Weekly Digest 46 - (#147 - #149) (Patreon)

Drying To Thresh

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.

––––––––––––––––––

Experimenting With Riz

The stalk was gone by the time they got down to the second level, leaving Riz holding a handful of seeds that were put in her belt pouch as she grabbed four bundles and moved them to the empty space between the pillars Lori had indicated. To one side, the weavers sat, spinning ropeweed fibers into thread at a leisurely, almost lazy pace, something to do as they played board games, gossiped, or just sat back with half-lidded eyes. The carpenters were similarly relaxed, and looked to be simply checking over their tools, oiling and occasionally taking a file to sharpen something, or possibly to remove a burr or some other damage. One seemed to be whittling game pieces out of offcuts of wood. The waterwheel was still, simply rocking slightly as the water was pulled up by bindings of waterwisps only to fall back into the lower basin through the overflow.

People naturally glanced up as they saw her and Riz, especially since the latter was moving around bundles of stalks as Lori paced back and forth, glaring at the bundles intently as she tried to figure out the best way to approach the problem. She needed to dry the hulls and the point where the vigas were connected to the stalk. Direct manipulation of the waterwisps had already been shown to not be viable, so she'd need something else.

Direct heat? No, no, that wouldn't work, increasing the temperature from the inside would likely just cook the grains, even if she didn’t make it how enough to steam off the water. Indirect heat then? The standard procedure was to let it dry in the sun. However, unless she increased the temperature, that was unlikely to cause the stalks to dry faster, and after a point, that would lead to the same problem as direct heat, which was the grains would cook…

"Uh, Great Binder? What now?" Riz asked.

"Quiet, I'm thinking," Lori said, distractedly, continuing to pace.

Where was she? So, direct heat and indirect heat alone was both not enough and too much… and they weren't the point anyway. The point was getting the stalks to dry without damaging the grain. But how was she supposed to get water out of something if she couldn't resort to binding the waterwisps or heat it up significantly?

…

Oh!

She turned and headed for the third level. Her temporary assistant hurriedly followed after her, falling into step next to her. Lori glanced towards the woman. "Erzebed, go upstairs and bring back a bucket of water and wait for me by the bundles. Don't let them get wet."

"Yes, Great Binder!" Riz said, promptly turning to obey the order.

Lori quickly excavated some stone from the walls since her stone pile had been depleted by her recent building, then brought it back up to the second level. Her bucket of water was waiting for her.

"Good," Lori said absent. She pointed to one side. "Sit there until I need you."

Water. She was trying to get water out of the stalks, and water had its own idiosyncrasies. Taking some of her excavated stone, Lori formed a box. It was a crude box, since she was more concerned with it being air- and watertight, but that was all she needed. With the box finished, Lori used her connection to her demesne's core and bound all the waterwisps in the air inside the box. It wasn't something she'd have been able to do before, when she'd just been a Whisperer. If she'd tried to bind waterwisps in the air, she'd have needed a specially prepared binding with water, since trying to claim waterwisps be waving her hands in the air would have only bound the waterwisps if they actually made contact with her. With her connection to the core, however, she was able to treat every wisp in the demesne as if it were part of her body, allowing her to claim wisps a Whisperer would normally not be able to.

Lori claimed those wisps and formed them into a binding. She claimed airwisps, and with the waterwisps—and in this state, the water in the air could also be claimed by airwisps—bound together a barrier over the opening of the box, trapping and keeping other waterwisps in the air from entering the box, keeping the air inside the box arid. Nodding to herself, Lori took one of the stalks and put it inside the box, pushing it through the immaterial binding.

The stalk and grains hanging from it didn't immediately explode from the moisture in it being turned to vapor, which was a good sign. It lay inside the box as Lori concentrated on her awareness. The binding was doing as it was supposed to, keeping all waterwisps and humidity out of the box. Then she waited.

