Lori raised an eyebrow at Rian as he collapsed heavily onto the bench opposite her, eyes drooping almost shut. It's opposite rose as well as Rian folded his arms over the table and laid his head down. "Rian, did you stay up late last night?"

There was a muffled sound that might have vaguely been affirmatory.

"Did the private celebrations in honor of having your own house go on for too long?"

There was a very long muffled string of words in response.

"I didn't catch that," Lori said. Behind Rian, Mikon took one look, shook her head, and diverted to head straight for the kitchen area.

Rian finally raised his head. "I said, 'whichever of any number of implications you're making, they're not any of them'."

"Ah. Perhaps it would have been easier to understand you had you been clearer the first time."

"Your concern and understanding are a standard everyone should strive to meet," Rian said flatly.

Lori nodded in agreement. "Yes, it is."

They stared at each other for a moment as Riz and Umu arrived, both looking much fresher than Rian, and sat down next to him. Both looked around curiously for a moment, as if wondering where Mikon was, until they saw her near the kitchen.

"I literally can't tell if you're joking or serious," Rian said.

"I'm Lori."

Rian blinked, paused, blinked again. "And now you're stealing my jokes."

"No, they are being requisitioned by the government. Can you work?"

"I'm going to choose to interpret that as your way of expressing concern. Yes, I can work, yes, I'm fine, I just had trouble sleeping last night."

Lori raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Again, whatever implication you're making, it's not any of them." Rian yawned. "I just had trouble sleeping last night because I was in a new place, that's all."

Lori raised an eyebrow. "You had no trouble sleeping in River's Fork."

"I wasn't alone in the room there. I was either in a house with everyone else or I was keeping watch over you."

Lori didn't understand his problem. She'd never had trouble sleeping alone. She'd slept alone all her life.

Rian blinked, then shook his head. "Not that I don't like the house, I just need to get used to it. It's a bit too dark and quiet after months of sleeping in what is essentially a communal barracks." He sighed. "I ended up walking around the demesne to try and get sleepy, which worked… eventually." A yawn ripped itself out of his mouth. "Ugh… I don't want to go to work today…"

"I thought you said you could work?"

"I said I could. I just don't want to, because I feel terrible."

Mikon walked up behind him, putting down a wooden cup and a ceramic jar of water in front of Rian. "Here you go Rian. I'll get your breakfast too."

Rian blinked, looking up her blearily. "Thanks," he said, almost sighing the word.

He really was tired, if he was just letting her get his food without any actual protest. Mikon tapped Umu on the shoulder. The other weaver glanced at her, but after a moment's hesitation and a glance towards Lori, she stood and went with Umu to get food.

Lori sighed. "Riz, you're taking over Rian's duties for today. Don't change anything, just see that things that are supposed to be done are getting done. If anyone has any questions, bring them to me."

"Yes, Great Binder," Riz said with a nod. She gave Rian a sympathetic look and patted his shoulder. "Go get some sleep, Rian. I'll take over for today. Anything I need to know?"

"You don't have to…" Rian trailed off, his head slumping slightly, before abruptly straightening blinking rapidly and rubbing his eyes. "Uh, on second thought, thank you very much. I guess I owe you one. You too, Lori."

"Don't worry about it, Rian," Riz said. "Get some rest."

"I'll try to be up by noon and take over for the rest of the day," Rian said weakly. "Actually, maybe I can just take a bath to wake up—"

"Rian."

"Is this the part where you order me to go to sleep?"

"It is."

"Going to sleep after breakfast then, your Bindership. Sorry for being useless today. I swear I love the house, it's just… lonely." That last was almost a sigh.

"I can only build it," Lori said. "Isn't it on you to make it less lonely?"

"I suppose…" Rian hummed. "Maybe I can draw on the walls or something..."

Riz reached up and awkwardly patted Rian on the shoulder.

"Thanks…" he said, shaking his head. "Well, just have to get used to it. And hey, I'm a homeowner now! I actually own my own house. According to my parents, I'm now an adult. And no property taxes—" He paused and looked at Lori cautiously, some of the sleepiness being pushed out of his eyes "—right?"

She waved a hand. "Yes, yes, no taxes yet. Mostly because you have nothing to pay them with." The brat had found a way, but not everyone was as diligent.

