Weekly Digest 37 (#118 - #120)

Making A Better Water Jet

The delivery of the next batch of miners, which was a bit larger than usual and required four trips, went without incident. Lori suspected they would not be put to much mining, since a lot of them were northerners who had originally settled in River's Fork, but as long as Shanalorre was willing to pay the cost of housing and feeding them, she was willing to look the other way. Many were people who had been injured hunting the abominations, who were otherwise in perfectly good health. They weren't dead, after all.

More and more abominations were hunted down as repairs were done to homes. Some people who were owed renovations due to the ruling at the last community meeting took this opportunity to call in the request. Lori allowed it under the condition that their homes would be worked on last, to discourage people from doing it when there was still more urgent work to be handled.

Lori had spent the day securing the now-finished waterwheel and stone flywheel for the carpenters and onto the lathe they'd build for it. Since it had to be able to stop, unlike the waterwheel in River's Fork, instead of moving the water in a trough under the wheel, she had made a binding that raised up water above the wheel and the carpenters could open a sluice to make it fall down over the wheel's paddles using an overflow arrangement similar to what she'd made for the baths. It had worked quite well, and the carpenters seemed to be looking forward to using their new lathe. The saw to go with it was already being designed…

"A lot of people don't actually want fancy rooftop decks and such, they want the folding beds and the overhead lofts for storage and more sleeping area," Rian said after he got back from a day of ferrying people to the other demesne. "May I suggest having the carpenters build those instead of regular beds when possible? It's a lot more work, but it’s the furniture we need. "

"Don’t you have a bed?" she said as she set down her sunk board and began putting the little stones into bowls. It was the first time in days she'd actually felt relaxed enough for a game. "I distinctly remember that."

"Some people have beds," Rian admitted. "Most of the houses have one. A lot of people still sleep on the floor though, since there's no room for more. "Hence the folding beds and things."

Lori frowned thoughtfully. She remembered her experiences sleeping on rock. Back then, sleeping on a hard layer of wood was a vast improvement on her circumstances. "Assign one of them to start working on beds once the repairs are finished, and tell them to recruit as much unskilled labor as possible. We will have to divide our attention between beds and finally building the boat we will use to go to Covehold."

Rian blinked. "We will?"

"Yes. We have just endured a dragon. Now is the best time for travel since we are unlikely to experience a dragon any time soon," Lori said. "Dragons tend to avoid one another, so we have a respite before another one potentially comes. Leaving and returning within the month is the safest time."

Rian nodded slowly. "Yeah, you're right. And we have enough wood to get started and still have enough to spare for anything the demesne needs built. "

"Please tell me you have a design," Lori said.

"Ah…" Rian hesitated timidly. "Tomorrow?"

"Rian! You've had months! You said you already had drawings!"

"I did! Then I erased them because I only had the one piece of wood! Don't worry! Last moment panic is a wonderful motivator!"

Lori sighed as she put the last stone down. Preparations complete, game ready. Well, he had a point, she certainly passed enough exams studying on sheer panic…

"Just to be certain," Lori said, "so that we're envisioning the same sort of boat, in addition to all the people, it will need to have storage for cargo, supplies, a water jet, water storage, latrines, and at least three prisons."

Rian paused. "Oh right. Though isn't specialized prison rooms a bit too much?"

"No," Lori said flatly. "Prisons. See that they are accounted for in the design."

"In a water-going vessel, I'm pretty sure the term is a 'brig', not a prison," Rian said.

Lori stared at him blankly. "Why?" Why have a different word for the same thing just because it was on a boat? "Why have a different word for the same thing just because it's on a boat?"

"Well, a brig is temporary, it's only for while they're on the boat and the intention is to unload them as soon as possible. A prison is a more permanent arrangement."

Ah. That made a little more sense…

"Well, get that design down and don't erase it this time," Lori said. "You have until the day after tomorrow."

