Demesne

Lolilyuri felt terrible. Unfortunately, there was work to be done. It wasn't too bad. She could do the work sitting down for the most part, and it was a steady, repetitive work that she didn't have to think too much about. The situation was aggravating, but mostly she was angry at herself for losing track of the time. She'd been going to sleep early and not watching the positioning of the moons in the sky, which was why this had crept up on her suddenly.

The sawpit had been busy, cutting down trees and sawing them into boards and beams. The problem was, as Lori had once learned long ago while working in a lumberyard (one of many, many, many jobs she'd had to pay for school), wood needed to be cured before it could be used for building, or else it could warp as the wood dried out.

Her job, now as then, was to dry the wood such that it could be used in a matter of hours instead of months. Unfortunately, it wasn't as simple as just imbuing some wisps and walking away. Different woods cut from different trees would have different levels of moisture, and would have different needs, needing to be carefully watched. Also, they only had the one kiln. Lori had raised it, like she had many things, using packed earth, to better keep the area around the sawpit from being an oven. Green wood was stacked in, and she imbued fire-, air-, water- and lightningwisps in the way she'd learned to increase the temperature of the kiln, circulate the air and control the humidity, draw out the moisture in the wood, and heat the internal parts of the wood for faster curing. It was a delicate and dynamic process, and she had to supervise it lest it be like the time she got fired from her first lumberyard job and have the wood catch fire.

Still, after many years and many jobs in lumberyards, Lori had become confident in her skill in the process. Drying wood to turn it into kindling was one thing. Turning it into a building material was another thing entirely. Between her, the woodcutting parties and the sawyers, they were managing to keep up with the demesne's lumber needs.

So if she looked like she wasn't doing anything as she sat back next to the kiln with her eyes closed, that was absolutely not the case and she was very much hard at work! It just happened to be something she could do sitting down with her eyes closed!

Lori told Rian so through gritted teeth and in great detail when he found her sitting next to the kiln.

"Uh, noted," he said. "Do you need one of the doctors?"

"No," she said. "Now, why are you here? And I swear, if you start going on about philosophy and why any of us are here– "

"I'm not going to do that… anymore," Rian said, flashing a quick smile. "I thought you'd like to know, we managed to make thread from those plants you showed us. It'll take a while, but the carpenters are making us a loom, and the farmers are seeing if we can grow the ropeweeds closer to the village. Turns out the seeds are edible, and have a lot of oil, so if we're lucky we'll finally have some fried meat that doesn't taste bland."

"Yay," Lori said. "All our troubles are solved. I want a mattress first thing." A beat. "Ropeweeds?"

"That's what the children call it," Rian said. "Some of those who aren't as good at seeling have opted to make rope instead, so we'll hopefully also have more rope soon. I'll need to talk to them, find out if they've found other interesting plants out there."

"You realize you can have someone else do it, right?" Lori said. "You're a lord, you have the authority to do that. Well, until you quit later today."

"Which I definitely will, I'm not cut out for this lord thing," Rian said. "No, I'd better do it myself. No preconceived notions."

"Have the astrologer guy do it," Lori said.

"Cassan?" Rian said, sounding surprised.

"Is that his name?" Lori said. "He looked like he had some kind of academic training. And he has a notebook. Even if he can't tell if the plant is good for anything, he can write it down and not have to carry a plank of wood with him everywhere. Also, find out who the parents of the ones watching the children are. They obviously haven't been paying attention as the children have been making rope and they didn't even notice."

"They don't deserve to be punished for that," Rian said.

"I'm not punishing them," Lori said. "You're simply going to tell their parents how negligent they've been. Anything else is up to them."

"That's still going to get them punished," Rian said.

"That's a family matter," Lori said. "None of my business, and I don't want it to be. I only step in when people violate my laws."

"So, you won't interfere in family matters, but you'll come down on anyone urinating in public," Rian said, amused.

"My demesne is a civilized place, with latrines," Lori said testily. "Use them or leave."

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The next day was a perfectly average morning in Lori's Demesne. The sun was rising, the songbugs on the outskirts of the demesne were (probably) singing, several children were getting an early start at killing small animals, people awkwardly socialized as they waited for latrines to become available, meals were cooked in the communal kitchen using large stone pots Lori had crafted on the journey from Covehold, Rian was in the middle of finishing his daily morning sword practice while several people enjoyed the sight of him shirtless, and Lori snapped violently awake knowing a dragon was coming.

