Demesne 317 - To Not Shirk Responsibilities (Patreon)

"Tah," Karina greeted her with a wide, welcoming smile as she arrived at the alcove. "Did you talk to Lord Rian?"

She returned Karina's greeting with a nod. "Yes. It was difficult, but I was able to convince him to rest. Ateh Mikon and Ateh Umu were very helpful in getting him to agree. I should have more than two hours to sleep, by the water clock Lord Rian had filled, but knowing him, I probably have a little more than that."

"Do you want me to wake you?"

"No, let Lord Rian have his little lapse. At the latest, I should wake up for dinner, at which point we will speak, and he will go to sleep properly."

Karina nodded. "We washed Yoshka's hands and face and had her gargle to clean her mouth."

"Thank you. I apologize for asking you to stay up, but it's necessary."

"Don't worry," Karina said. "I know you wouldn't ask me to do this if it wasn't important. Now lie down and go to sleep so you can get as much rest as you can."

Sleeping in one of the alcove's stone niches was a new experience for her, since in her previous times sleeping in the dungeon, she'd had a bed. While the bed in her house had been moved into the dungeon, like most of the beds that had been brought in, it had been moved down into the third level and stored in one of the many excavation tunnels that Binder Lolilyuri had left unfinished.

Her bedroll provided cushioning against the hard stone, though it was noticeably harder than the wooden beds she had slept on previously. Shana didn't complain, though she folded the blanket on top of the bed roll so it would provide Yoshka with additional cushioning. Her cousin lay down next to her with sullen reluctance, but she knew the younger girl would soon be asleep. Yoshka fell asleep quite easily.

Lying on her back, her pillow cushioning her head, Shana helped her cousin to find a comfortable position. Though she closed her eyes, she waited until Yoshak's breathing had become even before she relaxed her own hold on wakefulness. The tiredness of the early morning's waking that she had been holding at bay came rushing forward, and her consciousness was subsumed by darkness as her arms weakly tightened her hold on Yoshka.

She fell asleep.

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Karina woke her up just before dinner as everyone was moving upstairs for the day's dinner. Even with the rather extended day, they were maintaining the day's usual schedule, and that included dinner.

When she had attained full wakefulness, the first thing Shana heard was the distant, fading sounds of music. She discerned the whistles of flutes and pipes, the twanging of strings, and reverberations of things hitting other things as drums even as they began to cut off and fade away. She could feel the radiance of the lights on the ceiling outside the alcove, and they made her wince involuntarily as she opened her eyes.

Karina's smiling face leaning over her was the first thing she saw, her bright orange hair in sharp contrast to the muted and slightly smeared colors of the stone top of the niche. "Tah!" she greeted cheerfully. "Did you have a good rest?"

"I did," Shana said. "Be careful, you might hit your head on the stone."

"Don't worry, I'll be—" she cut off as she straightened up and the back of her head struck the top of the niche with a resounding impact. "Ow!"

Shana sighed. "Come here, I'll make the pain go…"

Karina meekly knelt down next to her so their heads were on the same level, and Shana raised one of her hands from holding Yoshka and gently placed it on top of Karina's head.

Between one breath and the next, Shana became aware of the life in Karina's body. Even now, she could not truly distinguish between the life beyond 'alive', 'inert' and 'disordered', and could not see how she could even begin making any changes to the life to do… well, anything. She simply did, doing one thing without really know what it was specifically.

Shana did it now, drawing magic from her distant, buried core and letting it flow down the life in her arm and into the life in Karina's body, claiming and taming the disordered-looking life at the back of Karina's head. She hesitated then tamed allthe life in Karina's head to be safe, in case her friend had given herself a brain injury.

And with the imbuement of magic, Shana… healed her.

It was an inadequate way of referring to the process. As a savant, the meaning that Shana did was instinctive, and even with her near-nonexistent understanding of what she did, she could tell that the meaning affected several things seemingly near-instantaneously in all of tamed life, and all the life in the back of Shana's head went from 'disordered' to 'alive'. This included life that she hadn't tamed in her initial claim. Hopefully this meant that Karina would not develop mental difficulties in future. "There. Is that better?"

"Yes! It doesn't hurt anymore! Thanks, Shana!" Karina tried to stand up again, even as Shana kept her hand on her friend's head, and so it was the back of Shana's hand that struck the stone edge of the alcove instead of Karina's head again. "Ah! Sorry!"

"It's all right, Karina," Shana said, shaking her he and to try and diffuse the sting. "I'll just heal it as well. Can you tell me what happened while I was asleep as I take care of waking Yoshka?" She sat up carefully so that she wouldn't repeat Karina's mistake, even though there was enough headroom.

She listened as Karina described organizing some of the older children to go downstairs and tend to the plots of the dungeon farm while she sat Yoshka upright, gently rocking her sideways. Waking Yoshka abruptly made her very distressed, so she had to be woken up slowly. There was a dull impact and barely cut off colorful language as Ateh Kayas struck her head on the top of the niche she'd been sleeping in. Her bright pink hair disheveled, the weaver cradled her head as she sat in her niche while Karina described how she had taken the older children to take baths after working, so all the older children had gotten washed up and gotten the runoff-water smell from them.

"After dinner, I'll take everyone else to the baths to wash up so they can go to sleep refreshed," Shana said.