"No, let's make it tomorrow at dinner. If you put it away any further I'll never get anything done…"

He cut off as Umu, Riz and Mikon arrived with food and water, sitting down on either side of him. Lori reached over and took one of the five bowls. Everyone else started to eat.

For a moment, Rian just sat there. "Couldn't you have just told me the food was ready?" he said. "I could have gotten our food myself."

"This was faster, Rian," Umu said, smiling brightly. "You and her Bindership were talking about important matters."

"Focus, Rian," Lori said as Mikon made her first move. The woman was getting better, but Lori still beat her last time they'd played. "In addition to making the boat design, I need you to train at least three ferrymen."

Rian opened his mouth, paused. "Can you please explain the last word you just used, just to be certain we're thinking of the same thing?"

Lori rolled her eyes as she replied to Mikon's move. "Ferrymen. People who can convey miners to River's Fork using the boat in place of you. Using a tiller isn't complicated, but you'll need to train them to not be afraid of moving fast and knowing the best time to lift the water jet out of the water to slow down."

"Ah, I actually have an idea for that," Rian said. "I just… fuck, where's my plank…?"

Umu reached down to her other side and held up Rian's plank and burnt stuck.

"Thanks," he said, moving his untouched food to the side.

Mikon, who was sitting next to him today with Riz on her other side, pushed it back without looking up from the game.

Rian stared down at it. "Or maybe I should eat a little first."

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"All right!" Rian declared after he'd eaten a little. "So, my idea. I thought of a way we can stop the water jet flowing without needing to pull the whole thing out of the water." He started drawing then paused. "Uh, give me a moment, I need to set this on fire—"

Lori sighed. "Give it here," she said, holding out a hand for the stick he was holding. It was Mikon's turn, she had time. Rian handed it over, and Lori reached out to bind the water in her cup. She increased viscosity and coherence, then dumped the water onto the table, where it lay quivering like a ball of clear, frozen honey, except it wasn't green. Then she bound it into ice. Heat puffed out, and she bound the firewisps as they leaked out, sticking the end of the stick into the binding. The top of the stick began to glow, and she carefully shaped the heat to char the tip of the wood.  Wordlessly, she handed the stick back as she made the frozen water flow back into empty bowl before putting the firewisps back into it. She reached towards the pitcher the other women had brought and poured herself another drink.

"Show-off," Rian said. "All right, here's my idea." He began drawing.

As soon as Lori saw the first circle, she said, "You want to make a ball valve. A disc-type ball valve."

Rian stopped. "Well, now I just feel silly," he said, letting the burn stick fall on the table pettily.

"I've worked in shops, I know what a ball valve is," Lori said blandly. "The problem is building it to the fine tolerances needed to be completely water tight. This isn't the sort of thing you just build by hand with rocks. You need molds, precise measurements, precise tools."

"But it doesn't need to be completely watertight except where it pivots," Rian said.

Lori sighed. "Rian, if the ball valve sealing one end of the waterjet is in anyway weak, the negative pressure built up by the void created by removing all the water will cause structural damage to the valve's structure, and might even cause it to implode."

"But as long as the water is just churning, it shouldn't cause any changes in pressure," Rian said. "The ball should be able take the pressure of the water just moving around inside, it's not like it's going anywhere."

The two stared at each other.

"You know, I think the two of us are having different ideas about what we could use a ball valve for," Rian said slowly. "How about you start first, since you don't think yours will work? Because I'm pretty sure it's not my idea."

Lori didn't show any embarrassment. She wasn't embarrassed. At all. There had simply been a simple miscommunication, and since Rian was her lord in charge of that, it was clearly his fault. "Using a ball valve to seal the end of the water jet so that water can't get in or out. The problem is putting a ball valve on the entry end would potentially cause a void, and putting it on the egress would cause a catastrophic build-up of pressure. Neither is an insurmountable problem to a properly made ball valve, however the problem is I doubt we have the tools and materials to make such a thing."

