Demesne

Eventually, as promised, food was sent up to them for lunch, since aside from Grem's actions, they were apparently still considered guests.

River's Fork demesne had bread.

That alone made all this worth the trip.

"I might have to leave your demesne," Rian said, staring down in salivating wonder at the baked good in front of him. "No offense, but Lorian isn't being completely fulfilling for me…"

"Those are terribly ungrateful words," Lori said absently as she licked her lips, taking in the smell of bready goodness. It was flat bread, dough heated on a hot, flat surface with nothing to make it rise but the air that had been mixed in from kneading, and it smelled wonderfully fluffy despite it.

"I have a right to my opinions," Rian said, reaching over and waving his hands over the still-warm bread.

"No, you don't, that's not on the list," Lori said, already finding she would miss the smell and sight of this bread once it went through her mouth and into her stomach.

"Well, I have the right to travel, and I'm thinking of traveling here," Rian said.

"Remember that list is contingent on you being my lord," Lori said. "You negotiated it that way."

"Curses. My path to bready paradise is thwarted," Rian said.

"You people are weird," one of the militiamen having their own lunch said.

Lori, and Rian, both ignored the obviously incorrect people as they stared at the meal before them. In addition to bread there were boiled vegetables and tuber not unlike what they had in Lori's Demesne, bread, grilled seel and beast meat, bread, some sort of fruit, and bread. It was laid out on wooden bowls not unlike what they used themselves back home, save the absence of bread. Because there was bread.

"If you just keep staring at that, the bread's going to get cold," one of the other militiamen said.

That finally got them to start eating.

As Lori ate, she watched Rian. He'd washed his hands with a little water they'd been provided and had put meat into the middle of his bread and rolled it up, forming a tube. He was eating it lengthwise like some kind of sausage. She supposed that was more efficient than tearing off bits of bread and pilling stuff on it, but it looked vaguely childish. The militiamen seemed to think so, glancing and snickering among themselves.

Still, it took little time for their plates to be cleared of food. Rian even offered to wash the dishes, an offer that was declined as one of the militiamen took everyone's plates away.

"So," Rian said as they settled back to keep waiting. "How do you think everyone's doing at home?"

"They've probably taken this opportunity to play music into the night," Lori said, maintaining her breathing. A light breeze began to waft around her, cooling her face. "Though I'm more concerned that the sudden inrush of new people will be straining our food reserves, not to mention how it affects our supplies for winter." She gave him a flat look for that. "Particularly in light of wasteful use of said reserves."

"We'll be fine," Rian dismissed. "Winter isn't for another seven blue months. That's plenty of time to stock up on food, and figure out keeps."

Lori blinked at that, and the militiamen perked up as well. "How do you know that?" she asked.

"I asked around Covehold while I was there," Rian said. "Didn't any of you? It's been a while, but we should have at least seven blue months left. Six at worse, they said something about the winds possibly making it come early."

Lori twitched. "Why don't you bring up important things like this sooner?"

"I thought you'd know," Rian protested. "How hard is it to ask how long we have until winter?"

Lori gave him a look.

"Yes, I remember, you don't like talking to people and they probably didn't sell calendars marking the seasons, but still!"

"Seven months, you say?" one of the militiamen said.

"Close enough?" Rian shrugged. "I don't exactly have a calendar either, I've just been making a mark on the wall for every day I've been here. Had to start all over again when the dragon knocked the wall down, so I might be off by a day or two, since I'm still not sure how long the dragon took to pass, I was too sleep-deprived and asleep…"

"Yes, weren't you supposed to be keeping me awake so we wouldn't die horribly?" Lori said blandly.

"We're alive, aren't we?" he said. "Besides, I responsibly waited for all the weird sounds to stop in the middle of your ranting before passing out." He frowned suddenly, leaning forward to peer at her. For some reason he stuck a finger in his mouth and held it up in the air, while she leaned back, disgusted. Eventually he set it down, wiping the finger on his trousers. "Huh… anyway, we have time. We might need a bigger, dedicated cold storage room for it though, some place where food goes in but doesn't come out until winter. It's a good thing we have you, Binder Lori. Otherwise we'd have to build it by hand, and we wouldn't be able to make the ice that would let foods like meat keep for that long."

He said that last in a bright, happy voice that seemed a touch insincere to her ears. Was he mocking her?

"Which reminds me… with all the people who've moved in from River's Fork, we might need a new bathhouse," Rian said thoughtfully. "Do you think we can have a different design, maybe pools people can soak in hot water in, or a nice steam room? I've had some design ideas I've been wanting to run by you, and I was wondering how hard they would be to implement…"

"What design ideas?" Lori asked warily.

"Well, pools for people to soak in, for one thing," Rian said. "I figure with a few changes of features, we can make the baths a proper social center. You don’t notice since, you know, you use your private bathroom, but a lot of people like to linger in the baths and chat after a long day of tramping through the woods looking for wild vegetables, trying to grow the wild vegetables we've transplanted, putting up roofs, tanning seel and beast hides, cutting wood, cooking for everyone and not urinating in public, people just want to relax and chat, and with a few minor changes to the design of the baths, they'd be able to do that."

"Baths are for bathing," Lori pointed out.

"Look, just trust me on this, all right?" Rian sighed. "A nice, steamy bath will do wonders for morale, especially when winter comes and we have rain at best or thick snow at worst. When that happens, even you won't want to stay in that cave you call your bedroom and will want to go out into the nice, hot baths and soak in the nice, hot clean water. Ooh, and speaking of winter preparations, do you think we can set up a farm in your dungeon?"

