In preparation for new food that would be stored in the cold rooms, Lori had been making more solidified and liquefied air.

Normally, making solidified air was quick, something she usually did every few days to replenish their cold rooms. She'd go into their cold rooms and check how many blocks of solidified air they still had, and that the walls and floor was kept free of ice condensing out of the air. When the number of blocks was sufficiently depleted, she made more.

She was vaguely aware of how much food they had because of this, but it wasn't something she really thought about. The meat was just… there, pale and frost-covered chunks on the shelves or hanging from the hooks built into some of the shelves. As long as there was stuff in the cold rooms, there was food, so she didn't need to worry, even as she had to stop putting blocks of solidified air in some of the cold rooms because they were empty…

Over the months, she had refined her methodology. Nowadays she used a large block of ice that had been carefully solidified to be cold enough to form flakes of solidified exhalation without also condensing inhalation into blue liquefied air, which she would usually set up in the cold room that most needed replenishment. The block would have a hole at the top that led down into a hollow space within the block where the air would liquefy and solidify. When it was time to make solidified air, Lori would deactivate the bindings that kept the ice solidified except for a thin layer over the outside faces of the block. This meant that while the ice would begin to exchange temperature, it would only do so within the hollow inside it.

Lori would then use airwisps to push air through the opening of the block and into the hollow within, where the temperature would begin to solidify the air, as well as some water vapor. Flakes of solidified air would start to gather at the bottom of the hollow, which she'd tamp down and compress with a tool to force it into a convenient block. Excess air that wouldn't solidify would leak out of another hole in the side, to help lower the temperature of the cold room. Every so often she'd have to poke that outlet hole with a stick as flakes of solidified air and normal water ice formed around it from the cold.

The blocks of solidified air would be placed high up on a shelf, atop a tray of bone that she had made to for the purpose of catching any water ice that remained when the solidified air was gone. Lori was careful whenever she handled the solidified air. Under normal circumstances, contact with it was dangerous to human flesh, and even with the firewisps around her altering temperature so that she was always comfortable, she did not want to test the substance's effects on her. Her touching it would also be wasteful, as the firewisps around her would add heat and cause the block to sublimate back into air.

With the expansion of the cold rooms, however, Lori decided she needed a bit more cooling to bring the expanded room down to a temperature that could safely preserve food and keep it from harboring dustlife. While they still had one functioning cold room, she wanted the expanded cold room ready to accept new meat.

The day after she agreed to let Rian have his holiday once he met her conditions, she set up for mass production of solidified air in one of the expanded cold rooms, telling everyone to not disturb her. Instead of just a single hollow block of ice, she set up several, with the blocks of ice solidified completely, making them as cold as possible. This caused liquefied air to form, but that was intentional. The liquefied air that would normally have been bothersome for her—there was a reason her blocks of ice was prepared to be just above the temperature that inhalation liquefied—dripped out of a spout she had placed on the sides of the blocks and into a long open trough made of bound ice. The cold room she was in quickly became very cold, such that mist wafted from the floor, and even she had to actively bind the firewisps around herself to stay comfortably warm.

As both solidified and liquefied air started to form, Lori went over to her Dungeon's reservoir—making sure to seal the entrance to the cold room she was using to prevent accidents—and drew out a mass of water that she also solidified into a block of ice about half a pace wide on each face. Then she simply moved the block into the cold room she wanted to cool and released the bindings on it. As the block of ice started to exchange heat with its surroundings again, frost that could be congealing water vapor or more solidified air forming on its surface, Lori bound the air in the room to circulate so that the block of ice would begin cooling the now-warm cold room.

When that was done, she sealed the door of the cold room with stone to prevent people from getting in and potentially hurting themselves, and placed a stone bar across the doorway to make it obvious.

The amount of both solidified and liquefied air slowly increased. Once there was enough blue liquefied air in the spill trough, Lori carefully scooped it up into the small jars usually filled with travel ration stew. She held the jars with tongs she borrowed from the blacksmiths because she couldn't let the liquefied air make contact with the firewisps around her body, lest the liquid start turning back into vapor from the added heat. While the substance was a bit too dangerous to use for regularly cooling the cold rooms with the resources and materials she currently had at her disposal, it would suffice for helping cool the now-warm cold rooms in preparation for long-term storage as long as she sealed up the rooms so that no one could get inside and into trouble while that was happening.

It was a simple matter to reshape the block of ice Lori had put in the cold room to have a hollow space inside. She carefully poured the jars of blue liquid into it. The blue liquid lay there, more mist wafting up around it. Then she went back to the room where she was making liquefied and solidified air and continued the process over. Solidified air was tamped down into blocks, liquefied air was moved to the cold room to add to the hollow in the ice block. The flakes of solidified air that formed in the bottom of the basin, under the layer of blue liquefied air, she left in place.