Rian listened intently, nodding as if he understood—at this point, it was a one in two chance whether he actually understood or was just making a show of understanding—and waited for her to finish. "Yes, I thought of that, and decided against it for the same reasons you did. No, this is something different. It's still a ball valve, but it was inspired by the suction tubes you made for the baths."

Lori blinked. "How do you know about those?"

"I looked while the carpenters were measuring for the levers that disconnected them." Rian shrugged. "It seemed interesting. But putting a ball valve on the end wasn't my idea. No, my idea was to put the ball valve in the middle." He picked up the pen again as Mikon finished her turn. The other women were finished eating and were just sitting around, looking awkward. At least Mikon had their game.

Rian finished drawing and pushed the plank towards her. "See, instead of sealing off the water jet with a ball valve, you put the magic here, in the middle, on the flap. When it's closed, it'll just make the water swirl around in the ball. Or at least, I think it should. And if that doesn't work, we could poke an air hole on top like this so that air can go in to prevent imploding. If we put it in the right place and design it right, the air hole can be covered when the valve is turned and aligned to be a water jet."

Lori stared at the drawing.

"Bad idea?" Rian asked.

"It's… anidea," Lori said slowly. "It might be difficult to implement on the smaller boat where the water jet is mounted on the tiller, but in a large boat like the one we're planning to build… Building the ball valve might be problematic, though."

Rian shrugged. "It doesn't have to be a ball," he said. "A ball is best for efficiency, but with what we have, a box shape is more exact. It's easier for us to measure and cut precisely if we make it with squares." He began to draw a cube with a square flap in the middle. "If there's one thing I know our carpenters can do, it's make exactly measured boards."

"We can't make it out of wood," Lori pointed out. "It needs to be stone or bone so I can bind the wisps to it." Though admittedly with precisely cut boards to base her dimensions on, she could a mold using stone… or better yet, ice…

The flap, she realized. Put the binding on the flat, not the interior of the tube or ball valve…

She stared at the drawing, not really seeing it as her mind thought of alternate configurations for the idea. Bindings on the flap, which moved and rotated…

"You can have until the day after tomorrow for the boat design," Lori said absently.

"That's too much time for last moment panic—"

"Then procrastinate," Lori snapped. "Do something else. I have something I need to test."

"Oh, can I help? Perfect way to procrastinate."

Lori rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine, you can help. Maybe you'll think of something."

A flap the rotated out of the way, with bindings on only one side… if it could turn to a loop so that it could expend the force of the binding safely… or not just flaps, but tubes that pivoted… or slid along a recess…

Lori would need help with this. This needed straight lines and precise edges, and that meant tools.

Well, she'd already made the waterwheel for the carpenters and needed to build a permanent smithy for the smiths anyway. They might as well use them for her benefit. And what was for her benefit was to the benefit of the demesne. So everyone benefitted.

Mikon nudged the sunk board slightly.

Oh, right, it was her turn. Lori reached for the board absently, her mind still thinking about moving parts with bindings on them.

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Modeling

Lori wasn't able to start her tests right after breakfast. There was needful maintenance she needed to do after she ate, making sure everything in the demesne (and one thing out of it) that needed to be imbued was imbued. She'd started keeping a list on the wall of her room, which she checked over every morning, even if she did the actual imbuing every other day or so. She could have done it while she was playing a morning game of sunk with Mikon, but the one and only time she'd done that, the other woman had won.

No, never again!

Really, how did other Dungeon Binders do this? She supposed using Mentalism they wouldn't have any problem trying to remember it all, but when did anyone every find the time to do the things she read about if they were doing maintenance work all the time?

But after far too much time sitting at the table with her eyes closed to help her concentrate, Lori found herself sitting in a near-empty dining hall. Rian still sat opposite her, looking bored. Why was her just sitting there?

"Why are you just sitting there?" she asked. He was usually much more productive, unless it was part of playing to the crowd.

"I made sure no one snuck up on you and stabbed you to death," he said innocently. "You really shouldn't do that in public you know, it's pretty dangerous."

