Demesne

The next day dawned and nobody had died.

Also, sleeping on a pile of sand is still sleeping on rock, only with an infinite amount of sharp points.

"I need a bed," Lori muttered as she washed herself off. A rock had been raised around the cave opening, with space for air to pass around its edges so she could have a quick bath. She'd briefly debated using the recess the Dungeon's core floated above as a tub, and the only thing that had stopped her was that it was too shallow. Obviously, she could dig it up, but it was too early for that kind of work, her door rock notwithstanding.

Lori got dressed, pulling on her hardwearing cloudbloom trousers and shirt before pulling on her rain coat and putting her hat on. Socks had been exchanged. Ah, dry socks! The best of luxuries!

She could already tell it was raining again. Now that they didn't need its protection any longer, the constant cold water falling from the sky was now a problem. Still, better rain than a dragon…

As she did every morning after she'd made herself presentable, the first thing she did was make sure her two corpses were still properly on ice.

Rian found her as she was burying them again, the ice restored to last for another day and a half.

"That is still immensely disturbing, and I was there when those two died," he commented, adjusting his leather cloak.

"I said I'd bury them, didn't I?" Lori said, walking over the loose mud to tamp it down. "They're buried."

"It still seems immensely disrespectful," Rian said. "At least make a room for them."

"I'll consider it," Lori said. "So, how was the shelter?"

"A bit tight, although given how cold it was, that wasn't a bad thing," Rian said. "We were able to fit in more than half the people into it. The rest of us slept around the kitchen and kept a fire going. The shelter could use another fireplace, it's too big for just one to heat it properly. A second shelter would be even better."

Lori nodded. "We'll need more wood, then. If people can get some cut, I can probably get it dried enough to burn."

They both glanced up at the lightly falling rain. In the distance, a thick wall of gray said it was going to come down harder soon.

"Don't supposed you can deal with that?" Rian said hopefully.

"Too high up. Our demesne isn't wide enough to reach those clouds," Lori said.

"Can't you… make a wall of wind or something?" Rian said.

"They don't maintain very well," Lori said. "I've heard some demesnes can do it, but this isn't one of them yet."

Rian sighed. "Well, dare to dream. I'll get the men started on cutting wood and as many people as possible looking for food now that we can roam around. Hopefully no one will find something that turns out to be poisonous."

"Hmm…" Lori said. "Sounds like you have a lot to do before you quit."

Rian paused. "Yeah… But I'm still quitting. I'll quit this afternoon."

"Well, make sure to talk to anyone with seeds first and find out what they need to start planting," Lori said. "And make sure no one threw away that beast skull, it'll make for a good shovel."

Rian paused. "I thought you didn't know how to Deadspeak yet?"

"Who's Deadspeaking? Bones are basically a kind of rock. You can Whisper those, and we'll have a shovel that's light but strong," Lori said. "No one might want to dig now, but I assume planting will involve a lot of moving dirt around."

"I'll ask the ones who were cooking yesterday," Rian said. "Speaking of which, we actually have breakfast this morning. We made a big pot of stew and kept it on the fire overnight."

Lori's stomach rumbled.

"Well, let's do that first of all then," she said.

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Breakfast was warm, soft, filling, meaty and officially the best breakfast she'd ever eaten.

"That's it," Lori declared as she finished eating. "I'm going out there and killing something again."

Rian, standing across from her with his own bowl– more tables would have to be made at some point– gave her a concerned look. "That sounds really dangerous. I think I speak for everyone when I say I'd rather not have our only wizard die in the middle of the wilderness and lose our demesne just because she wants some meat."

"I don't care," Lori said, scraping her wooden spoon, trying to get the last little bits still clinging to her bowl. "I want more meat inside me. Lots of nice, warm, juicy meat."

"There are some here who know how to hunt, you know," Rian said. "How about we ask them to do it instead?"