"No property taxes!" Rian cheered, then swayed and slumped. "Ugh, so tired…"

Umu and Mikon came back with food, one of the bowls only half full, and after Lori picked a bowl, the three of them took turns coaxing Rian to eat a little food. Lori didn't have anyone to play sunk with that morning but then she'd been a bit too busy to play much for the past few weeks.

Eventually, Rian finished the half bowl and staggered off to sleep, Umu and Mikon helping him get back home since he was a bit unsteady. Riz watched them go, but could clearly feel Lori's gaze on her, so she sighed and got up, heading down to the carpenters to tell them of the change of plans.

The blocks that would form the large water jet for the ice boat had been finished yesterday, the pieces finally hollowed out, but the supporting beams to lay them on were still being added to the boat's frame.

While that was being put in by the carpenters, Lori finally stopped putting it off since she finally had an immediate use for it, grabbed a dragon scale made of gold, and loomed over the blacksmiths to draw it out into wire. Well, wire and a little container the size of her little finger, since she needed something to hold her blood. Gold was ideal for this, since it could be as thin and small as needed, as long as it was reinforced by something else. She had to make a form of the appropriate size to wrap the gold around to get the size and shape she wanted for the container.

As the blacksmiths worked on that, Lori took a moment to glance into the window of Rian's nearby house. She nodded in satisfaction when she saw he seemed to be properly sleeping. He was snoring, at least, and one leg was twitching as if he was stomping on something in his dreams. The thought occurred to her that the woman—or man—who finally managed to get into Rian's bed was in for a possibly painful surprise.

Actually, that made her wonder if he actually had managed to get any sleep that time she'd ordered him to during that holiday. None of the women had ever brought up if he'd kicked them in his sleep…

Lori looked into the window again suspiciously, wondering if he was really sleeping instead of just lying there with his eyes closed. She was tempted to call out to see if he would move, but she remembered sleepless nights and her vengeful anger when her mothers had woken her up in the middle of a day's well-deserved sleep to do something they wanted…

…

She supposed she'd let him sleep.

Lori spent the rest of the day maintaining the bindings on the demesne, checking the baths to make sure the water was the right temperature, and that the cold rooms were cold. Since the dragon, she'd been experimenting with using liquefied and hardened air to keep their storage rooms cold instead of ice, with variable results. She was still perfecting the process, since unlike ice, she couldn't just use airwisps to compress it solid. Once it became a liquid, it stopped being air, and airwisps could no longer be used to bind it. Waterwisps only controlled water in all its forms and mixtures with water in it, and while she could use bound solid waterwisps to contain and insulate the liquefied air, turning it into solid blocks of air was detailed work, since she had to let the ice start taking in heat and use it to cool the air all the way until it became solid. This was made complicated because it needed to be under high pressure at all times, or else it would turn back to gas before it turned solid.

There was probably an easier way to do it, but for now she didn't know.

Hmm, she might have to get Rian to ask around at Covehold to see if he could find the process for her. Surely someone there would know? She'd only ever made liquefied air in class, and that had very quickly changed back to air, but she knew it was an industrial process. Unfortunately, it had required more formal qualifications than she'd had at the time, and so she'd never worked where she could have learned the process.

Still, her way was… mostly working. Currently she was getting small amounts of solidified and liquefied air, which was good for massively cooling the food storage rooms and using bound ice to maintain the chill. It was complicated, but she was getting more proficient at the process, and expected to be able to mass produce it any day now. She was getting tired of all the water in the cold rooms from the ice melting, and solidified air didn't drip. And at the end of the day, the cold rooms were beyond freezing cold again, preserving their food supplies.

The cold rooms were almost full again. She might have to dig out another storage room… or possibly expand the cold rooms they had now. After all, there was plenty of unused space if she dug down…

Rian was looking more refreshed when he showed up again at dinner. He still yawned and looked tired, but that might have been because he'd just woken up… or he hadn't really slept at all.

"Did you sleep?" Lori asked him.

"Yeah," he said with tired cheer. "Still a little tired, but that means I'll be able to sleep again tonight."

"What about the problem that kept you from sleeping last night?"

Rian shrugged. "I'll get used to it. I've slept alone in a room before, I just need to remember what it's like. Though the fact the latrines are so far away makes waking up in the middle of the night awkward. One thing about the shelter, there was a latrine right outside. Well, not right outside, but you understand what I mean."