The stalk just sat there, and if Lori hadn't had her awareness, she'd have thought absolutely nothing was happening. But through her connection to the demesne's core and the awareness of all the wisps within the demesne that came with it, Lori knew that… mostly nothing was happening.

Lori sighed and reminded herself to be patient.

Eventually, moisture began to seep out of the stalk. The amounts were miniscule and completely undetectable to even a Whisperer, but there was a change. Lori nodded in satisfaction, then added a binding to the air inside the box, a simple arrangement of airwisps to circulate the air.

She waited again.

In her eyes, more nothing seemed to happen.

Lori sat on the rest of the stone she'd excavated and watched the stalk intently.

After what seemed like forever, in which she'd taken a short nap sitting on a bench in one of the alcoves because why not, everything was imbued anyway, Lori checked the state of the inside of the box. More moisture had seeped out of the stalk, and since the air was circulating and moving the moisture around, the water hadn't settled on the outside of the stalk. Carefully, Lori reached into the box and carefully felt the surface of one of the stem's leaves. It was noticeably stiffer and dryer now…

"Erzebed," she called out, pulling the stalk out of the box. The barrier keeping out humidity didn't affect it coming out the other way, for which she was glad. It shouldn't have, since the binding had no directionality built in, but in those cases there was always a chance a directionality would naturally emerge in an untested binding. Not that this binding was completely untested, it was a modification of the binding she'd used to collect water from the air when they had been traveling…

Lori waited, then frowned as her temporary assistant failed to appear. She looked up irritably.

Riz was sitting on a bench in one of the alcoves, her arms crossed and head back against the stone, eyes closed. Her mouth was slightly open as she slept, practically inviting a bug to crawl in. Being afraid that a bug would crawl into your head while you were asleep was a completely legitimate fear!

Sighing, Lori wound airwisps into a long tubed from her both to the sleeping woman's ear. "Erzebed," she repeated, and the woman jerked upright as the sound was conveyed as if Lori was right next to her. "Come here."

"Y-yes, Great Binder!" Riz said as Lori let the binding collapse, her temporary assistant hurrying towards the Dungeon Binder.

Lori held up the stalk. "Is this dry enough to thresh now?"

Riz blinked at her, but took the stalk in her hands. She felt at the grains, rolling them around in her fingers until they popped. "It's… still a little tough, Great Binder, but… I suppose, if we had to?" The look she gave Lori was clearly one of someone who didn't want to. Even Lori could tell that, she'd used to make that face a lot.

Lori grunted, dissatisfied. "Go find out if it's lunch yet then come back here," she said, taking the stalk and setting it aside as a result sample. She realized she should have used a water clock to time how long it had been drying for, but… "Wait. Get me a water clock from the Um, and then come back. And have another bucket to go with it."

"Yes, Great Binder!"

Riz hurried to do just that, seemingly not bothered at having her sleep interrupted as Lori took another of the stalks and, after binding the contents of the box again to draw out the humidity leaked from the previous stalk, put it in the stone box. This time, in addition to having the air be arid and circulating gently, she rubbed her hands together until they grew warm, then carefully bound the firewisps on the surface of her skin as she stuck her hand into the box. Carefully, she separated the firewisps she'd generated from friction from her skin and into the space inside the box, imbuing them to slowly radiate warmth and using the airwisps to spread that warmth around evenly as Riz returned with one of the water clock and another bucket.

Once the air around the stalk was warm and seemed to be maintaining the temperature, Lori placed the water clock over the bucket and filled it with water up to the line that measured an hour's time. "So, is it lunch yet?"

"We're not having stew for lunch, Great Binder," Riz said. "Some people went out to hunt beasts, so we're having roast."

"Roast… but it's just a rest day, not a holiday."

"Yes, so the kitchen staff are resting," Riz said. Lori couldn't fault that reasoning. "Besides, who doesn't like a good roast? Don't worry, I told them that some of the meat needs to make it into the storage room."

