Normally, Lori ate outside when they were having roasted beast. It made it easier to get second, third or fourth servings. However, today, instead of finding a nice, shady spot to set up a rock to sit on, she ate in her dungeon, in her usual table. Outside, the rhythmic, odious sounds of, ugh, music trickled through her Dungeon's entrance. It made her wish she could just put up a binding to block out—

Oh.

Lori made a binding of airwisps at her Dungeon's entrance, blocking off the annoying sound and letting her eat in peace. She'd always wanted to do that whenever she had to sit in a dragon shelter and endure the party people inevitably held. When she'd grown older and learned enough Whispering to do it, she'd had to be satisfied with binding the airwisps over her ears. It helped but only up to a point, since the music could grow so loud she could feel it vibrating through her jaw.

Fortunately, Riz has gotten her a lot of meat on her plate, and when she finished it, she felt full enough to not want to go out and make her way through the annoying music that was probably still there. After washing her plate in her room, she went back down to the second level to see how the stalks in her drying box were doing. The water clock still had a lot of water in it, but Lori was able to use her awareness of the demesne's wisps to judge how much water remained in the stalks. They still retained a lot of moisture, but that seemed to be because the warm, dry air wasn't able to circulate as thoroughly among the stalks. The stalks near the top of the box were significantly more desiccated than the ones at the bottom, or so she was able to deduce from her awareness. Lori almost reached for the lid to see the condition of the stalks, but restrained herself. Instead, she sat and stared at the water clock again, waiting for it to empty.

…

It occurred to her that she might have been doing something else while she waited for this…

…

Well, there was still about a quarter of an hour left in the waterclock, maybe she could do something…

Lori went upstairs to get her chatrang board and the box that had come with it.

By the time the water clock finally ran out of water, Lori… well, she had become distracted trying to roll out pieces to use for lima and pincer for the board on the reverse side. She only realized the water clock had finished when she finished rolling out some dark stone and checked the water level. Putting aside the stone roll—it wasn't a proper cylinder, since it was just some softened rock that she'd rolled on the flat surface of the bench she was sitting on, meaning it wasn't perfectly rounded—Lori checked the contents of the box, focusing on the distribution of waterwisps.

There was more moisture in the air inside the box, and the stalks were more desiccated than they had gone in, though there was a clear pattern of the stalks at the top being dryer than the ones at the bottom. Lori frowned, and focused on the stalk from the last test, comparing it to the ones in the box. While some of the topmost stalks were close to being as dry as the singular stalk that had been dried before them, it was only some. Many were only as dry as the sample from her second test, and the ones at the very bottom were still fairly full of water. Why…

Oh. Stupid of her, she'd forgotten than the more stalks she put in, the less air there was, meaning the air that was in the box reached its saturation point more quickly. And the stalks seemed to provide some degree of insulation for the ones at the bottom of the box, and certainly kept air from circulating through them properly…

Lori considered what she'd built. That result did not bode well for trying to think of a way to scale up drying the stalks so that they would dry faster than a week. It meant nothing if she made a process to dry the stalks if it still took a week to dry it all. Then she'd have just made a more labor-intensive process that achieved the same result in the same amount of time, which meant she had failed…

She felt the stalks. They were warm, verging on hot, but at least she'd been correct about the heat output. Of course, they were cooler the further down the pile the stalk had been, but even the ones that had been at the very bottom were a little warm. All right, it wasn't a complete failure. Clearly, it just needed a larger volume of warm air to extract to moisture… and if she positioned the stalks with all the grains on top, then the insulating nature of the stalks didn't matter, since it was the grains and the stems holding them that needed to be dried. Since the stalks were already in bundles that had the grains on one end, to be efficient she just needed to make the container big enough to fit a whole bundle… and lot of space for the air, so a relatively tall vessel…

No, wait, a tall vessel wasn't needed. She just needed to remove the moisture in the air, so that it could keep drawing out moisture from the stalks. And since she was circulating the air anyway…

Lori disassembled the box, softening the stone that had composed it to the consistency of wet clay (without the wetness). Then she began building a new one, using the size of the largest of the bundles Riz had moved for her as a reference, then adding a little space so that the bundle could easily be put in and removed. Lori also made a stone lid, which she would not be putting on top herself because it would be too heavy. She made two holes, one near the top of the new vessel and one at the bottom, and used a binding to keep out humidity while letting in air. It was currently useless because the lid wasn't on yet, but that was fine.

"Erzebed!" she called out.

There was silence save for the sound of the air circulating in her Dungeon.

She waited, but no temporary assistant made herself known. Annoyed, she looked around, but Riz wasn't sleeping on one of the benches. Where was…?

Oh, right. People were eating roast outside. She was probably there somewhere, probably being flirted at by Mikon and either enduring it to retain the woman's aid or unaware she was being flirted with.

Sighing, Lori climbed the steps up to the dining hall and walked towards her Dungeon's entrance, suspending the binding there that kept out sound and reconfiguring it into one that amplified sound. She stepped into the binding, and she could hear the sounds of the music outside, mostly percussion, though there where some wind instruments as well, probably carved from wood. She made a pair of quick bindings to protect her ears. "Erzebed!" she called, the binding vibrating around her, and she heard her words shaking her bones.

Lori removed the bindings over her ears, nodding in satisfaction as she heard the music stutter. Good, Riz had probably heard her. She headed back to the second level, configuring the binding behind her back into one that blocked off sound.

After an irritatingly long time—Riz's arms were wet, so she had probably washed her hands—Riz came down to the second level, wearing the face of someone reminding herself she shouldn't be annoyed and had to be patient. Lori had never made that face herself, but she'd seen it a lot on her mothers, usually just before she explained her side of something and they became unreasonably angry at her perfectly logical reasoning.