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The next day, after a day of the room cooling with liquefied air, Lori carefully moved all the blocks of solidified air she had made into the cold room, which was now freezing and ready to store food. Most of the blue liquid from the day before had evaporated back into gas, and she carefully evaporated away what was left. With the cold room once more properly a cold room, it was now ready to be used, though she'd have to remove the block of water ice eventually. It took up a lot of space on the floor and blocked some shelves, but for now it was useful for keeping the room cool.

Once the expanded cold room was properly cooled down, Lori had Rian tell people to move all the food and any remaining blocks of solidified air into the expanded cold room so she could start expanding the only cold room that hadn't been expanded yet.

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The day after the hunting party found the group coming back to the demesne from River's Fork, enough fresh meat had finally been brought in to comply with the conditions Lori had set for the holiday.

"So we can have a holiday tomorrow?" Rian said, leaning forward excitedly during lunch.

Lori rolled her eyes. "Yes, you can have a holiday tomorrow."

"And you'll provide the heat so we can roast in the dungeon?"

Sigh. "Fine, fine, I'll put some firewisps near the wall. You be the one to tell people not to stick their hands into them unless they want to cook those hands."

"Yes, your Bindership."

"Remember, no music after sun down."

"Of course, your Bindership. You'll be joining us and enjoying the holiday too, right?"

"I'll be there and eating the food," Lori said. "If you try to get me to dance, I will kick you."

Rian nodded. "That's fair. Tell me what you think of the glaze we've come up with, will you?"

"I'll try one sample. Don't give me more unless I ask for it."

"Right. Understood. Hope you like it, then. We've tried the recipe on small pieces as a test, and it's turned out good, but if it's successful, we might be able to have our first traditional winter holiday recipe."

Lori frowned. "First traditional winter holiday recipe?"

"Well, we start having the recipe during enough holidays, it'll become a tradition," Rian said brightly. "I love roasted meat, but a little variety would be nice."

Lori sighed again, wondering what was taking the food so long.

She listened distractedly as Rian reported the status of the demesne. The binding of waterwisps to pump water from behind their side of the flood barrier towards the river was keeping up with the sporadic downpours of rain, which came down every other day or so, but had clearly been increasing in frequency as time went on. The trees were starting to sprout buds and leaves again, and stalks of ropeweed were starting to grow along the parts of the riverbanks not currently under water. More seels had been spotted, but not yet in the numbers they had been at originally.

"I suspected these are just the early arrivals," Rian said. "The rest will probably all arrive by the time the river settles down. We should wait until the seels give birth before we let people start seeling them, though. Make sure the next generation at least has a chance to exist before we start eating them. And if we wait, they'll be bigger and have more meat on their bones."

"I wouldn't know," Lori shrugged. "Do what you think best… without it involving voting of any sort whatsoever!" she added hastily.

"So we can't have people vote on which honey glaze variant is best?" Rian said.

"No. You try all of them and decide for yourself, then make that decision known and stand by it."

"I'm kind of hoping to get a little rest too, you know…"

"No voting."

Rian sighed. "Fine… ah, by the way, I've noticed slugs crawling along the outside slope of the flood barrier. You might want to check the pipes leading into the river for them every so often. I don't think that was a problem previously, but I think this is their breeding season, so there might be more of them to get stuck in the pipes."

Lori frowned, closing her eyes to focus on her awareness of her demesne's wisps and concentrated on the intake from the river to the water hub shed. She winced at the voids she felt. "Noted. I'll look into it."

Rian nodded. "All right, I'll stop bothering you, you look like you're dangerously close to completely ignoring what I say. I'll tell you the rest later."

Lori waved her hand dismissively, focused on her food, her mouth chewing though the admittedly excellent and delicious bread like an undead set on a task.

"You don't approve of the holiday?"

It took a moment for the voice to register, and another moment as she started to ignore it only to finally recognize the voice—or at least, the direction the voice was coming from. Lori turned to glance at Shanalorre, who was looking at her solemnly, a towel wrapped around her pale hair. "I think it's unnecessary," Lori said after she finally managed to swallow the mouthful she was on. "There's still work to be done to get the demesne properly civilized, and none of it gets done while we're wasting time having a holiday. However, Rian insists they're necessary for morale, and one should listen to an advisor when they speak about their area of expertise."

Shanalorre blinked. "What is Lord Rian's area of expertise?"

"Manipulating people to do what he says," Lori said.

Shanalorre's head snapped to look at Rian, clearly alarmed.

"Please don't make me sound like some kind of evil, treacherous villain, your Bindership," Rian sighed. "My job is to speak to the people of the demesne, organize them if they need it, find out what they need, resolve disputes, bring their concerns to Binder Lori's attention, and see to the well-being of the people of the demesne. In short, I do a lot of talking to people so that Binder Lori doesn't have to, allowing her to concentrate on other matters. She just likes to reductively summarize that as 'manipulating people'. It's technically correct, but makes me look really bad."

"Yes, manipulating people, that's what I said." Really, why did Rian have to repeat what she said but with more words?

For some reason, Rian slumped down and let out a groan. Umu, Mikon and Riz all reach out to pat him reassuringly.