She could feel it in the distance, a sensation like… like the breeze that came at the forefront of an opening door, an immaterial bow wave being pushed in front of something more solid. It was a sensation she'd felt before, and as always it jolted her wide awake and filled her with mortal terror.

Lori stared in horror at her dungeon. Her small, four-room dungeon.

Rainbows.

She scrambled to her feet, wincing in residual discomfort as she sat down to put on her boots. She tried to think of what they needed to do even as she hoped that the dragon would pass them, and knew it wouldn't. Dragons were huge. Not getting caught in their shadow was too much to hope for.

Lori thrust one arm into the sleeve of her leather raincoat even as she grabbed her staff and rushed out of her new bedroom, crossing the now wide-open space that had formerly been all her living area. Her darkroom, its narrow opening protected by a lip to prevent light from the entrance from getting in, suddenly seemed too small and not dark enough…

She willed the boulder in front of the door away even as she dispersed the bound lightwisps that illuminated her cave, trying to plunge it into as much darkness as she could. Outside, though the ground was muddy, indicating it had rained in the night, found herself stepping out into a bright, cloudless sky. A rainbow hung on the horizon, its colors sending shivers down Lori's spine. The air was thick with humidity that would be agonizing when the day's heat came, although the discomfort lasted only long enough to her to will it away from her with waterwisps.

There were people about, some going to the river for a quick splash out of habit or convenience, others heading for the dining halls. Only a third of the shells of houses she'd set up had people living in them yet, and even those families weren't eating there yet.

Lori debated making a scene. Then she headed for the hospital instead.

Rian was already eating when she sat down with her own bowl. "Hey," he said, nodding at her. "Good morning."

"No, it's not," Lori said grimly as she sat down.

"Well, you're dour this morning," Rian said.

"There's a dragon coming," she said.

His spoon paused. "Are you joking?"

"Do I ever joke?"

"Well…"

"No, I never joke," Lori said, taking a breath. "It's not on the horizon yet, so I thought I'd have breakfast before declaring a state of emergency."

"Ah."

"Keep anyone from leaving until I finish eating, will you?" Lori said. "And have someone retrieve the children who've already finished eating."

Rian nodded grimly and stood up, leaving to do as she'd said. Then he came back, grabbed his half-finished bowl of food, and left again.

Sighing, Lori ate. It would probably be her last calm meal until the dragon passed.

Her hands shook.

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"There's a dragon coming," Lori announced, and waited for everyone to get their fear under control.

Only the very young children– which the village didn't have, as no child that young would have been allowed onto the ships heading for this continent for a whole host of cost and safety reasons– wouldn't have known what a dragon was. Most demesne had a dragon pass it by at least once every year or two. So to Lori's surprise, there was surprisingly very little fear. For most, there seemed to be an air of annoyed resignation, as if told they'd need to do something inconvenient but required.

She frowned at everyone. "You all heard me right?" she said. "A dragon is coming." Even now she could feel it, the strange sensation like waves washing over her. She could feel their direction, and how they were slowly growing stronger. Lori felt like she should be swaying as the sensation swept over her again, all the wisps around her seeming to sway with her. She'd never found anything in any book or study that explained what that feeling was. It wasn't because of wisps: Deadspeakers, Mentalists and Horotracts all felt it too. Life wavered, thought eddied, and vistas eroded, all as if something were washing it away. "We need to get ready!"

"Binder Lori, relax," Rian said, once more seeming to speak for everyone. "We've all been through dragons before, there's no need to get upset."

"I think having a dragon bearing down on us is perfectly upsetting, Rian," Lori snapped. "We need to get to work while we still can."

"It's a dragon. We've lived through them before. Just get down into the shelters and wait it out," Rian said. "Our biggest problem will be getting bored. Sure, we might have to replace some roofs and dig up whatever falls on us afterwards, but it's not really that big of a problem."

Lori stared at him. Then she looked, really looked, at the people of her demesne. All of them bore the same relaxed, self-assured expression as her only lord.