Lori grunted. "Well, I have to get to work."

"I thought you were going to test water jet ideas?"

"Yes, exactly."

She went upstairs to get her tablet. The slab of rock was flat, reinforced by earthwisps to be stronger and therefore less likely to break should she accidentally drop it or pressed down on it too hard. She also had a stylus made from a slim branch with a pointed piece of rock on the end. It had been naturally pointy when she'd found it, and she'd only had to put it on the end of the stick.

"So, what are we going to do?" Rian asked.

"You will stay silent and I will contemplate my ideas and set them down to rock," Lori said. "Perhaps you can draw the boat you're supposed to while I'm doing it."

Rian wilted slightly, and sighed. "All this focus is doing horrible things to my procrastination. I'll never get anything done…"

"I don't care, stop talking and distracting me." Ah, she'd always wanted to say that!

She looked down at her tablet, flattened down and smoothed out using a piece of leather. She altered the binding of earthwisps on a thin layer of the surface of one side, just enough to take a mark, and used her stylus to draw two roughly parallel lines. With a slightly out of practice hand, she drew the notational symbol for waterwisp, anchoring binding, directional binding, and then an elongated triangle with a line inside one point to indicate direction. Lori stared at it, then remembered and added a grouping indicator. Yes, she was definitely out of practice in notation.

Then she began to carefully draw a box around the simple drawing of a tube and put it in a box, and more lines…

She didn't know why Rian was taking so long at this, drawing was easy! And the only notations he had to specify was measures of dimensions, and none of them had to be for vista interactions either!

Working carefully so she wouldn't have to try to erase anything, Lori drew the tube with the water jet binding inside a solid block, inside a larger, partially hollow block. She was already thinking of making one or both blocks with ice, or at least using bound ice so there wouldn't be any friction. There were inlets and outlets in the larger block to let water through from the ends of the block, but the inner block with the bindings could be slid aside to block the holes and have the water jet tube align with a different channel in the larger block. The secondary channel was shaped like a closed loop, which would allow the water to continue circulating while preventing the buildup of pressure…

"You put in a bend there, you can also make the water go in reverse."

Lori just managed not to jerk up in surprise as the voice interrupted her contemplation. "What?" she said.

Rian pointed at her tablet. "If you put in a bend that goes all the way around instead of a loop, you can give it a reverse setting. That would be useful for maneuvering and slowing down to keep from hitting rocks and whatnot. Which given how much more mass the large iceboat has, it would need something to actively slow it down to prevent collisions."

"Shouldn't you work on your own design?"

"I'm procrastinating!" Rian chirped.

"That is not something to proudly declare." Lori looked down at her design. She could see it. Drawing some lines to block off her initial design as a reference, she began drawing another square. Or rather, a series of squares, all cross sections of the same cube from different angles. Rian leaned forward to get a better look.

"Make your own design drawing Rian," she sighed. He leaned back and clearly forced himself to look down at his own plank and burnt sick, occasionally shooting glances at her and her tablet. It was like being back in school all over again!

She ignored him, continuing her drawing. Yes, he was right, the block with the tube through it that held the bind could reasonable by moved to more than one position. Add a hole, say here, and run a pole through it connecting to the inner block and it would move just fine, even without a frictionless as coating. Which she'll add anyway, because why not, adding in the notation for waterwisps less one tick to denote it was ice and an anchoring binding…

She frowned, the started a new drawing. There was no reason to the make the tube cylindrical. It could be any shape as long as it was structurally stable. In fact, better if it was an elongated slot than a round tube. That way, the inner block could have thick internal walls for structural stability… actually, there was no reason if it couldn't have a few reinforcing parts in the tube as well. That would keep it from deforming under the pressure of the water passing through and getting stuck inside the outer block…

Yes, and with the tube with the binding slightly elongated, it can transition between the various tubes in the outer block that let water pass through, again preventing excessive pressure from building up. The tube in the inner block and the various pathways in the outer block didn't all have to completely align, after all.

