The day after Binder Shanalorre had finally left to go back to her demesne—though probably not for very long, since there were more pregnancies due—Lori woke up with the firm intention of assessing the ability of the riverside infrastructure of her demesne to deal with the possibility of flooding. She'd left several bindings of airwisps anchored in place the night before to blow away snow in the areas she intended to work—finding places to anchor them that hadn't been snow had taken a while—so hopefully there wouldn't be much for her to clear herself. Or at least, not as much, anyway.
Then she could get to work on the exposed ground, using the surplus stone in the pile next to the entrance—which was… still covered by snow, but no matter—to try and make barriers against possible flooding. The question was whether the measure would only be temporary, or if they would become permanent structures…
Oh, who was she kidding, of course they'd be permanent. She could already hear future generations complaining about why the area around her Dungeon's entrance kept getting flooded…
"I need your authorization to change our food," Rian said as soon as she sat down at the table.
She stared at him for a moment. "Repeat that, with context."
Rian nodded agreeably as Riz sat down next to him, closed her eyes, and immediately went to sleep with her head on the table. "Our reserves of meat in the cold rooms are running low. I need to authorize opening the vigas reserve to add to our food. Eating a reduced meat ration is better with bread to pad it out, so our morale isn't affected. Also, given the month—if Shana's correct about it—we need to start building up everyone's reserves of energy to get them ready to work, and that means feeding them more filling foods like the vigas to supplement the tubers that's already there."
Lori straightened in alarm. "How much meat is still in the cold rooms?" she asked.
"About a third of what was there when we started the season," Rian said. "It's best to make it last until after the start of spring, when we can start hunting again and replenish out meat supply, though. Besides, it's about time we had a change in what we're eating. Even without honey, it's an easy way to keep up morale."
Lori frowned and looked around. She might not be any good with faces, or understanding how her idiots think most of the time, but in her cursory inspection it didn't seem like anyone needed their morale raised. "No one seems to need their morale raised."
"When people look like they need their morale raised, it's already too late," Rian said. "Besides, even if you do manage to raise their morale at that point, the increase is less than what it could have been if you'd raised it earlier… Look, trust me, all right? It's a 'dealing with people' matter. Just something to break the monotony of winter while preparing for spring."
Lori sighed. "Fine, fine, do it."
Rian nodded, then grinned. "If you want, you can also authorize a little bit of honey, and we can have sweet honey bread for dinner," he said in a low voice that people in other table's probably didn't hear. "After all, Shana's probably eating some of what we gave her, so you should too. You know, for the morale."
"Do I look like I need my morale raised?" Lori said flatly.
"Honestly, it's always hard to tell with you, so I just err on the side of caution and try to raise it at every opportunity. But you do look like you'd appreciate having some honey bread for dinner. Come on, it's not like I'm asking for a holiday… though I point out the time on that ban has already long expired."
Lori glared at him a little longer, but… well, she didn't really disagree with the logic. There was probably a lot of work to be done in the spring, so it was best to start bulking up for it, and everyone knew grains and tubers were good for that. And she was hardly going to say they wait for all the meat to be gone before they touch the grain. As long as they had enough for planting and a little bit for emergencies… "Fine. But the honey is only for tonight. Will there be enough flour ground by tonight?"
"We have a lot of people with big, muscular arms with very little to do, I don't think that's going to be a problem," Rian said.
Lori nodded. "You and Riz are free this morning. We're not going out to the edge. I have work to do closer to the Dungeon."
"The flood preparations, right?" Rian said. "If you start work in the immediate area around the Dungeon's entrance, I can accompany you to the rest after I finish organizing the milling. Don't look at me like that. You're the most likely to accidentally slip and fall in the snow out of all of us, since you start to melt it if you stand still long enough."
Ugh, she hated it when he had a point. "I'll be careful," she ground out as Umu and Mikon arrived with food and water.
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"You always are, but things happen regardless." He sounded resigned.
––––––––––––––––––
After breakfast, Lori grabbed her stone-shaping tool—in case she felt like making any immediate changes— and, after some consideration, her hat, and headed out of her Dungeon towards the water hub shed.
Unfortunately, the binding of airwisps she'd left overnight to blow the offending snow away wasn't as successful as she'd hoped. Of course, she'd hoped that it would be able to clear the snow all the way down to the dirt. Enough of the way was clear that she was able to make her way to the stone shed.