Lori pursed her lips. "Better idea," Lori said. "Have everyone write down their name and what they can do so I don’t have to ask you to keep finding out." She'd never really paid attention while they were traveling. She knew Rian because he was an annoying busybody, she knew his admirers Umu and Mikon because they sometimes appeared and argued around the annoying busybody, she knew the brat because she still hadn't managed to forget the name from yesterday, and she knew one of the doctors, Ganan, because she'd once come down with something and nearly dehydrated to death. That was the extent of the names she was familiar with. She wasn't some Mentalist who could remember everything that ever happened to her. Some things just weren't worth remembering.

"I feel I must point out we don't have that much paper," Rian said. "And most things we can use to write on are a little wet right now."

"Nonsense. Our shelter has lots of nice, clear stone walls and we have plenty of burnt wood," Lori said dismissively.

"Second point, we shouldn't assume everyone can write," Rian said. "I mean, you obviously can, since you went to school and everything, but not everyone got to do that."

"The doctors can write," Lori said. "And they'll be down there taking care of sick people anyway. What's a little writing on the walls?"

"That reminds me, they say they need more light down there," Rian said.

"Noted," Lori said. She started gathering some lightwisps to leave at the shelter. "Anything else I should know about?"

Rian paused thoughtfully. "What do you want us to do about any eggs we find?"

Lori gave him a confused looked. "Eggs?"

"Well, beasts might have left their eggs behind," Rian said. "We could eat them, but if they're far enough along we could hatch them, then raise the beasts ourselves. It's the pain and neural shock of the Iridescence leaving their bodies that hurts and kills beasts. Eggs at the right stage of development wouldn't have the nerves and organs to hurt."

Lori mentally filed away 'neural shock'. She had to wonder what sort of education Rian had gotten. "Give it a try. If it works, then it'll be good for us," she said. Domestication? Without Deadspeaking to keep the animal from dying? Well, it was worth a shot. Personally, she didn't think it would work. Beasts were vicious things.

As if to punctuate her thought, in the distance was the high, piercing roar of a beast.

"I should probably get started," Lori said. "Lots to build…"

Rian nodded. "I need to go talk to people," he said.

They went.

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It was a full morning for Lolilyuri. The beast skull was found (it had apparently not been brought back to be butchered since she'd decapitated the beast, but had remained where it had fallen next to the now-superfluous water break) and, after knocking off all the sharp, curving teeth, she was able to use earthwisps to flatten it enough to be mounted on a stick as a shovel. The upper part of the skull worked as one too, though she had to flatten it a bit more. She kept the teeth. They were reasonably sharp, maybe they could use them for a saw or something.

The shelter had lightwisps bound to it, with enough magic to last the day and a little bit into the night so people could get settle down. The children staying out of the way in the shelter cheered when she made the lights. Lori supposed they missed proper, civilized illumination.

She had an audience watching her, whispering and pointing as she made the second fireplace by reshaping several rocks she'd dragged along for the purpose. Instead of trying to knock a hole through the arcing roof, she figured it was safer to just run the shaft out through a window. That's what they were there for, after all.

Then she started building the second shelter. It was faster this time, since she'd already done it once the day before.

Lunch was a little remaining meat, wild vegetables, and roots, all cooked together into mush.

Then she went back to finishing the second shelter. This time it had two fireplaces right away.

When she went back to her cave with the core, she started in bemusement at the dead seel hanging outside the opening on a stick, the long, serpentine body with its thick, water-repellent hair just… hanging there, like a dead songbug her old petbeast had killed. It looked like it had been clubbed to death. That is, someone had held it by one end and clubbed it repeatedly into the ground to kill it.

She was about to throw it away in disgust, wondering who'd thought this was funny, when something tickled at her memory.

Gingerly, she turned it around, finding the guts had been scooped out. Not a prank then. Someone had cleaned the seel first.

"I accept your offering," she muttered.

A thought wrapped the seel in water, and another changed the state of that water into ice.

Well, at least she'd have some sort of meat for breakfast…