In the morning, the hole in the sock and the laundry were still there.

More work she had to do, needed to do.

She'd get to it later.

Before she left her room, she went down the list of bindings she had to imbue and maintain. As she sat on her bed, Lori stared at the wall next to her where she had written the list. She kept meaning to arrange it by order of importance, but as with many things, she just never got around to it. So it was still written in the order of when she'd gotten around to writing them down.

At the bottom of the list was the list of bindings that maintained the Coldhold. She always did that part of the list first. It was the only thing she could do to make sure the ice boat could return. The hull, the water jet driver, all the parts of the ice boat… she kept them all imbued and functioning. At least she didn't seem have to worry about her affinity with her blood fading and the connection being lost. Even her lightwisps remained connected to her…

She was finished. Lori sighed and headed down for breakfast. In the dining hall, breakfast was again in progress, though it seemed she'd managed to wake up earlier today. Many of the tables were still unoccupied, so she was able to go directly to hers. It was appealingly empty, and she slipped onto her bench, leaning her staff next to her. She looked around, but Riz wasn't here yet, and neither was Mikon.

Sighing, Lori folded her hands on the table and laid down her head, closing her eyes.

She woke up when she felt someone nudging her shoulder. Lori made a sound in her throat as she opened her eye—she'd barely put her head down!—to find Mikon standing next to her. The weaver began to pull her arm back as she saw Lori was awake. "She's awake!" she said to the person across the table.

Well, it was a little better than calling a child to wake her up, but not much better.

Lori pushed herself up straight, wondered why there was salt in her eyes even if she hadn't actually fallen asleep. Ugh. Still, the three bowls in front of her were still warm and fresh from the kitchen, and there looked to be dried mushroom and likely mushroom stock in this batch.

"Good morning, Great Binder," Riz said. "Did you sleep well?"

Lori grunted with feeling as she got the salt out of her eyes. A part of her wondered if she should save it to give the tanners. They needed salt, right? Idly, she tried to bind it. Some waterwisps, some earthwisps… Probably not enough salt, salt had more earthwisps to bind. Ugh, stupid back ache. She twisted back and forth on her bench, and felt her spine pop, then rolled her shoulders because there was still a twinge on her back…

Shaking her head one last time, Lori rested her elbows on the table, one hand resting on top of the other, one wrist pressing back into her mouth as she contemplated her temporary Rian. In hindsight, she'd acted… exactly like what she'd been trying not to be. She should probably apologize…

Well, she wasn't good at this anyway.

"Good morning, Erzebed," Lori replied. Her temporary Rian seemed surprised to be addressed by her proper name. "I did. Are there any issues I should be aware of?" She glanced at the bowls, and picked one, pulling it towards herself.

Riz still seemed confused, even as Mikon pushed one of the bowls in front of the northerner and took the last one for herself. "Uh… well, there are bugs trying to nest in the baths."

"So you said. Anything else?" There was a new spice to the stew, and it wasn't just because of the mushroom broth. Lori couldn't quite place it, but it was new and not unpleasant. It made her want to drink water though.

A strange expression came over Riz's face. "We've started to have small beasts in the fields. We've been able to keep them away from the crops, but they might start going into other places."

"Find out what those places are and make the arrangements," Lori said. "Like doors."

"Yes, Great Binder."

Lori gave her a flat look, then winced internally as she guiltily realized what she was doing and looked down into her food. "Good," she said. She was NOT going to act like her mothers! "I'll leave that to you, then. What else?"

"Those should be it, Great Binder," Riz said.

"Very well," Lori said. "Eat then. You can't work on an empty stomach."

Mikon pushed the still-untouched bowl of stew toward Riz significantly. The movement made Riz glance down and she reached for the spoon for the first time. She began to eat hesitantly, occasionally glancing at Lori as if she expected a subtle, pointed comment in her direction. At least, Lori assumed so. It was what she used to think in that position…

The worst was always when her mothers sighed and started telling her that they loved her. Lori was never sure who they were trying to convince, her or themselves…

Grimly, Lori pushed away such pointless thoughts and focused on the taste of the food, determinedly eating her breakfast.

––––––––––––––––––

After breakfast, Lori set out to begin the day's work. There was some trudging involved, but it wasn't as uphill as yesterday's trudge, which was nice.

Lori wasn't sure if it helped, but she wrapped a cloth around her mouth and nose before she entered the cave with the mushroom farm. There was a woody smell inside, and she only took few steps in before she turned around and went out again. The sun shone down brightly, so there were plenty of lightwisps for her to claim, imbue and bind. She put them onto the end of her staff and went back into the cave. Maybe she should put a few lights in there, it was pretty dark…

The cave was mostly clear, and there were only a few crumbling bits of wood on the floor, save for a neatly stacked row along one wall, glowing slightly blue from small growths of mushroom already on them, waiting to mature. She supposed they didn't plant the mushrooms into the wood in the cave, or whatever it was they did to grow them. This left her plenty of room to work, which was good.