If there was going to be flooding, then she needed to make sure that this particular conduit to her Dungeon wasn't going to be the reason it was flooded. The pool where water was usually boiled to clean it before being sent to the reservoir and other places was still and cold, barely being kept liquid by the binding that kept the water around the output vent for her Dungeon's air near boiling to discourage bugs and abominations from using it as a way in. She found all sorts of larvae in the pool, taking advantage of the heat, and shuddered in disgust.
Shaking her head at herself, Lori restructured the binding to contain heat around the water of the vent instead of merely generating it. That would eventually cause the water in the rest of the pool to freeze, hopefully killing the bugs. She'd have to clear out the pool before she restored the bindings that provided them with water, but flooding would probably do that anyway…
Lori also checked the vent itself, hidden under the water. It still seemed secure, so even in the event of a flood it shouldn't let any water into her Dungeon. The air pressure from the vent should be more than enough to keep any water out, and while she could add a binding of waterwisps… it really didn't need it just yet.
Ironically, a flood would be a greater danger to their water supply than the river freezing, since such an event would cause the river to rise up and fill the boiling pool where the water was heated to kill dustlife before it was drawn in to the reservoir, and from there redistributed to all the bath houses. She'd have to shut down the hub before the reservoir was filled with contaminated water. Even if it didn't have dustlife, flood water would have a lot of suspended particulates and possibly debris, which the bindings she had in place weren't meant to deal with.
In the event that happened, she'd have to build something to specifically deal with particulate-heavy water, but that was best done when she knew what the flood's water level was…
She was starting to see why Rian thought procrastinating might be a solution to problems…
No, no, not a good idea! Back to work, back to work!
Lori looked towards the docks next to the water hub shed. The Coldhold was covered in snow, making it look like a half-buried hut. On the other side of the stone dock, Lori's Ice Boat was completely buried under snow. She hoped there would be time to recover it before flooding started…
Well, back to inspecting.
She wasn't sure if the clay pits need to be protected from flooding or not. On the one hand, it was just dirt… but on the other hand, flooding might alter the composition or add impurities or something. She'd have to get Rian to find out for sure. However, it looked like the issue was likely not to matter, since the bedrock might be too deep for her to properly anchor a flood barrier in front of the clay pit without adversely affecting it.
The laundry area… probably didn't need to be protected. The infrastructure was stone and well-anchored, and none of it was likely to be ruined or irreparably damaged by flooding. If she raised a wall, they might be able to use it during a flood… no, that wouldn't work. The laundry area was designed to drain down to the river. If they used it from behind a floodwall, she'd have to add new infrastructure and bindings to drain out the wash water so they could continue to use the laundry area from then on. She'd have to think about that…
Raising a flood wall to protect the bath house, shelter and Um would be simpler, though as she looked at it, she almost didn't think it was necessary. From this angle, she was reminded that they were a bit higher up the slope than her Dungeon's entrance, making them slightly less likely to be flooded. They were still low enough that flooding was definitely a risk, but as things stood they were in a safer position than her Dungeon.
Lori considered her option. Of course, she could just make more a permanent barrier along the river bank… but that would mean demolishing the water hub shed, the clay pit, the laundry area and possibly even the docks, or at least finding a way to integrate them into such a wall. Such would be more time and material intensive, and she wasn't sure she could do it in the time they had left, especially given the weather.
The easiest thing to do would be to just seal up all affected buildings, create a flood barrier to keep water out of her Dungeon, and then just wait it out… except that would mean having people in her Dungeon, reduced necessary infrastructure while the bath house and laundry area were flooded—and the Um too, she supposed—and there was no knowing how long the flooding would be. Judging from the fact that the area hadn't been flooded when they'd arrive during the rainy season, it probably wasn't that long… or the previous year had been uncharacteristically mild, and this year could be worse.
There was also the option of not building anything and just setting waterwisps to divert floodwater from the town when flooding occurred, but in her opinion that seemed extremely dangerous. Such a binding would require a lot of imbuement, not to mention need to be anchored in place, so she would still need to prepare solid structures for it. Of course, she could set the binding to instead turn potential floodwater to steam or ice, but that would be so irresponsibly dangerous she might as well kill her idiots herself, and further bindings needed to make such a thing 'safe' was an added expenditure of energy. So, no.
…
Well, one step at a time. First, build something to keep floods from getting into her Dungeon. Hopefully building such a barrier would put her in a proper frame of mind to consider the problem properly. All these months of not properly building something seemed to have taken their toll…
Humming to herself, still shouldering her stone-shaping tool, Lori went to get her stone stockpile unburied of the snow that had fallen on it since they'd added the additions to the chimneys.