Demesne 385 - Shanalore At Work (Patreon)

The children in her care would return by lunch the next day, happy at having spent the day and night with their families and whatever holiday festivities River's Fork had held. Shana knew that Binder Lori had sent them several rocks with lightwisps anchored to them to provide illumination for the night as well as some honey and meat so they could have a similar celebration as the one held at Lorian. There'd even been a note telling Wizard Lidzuga to rest for the day, and that his probationary period would be pushed forward a day.

However, the holiday had passed, and so everyone went back to work doing as much as they could before the heat of the day forced everyone back into the dungeon.

Shana herself woke up early, as she'd begun doing recently, leaving the comforting abyss of empty, thoughtless sleep, and everything hurt all over again. Tota was dead. Tyatya was dead. Dyadya resented her. Mushka had grown distant. Yoshka wasn't here with her. She lay on the bed, staring tiredly at the familiar ceiling and taking deep, deliberate breaths, hands folded over her stomach. With each breath, she felt magic filling her, enriching the life within her, energizing her thoughts to wakefulness, even if she didn't want it to…

She closed her eyes trying to ignore the world a little longer, ignore her pain, ignore herself…

Eventually, Shana opened her eyes. She dabbed at her face, but it was dry. No tears this morning. There hadn't been tears in several months. That seemed like a betrayal, somehow…

…

…

…

…

Shana found herself blinking, coming back to awareness as the disruptive emotions receded. She had not been insensate for too long. Carefully, slipped out of her bed, full of all the other girls who had come to keep her company for the night, and take advantage of the fact she had a bound tool that made a breeze inside her house. The bead had been consumed during the night, so there was nothing she had to remove.

Despite her attempts to not disturb anyone, Karina was already waking up. She'd been right next to Shana, after all, and the other girl had also taken to waking up early once she'd learned what Shana was doing. By the time Shana had readied her bath bucket for when she needed it later in the morning, Karina had managed to push herself upright, standing up from the bed and rubbing her eyes.

"You can go back to sleep, Karina," Shana said, as she had every day since she'd started doing this that the other girl had slept over. "I can do it by myself."

"Mragn gragun feruh…" Karina said, or something to that effect. She stumbled towards the water jug, hefted it, and lifted it to her lips when she realized it still had water, taking a drink. There was conspicuously no cup next to it. Shana knew this was not in keeping with Binder Lori's standards of hygiene, but there were so many people in her house having cups for all of them to drink from was simply unreasonable. Swallowing, Karina shook her head. “Come on, let’s go while it’s still cool.”

Karina was a good friend, and worked very hard. Shana worried about her sometimes.

Carefully, the two of them left the house. Outside, some of the additional lights that Binder Lori had placed for last night’s holiday still glowed, though most had disappeared, their imbuement no doubt spent. Still, their light wasn’t really necessary. The red moon was full in the sky, and would be for half a week yet since it moved so slowly, and the other moons were out as well, though their lights were weaker. Still, between that and the distant dawn, the sky was a slowly brightening blue, and they had no need to worry for their footing.

Shana was just closing the door to her house when the house next door opened, and Wizard Taeclas stepped out. “Good morning Shana,” the Deadspeaker greeted just quietly enough to not wake up any of the neighbors, her smile so wide Shana felt it should be reflecting moonlight. “Good morning, Karina.”

“Mornin’, Wiz Tae,” Karina greeted right back.

“Good morning, Wizard Taeclas,” Shana said respectfully. “Did you rest well last night?”

“Not really. The holiday was so much fun!” Wizard Taeclas said cheerfully as the three of them began to walk to where their tools were kept. “We might have stayed up a little too late…? But it’s fine, I’ll take a nap in the afternoon. Heh, I love this place! It’s all right to take a nap when it gets too hot to work! Back in Covehold we didn’t get to stop like that!”

“It’s only now in the summer,” Karina said. “When it gets cooler again, there’s no napping unless there’s no work to do.”

“Eh, if it’s cooler, than there’s no reason to nap, right?” Wizard Taeclas said.

Other people were already moving about, taking advantage of the cool of the predawn. Some people were getting an early start on laundry, while those who shoveled the waste from the latrines got a start on cleaning out last night’s load to take to the compost pit. The hunters who also ran the tannery were collecting the gold water from the special evaporators Binder Lori had made, to be used for treating skins, though Shana also knew that they gave out the caustic liquid to those who had very stubborn stains to remove in their laundry.

Taeclas greeted everyone with a wide smile, exchanging a few words with them about how fun the holiday last night had been—actually, should it be called a holinight?—how delicious the food was, and wishing there’d been music to go with the dancing.

“Wiz Lori would never allow it,” Karina said. “She hates music a night.”

“But why, though?” Wizard Taeclas sighed.

“No one knows,” Shana said, “but she dislikes it enough to have made it into a law, so it must be for a very good reason.”

“Maybe she used to live near a tavern, and they played music so late she couldn’t sleep?” Karina suggested.

“Hmm… I suppose that’s one way she’d end up not liking music at night,” Wizard Taeclas said. “Do you think Rian knows?”

