Demesne

It was not, in fact, that hard in theory. Or even in practice.

At least, that's what Lori told herself.

Finding where the children did their seeling was simple. She'd put a latrine near there, after all.

Figuring out seeling was done by using long, pointy branches to catch the seels was easy. All the children stood on rocks above the water near patches of swaying reeds, spears raised and ready above their heads and looking intently into the moving, rippling clarity of the flowing river. Some held that pose for a long time. Some jabbed their spear down often, seemingly on the basis of more attempts increasing the likelihood of one of the attempts being a success. A few seemed to have lines tied to the end of their spears, with the other end tied to their wrist, seemingly for retrieval.

The brat wasn't one of the latter, standing there with her arm raised and her spear ready, a comical look of concentration on her face.

They were being watched, of course. Two boys and a girl in their teens were spread around with the children between them, using knives to carve little wooden hooks. Every so often, one of the children would manage to spear a seel. If they didn't manage to subdue it right away, one of the teens would help them so they wouldn't get pulled into the water. They'd then take care of draining and gutting the seel while the child went back to river to catch the next one. They also kept an eye on the adult seels nearby. While the juveniles the children were seeling were only a little bit longer than Lori's arm, the adults were bigger, almost twice as long as Lori was tall and very thick. More than enough to knock even an adult into the water and possibly rip them apart with their teeth. They didn't seem inclined to come to the beach and rocks the children were seeling on– Lori supposed the water was too shallow and the rocks uncomfortable on their bulk– but given their proximity it was better to watch them. They were killing the seels' children, after all.

Even from Lori's vantage point, they weren't likely to run out of seels any time soon. The water writhed with seels, the long, slinking bodies of the freshwater fursh moving in smooth, side-to-side motions to propel themselves through the water. The surface of the river rippled as the things went up to take breaths, their dark fur looking sleek against their bodies.

They moved fast, and it was all Lori could do to focus on one through the refraction of the water, the similar creatures around it, and its sinuous, confusing movements. It didn't help that there were constantly diving into the reeds and other plants growing in the water. They seemed to be feeding on small slugs and little shelled squid.

Lori took a moment to consider the cyclical image of juvenile slugs and squid being hunted by juvenile seels being hunted by juvenile humans. Was it a cycle, with the humans being eaten by the slugs at some point, or was there a level above that where the juvenile humans would be eaten by the juveniles of something else?

She considered that and decided the thought was too morbid even for her and went to find a branch to cut and sharpen.

Most would have wondered why she didn't just use her staff. Most people were idiots. Her staff was a well-cured hardwood. It had wire wrappings to better channel her magic, inlays of quartz for lightningwisps, more porous woods molded in to hold waterwisps, and a little coalcharm to hold a live coal for when she needed firewisps and didn't have time to rub her hands together. It had been with her for years, it was a trusted and reliable tool, and it was too heavy for any of that throwing around the children were doing.

Lori found a tree with branches that seemed sturdy enough, and used waterwisps to make a high-pressure stream of water to cut off a promising branch. She found a convenient rock and bound the earthwisps in it, forming a serviceable knife blade. She might not be any good at making flat walls and floors, but after weeks of traveling, she'd gotten good at making knives and similar shapes without a mold.

It took her four blades to strip the branch of offshoots. She was fairly sure she'd done something wrong with the rock, like forming it so the cleavage lines were pointed the wrong way. Still, it was faster to just make a new blade than stop right then and figure out the rock's properties. In the end, getting the branch stripped was important, not the quality of her rocks.

She hefted the stripped branch, finding the point where it balanced. After trying to cut a point into one end, she'd just given up, found an already reasonably pointy rock, hit it with another rock a few time to see if it was hard enough not to break, and just used more rock to wrap it around one end as a point.

"You shouldn't do that," a voice behind her said.

Lori turned around. It was the brat. Now that she wasn't being rained on and had to wear a beast hide as rain cover, her bright orange hair had more body to it, and were secured with wooden hair ties. She had a long, sturdy looking wooden spear, one end cut into a simple narrow point. "Why not," Lori said.