"A… farm?" Lori said.

"Yeah, you know, somewhere we can plant small wild vegetables and tubers indoors so we can augment our diet with fresh vegetables in the winter," Rian said. "A little heat to simulate the climate, a little magic light to make the plants think they're in sunlight, and we'd be able to use the dungeon to grow crops all year round, like the big demesnes! Then we won't have to be dependent on scavenging plants for food!"

Lori opened her mouth to protest… and paused. She tapped her lips thoughtfully,

"It'll be a lot of work, but we'd have six months," Rian said. "Plenty of time to prepare so we don't die horribly over the winter."

"I suppose…" Lori said, digesting the thoughts slowly in her head. "It should be doable, with a proper schedule." She sighed. "Fine, get me some drawings of the designs you're thinking of for the baths. Though it'll be your job to keep people from fornicating in there."

"What, you want me going into the baths for women?" Rian said.

"Deputize someone if you have to," Lori said.

"Not gonna do it yourself?" Rian smirked.

"I'm the Binder, I would literally have other things to do," Lori said.

Rian sighed. "Maybe I can ask Riz to do it, she'd probably have peacekeeping experience," he muttered. "Ugh, we're going to have so many issues to deal with when we get back, aren't we? I have to check the progress on making thread, need to see how the furs we've been gathering have been doing… I think you were waiting for something so you could finally make wire?"

"A draw plate," Lori said. "You talked to the smiths about lending me one of theirs, remember?"

"Oh, right," Rian said. "I suppose that'll give you something to play with in the winter, since we'll all be stuck indoors anyway. Maybe I can get the carpenters to carve board games so the rest of us will have something else to do… "

Lori sighed. She glanced out the window. The sun looked like it had barely moved. "How much longer do we have to wait?"

"Traumatized little girl," Rian said, not looking outside. "Dead father. Don't rush her."

Lori sighed.

"Take a nap," he said. "I'll wake you up if anything happens. Somehow, I don't think anyone's in a rush to get things moving right now."

He glanced towards the militiamen, who all looked back stoically.

"Yeah, take a nap," Rian said. "Who knows how long this'll take? Best you get rested for when someone finally talks to us instead of being exhausted waiting."

Lori glared at him. "I'm fine." She didn't plan to be asleep unless it was behind stone walls or in the middle of the river. Still, she did sit back and lean against the wall, facing the militia, who faced her back. "We'll continue waiting," she said, getting comfortable in her seat.

Still, there was no harm in resting her eyes… just a little. She didn't need her eyes to listen for people coming at her, after all…

Lori sat back, closing her eyes to rest them, concentrating on her ears to hear the slightest noise…

Someone nudged her and her eyes shot open alertly, blinking at the hand resting on her shoulder. She glanced up at Rian. "Whugh…?"

"So, it turns out the local Binder has an aunt as well as an uncle," Rian said. "And she's been spending most of the afternoon getting her niece settled down from being upset. But now she's free, and while she's not exactly claiming anything on the Binder's behalf, she wants to talk to us about what happened to her niece and husband. Purely as family, I'm told. She's not blaming us– yet– she just wants to hear the sides."

Lori blinked several more times, purely because her eyes had become so well-rested they needed to get the blood pumping into them again. The cloud of airwisps she'd been surrounding herself with all day was still there, imbued and ready to act at her will, whatever it may be, though the imbuement was less than it had been when she'd sat down to n– rest her eyes. The light outside was more orange than yellow, and they definitely wouldn't be making it back to her demesne even if they started back right then. "Ugh… I see. All right then, let's go talk to her…"

"How kind of you to make time for me, Great Binder Lolilyuri," a female voice said, and only then did Lori noticed there was someone else with the militiamen too. "I hope you enjoyed your nap?"

"She's here, by the way," Rian said brightly.

"Yes Rian, I can see that," Lori said. She stood, and if the movement was slow, it was definitely not because she'd been awakened form a nap– she'd merely been resting her eyes– but because her posterior had fallen asleep and numb. She casually straightened her shirt as she stood, back straight and unimpressed. "You are Dungeon Binder Shanalorre's aunt, then?"

"I am," she said in a tone that made Lori twinge inside, just a little. It reminded her far too much of when her mothers were scolding her. Her face seemed naturally set in a severe expression, dark green hair pulled back in a bun. "And I am here to find out why my husband is covered in bruises and why my only niece came back home upset." She didn't raise her voice, didn't scowl extravagantly, didn't say anything that wasn't perfectly reasonable. She just sounded determined. Lori had to forcibly resist the urge to start looking down at her feet. She frantically tried to remember this woman's name, came up blank, panicked for a moment, then internally sighed as she remembered she hadn't been told yet.

The doctor, Las… Laspodin? No, Lasponin, that was it… he had given Lori the impression for trying to be the power behind the core. Trying incompetently, but trying. This woman gave the definite impression of being the power behind the trying to be power behind the core. Lori firmed her resolve and reminded herself she was a Dungeon Binder, and a learned wizard, who'd gone to school and been recognized as a wizard by her peers. She knew exactly how to deal with this woman's mother-reminiscent intimidation!

"Lord Rian here was speaking to your husband and can give you a full account of what transpired," Lori said, reaching behind her and pushing a surprised lord in front. "Rian, tell Binder Shanalorre's aunt everything she needs to know, as you were the closer witness between us." This was definitely a 'talking to people' situation, and that was Rian's job. He should deal with it.

Mercifully, the woman turned her gaze toward Rian, who shuffled nervously. "Very well, then. Lord Rian, was it? Tell me, then, why my husband and my niece were attacked this morning…"