all been lined up outside the storage shed, empty.

"It's usually not stored like this, Great Binder," Riz said defensively. "Usually the bundles are left out in the field to dry, but because of all the chokers that might eat it, we decided we'd store them here first while the chokers were dealt with or a pen could be built that they can't get into. Once they've dried and we've threshed the grain from the stalks, it should all fit. "

Lori examined the heads of the grain again. They already looked fairly dry to her. "They already look fairly dry to me," she said.

Riz shook her head, then reached towards the heads and carefully pulled out a single vigas grain. Wide as Lori's thumbnail, it was about the size of a medium-sized bead, the kind used for middling denominations that were used often and commonly used to power bound tools. Riz pressed her nail against the vigas for a moment, puncturing it, then squeezed it between her fingers, making it split. The outer shell was surprisingly stiff, and from inside, a sort of powder leaked out onto Riz's fingers.

Her dark-pink hair swayed as the northerner woman held up her fingers to Lori. "Here, Great Binder," she said. "All the vigas looks like this inside right now. They need to be dried in the sun until the hulls grow brittle enough that the grain falls off easily. At that point, they can be threshed from the stalks and winnowed. Until then, they're stuck too securely to the stalks."

Lori nodded. The explanation seemed simple logical enough, but… "Won't drying them kill the seed? I thought some of these would be planted for the next crop?"

"Oh no, they can still be planted after being dried, Great Binder. That's not the part that actually takes root, it's this part here," Riz used a nail to point at a bit of not-poweder that seemed indistinguishable from any other part of the burst vigas to Lori, "so drying doesn't affect its ability to be planted."

That sounded strange to Lori, but what did she know? She was a wizard, not a farmer.

"So, how dry do they need to be?" Lori asked.

Riz looked hesitantly at the mess on her fingers, the shrugged. "I don't know, Great Binder. I know how they look like when they're ready, but I don't know how dry that is."

Lori hummed thoughtfully, looking at the bundles and bundles of stalks. She narrowed her eyes slightly, concentrating on her awareness of her demesne's wisps, feeling for the wisps around her, inside the storage shed. Earthwisps and firewisps in the stone structure, airwisps all around, lightwisps in the air, streaming in through the shed's entrance, darkwisps between the tightly packed bundles and in voids inside the stalks themselves, lightningwisps concentrated on certain conductive materials…

And waterwisps. Lots of waterwisps. They were in the leaves, the stalks, the vigas, in the air and on surfaces. Minute amounts, but taken altogether, it was actually a lot, even with the unremarkable humidity

If Lori had been an ordinary Whisperer and not a Dungeon Binder, she wouldn't have been able to feel any of that. She'd only be able to perceive wisps in objects she was in contact with, it would have required slow claiming and deliberation, and even that would have been ineffective if there weren't any perceivable wisps at the point of contact to propagate her claim, which occasionally happened when it came to plant matter. Even if she was still unable to utilize Deadspeaking, Horotracting or Mentalism, simply the awareness of the wisps within her demesne gave her options beyond what she originally had.

"Go and find me a farmer and come back here," Lori said as she thought of a sack in her room. "Someone who isn't a fool or stupid. I need to go get something, and then I'll speak to them."

"Yes, Great Binder," Riz said promptly. Lori nodded, leaving them to it as she headed back to her Dungeon.

Her private cold room was more of a box now since she'd run out of fruits. All it contained was a small lumpy sack sealed with a leather cord. The pink lady seeds were in more common cold storage, waiting to be planted to grown new plants. Lori wasn't quite sure if the cold was actually needed to preserve the contents of the sack, but it was a foodstuff, and keeping food cold and dry probably helped it last longer. She took it out of where it lay, making a binding around it to keep back waterwisps so that water wouldn't condense on the cold vigas and cause some kind of degradation. Hefting the bag of grain, she undid the cord securing it closed and looking inside. Save for being cold to the touch, they still looked and felt as they had when she'd first discovered them mixed in with the fruits.

Lori took a moment to warm the grains so that water wouldn't condense on them anymore before heading back to the storage shed, the sack of grain in hand. When she got there, Riz had someone with her, most likely the farmer that Lori had requested…

She frowned, peering at the man's face.

"Um, is—" the man began, before Riz coughed suddenly, and the man stopped speaking at the reminder.