"They break," the brat said. "Then the seel gets away and starts bleeding in the water, and then all the seels get angry because there's blood in the water, and the big seels get angry and we have to leave before we get hurt. Making the wood pointy makes it go in easier and less likely to break when you pull the seel out."

"I tried doing that," Lori said. "My knives kept breaking."

"Don't you have your own knife?" the brat said. "All the grown-ups have their own knives. My Itay says I can't have a knife until I'm older."

"I have a knife," Lori said. She did too. It was good non-oxidizing steel that she'd brought with her own beads before getting on the ship that had taken her to Covehold. It was currently doing nothing, stashed in the bottom of her pack. "It's just not on me. I don't usually need it."

"You should always bring your knife," the brat chided. "What if you need to make a tool or something? A knife is the best tool for making other tools, my Itay says."

"Well, I have magic," Lori said. "That's my tool for making tools."

"Your tools can't be very good if they keep breaking so soon," the brat said. "We can borrow kuya Vov's knife to sharpen your spear. Ateh Krihs has a knife too, but kuya Vov's is better."

Were those… titles? "What demesne are you from?" Lori asked.

"Lorian Demesne," the girl said.

"No, I meant before you came here," Lori said. "What demesne were you from originally?"

"Our past doesn't matter, because we're going to make a new start in a better demesne where the lords and Binder actually do their colorbrained jobs," the brat said. "That's what my Itay says."

The brat's family sounded worryingly opinionated.

"Do you want me to teach you how to seel?" the brat said. "Is that why you made a seeling rod?"

"I realized it might be a needful skill I need to learn, yes," Lori said loftily.

"Your seeling rod's too big in one end," the brat said. "It can't be like that, or else it doesn't throw right."

Lori gave her an annoyed look.

"Don't worry, everyone makes mistakes," the brat said. "Come on, let's find you a better branch."

Lori glared at her, but sighed and tossed the stick away, and followed her as she explained what the right kind of stick needed to be.

––––––––––––––––––

After finding the right sort of tree branch and cutting it with a stream of water– the brat had gasped with an appropriate amount of awe– they'd taken the stick to one of the young men on watch. He had then proceeded, under Lori's gaze, to methodically strip off smaller branches, then quickly sharpened on a point with a practiced and methodical slash that left the end a simple point.

"Don't rest the point on anything," the brat said. "It'll ruin the point, and then you'll have to cut it again. It's fresh wood, so it's only good once before you need to put another point on it. It'll get better as it get older and dries out."

"That seems inconvenient, having to be careful with a new rod every time you use up the old one," Lori said.

"Oh, we all have branches we've cut already," the brat said. "Mine are drying next to my bed. When I can't use this one any more, I just go back and get one of those."

Huh. She'd been wondering about those sticks in the shelters.

"But a fresh stick is best if you're just starting out," the brat said and Lori could tell she was being consoled. "It's easier to cut a new point when it gets ruined."

"What makes you think I'll ruin it?" Lori said indignantly.

"You've never done this before," the brat said.

And Lori couldn't really argue against that, could she?

She was also advised to take off her boots and socks. After looking at the children and where they needed to stand to be able to hit the seels, Lori reluctantly took off her footwear and rolled up the legs of her trousers.

The rocks were hot but with her bare feet contacting the stone she was able to get the firewisps to draw out the heat, leaving the ground pleasantly chilly. Standing in direct sunlight like this, she also bound firewisps around her to divert oncoming heat so she wouldn't get overheated as the brat demonstrated how she was supposed to hold the spear-like seeling rods. Lori watched as the brat looked intently into the water, suddenly jabbed downward, then seemingly in the same motion swung her spear out of the water. A seel was impaled on the point, letting out distressing honking sounds as it wiggled desperately. The brat held her spear in both hands, keeping the point upraised as she waited for it to tire itself out. Then she carefully grabbed the seel by the back of its head and slid her hand down until it reached a point a third of the way from the opposite end of its body. The brat tightened her grip as the seel continued thrashing, and carefully placed the seel's head on the ground, holding it in place with her foot. With a twisting motion, she pulled out the spear and put both hands around what Lori now saw seemed to be the seel's hindquarters, where it's spine and tail met, and where its vestigial rear limbs allowed for a firm grip.