Lori nodded. "Good." She should bring down her stone plate, then…

––––––––––––––––––

The water clock ran out. Lori, who had simply been sitting there staring at the water clock impatiently, immediately reached into the stone box and drew out the stalk. It was hot, but not enough to make her drop it, even before the firewisps in her fingers cooled the parts her fingertips were on. "Erzebed," she called.

"Um, a moment Great Binder!" Riz called back.

Frowning, Lori looked towards her. Riz was putting down a pitcher and a stack of cups on a bench next to… yes, there was Mikon, sitting with a group of other women, some of whom looked amused as Riz hurried away. Lori rolled her eyes, but she but waited as her temporary assistant hurried towards her. She held out the stalk, and Riz took it, this time not even needing to be prompted as she rolled the vigas around between her fingers. Little pieces of something fluttered down to the floor and Riz was holding some grains in her hands. Riz frowned down at the vigas, then pierced one with her thumbnail, breaking it open. She rubbed the powdery insides between her fingers…

"That… that feels like we can thresh it, Great Binder," Riz said slowly. "And the insides don't feel strange…"

"Go find a farmer and make sure," Lori said. "Bring them here, if you run off with the stalk it might break apart."

"Yes, Great Binder!" Riz said, going off to presumably find as farmer as ordered.

Lori, meanwhile, took several more of the stalks and, after removing the humidity from it again, put the stalks inside the box until it was half full. Very belatedly, she wondered if it might have been easier to make some sort of lid, if only to keep the heat inside. She did just that, taking some stone from the pile, making a knife and using that to slice off a slab of rock from the pile that she formed into a lid. She had to put it on and remove it a few times to make sure it was air tight and not fusing to the stone of the box itself.

With the lid closed, she filled the water clock again, reducing the output of the firewisps so that it wouldn't get so hot since heat was no longer escaping from it. She placed her hand on the lid, concentrating to keep the lid from being cooled so she could judge how hot it was, reducing the output of the firewisps a bit more as Riz came back with the same farmer as before. Riz handed him the stalk, and the farmer felt it himself, rolling the grains between his fingers as well. More flakes of something fluttered down to the floor.

"Well?" Lori said. "Is that dry enough to thresh?"

"It's… close enough, your Bindership," the man said frowning. He continued to feel the stalk.

"So, if all the harvest was that consistency, you could… what was it you said Erzebed?"

"Threshing, Great Binder," Riz supplied.

"Yes, could you start threshing?"

"We… could, your Bindership," the farmer said hesitantly.

Lori nodded. "Excellent. Go back to resting."

The farmer blinked in confusion, glancing towards Riz, who shrugged. "All right… glad I could help, your Bindership…"

Lori was no longer listening, staring at the water clock.

"You can go, Rafel. Sorry for bothering you. Great Binder, it's lunch time," Riz said.

It is? Already?

"It is? Already?" Lori said, instinctively looking up. Of course, since she was in her dungeon, there was only stone above her. She shook her head. "Right, right… I'll get my plate, you know what I like."

"Yes, Great Binder, the soft, fatty bits everyone likes," Riz said. She glanced towards the stalks. "Do you really think we can start threshing tomorrow?"

Lori shook her head. "No. The day after at best, and only if I can successfully scale up the binding to work on a lot of stalks at once, which isn't always as simple as making everything bigger. Still, at the very least we can take a couple of days off the process."

Riz nodded slowly. "But not today or tomorrow? Because I think people need more rest."

"No, not tomorrow," Lori confirmed. "Tomorrow I will be attempting mass drying, so no threshing will need to be done."

Riz sighed in relief.

"You will, of course, be assisting me by carrying all the bundles I need dried."

Riz sighed again. "Can I at least draft other people to help?"

"Of course. You're an officer, not a glitter crawler. Temporarily, at least."

Riz tilted her head thoughtfully. "Huh… Well, put that way…" A small smile grew on Riz's face.

