As Rian made the arrangements, Lori put lightwisps on the outside of the Coldhold. She had to use lightwisps from her eyes so she could keep them imbued even when the boat was outside of the demesne, but when she was done, she was reasonably sure that the Coldhold would have enough light to navigate by. She also anchored some on the waterwisps making up some of the external structure of the boat, so that it would have some external lighting at night so they could see around the boat.
Thankfully, they were able to get underway a little past midmorning, with some of the stonemasons aboard. In the next four days, Lori was able to progress excavating the dragon shelter, while they dealt with the fine details that she didn't have the time or skill to try to do herself, such as straightening the doorway to the food storage, and making sure that the channels she had carved on the floor all led properly to the pool for the meltwater, and that the water wouldn't start to gather anywhere else in the room.
On the third day of her excavating—the ramp had been finished, and she could now start excavating the shelter itself—she took a break from the excavation to reinforce the mine tunnel and lessen the likelihood of collapse. All that stone that she had excavated and had simply dragged out into the mine had piled up, narrowing the tunnel's width by more than half. The stone masons had looked increasingly worried as she had kept simply dragging stone into the tunnel and leaving it there, all but burying the tunnel's support beams.
Fortunately, this was her intention.
Starting from the part of the tunnel closest to her ramp, she claimed and bound the excavated stone, causing it to flow and seal off the tunnel. Then, once a complete barrier from one wall to the other had been made, Lori simply removed the middle part of the stone obstruction, reopening the tunnel… with a new, stone arch ceiling and stone pillars to either side of it that would help channel the ceilings weight to the ground.
It was, in a way, a recreation of the way she was excavating the third level of her dungeon. While she needed to move a lot of stone for this since she had to make a complete wall, the way that her excavated stone had built up in the tunnel meant she only had to move enough stone to block out the remaining gaps. That was easy enough since she had a lot of excavated stone around to claim and move, and in the process of moving the stone she was able to clear space in which to work.
In some ways, the process was a bit repetitive, since she essentially filled in the tunnel, excavated it open again, then moved the re-excavated stone back out to fill in more of the tunnel so she could excavate it out once more, only to use the stone to seal more sections of the tunnel all over again. However, from her attempts the previous week, and with the amount of stone she'd managed to fill the mine tunnel with while she'd been excavating the ramp, doing it this way was the fastest and most efficient method available to her. It only involved a relatively simple binding that simply softened and moved stone to fill in gaps, and then softened it again and excavated it to make a cleared space. She didn't have to move stone upwards against its own weight, didn't have to try to shape it into an arch while it hung above her, and didn't have to push stone up to fill in gaps while nothing but air and having its earthwisps anchored to the ceiling supported the stone's its own weight.
Working in this way, she managed to both clear most of the stone that had accrued almost to the mine's entrance and reinforce the ceiling by the end of the day. The next day, she was able to do more excavation on the dragon shelter while the stone masons were adjusting the walls and arches she had made to be more plumb and even.
When they returned to her demesne after the fourth day, the boat contained some of River's Fork's children.
Not all of them were there. She hadn't been expecting the malcontents to let their children stay in her demesne, and had been surprised and confused when one of the families had. All in all, seven children had come with them from River's Fork, each carrying what clothes they had in an assortment of packs.
Shanalorre took the initiative of leading them, taking them not to the shelter or the baths, but rather to the row of houses at the top of the rise where nearly all the people who had come from River's Fork lived.
"Ah, good idea," Rian said approvingly as he saw where she was taking the children. "Take them to meet people they know so they'll be more comfortable, maybe meet some of their friends who moved here. It will help them adjust to living here."
Lori frowned. "I'd have thought they'd want to put their packs away first."
"You mean the packs that hold all their worldly possessions? You want them to leave those unattended in a building they don't know, when they've just come from a demesne where people have been stealing?"
Ah. When he put it that way… "Ah. When you put it that way…still, they'll need to move in there eventually."