"Yes, Great Binder?" Riz was even using the same tone.

Lori sighed and reminded herself to be patient. Riz wasn't her mothers, she wouldn't ask pointed and leading questions to demoralize her temporary assistant and she missed Rian. "Put the largest bundle into that," Lori said, pointing at the stone vessel she had made. "Then put the lid on it."

Riz stared at the big stone lid, wide enough to seal the vessel Lori had made and closed her eyes, before letting out a sigh.

"As you need reminding, you are an officer, not a glitter crawler," Lori said. "You do not actually need to do the lifting yourself."

Riz blinked, then smiled the smile of someone who was going to make someone else do something, because she could. "Yes, Great Binder," she said, sounding more cheerful than before. She went over the bundles, picking up the largest one and putting it inside the vessel. Thankfully, she put it grain-end up without needing to be told. There was a half a hand's-length worth of between the bundle and the wall of vessel.

"Before you go," Lori said as Riz started to turn away, "try to get the bundle out of there. Is there enough space?"

Riz frowned, but did as she was asked. The bundle was about the thickness of a torso, and while Riz had some trouble gaining a grip, she was eventually able to pull the bundle out. "Might need a hook to get it out easier, Great Binder," Riz commented, putting the bundle back in. "I'll go and get some people for the lid. Do you want me to get you more meat as well?"

Lori considered that. "Yes," she said. "I'll get my plate."

When Riz came back, she had Lori's plate with her and five strong-looking men. To her credit, she helped the five of them pick up the stone lid, though Lori had to wonder how much assistance she actually provided. Still, the lid was put on top of the vessel, and the walls of the vessel didn't collapse.

Lori nodded in approval. "Come back in an hour to take the lid off," she told Riz.

Riz didn't sigh this time. She had the tranquil look of someone who'd been expecting to hear that. "Yes, Great Binder."

Lori dismissed Riz from her mind, binding firewisps to warm the air in front of the hole at the top of the vessel—

She paused and stared at what she was making then sighed.

Making a hole in the center of the lid without letting any stone fall onto the bundle was aggravating but doable, and she had only herself to blame on that one. She sealed the other hole in the vessel, leaving only the hole at the bottom, and put the binding to keep out moisture onto the hole of the lid. Then she modified the airwisps on both bindings, and the binding on the lid started pushing dry arid air into the vessel as the hole in the bottom pulled it out, the moisture in the air being trapped in the binding.

She was even able to use firewisps to take heat from the air passing through the hole at bottom and move it to the air entering from the top, which was usually just a needlessly complicated binding used by people who liked to show off their efficiency, but in this instance allowed her to maintain the temperature in the vessel with little additional heat and little chance of accidentally overheating the stalks. It also kept the second level from becoming hot, since she was passing a lot of air through the vessel.

Then she filled the water clock with an hour's worth of water and went back to rolling pieces for her game board.

––––––––––––––––––

Riz came back a little after the hour was done, which was all right since Lori had become preoccupied making little stone discs for her game board. They were only one color, but later she'd put some beast teeth on them so they'd have a pale side. Her temporary assistant also came with more strong-looking men—Lori would be the first to admit she was terrible when it came to remembering people's faces, but she could remember enough to tell these were different people—as well as the same farmer as the last two times. Lori was impressed. Riz had actually anticipated her needs.

After Lori had cooled the lid by using the firewisps to move the heat into the floor of the level, the men and Riz—Lori had to wonder again if the woman was actually helpful—picked up the lid and laid it down on top of the stone pile next to the vessel. Riz reached inside with a piece of branch that had a hook-like protrusion, pulling the bundle up enough to get a grip on it. The woman winced, probably at the heat, and hastily pulled it out of the vessel and onto the ground.

The farmer knelt down and pulled a stalk from the bundle, examining the head where the grains were. He rolled some of the vigas in his fingers, then set the stalk aside and pulled out another one. Lori waited patiently as he examined more stalks from the bundle, talking from different parts in the middle of it.

"It's dry, your Bindership," he said eventually. "Dry enough to thresh." The look he gave the vessel Lori had made was dubious though.

"Good," was all Lori said. "You may go back to… resting." Honestly, why did people call it a rest day, then tire themselves out? That was the complete opposite of what rest involved!

The farmer gave the vessel another dubious look, but bowed to Lori and left, and after a gesture to Riz, so did the men who had lifted the lid. Riz glanced after them, then sighed and waited as Lori regarded what she had made.

"You said that the grain will be left out to dry in the sun, correct, Erzebed?" Lori said.

"Yes, Great Binder," Riz said promptly.

"When will that be? Tomorrow?"

"Probably, Great Binder," Riz said. "Even if the chokers will try to get at it, the vigas needs to be dried."

Lori nodded slowly, staring at the dried bundle of stalks Then she shook her head. "Noted. Please put away the other bundles and then you may go, Erzebed."

"Yes, Great Binder." Riz picked up one of the unused bundles and began to put it back in the alcove the other were stored in, stacking them on their side. When she finished, she glanced towards Lori, but Lori waved her away. It was only when Riz was gone did she think to wonder if her temporary Rian will remember to come bring her dinner.

Lori sighed. Well, she'd deal with it when she started to get hungry.

She dismantled the vessel and dragged the stone outside, ignoring the din of music as she added the stone to the stockpile, then went around to the bone pile and picked up some of the beast teeth drying there, putting them in a skull as an impromptu bowl. She'll have to wash her hands and heat the bone to clean it of dustlife…

Lori went back to the now-clear second level of her Dungeon. All that was left was the water clock and the buckets. She sat on a bench in one of the alcoves, considering the alcoves filled with stacked bundles of stalks…