Lori started walking. "Follow me so I can get you my plate."

"Yes, Great Binder!"

She was no Rian… But Lori had to admit, Riz had her own competencies.

––––––––––––––––––

Final Desiccation Test

Normally, Lori ate outside when they were having roasted beast. It made it easier to get second, third or fourth servings. However, today, instead of finding a nice, shady spot to set up a rock to sit on, she ate in her dungeon, in her usual table. Outside, the rhythmic, odious sounds of, ugh, music trickled through her Dungeon's entrance. It made her wish she could just put a binding to block out—

Oh.

Lori made a binding of airwisps at her Dungeon's entrance, blocking off the annoying sound and letting her eat in peace. She'd always wanted to do that whenever she had to sit in a dragon shelter and endure the party people inevitably held. When she'd grown older and learned enough Whispering to do it, she'd had to be satisfied with binding the airwisps over her ears. It helped but only up to a point, since the music could grow so loud she could feel it vibrating through her jaw.

Fortunately, Riz has gotten her a lot of meat on her plate, and when she finished it, she felt full enough to not want to go out and make her way through the annoying music that was probably still there. After washing her plate in her room, she went back down to the second level to see how the stalks in her drying box were doing. The water clock still had a lot of water in it, but Lori was able to use her awareness of the demesne's wisps to judge how much water remained in the stalks. They still retained a lot of moisture, but that seemed to be because the warm, dry air wasn't able to circulate as thoroughly among the stalks. The stalks near the top of the box were significantly more desiccated than the ones at the bottom, or so she was able to deduce from her awareness. Lori almost reached for the lid to see the condition of the stalks, but restrained herself. Instead, she sat and stared at the water clock again, waiting for it to empty.

…

It occurred to her that she might have been doing something else while she waited for this…

…

Well, there was still about a quarter of an hour left in the waterclock, maybe she could do something…

Lori went upstairs to get her chatrang board and the box that had come with it.

By the time the water clock finally ran out of water, Lori… well, she had become distracted trying to roll out pieces to use for lima and pincer for the board on the reverse side. She only realized the water clock had finished when she finished rolling out some dark stone and checked the water level. Putting aside the stone roll—it wasn’t a proper cylinder, since it was just some softened rock that she'd rolled on the flat surface of the bench she was sitting on, meaning it wasn't perfectly rounded—Lori checked the contents of the box, focusing on the distribution of waterwisps.

There was more moisture in the air inside the box, and the stalks were in more desiccated than they had gone in, though there was a clear pattern of the stalks at the top being dryer than the ones at the bottom. Lori frowned, and focused on the stalk from the last test, comparing it to the ones in the box. While some of the topmost stalks were close to being as dry as the singular stalk that had been dried before them, it was only some. Many were only as dry as the sample from her second test, and the ones at the very bottom were still fairly full of water. Why…

Oh. Stupid of her, she'd forgotten than the more stalks she put in, the less air there was, meaning the air that was in the box reached its saturation point more quickly. And the stalks seemed provide some degree of insulation for the ones at the bottom of the box, and certainly kept air from circulating through them properly…

Lori considered what she'd built. That result did not bode well for trying to think of a way to scale up drying the stalks so that they would dry faster than a week. It meant nothing if she made a process to dry the stalks if it still took a week to dry it all. Then she'd have just made a more labor-intensive process that achieved the same result in the same amount of time, which meant she had failed…

She felt the stalks. They were warm, verging on hot, but at least she'd been correct about the heat output. Of course, they were cooler the further down the pile the stalk had been, but even the ones that had been at the very bottom were a little warm. All right, it wasn't a complete failure. Clearly, it just needed a larger volume of warm air to extract to moisture… and if she position the stalks with all the grains on top, then the insulating nature of the stalks didn't matter, since it was grains and the stems holding them that needed to be dried. Since the stalks were already in bundles that had the grains on one end, to be efficient she just needed to make the container big enough to fit a whole bundle… and lot of space for the air, so a relatively tall vessel…