Now, how to did she orient this? Vertically or horizontally? Vertically was much smoother, and if she put the circulating pathway on the bottom, it would default to not moving so if whatever was being used to move the inner block and hold it in place broke, the waterjet would just stay where it was and they wouldn't have to chase it around. On the other hand, horizontal would be easier to operate… theoretically, at least. Hmm… wait, there was no reason the intake and outflow had to be at the same level as the two blocks, right? The outer block could have external pipes leading into the water to both draw it in and send it out to propel the vehicle it was attached to. That would make a horizontally sliding block much easier to manipulate…

Of course, there was the question of how to seal such a system so that none of the contents leaked out… or not too much of it, anyway. This would need tight tolerances… though unlike with the theoretical ball valve, it could easily be done with straight lines. Very straight lines.

Still, the idea was simple enough that she could probably make some models to test how it would work before building it full-sized…

"Rian—"

"How can I help?" Rian said, far too quickly, brightly and loudly.

Lori gave him a flat look. Then she looked down at his plank. While there were drawings on it, none of them looked like a boat. "Did you get anything done at all?"

"I was procrastinating!"

"Stillnot something to proudly declare," she sighed. "I will be expecting it from you tomorrow."

"Who needs sleep anyway?" he said, still cheerful. "Can I see now?" He was actually pleading.

Lori gave him a flat look, then sighed and carefully pushed the tablet towards him.

He reached over enthusiastically, taking the tablet and turning it around. Then turned it around again. Tilted his head.

"Okay, what am I looking at again?"

Lori sighed and began to explain, pointing out the features.

"Huh. I'm surprised you considered how this had to be operated by someone else," Rian said. "I know it was my idea, but I do NOT like having to lift the whole water jet out of the water just to get the boat to stop. If this works as intended, it would be much easier. Even one of the children would be able to operate it." He paused. "When we make these, we'll have to secure whatever boats they're on better. Even the children would be able to operate these! That's just asking for trouble!"

"While it would work, making them would be difficult, even for me," Lori said.

Rian frowned, clearly not understanding. "Why do you think that?"

Lori stared at him, then pointed towards the loop. "They're shapes inside solid objects. What sort of tool could even be used to make that with if not Whispering?"

Rian looked at it. "Take a solid block. Cut it in half. Hollow it out, put the two halves back together, then glue or secure them in a frame somehow." He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Lori opened her mouth to retort, but nothing came out. Because yes, now that he'd said it out loud, it WAS the most obvious thin in the world. She glared at him instead, but he even had the good grace not to look smug. She let out a huff. "Well, all right, I supposed it can be done…"

"Not something you've seen done?" Ah, there was the smugness. Teasing, at any rate.

It made Lori felt better. Annoyed, but better. "I'm not a carpenter, I just worked in their shops," she retorted.

Rian hummed. "So, are we building this?"

"In the small scale at first," Lori nodded. "A test model to see if the concepts actually work out of the drawing tablet."

"Rocks, then?"

Lori nodded. "Rocks."

Rian started to nod too, then paused. Then he grinned. "Wait, I just had a better idea."

Lori raised an eyebrow. "Somehow I doubt that."

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Lori hated being wrong. And while it was certainly better than trying to hollow out a block of stone or bone blind, why did all of Rian's ideas involve her doing most of the work?

"This is very strange," Lori said instead. "Who thinks of something like this?"

"People who need to make molds," Rian said. "Anything I can do to "

"Hold this," she ordered. He complied, and Lori wrapped the cord she had around where she wanted to cut and slowly softened the stones so that it sliced through the stone. It was as close to the line she'd scored as possible, though of course it wasn't perfect. She used the flattened, smooth offcut of wood that Rian had gotten from the carpenters to level the face that she'd cut, scraping off what protruding bits she could.

Lori looked at it, then shrugged. Well, this was her first time trying this, so she couldn't expect it to be perfect. She reminded herself of this firmly, lest her impulses get the better of her and she wasted time on this. "I think this is ready," she said.