"I think it would be better if we arrange for them to live with the families they know," Rian said thoughtfully. "I know we talked about how we'd have them in the shelter with Mikon's cousins as chaperones, but on consideration, that might be a bit too uncomfortable for them, at least for the first few days."
"Well, you handle that," Lori said, waving her hand dismissively.
"Do you mind if I handle that by asking Shana to do it?" Rian said. "She seems to be taking care of it already, and I need to make sure your boats have been inspected and are ready to be used again this season."
Ah, right. They were going to do that, weren't they?
The wood of the smaller boats had been inspected, thankfully, and they hadn't found any mold or any other damage. Lori remounted the first generation, simple water jet driver onto the wooden frame of Lori's Boat. Then after lunch she rebuilt the ice hull of Lori's Ice Boat, burying bindings of lightwisps in the ice for illumination at night, just in case. She did the same for Lori's Boat. Since older boat was made of wood, she had to wrap little pieces of bone along the front so she'd have something for her lightwisps to anchor to. They probably wouldn't need to use the boats at night, but that's what they had thought about the Coldhold.
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Lori inspected the levels of her dungeon, checking that the temperature and humidity were corrected, and that the soil of the Dungeon farm was draining properly. She also checked all her unfinished excavation tunnels on the third level for suspicious smells. She found one suspicious smell, but it turned out to be a pile of the dried waste being stored nearby to fertilize the tubers that had somehow gotten wet. It was just as bad, but at least it had been incompetence rather than stupidity. She drew the waterwisps from it as she tried not to gag and told Rian to tell people to not store that sort of thing in the third level, especially where it might get wet.
Besides that, the rest of the dungeon farm seemed to be doing well. The plots that had been made in time for planting was full of thick, green growth, and the seeds of the pink ladies, golden buds and micans at least seemed to be sprouting, though they were still in pots instead of a proper plot.
She also checked the water hub shed, and was glad to find no bug corpses floating in the water, or settled in the bottom of the tank. The binding she'd placed seemed to be working, which was good to know. Though… should she experiment to see if she could develop something similar for beasts? Well, it wasn't like she had time to really do her own experiments, since she was still building needed infrastructure for her new demesne.
It was one of many things she had to get around to when she had time and the things she needed to do were no longer so urgent. It was probably less of a priority than putting together a bound tool, but definitely more urgent than making more beads. Though given she was a bit too busy to expand right now, she might be able to make bead production more efficient, since she could set up semi-permanent infrastructure for it…
"So," Rian said brightly at dinner as Lori stared at the little interloper on her bench, her hair pale with a light green tinge. The interloper stared back, looking at her curiously. "How are the other children doing, Shana? Settling down all right? More importantly, do you think they feel safe and comfortable enough to actually go to sleep?"
"I have had them accommodated, Lord Rian," Shanalorre said.
"You should probably just call me Rian," he said. "As a Dungeon Binder, you outrank a mere lord such as me."
"Noted, Lord Rian." Rian winced for some reason. "Tonight, I have arranged for them to stay with families they know, in lieu of sleeping in the unfamiliar confines of the shelter. Warm and comfortable as it is, I do not think they would sleep very well there, with them unused to it as of yet. The only ones who will be staying in the shelter will be myself and my cousin."
"Your cousin?" Lori said blandly.
Shanalorre nodded, then gestured at the interloper sitting next to her. "Yes. May I re-introduce my cousin, Yoshka. You met once when my aunt invited you to breakfast with them. My aunt tasked me with watching over her."
Lori's voice was still bland. "Did she, now?"
"Yes. I, of course, accepted the familial responsibility. Yoshka, what did I tell you about staring at Binder Lolilyuri?"
"But she's looking at me…" the girl said. Still, she looked away, looking across the table towards Rian, who smiled and waved at her. Tentatively, she smiled and waved back.
"Why is she eating here?" Lori asked.