The brat then proceeded to swing the seel by its whole body to club its head against the ground until it finally stopped moving. Then club it some more just to be sure.

"And that's how you catch a seel," the brat said proudly, having never stopped narrating what she was doing. "Now you try!"

Lori looked into the water skeptically. The seels were dark, darting forms, and she knew that where they seemed to be wasn't really where they were, because of refraction. Still, she hesitantly got into place, raising the seeling rod up as she been shown, reminding herself she was supposed to jab it, not throw it. Throwing it meant even if she did hit, the seel would just get away, and she'd lose the rod too.

She eyed the water, trying to account for refraction. She put the end of the rod into the water, noting how much it bent, trying to remember the degree of refraction.

"Don't just concentrate on the water in front of you," the brat said, obviously trying to be helpful. "If you aim for the seel in front of you, you won't hit it. Aim for it before it's in front of you."

"Noted," Lori said, trying to keep her annoyance tamped down. She took a deep breath, and tried to be aware of her peripheral vision as she hefted up the rod, staring into the water, waiting for a seel…

––––––––––––––––––

"And you cheated," Rian said over dinner.

"Of course I cheated. It was my first time, I wasn't going to hit anything!" Lori said. "I'm a Whisperer. If I want to catch something in the water, I'll make the water hold them in place."

"Poor Karina," Rian said, still smiling in amusement. "She tried so hard to teach you the right way to do it, and you cheated."

"Oh please, like you'd have managed it the first time," Lori muttered, taking an angry spoonful of stew.

"Of course not," Rian said, still looking insufferably amused. "I'd need practice. After all, those children have been doing this for weeks. They've gotten pretty good at it. Probably the best. But I wouldn't have cheated. My ego isn't so fragile I need to look good in front of children."

"Well, mine does," Lori said under her breath. "Wipe that smirk off your face."

"I should have bet you," Rian said.

"Oh, like I'd have admitted anything if we'd had a bet going," Lori said. "Now will you shut up about it?"

"Fine, fine," Rian said, still chuckling. "Was it big at least, or did you cheat for an itty-bitty little thing?"

"Fatter than this bowl and longer than my arm," Lori said. Actually, that had just been luck, she'd just had the waterwisps stop the first thing that moved into her view.

"Well, at least it was a big one," Rian said.

"Yeah, well…" Lori muttered. "Does anyone here know how to spin fibers into thread?"

"I think a few people do. Why?" Rian asked.

Lori reached into a pocket and pulled out the piece of stalk she'd cut. She peeled off the outer layer, showing it to Rian.

"The children had been using this to make lines for their spears," she said. "It's from this plant that grows close to the river. Do you think someone could turn this into thread or rope?"

Rian frowned, taking the outer layer and pulling at it, watching as it separated into long sheets of fibers. "Maybe…" he muttered. "People talked about cloudblooms, but there are other plants that you turn into fabric, like tressflowers. Maybe we should see what we have around here before we buy something. After all, cloudbloom might not even grow here."

"I thought those were raised for oil?"

"The stalks get turned into thread and fibers too."

"Huh. So I guess you can put off going down the river a little longer."

"Not too long," Rian said. "We still need medicines."

"What about rapids?"

"If we have to, we'll drag the boat overland," Rian said determinedly.

"And on the way back? When it's full of supplies we need?"

"Then we'll be really careful about how we drag. Besides, if we're somehow successful enough to have all that, maybe we'll find a way to get back up too."

"Ah, there's that annoying relentless optimism," Lori muttered. Somehow, it wasn't as annoying as it usually was.

That night, she carefully placed her seeling rod in an out of the way corner so it could dry, one end cut into a sharp, simple point.