The table was… slightly messy. There was a thin layer of softened rock that had been scraped off their modeling material and had run out of imbuement on top of the table now, so thin that it was crumbling to shards that was slowly turning into dust. In the midst of that was a large bowl of water and their model. Or rather, models.

Both were built around little bricks of stone roughly the size of a fist. They had both started exactly the same size, made from the same mold. One had been hollowed out with a hole in it, and a long protruding cylinder on the long perpendicular face. The other…

Well, the other had protrusions coming from it. The protrusions were rounded tubes in shape. At one end, a protrusion stuck out one side, bent upwards to face back the way it came, then curving down again, into the block, like a strange handle. In the middle were cylindrical protrusions at roughly the middle, like someone impaled the block on a long shaft. At the other end was another protrusion that curve upward and back the other way, then kept on going.

"You know, in hindsight, we should have made this out of ice," Rian said thoughtfully.

"We?" Lori said pointedly.

"Sorry, I meant you, your Bindership, you did all the hard and very technical work."

That didn't make her feel any better. Especially since Rian had a point…

"Let's get this over with," Lori said. She picked up the model with more protrusions and lowered it into the stone bowl of water next to them, submerging it but being careful to make sure the mass was centered in the water and wasn't close to any of the sides or the surface.

Then she bound the water into ice.

They slid the resulting mass out of the bowl and put it on the table upside down.for stability. Then Lori softened the stone and carefully began pulling it out of the ice, leaving behind hollows in the shape of what had been there before.

For a moment, they both stared.

"So… how do we cut it in half?" Rian asked.

"This was your idea," she reminded him. "You think of something."

"I suppose that's fair," Rian nodded. He thought for a moment. "I'll be right back." He hurried off.

He came back with a confused Deil holding a hand saw, and the carpenter proceeded to saw through the ice while Lori maintained the structural integrity despite the parts being sawn off, and Rian held the ice in place, especially when it had to protrude a little over the edge of the table so Deil could saw all the way through it.

"Thanks Deil!" Rian said as Lori carefully pulled the two halves apart, reinforcing the ice so that it wouldn't break. "You can go back to work, sorry for bothering you!"

Lori carefully placed the other model inside the hollow. It fit in perfectly. Nodding, Lori placed the two haves back together.

Rian and Lori stared at it.

"It occurs the me the block that moves around inside should be smaller than the space it's sliding through," Rian said slowly.

"You were in charge of making it," Lori said pointedly.

Rian sighed. "Yeah, this is definitely my fault…"

It took two more tries, but eventually they got it right. The inner block moved, it lined up with the tubes inside, and the tubes worked as they wanted, allowing water to circulate in place, reverse or pass through the block.

"Well, it works," Rian said tiredly.

"It works," Lori nodded, equally tired.

They stared at the block.

"We're going to have to make this bigger, aren't we?"

"What do you mean 'we'?"

"Sorry, your Bindership."

Lori sighed. "Rian."

"Yes, your Bindership?"

"You thought of this. Find a way to make it easier to do."

"Yes, your Bindership."

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Rian's Problem

At breakfast the next day, Rian sat himself down heavily, the last to arrive. He looked terrible. He had that slightly unfocused look of a man on too little sleep, each blink slow and deliberate as if he was fighting the urge to close his eyes and just keep them closed. With a caution that made the act seem climactic but was probably just him trying not to drop it, Rian set his plank on the table.

"Done," Rian said. "I have a boat design."

Lori glanced at it. "Good. I'll look it over later. After breakfast, got talk to the blacksmiths to find out if they need anything specific for their smithy, I already have a location for them. Ask the… tanners? Ask the ones treating the seel and beast skins the same thing, I never worked in the industry and have no idea what it entails." She'd heard about the smell and decided not to have that in her life.

Rian twitched. "Can I do that in the afternoon? I barely slept last night."

"I told you to not procrastinate."