No, wait, a tall vessel wasn't needed. She just needed to remove the moisture in the air, so that it could keep drawing out moisture from the stalks. And since she was circulating the air anyway…

Lori disassembled the box, softening the stone that had composed it to the consistency of wet clay (without the wetness). Then she began building a new one, using the size of the largest of the bundles Riz had moved for her as a reference, then adding a little space so that the bundle could easily be put in and removed. Lori also made a stone lid, which she would not be putting on top herself because it would be too heavy. She made two holes, one near the top of the new vessel and one at the bottom, and used a binding to keep out humidity while letting in air. It was currently useless because the lid wasn't on yet, but that was fine.

"Erzebed!" she called out.

There was silence save for the sound of the air circulating in her Dungeon.

She waited, but no temporary assistant made herself known. Annoyed, she looked around, but Riz wasn't sleeping on one of the benches. Where was…?

Oh, right. People were eating roast outside. She was probably there somewhere, probably being flirted at by Mikon and either enduring it to retain the woman's aid or unware she was being flirted with.

Sighing, Lori climbed the steps up to the dining hall and walked towards her Dungeon's entrance, suspending the binding there that kept out sound and reconfiguring it into one that amplified sound. She stepped into the binding, and she could hear the sounds of the music outside, mostly percussion, though there where some wind instruments as well, probably carved from wood. She made a pair of quick bindings to protect her ears. "Erzebed!" she called, the binding vibrating around her, and she heard her words shaking her bones.

Lori removed the bindings over her ears, nodding in satisfaction as she heard the music stutter. Good, Riz had probably heard her. She headed back to the second level, configuring the binding behind her back into one that blocked off sound.

After irritatingly long time—Riz's arms were wet, so she had probably washed her hands—Riz came down to the second level, wearing the face of someone reminding herself she shouldn't be annoyed and had to be patient. Lori had never made that face herself, but she'd seen it a lot on her mother, usually just before she explained her side of something and they became unreasonably angry at her perfectly logical reasoning.

"Yes, Great Binder?" Riz was even using the same tone.

Lori sighed and reminded herself to be patient. She wasn't her mother, she wouldn't ask pointed and leading questions to demoralize her temporary assistant and she missed Rian. "Put the largest bundle into that," Lori said, pointing at the stone vessel she had made. "Then put the lid on it."

Riz stared at the big stone lid, wide enough to overtop the vessel Lori had made and closed her eyes, before letting out a sigh.

"As you need reminding, you are an officer, not a glitter crawler," Lori said. "You do not actually need to do the lifting yourself."

Riz blinked, then smiled the smile of someone who was going to make someone else do something, because she could. "Yes, Great Binder," she said, sounding more cheerful than before. She went over the bundles, picking up the largest one and putting it inside the vessel. Thankfully, she put it grain-end up without needing to be told. There was a half a hand's-length worth of between the bundle and the wall of vessel.

"Before you go," Lori said as Riz started to turn away, "try to get the bundle out of there. Is there enough space?"

Riz frowned, but did as she was asked. The bundle was about the thickness of a torso, and while Riz had some trouble gaining a grip, she was eventually able to pull the bundle out. "Might need a hook to get it out easier, Great Binder," Riz commented, putting the bundle back in. "I'll go and get some people for the lid. Do you want me to get you more meat as well?"

Lori considered that. "Yes," she said. "I'll get my plate."

When Riz came back, she had Lori's plate with her and five strong-looking men. To her credit, she helped the five of them pick it up, though Lori had to wonder how much assistance she actually provided. Still, the lid was put on top of the vessel, and the walls of the vessel didn't collapse.

Lori nodded in approval. "Come back in an hour to take the lid off," she told Riz.