"I'll help," Karina instantly replied.

"There's no need, Karina. You've been up longer than me, you need your rest."

"I'm not that tired. Besides, I still need to get my brothers and sisters to take a bath too."

She was clearly lying, but Shana let it go. She wasn't going to disrespect her friend's offer, and besides, the other girl had managed to get some sleep earlier. Even if Shana had needed to wave off flying bugs to keep them making a den in Karina's mouth and possibly eating her tongue. "Very well. Thank you."

It was slightly hypocritical, given her discussions with Lord Rian, but she could do nothing but acknowledge the state of affairs.

When Yoshka started making incoherent mewling sounds, Shana knew she was… well, 'awake' was probably an overstatement… 'not-asleep' enough to stand and walk in an only slightly-uncoordinated fashion. With a practiced movement, Shana picked up Yoshka and hefted her up so that her head and arms were settled on Shana's shoulder as she slid one arm under her cousin's hips to support her with the ease and grace of practice. Yoshka's arms moved, wrapping around Shana out of formed habit to secure herself.

Carrying her cousin, Shana walked towards Ateh Kayas. "Would you like me to heal you?" she offered.

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It was strange to sit at Binder Lolilyuri's bench and table without her. However, she needed to speak to Lord Rian, and there wasn't room for him to join her at her table. They were already full of children, and the addition of Yrria and Tena pushed the table to the limits of its capacity.

Shana made a point of avoiding sitting in the middle of the bench, were Binder Lolilyuri sat. Instead, she sat at her usual location to the left of it. Usually, this meant that she would be speaking to Lord Rian at an angle, since he sat opposite Binder Lolilyuri, but today he'd moved sideways to face her. The man looked like he had to force his eyes open, and while Ateh Mikon and Ateh Umu sat close to him on either side as usual, today it seemed to be to keep him upright.

The resemblance to Yoshka, sitting on the bench next to her and asleep with her head rest on her folded arms on the table, was very strong.

"Should you be eating in your state, Lord Rian?" she asked, concerned.

"No, which is why I won't be," he said. He was looking at her with only one eye. The other was shut as if already sleeping, and the eyelid of the open one was fluttering as if threatening to fall as well. "I hope you don't think me rude if I try to keep this quick? Otherwise I might fall asleep on you." One hand reached up to rub at his closed eye as he visibly forced it to open.

"You need not make such excuses with me, Lord Rian," Shana said. "Very well. Let us converse quickly. I can get food for myself and Yoshka when we finish."

Rian nodded, and he sat there still for a moment with his eyes closed before he forced them open again. "Uh, sorry… All right, so, the sounds haven’t gone away all day. They've been getting louder and louder though, and the consensus is they're explosions. We don't know what's exploding, but if it's exploding, then those are our crops probably ruined…"

Shana frowned, her thoughts turning to the exposed crops of her demesne. "That is worrisome for the state of things later…" she said. "Have there been any sigh of dragonborn abominations of any sort?"

"None yet," Rian said, sounding relieved. "Hopefully this means there aren't any or Lori's lightningwisp killing thing is working. Though since we haven't smelled any burning lightning smells yet, it might be the former. Beyond that, nothing to report Lady Binder."

Shana nodded. "A state of affairs that will hopefully continue. Very well, Lord Rian. I will keep watch for the rest of the night, with your permission."

"You've got it, for whatever good it does…" Rian's voice cut off as he raised a hand to his mouth, sparing the world the sight of it wide open as he yawned hugely. "Sorry. Uh, let's see, what else…? Uh, Cassan is keeping an eye on the clock for me, but he'll need to rest soon too. Kolinh's cycled out early, right now Kovla's in charge of the volunteers, and Yhohim after him in a couple more hours. They're in charge of defense, but if anything non-urgent comes up, they'll know to come to you."

"I understand, Lord Rian. Hopefully it will not be necessary to wake you."

"You presume I'll wake up." He paused. "That sounds morbid." He rubbed his eyes again. "Uh, I think that's it?"

It probably wasn't. "That should be it, Lord Rian," Shana agreed. She'll need to find out the state of the latrines, the rate of water use, and any disciplinary matters, if only so she could report it to Lord Rian for him to decide when he woke up. "Rest well."

Rian nodded. "I'll just… sleep here…" he said, folding his arms on the table top and getting ready to lay down his head.

"Oh no," Ateh Mikon said gently but firmly. "You're going to downstairs. The bedroll's laid out, and if you fall asleep, we might not be able to wake you up to get you to move." She kissed his cheek. "Now, please get up. Unlike Yoshka, you're too heavy to carry."

Lord Rian sighed, but pushed himself to his feet, swaying with his eyes closed. The two weavers next to him helped him up, pushing back the bench instead of stepping over it. He sighed again and forced his eyes open. "I'll go splash water on my face first before trying to go down the stairs," he said, turning towards the baths in the back of the dining hall.

Ateh Mikon and Ateh Umu went with him, helping him navigate between the other tables of the dining hall.

Over at the kitchen, they started serving food.

Shana swung her legs over the bench, turning to Karina who was sitting at the bench behind her. "Come on Karina, let's take everyone to get their food."

She still had this responsibility, after all. Binder Lolilyuri never shirked her responsibilities, so she couldn't either.