"Rian, shelters are always built as least twenty paces underground for a reason," Lori ground out, addressing it to him, but explaining it to everyone. "Unless they're built that deep, it's perfectly possible for a dragon's wild manipulations of wisps to tear the ground apart and open the shelter up, and then people die because their bodies start fusing together, or they get caught in a twister and wrung like a dishrag until all their flesh is stripped from their bones, or they fall and never stop falling until they die of starvation or any number of things."

Rian blinked. "The shelters never seem that deep. You just go down some stairs and there they are."

"Yes, that's what happens when you use Horotracting to make a vista," Lori said. "Trust me, they're that deep, I used to have a job doing shelter cleaning and maintenance, and we always needed a Horotract to get down there."

Abruptly, Lori slammed the butt of her staff into the ground, using earth- and airwisps to make it echo like thunder. People jumped at the noise, suddenly focusing on her. "Dragons might seem like just any other storm when you're in a demesne, but those are old demesne, built up over decades and centuries. They have plumbing and sewers and streetlights and ways to protect themselves from dragons. We don't! Colors of death, people, you know all the stories about dragons that I do! They can tear a demesne to the bedrock and leave no survivors, turn an entire city into a mound of insane screaming flesh that's killing and undying everything around it, and give you iridiation even from inside a demesne! And that last one is if you're lucky, so you die fast!"

Shocked silence filled the dining hall, and Lori finally saw fear.

"And if you don't believe that," Lori said. "Believe this." She pointed towards the kitchen and cold room. "All our food is in there, and the only safe place we have to hide from a dragon," she pointed in the general direction of her cave and the dungeon's core, "is over there! Dragons can take two or three days to pass by, and anyone who goes out in that time is going to die. Do you see the problem?"

They all looked towards the kitchen. Then towards the Dungeon.

It was then that the logistical problems finally presented themselves to everyone.

"And before you all start thinking of moving the food to the shelters," Lori said as the idea seemed to finally dawn on everyone, "consider this: all that damage after a dragon, with roofs fallen in and such. How thick do you think the roofs of the shelters are? And how thick to you think the hill on top of the Dungeon is?"

She didn't wait for some kind of moment of realization or someone answering her rhetorical question.

But neither did she just walk off dramatically.

"Get all the food into my Dungeon," Lori told Rian. "All the metal tools we can't afford to lose either. I'll turn one of my rooms into a cold room for it."

"What are you going to do?" Rian asked.

"Something I should have done sooner," Lori said. "Make my Dungeon bigger."

When she stepped out of the dining hall, a wind had risen. Steady wind that neither surged nor ebbed, rushing like someone's breath whispering past her ear. It flowed southward, and Lori got the feeling the wind wasn't being blown in, but inhaled.

On the horizon, just beginning to rise over the curve of the world, was the dragon.

For a moment, Lori stared. She couldn't help it. She'd never seen a dragon with her own eyes before, and the descriptions and sketches and illustrations in books seemed… nonsensical. At first she thought a wall of clouds stretched from east to west, not unlike the driving rains. And then she blinked and suddenly it seemed too thick to be clouds. They didn't roil like clouds did, getting bigger, or rising or falling slowly. It roiled like boiling water, bubbling and expanding and moving right before her very eyes, faster than any cloud. Bubbles would erupt into eerily silent lightning of many colors. Brilliant green, dull and burning red, even a light-defying dark purple that seemed black, slowly moving horizontally like the reaching arms of some impossibly long, narrow limb.

Even as she watched, one of the streaks of lightning bent in the middle like an elbow, sweeping it's already extended length towards the ground before touching the earth and suddenly it wasn't lightning but a great cone, it's point touching the ground… and then tears seemed to open all along the cone's length, and Lori found herself staring at eyes of–

Someone grabbed her and spun her around quickly, breaking her gaze.

"Don't stare at something's eyes," Rian said, looking intently at the ground. "Things never like it when you meet their eyes. They think you're challenging them."

Lori took a deep breath and realized she was shaking.

Then thunder came, not in a sudden crack, but a low, deep, ominous roll that seemed to keep on going and going and going…

"Get to the Dungeon!" Rian cried, his voice sounding surprisingly loud and normal over the continuous bass rumble of the dragon's thunder as he pushed Lori's staff into her hands. When had she dropped it? "Get it as big as you can! I'll take care of the rest, just get the Dungeon bigger!"

Clutching at her staff, Lori ran, already willing the stone to flow…