Riz didn't sigh this time. She had the tranquil look of someone who'd been expecting to hear that. "Yes, Great Binder."

Lori dismissed Riz from her mind, binding firewisps to warm the air in front of the hole at the top of the vessel—

She paused and stared at what she was making then sighed.

Making a hole in the center of the lid without letting any stone fall onto bundle was aggravating but doable, and she had only herself to blame on that one. She sealed the other hole in the vessel, leaving only the hole at the bottom, and put the binding to keep out moisture onto the hole of the lid. Then she modified the airwisps on both bindings, and the binding on the lid started pushing dry arid air into the vessel as the hole in the bottom pulled it out, the moisture in the air being trapped in the binding.

She was even able to use firewisps to take heat from the air passing through the hole at bottom and move it to the air entering from the top, which was usually just a needlessly complicated binding used by people who liked to show off their efficiency, but in this instance allowed her to maintain the temperature in the vessel with little additional heat. It also kept the second level from becoming hot, since she was passing a lot of air through the vessel.

Then she filled the water clock with an hour's worth of water and went back to rolling pieces for her game board.

––––––––––––––––––

Riz came back a little after the hour was done, which was all right since Lori had become preoccupied making little stone discs for her game board. They were only one color, but later she'd put some beast teeth on them so they'd have a pale side. Her temporary assistant also came with more strong-looking men—Lori would be the first to admit she was terrible when it came to remembering people's faces, but she could remember enough to tell these were different people—as well as the same farmer as the last two times. Lori was impressed. Riz had actually anticipated her needs.

After Lori had cooled the lid by using the firewisps to move the heat into the floor of the level, the men and Riz—Lori had to wonder if the woman was actually helpful—picked up the lid and laid it down on top of the stone pile next to the vessel. Riz reached inside with a piece of branch that had a hook-like protrusion, pulling the bundle up enough to get a grip on it. The woman winced, probably at the heat. and hastily pulled it out of the vessel and onto the ground.

The farmer knelt down and pulled a stalk from the bundle, examining the head where the grains were. He rolled some of the vigas in his fingers, then set the stalk aside and pulled out another one. Lori waited patiently as he examined more stalks from the bundle, talking from different parts in the middle of it.

"It's dry, your Bindership," he said eventually. "Dry enough to thresh." The look he gave the vessel Lori had made was dubious though.

"Good," was all Lori said. "You may go back to… resting." Honestly, why did people call it a rest day, then tire themselves out? That was the complete opposite of what rest involved!

The farmer gave the vessel another dubious look, but bowed to Lori and left, and after a gesture to Riz, so did the men who had lifted the lid. Riz glanced after them, then sighed and waited as Lori regarded what she had made.

"You said that the grain will be left out to dry in the sun, correct, Erzebed?" Lori said.

"Yes, Great Binder," Riz said promptly.

"When will that be? Tomorrow?"

"Probably, Great Binder," Riz said. "Even if the chokers will try to get at it, the vigas needs to be dried."

Lori nodded slowly, staring at the dried bundle of stalks Then she shook her head. "Noted. Please put away the other bundles and then you may go, Erzebed."

"Yes, Great Binder." Riz picked up one of the unused bundles and began to put it back in the alcove the other were stored in, stacking them on their side. When she finished, she glanced towards Lori, but Lori waved her away. It was only when Riz was gone did she think to wonder if her temporary Rian will remember to come bring her dinner.

Lori sighed. Well, she'd deal with it when she started to get hungry.

She dismantled the vessel and dragged the stone outside, ignoring the din of music as she added the stone to the stockpile, then went around to the bone pile and picked up some of the beast teeth drying there, putting them in a skull as an impromptu bowl. She'll have to wash her hands and heat the bone to clean it of dustlife…

Lori went back to the now-clear second level of her Dungeon. All that was left was the water clock and the buckets. She sat on a bench in one of the alcoves, considering the alcoves filled with stacked bundles of stalks…