"You did," Rian nodded. "But it still managed it!"

"Rian."

"Yes, your Bindership?"

"Get some sleep before you go decide to go hunting beasts."

"Yes, your Bindership! Don't ride on any rocks until I get back."

He didn’t even look at the bowl of food in front of him as he stood and left, moving with a distinct leftward tilt as he walked back to the door.

There was silence for a moment.

"Someone should probably go after him to make sure he doesn't fall into the river," Lori commented to no one in general.

Umu was up and almost running instantly. Riz blinked a moment before following.

Mikon shook her head, picked up the four other bowls on the table and began to expertly balance all four bowls in her hands. She must have worked at some kind of eating establishment at some point.

Shaking her head, Lori continued eating.

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The design was a bit smudged and some of the lines weren't as straight as they could be, as if perhaps last moment panic combined with sleep deprivation was taking its toll on the person drawing. Still, it was mostly legible.

The shape was basically a larger version of their prototype, the late and unlamented Lori's Ice Boat. Five paces wide, three times that long, and three paces high… and that was just the block of ice that was supposed to be hollowed out for buoyancy. There were outriggers to the sides for stability, and they also seemed to be for increasing the area of the deck? There was practically a little house on top of the block.

Lori couldn't help but feel it was a design that should have gotten to her hands a lot sooner than now.

There were thick black bars in some places, and Lori assumed that was wooden reinforcement, an internal framework for her to anchor the ice to. From what he'd said before, Rian probably also intended to have wooden cladding on the outside of the boat to protect against impacts.

Try as she might, she still couldn't think of a better way to do this than with ice. While bone might be viable, she doubted they'd be able to gather enough of the material before winter, and while stone might work, it… well, it had no buoyancy. Any stone boat would need to be very large to displace enough mass to float, and if she riddled it with bubbles to mimic pumice, it would probably be structurally compromised. Also, she didn't know how to do it. And while they had a lot of dragon scales… it wasn't anywhere near enough to actually make a boat of any structural integrity. They were a mix of materials, and some would need to be alloyed or refined to be usable. Even with her generating heat, that would take a long time.

So, ice. Perhaps next year they could try other options.

While she waited for Rian to regain consciousness, Lori got to work and began working on making a permanent smithy. Or at least prepare the location for one, Rian still had to get specifics for her.

Unlike her initial thoughts, she couldn't put it right outside the entrance. The core was too close on one side, the kitchen was too close on the other, but that didn't mean there wasn't any space. After some walking, measuring and checking, Lori found a space behind the excavated rock pile that she could use. It was close enough to the entrance to safely enclose without digging into the cold storage room next to the kitchen. There was enough space for her to excavate a decently high space so it could have good ventilation even without her putting in bindings. Two of the walls could be open most of the time, and then when a dragon happened she could enclose it.

She had to move her excavated stone stockpile, otherwise the area would be blocked off, but that wasn't too big of a problem. Lori just had to put the pile a little past the smithy area, which wasn't that far and still convenient. However, beyond carving out the space, she wasn't really sure what they needed. When she'd worked at blacksmiths and other metalworking shops, she'd been there as a heat source, not as someone who made the shop. She'd told Rian handle that aspect of it, that was what he was there for.

Provided he remembered to. She'd have to remind him when he woke up.

When Rian woke up and showed up at lunch, the first thing he did was check the plank. He sighed. "Oh good, I didn't draw anything weird or wrong."

"Will this even float?" Lori said.

"Oh, it'll float," Rian said. "It's ice and intended to be hollow. The only question is how well it will float. We'll have to use lightweight wood. The ice will also need to be as cold and dense as possible for the most strength. Then there's the question of how we actually build the thing. Do we make a wooden internal frame and have you wrap it in ice? Do we make the ice first, hollow it out and add the wood in later? Do we make it all in one piece, or as sections that we piece together?"

"Yes, very hard questions," Lori nodded. "I look forward to what you come up with. This is your project, after all." She waved a negligent hand. "Tell me when you need the ice and I'll see if I can find time for you."