"Because I'm supposed to be watching over her, and I cannot do that when she's at another table."
Lori stared at her. "Fine. She can stay, as long as she remains quiet while we discuss matters. But no one else!"
"Of course, Great Binder," Shanalorre said.
"I thought you were Great Binder, Shasha?"
"Not anymore."
"Oh, good!"
Lori blinked in surprise, staring at the little girl. What?
"You never liked being Great Binder. Does that mean you're going to stop talking funny now?"
"I do not talk funny."
"Yes, you do!"
She did not.
"I do not."
"You do! It's weird!"
"This is a perfectly normal way to talk."
"You used to talk faster!"
"Oh, look! Food's here!" Rian announced, and indeed, a returned Riz and Mikon were back, carrying between them six bowls of food, a plate with bread for six people, cups, and a pitcher of water.
Yoshka reached out for the food, but Shanalorre intercepted her. "No, Yoshka, Binder Lolilyuri picks first," she said gently. The little girl pouted, but put her hands down as Lori picked one of the bowls, a cup and some bread. "Now you may get food. Blow on it first, it's hot."
"That one! I want that one!" the little girl declared, pointing towards one of the bowls of hearty soup, and Shanalorre patiently took the bowl and moved it in front of her cousin. "And that one!" She pointed towards one of the pieces of bread near the bottom of the stack. Shanalorre carefully pried up the rest of the bread and pulled that piece out, handing it to her cousin. "Thank you!"
"You're welcome," Riz said, smiling at the child.
"Very welcome," Mikon said, doing the same.
"Yoshka, no. Don't dip the whole thing into your soup," Shanalorre said as she prevented her cousin from doing exactly that. "Tear it into pieces like this." She took a piece of bread and a bowl for herself—leaving the last of both for Rian—and demonstrated, tearing off small bits of the flat bread and dipping it into the soup. "There, see? No, no, not like that, your pieces are too small. Tear off the bread, don't pull it out so hard. Here, let me do it for you."
As Shanalorre patiently showed her cousin how to eat, Lori saw Rian looking at the two with a strange look on his face.
"Rian, eat," she pointedly reminded him.
He blinked, glancing towards her, then back towards his food. "Right, right. Eating, your Bindership." He ate, but his eyes remained fixed on the two next to Lori.
Lori shook her head, focusing on her own food, even as she glanced sideways, watching Shanalorre gently, patiently, and seemingly happily teach her cousin about the intricacies of eating soup with bread. "Rian, how many more of the houses have been finished?"
Rian blinked, then visibly had to make himself turn his attention to her. "Well, work has sort of stopped on the last three, but if we ask them to divert some work into it, the roofs should be finished with another day or two of work. Though I should mention that we've exhausted nearly all our store of cured wood."
"Nearly all?"
"I had them set aside a reserve for repairing the door of the dungeon in the event of something unexpectedly damaging happening to it, just in case something happened while you were asleep during one and we had to build something to defend ourselves in the time it would take to wake you up. And it might be useful for other things."
Lori stared at him for a moment, but that made just enough sense that she eventually nodded. "Fine. I'll cure what wood I can tomorrow, and again when we get back home next time. In the meantime, have one of the empty beds in the shelter moved to one of the finished houses. The one currently most fit for habitation."
"That would be the one the petitioners didn't pick. It's got doors and shutters on its windows, but it's pretty bare, and it doesn't have much in the way of anything inside."
"See that the bed is transferred first thing tomorrow," Lori said. "Shanalorre will need her new house to be livable."
Rian blinked and next to Lori, Shanalorre suddenly turned away from her cousin. "What?" he and Shana managed to say at the same time, even if not with the same inflection.
"I'm assigning you a new permanent residence," Lori said. "You are still a Dungeon Binder. I will not have you sleeping in emergency housing, now that you will be permanently residing in my demesne."
Shanlorre stared at her. "May I invite some other people to stay with me?"