The man looked vaguely familiar somehow… well, that wasn't surprising, Lori kept seeing the same people in the dining hall every day, of course they'd eventually start looking familiar from repetition. She shook her head, moving the flow of her thoughts back to business.

"How dry can the vigas be before they can't be planted anymore?" Lori asked.

The man opened his mouth, paused, and looked towards Riz, who nodded. The man sighed in relief. "Very dry, your Bindership," he said. "As long as it only dried from being left to stand and not cooked on a fire or something. "

Lori nodded, holding up the small sack of grain. "Yes, yes, but for the grain itself, is this dry enough, or can it be dryer?" She held up one of the grains as an example.

Hesitantly, the farmer—he hadn't made the mistake of trying to introduce himself, which was wonderful—took the grain, rolling it around in his fingers. "Uh, can I break it open, your Bindership?"

"Yes, yes, go ahead," Lori said. Well, at least he asked for permission.

He cracked the vigas between his fingers, examining what was inside. Lori could see it was a drier powder than what Riz had shown her earlier. The farmer nodded. "Yes, this is dry enough, your Bindership."

Lori nodded. "Get me one of the stalks that isn't dry enough yet, please."

The farmer hesitated, bemused, but did as she asked, going to the nearest bundle of vigas and pulling one out. He presented it to Lori awkwardly, as if unsure about simply handing it to her as he normally would.

Lori took the stalk in her hands, mindful of the supposedly sharp leaves. She concentrated on it, feeling the waterwisps integrated into its structure—stem, leaves, stray fibers, husk and grain seeds—and comparing the concentration to the waterwisps she felt in the vigas she had in her little bag. Staring at the head, with its long and orderly arrangement of vigas, she focused, binding the waterwisps in the little bits connecting the grains to the rest of the stalk, and then drawing them out and into the air.

There were small streamers of vapor, as if she had just snuffed out a candle, immediately followed by a few pops, and several grains fell off.

"Huh," Lori said, reaching for the few grains still hanging on and pulling them off. They came off easily, still surrounded by a fibrous husk. She looked at her hand, then held it out to Riz and the farmer to show them. "Is that dry enough to thresh?"

The farmer held out his hand, and Lori poured the grains into it. he poked at them with his finger, then shook his head. "The hulls still aren't dry enough, your Bindership. It's better, but still won't thresh properly."

Lori nodded, considering the stalk still in her hands. So she couldn't just bind all the waterwisps and pull the water out with it, even if she excluded the vigas from such a binding. Perhaps use the binding she used for curing wood to dry the stalks? She shook her head, rejecting that idea, at least without extensive experimentation and modification of the output of the binding. The stalk had too little mass to pass lightningwisps through it without simply setting it on fire, which was probably bad for the grain…

Lori would have to dry it less directly…

"You're dismissed," Lori said absently. "Enjoy your rest."

The man glanced at Riz and bowed, tentatively leaving the storage shed as Lori considered the stacks of bundles of grain stalks…

"Erzebed, come with me," Lori said, turning to head out. "I need to find the best way to dry a lot of stalks quickly, and you're going to help me."

"I am, Great Binder?" Riz said, sounding nervous as she followed.

"Yes, I need someone to lift things."

Riz relaxed slightly. "Yes, Great Binder."

Lori pointed back at the bundles behind them. "Get me some bundles to experiment on. Four should do."

Riz hesitated, glancing at the bundles in the storage shed. "Uh, Great Binder, why don't we use the stacks in the Dungeon instead? Less likely to fall and easier to clean up afterwards."

Lori considered that. A good point, and as she thought about it, the Dungeon offered more stable and reliable experimental conditions than the field outside. "Fine," she allowed, turning and leading the way back, the little sack of grain still in her hand for reference. She handed Riz the stalk though. "Here. Get an early start on the threshing."

Best not to waste anything, after all.

"Um, Great Binder," Riz said as they walked. "Do you really need to dry the stacks yourself? There's really no hurry. After tomorrow, we can just take them out to dry in the sun."

"That's a waste of a week," Lori said. "If I use a binding to dry the stalks sooner, you can start threshing tomorrow, and we can replant the field."

"I don't think we can plant the field right away," Riz said skeptically. "It usually has to rest for a few days, and then the farmers have to prepare and fertilize it."

"Well, they can do that sooner as well," Lori said dismissively.

Riz sighed. "As you say, Great Binder."

She sounded a lot like Rian when she said that.