“If he does, he probably wouldn’t say,” Karina said. “Unless they talk about it when they’re eating. Then we’ll just have to listen.”

"What?"

"You're new, so you haven't heard them yet, but Lord Rian and Wiz Lori really don't care who's listening when they talk, and sometimes they're funny."

"Oh, like when Rian asked Lori if he'd have to keep knocking on her door so she'd put down her book?"

They reached the tool shed where their poles were, where they rested on a special rack so that the wires of the lattice wouldn't be at risk of hitting the other tools. While Wizard Taeclas was able to heft her pole easily enough, resting the three pace long tool on her shoulder, Shana had to admit that it was unwieldy for someone of her height to carry around. Hence why she accepted Karina's assistance, the two of them carrying the tool between them towards the edge of the fields were Shana had left off the day before the holiday. Wizard Taeclass waved goodbye as she kept walking ahead of them towards where she had left off claiming crops and placing meanings on them.

As much as Shana wanted to claim she could use the pole by herself, she had to admit that it would have been awkward and slow, and while she would be able to control the pole to keep from potentially damaging the heads of the crops it would have made the pace of her work slow. Karina's assistance allowed her better control as her friend rested the pole on her shoulder, holding the pole to keep it in place to keep it from falling off as Shana used her as a fulcrum to better control the pole.

By now, Karina knew how far away to stand from the crops while Shana maneuvered the pole so that it rested lightly on the crops she would be imbuing as she reached through the wire pressing against her palm. Though it wasn't quite like touching someone with her bare hands or having them inside the boundaries of River's Fork Demesne, it was easy to reach through the wire. At first, it had been strangely disorienting to be in contact with meanings without actually touching them, since she had no tactile sense of where they were, but Shana had eventually become used to the sensation.

She positioned the pole until she became aware that the wire lattice at its head was contacting meanings she had already imbued. With that acting to assure her she hadn't missed any of the stalks, Shana began imbuing the meanings. By now she knew how to draw magic from her connection to River's Fork's core, letting the magic flow from her lungs—it didn't actually need to start there, but that was how she knew how to do this—and down her arms to where she touched the copper wire that wrapped around the pole shaft in an elongated spiral.

Shana pushed the magic through the wire, touching the meanings. Since they were deactivated and Wizard Taeclas wasn't actively maintaining her claim, she was able to override the woman's claim and bind the meaning to her own will. Once that was done, she was able to start imbuing the meaning, and began a slow count to a hundred.

Once her count was finished, the meaning had been imbued, and by now Shana was experienced enough to judge that she'd put in as much as she was supposed to into the meanings she had claimed. If there was a little bit more… well, that was all right. While Wizards were supposed to put in only as much imbuement into what they were imbuing as needed, that was because most wizards were limited in how much magic they could imbue at a time. As a Dungeon Binder, she—and Binder Lori—did not have that limitation, so she could afford to be a little wasteful. It was probably a bad habit to form, but as Binder Lori had forbidden her from learning more Deadspeaking than she already knew, it was not a problem.

"Step," Shana said once she was properly finished and had pulled the wire lattice head of her pole from the crops, and she and Karina took a step sideways. Repositioned, Shana lowered the head and adjusted the lattice slightly so that there was a hair of overlap with the meanings she had just imbued. This was to prevented her from accidentally missing some of the meanings between the places she lowered her tool.

Reaching through the wire again, Shana overrode Wizard Taeclas' claim and began imbuing the meanings, counting to a hundred.

It was slow, repetitive work, as most work was, but neither of them complained. Slowly, methodically, they imbued the meanings that Wizard Taeclas had left deactivated on the crops. Everyone once in the while when they stepped sideways, Karina would shift the pole to her other shoulder to let it take the weight. When they'd begun doing this, Shana had offered to take her turn with the pole resting on her shoulder, but Karina had refused, saying she was fine.

The one time Shana had insisted, she'd realized that with Karina maneuvering the pole the wire lattice at the head was hard to place exactly, and they spent far more time resetting after each step sideways. Shana had eventually acquiesced, and had simply concentrated on trying to be as efficient as she could be.

The two of them continued on until the sun started to rise, and had managed to do several paces of crops before Karina said, "Time for breakfast." She was looking to the side, and Shana followed her gaze to see Rian waving towards them and pointing towards the dungeon.

Shana waved in acknowledgement. "Let me finish this last," she said.

Karina nodded carefully, the pole remaining still and in contact with the crops. The other girl turned her head and raised her voice. "Wiz Tae! Breakfast!"

"Got it!" the Deadspeaker's voice replied, seemingly coming from the crops. They were approaching a corner of the fields, one the wizard had already turned, so she was out of their sight. If they managed to turn the corner today, they'd be able to see her again as they worked. "Just finishing!"

It was only the start of the morning's work. Already, the sunlight shining on them was hot, although their surroundings were still relatively cool despite that. Once they continued after breakfast, however… well, they had their hats. The work had to be done, after all.

"Done," Shana said as she finished imbuing the crops she'd been working on. "We can go have breakfast now."

On the signal, Karina raised the pole off her shoulder, lowering it down to a carrying grip as she started walking, taking the lead back towards the dungeon and breakfast.