She started with excavating the floor next to the long wall of the cave, making a ramp that sloped downward. While it would take up more room, a ramp down was easier to build than stairs, and… uh, it would probably made it easier to bring down the wood that the mushrooms grew on to the next floor down. Yes, exactly, that was why.

Lori built a low wall around the hole for the ramp so they could lean wood for mushroom growing against it, before continuing the excavation. This would be a first for her, she realized. This would be the first level she'd build that would be directly under another. Still, it wasn't like she had no experience with this. Her room was built over her core, after all, and the space around the core was hollow. Her bedroom floor hadn't collapsed on her yet…

…

Maybe she should fill in her core room when there wasn't a dragon around, give her floor more structural integrity.

She built the ramp, then built it again when it was obvious it was too shallow and would end up being longer than the cave currently was. Once she thought the bottom of the ramp was deep enough, she began excavating the next level. By now putting up load-bearing pillars and arches when excavating was familiar enough she didn't need to measure to make sure the arches were the right configuration, though she did anyway. She also bound lightwisps to the corners of the ceiling of the cave, both in the original portion and new one she was excavating, a dim light that wouldn't impede the growth of the mushrooms.

She was so occupied she almost missed lunch, and only realized it was time to eat when she went out with a batch of excavated stone and saw that the smiths weren't at the smithy.

Lori sighed. Rian usually came to get her when she was too busy to notice it was time to eat.

For a moment, she was tempted to just go back and continue working—she didn't really feel like eating—but experience had taught her not to skip meals, or else her mind would be too fatigued to concentrate. She headed back to her Dungeon's dining hall.

Fortunately, it seemed like it was still early in the meal. She arrived at the table at the same time that Riz and Mikon did, one carrying food, the other carrying the cups and pitcher of water.

"Erzebed," Lori said as she sat down, "Rian might have forgotten to mention, but if I'm not at the table at lunch or dinner, look for me. It's hard for me to tell the time when I'm busy digging under the ground."

Riz winced. "Ah, sorry Great Binder. I'll remember next time."

Lori nodded. "Good." She reached for one of the bowls. "So, did anything come up this morning?"

Mikon very deliberately pushed a bowl towards Riz, who hesitated a moment and accepted it. "The smiths say they need a grinding wheel. All the hand tools are getting dull because of the cutting and while we can make do with whetstones, sharpening them all individually takes too long."

Lori nodded. "Noted. I'll make one."

"They, uh, say that the stone needs to be shaped as quarried," Riz said. "The texture is important for the sharpening, and too much Whispering can ruin it."

"Tell them that I've made grindstones before, but their awareness of how not everyone has is noted," Lori said. "Well done getting more complete information, Erzebed. Very competent."

The two women across from her looked at her strangely.

"What?" Lori said.

"How are you feeling, your Bindership?" Mikon asked. Well, Lori supposed she hadn't specified who she was addressing.

Still, it as a strange question to ask. Lori shrugged. "I'm fine," she said disinterestedly. "Was there anything else from this morning?"

Riz glanced at Mikon, then sighed. "Well, there was one other thing. The weavers want to know how they should prepare for winter. So far, they've been weaving a lot of sheets, which are making good blankets, but if they have to make that into anything else, like shirts or winter house blankets, it'll take time, and they'd like to know what the priority is."

Lori paused in her eating, frowning. "Winter house blankets? What are those? If they were just like regular blankets, you'd probably say so."

"They're thick blankets with sleeves, your Bindership," Mikon said explained. "You use it as a blanket at night, then wear them over your regular clothes to keep you warm in winter."

"Oh, you want to make robes?" Lori said. She frowned. "Do we have enough material to make those?"

"No," Mikon said. "But we might have enough to make them for the children, if we start now."

Lori considered that. "Make sure we have enough for extra blankets first."

Mikon nodded. "Yes, your Bindership. We're running out of ropeweed though, and as the season grows colder, retting them becomes less effective."

Lori grunted and turned to Riz. "Have people start gathering ropeweed from the other side of the river. Clowee can take them, it's not like the boat is used much the rest of the week."

"I'll tell her, Great Binder," Riz said. "I think that's all that for now."

Lori nodded, then bent down to focus on her food. She was hungry after all, she realized.

They ate surrounded by the familiar murmur of the dining hall during meal time. As they ate, Lori became aware of Mikon staring at her intently.

"What?" she demanded.

Mikon smiled. "Would you like to play a game later, your Bindership?" she asked.

Lori considered it, then shrugged. "Sure, why not. At dinner."

Mikon nodded, and they went back to their meal.