Rian winced. "I don't know anything about making boats!"

Lori glanced down at his design. "Well, you've had a good start to learning," she said dryly.

"I should have just hollowed out a tree," he muttered.

"I couldn't possibly comment," Lori commented. "Please build the boat in a more timely manner than it took you to create the design. This journey must be completed before winter, after all."

Rian sighed. "Yes your Bindership."

"Now eat your lunch, you missed breakfast. And don't forget to talk to the tanners and blacksmiths."

Rian sighed. "This is a lot more than what you usually have me do first thing in the day."

"That's what happens when you procrastinate, work until late into the night and sleep until noon."

"Yeah, I'm starting to remember why doing it is a bad idea…"

"Riz. Since he'll be busy, I'll need another temporary Rian."

Riz nodded almost as if she'd been expecting it. "Yes, Great Binder."

"Good. You can start by finding out for me what the blacksmiths and tanners need for a place of work."

––––––––––––––––––

Days passed. Work was done.

The seels, who had made themselves scarce during the dragon, eventually returned, meaning the children were able to start catching them again. Not as many of the children did so anymore. Many had begun working as spinners, making thread and cord so that the weavers could make fabric and eventually clothes. Lori suspected it wasn't entirely of their own free will, but no one complained, and children seemed willing. More people learned to play board games with their feet. Not sunk, because picking up all the stones with only one's toe was apparently too difficult, but the other games, where pieces were put down one at a time, managed it.

The smithy was made in the area that Lori had excavated out near the Dungeon's entrance. The forge had to be made with clay bricks, as stone alone had a likelihood of cracking, and mortared with more clay that Lori baked solid with firewisps so that it actually turned into brick itself. To hold in the intense heat, she wrapped the assembled oven in water that she then bound into ice, trapping the heat inside since the ice was unable to absorb heat. There were some cracking sounds as the heat transferred to the ground, bereft of anywhere else to go, but when it was finished, there was a new furnace for the forge.

Lori took out a dragon scale that was mostly iron from the vault and gave it to the smiths for raw material. Soon the smithy as hot and ringing as repairs were made to tools.

The tannery was easier. She raised up stone walls and the hunters put the roof over it themselves, using branches instead of planks. It was a bit of a fire hazard, but what wasn't? She also used packed earth to make vats for them to soak the skins and furs in, then excavated a cave nearby where they could move the skins and their materials in case of a dragon. She'd been inclined to excavate a shallow pit and have them set up there, so she could just bury and cover the entire thing in case of a dragon, but apparently they needed the open sun and air circulation, else the noxious and nauseating fumes would build up. Well, it would be easier to bury just the storage came anyway, and since the roof was made only of branches, it would be easy to repair.

Now that he had a design and most of the repairs to the demesne were done, Rian finally had the optimum opportunity to build the boat that they would use to go to Covehold. That meant calling another meeting of the carpenters, woodworkers, and smiths to inform them of what needed to be built.

As could be expected, Rian got a lot of weird looks when he got to the part about making it partially out of ice.

"I know it sounds insane, but it works," Rian said. "I mean, you all saw the ice boat make the trip to River's Fork a few times before, you know, the dragon happened. And it won't be all ice. The idea is to have a wooden frame for the ice to freeze around to give it strength, and wooden cladding on the outside to protect it from impacts. Binder Lori will…" He made a vague gesture. "…do magic things to keep the ice from melting, so it can serve as a building material and waterproofing."

He smiled confidently.

Everyone glanced blankly at him. Then they all stared at Lori, as if even Rian's charisma wasn't going to win this argument for him.

"Yes, he's serious," she said blandly. "But we tested it, and the idea looks like it will actually work. If it's any consolation, none of you ever need to ride the boat."

Everyone looked at each other, and there was a consensus that was best described as a shrug.

It was, as things went, not a very optimistic start.

But it was Rian's project, so Lori didn't care. It was all his problem.