"If I add a latrine to your house, you'll have to clean it yourself," she said flatly. "And you'll probably have people constantly going into your house to use it during the day."

"Hmm, you have a point…" Rian said, nodding in agreement. It was all theatricality: he had his eyes closed as he nodded. "Maybe when winter comes, if the offer is still open?"

Well, she did implicitly offer to do it… "If I feel like it," she said.

"That wasn't a straight 'no'," Rian said.

"If I feel like it," Lori repeated.

Rian's hand rose momentarily, before he seemed to firmly place his hand on the table. "Thank you," he said quietly. "For the house. I think I forgot to say that last time—" He had, "—but I'm really, really grateful that you made a house for me. It's not every day you get a surprise house. Thank you, Lori. I promise, I'll come back to live in it."

Rainbows. He saw through her strategy!

"Though I have to ask…"

Lori raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Can you… put a light in my house? It doesn't need to be very bright, just a little glow on the inside for when night falls."

She gave him a flat stare. "Rian, you're a grown man. Are you actually telling me you're afraid of the dark?"

"I'm not afraid of the dark, I just… got used to going to sleep with a little light leaking out from around the covers on the lights, that's all."

"That sounds like being afraid of the dark."

"It's not being afraid, it's having a preferred light level, like having a preferred temperature!"

"You're afraid of the dark."

"I'm not afraid of the dark, I'd just rather not hit anything if I have to go out to the latrine in the middle of the night!"

Lori rolled her eyes indulgently. "Fine, I'll make you a night light."

"I'm not asking for a night light, I'm not a child! I have my own house now and everything! But thank you."

He might have insisted on the issue, but the women finally arrived, and he fell silent on his little embarrassment.

Riz sighed in relief as she saw him. "Lord Rian," she exhaled. "You're… looking more rested. Does that mean you can go back to work tomorrow?"

Rian glanced at Lori for some reason, before shaking his head, looking amused. "The day wasn't that bad, was it?"

"I have no idea what we we're supposed to be building," Riz groaned, raising her leg to step over the bench before sitting down next to him. "I know it's an ice boat, but what I know about ice boats is to watch them sink as they stop working. I just told people to keep doing what they've been doing and told them to find something else to do when they told me they were done. I don't know anything about building boats!"

"Oh, Riz…" Rian said, and to Lori's surprise and likely Riz's as well, he patted the northerner woman on the shoulder. "What makes you think I do? We're all making it up as we go along. You probably did just fine." There was a small, squeak-like sound. Umu was staring at the hand in almost comical shock, while Mikon restrained herself to raised eyebrows.

Then the pink-haired weaver shrugged and sat on Riz's other side. "Good evening, Rian," she said. "I'm glad to see you're looking better. Will you be able to sleep well tonight now?"

"Hopefully," he said as Umu sat down next to him a little stiffly. "Her Bindership is giving me something to help."

Mikon nodded. "Would you like me to stay with you until you fall asleep?" she offered. She patted her thigh. "You can lie down with your head on my lap, if you want. I'm told it's very comfortable." Since Rian was focused on the woman speaking, he didn't notice Umu's head snap around in shock beside him.

"It actually is," Riz admitted almost reluctantly.

Lori watched with some amusement as Rian actually started blushing. "T-that's all right Mikon, my pillow is just fine…"

"Aw…" Mikon pouted, then shrugged. As a child of two mothers who liked to flirt with each other even when their poor daughter was present, Lori identified it as a deliberate 'bosom-jiggling-to-get-you-to-look-there' shrug. "Well, if you're sure. I'm still willing to keep you company though." A smile that deliberately ignored the fact Rian's eyes had involuntarily flicked down. "You can teach me more about sunk. I'm still not very good at it. Maybe we can play a practice game so you can tell me what I'm doing wrong?"

"I want to learn how to play sunk too, Rian!" Umu declared with no subtlety whatsoever.

"Me too," Riz said quickly. "Or at least know why the stones are getting dropped into the bowls, anyway."

"Uh…" Rian said, looking overwhelmed. "Sure? I guess we can… do that…?"

"Well," Lori said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "It seems you'll have company to help you fall asleep tonight, Rian. How fortunate for you. Now go and get my food, I'm hungry."

Did any of them realize Rian didn't have a sunk board in his house? Probably not. They just seemed to be saying the first thing that came to mind…

Well, that was their problem.