Lori woke up staring at an unfamiliar ceil—no, wait, she recognized that ceiling. That was her ceiling. There was that list of random names that she kept never getting around to removing. What was she doing here? The last thing she remembered was being in River's Fork and writing…
Writing…
Oh.
She shifted her body, and found it not aching. Instead, the surface beneath her flexed and deformed in a familiar, comfortable manner. Lori was lying down on her own bed, rather than on a pile of straw on top of stone, which had been comfortable enough the first night but had become progressively less so in the succeeding days.
Despite that, the rest of her was uncomfortable. The clothes she was wearing felt strangely too warm, despite her being in her demesne where everything should have been a comfortable temperature. Her hair felt too hot, and she felt an itch somewhere private. Her feet felt warm—not comfortably warm, simply warm—and her toes felt confined for some reason. Why had she gone to bed still wearing her boots and socks? There was also an unpleasant smell coming from somewhere, and… why did she have a strong sense that someone had pissed in the water reservoir?
The explanation for all but the last was soon obvious as she sat up and ran her hand through her hair, feeling dried sweat and oil and the warm feeling not changing at all. She raised an arm and lowered her head, then recoiled as the smell intensified slightly. Yes, she clearly hadn't bathed in far too long. But why…?
Vague memory slowly unfolded at the attempt to recall, and Lori looked around her room—her room back in her demesne—frantically looking for papers. There were none in sight, but she did see her pack on her stone table across the room. Throwing her legs over the side of her bed, she reached down to pull on her boots before remembering she was already wearing them—along with other disgusting articles of clothing—before standing up and rushing to her pack. Undoing the pack's flap and pulling open the drawstrings, she searched it for her notes, pulling out the clean clothes inside and carelessly tossing them down next to the almanac on the table.
Her notes! Her notes! Where were her notes?-! She searched through her pack frantically, but there was nothing in her pack but clothes, her towel, and her little bag of soap! Emptying the pack uncovered nothing else, and with her pack being inconclusive, she searched around the room frantically as she tried to find the sheaf of loose papers that she'd written her observations of the ill-bound wisps, wisplings and other strange bindings that the dragon had formed while it has slowly passed through her demesne. No! Where was it?-! Surely she remembered to include it when she'd been filling her pack! She'd worked on those notes for days, of course she'd—
Wait.
She hadn't been the one to pack her effects, had she?
Rian had said he'd take care of it.
"Rian…!" she growled, turning and stomping towards her door. While she still had her samples of wisplings, deactivated bindings, ill-bound wisps, and what she was reasonably certain were insane thoughts, twisted vistas and rampant life—containers of darkwisps she'd set up at the borders of her demesne were occasionally getting their imbuement depleted by something—that she could study, her notes contained her observations and flow diagrams of several samples that had already dissolved, been predated upon by other wisplings, or were otherwise no longer with the ones she'd contained. That made her notes on them absolutely essential, as she couldn't be expected to remember everything that she'd observed. If something happened to those notes she'd… she'd… well, she'd do something very violent and cathartic to Rian, that's what she'd do!
Normally, she would have immediately stomped out of her room and screamed for Rian to present himself and explain where her notes were, but… well, with the notes not in her pack, and faced with having to step out in public for any further information as to where they are, she could no longer stop thinking about her current state. She stank, she itched, her hair felt like some kind of dragonborn abomination had taken up residence in her scalp and spilled its blood and waste all over her hair, and despite being in her demesne her clothes felt like they contained their own heat that radiated into her skin.
She needed a bath.
Lori grabbed the clean clothes she'd pulled from her pack as well as her soap and her scrubbing rock, and took them with her to her private bath so she could do just that.
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It took some time for Lori to be clean to her satisfaction. More than a week of not bathing—no doubt closer to a week and a half, as she'd stopped keeping track of time at some point, focused only on getting the morning imbuing done as quickly as possible so she could get it out of the way and back to her notes before she'd lost track of the observations she couldn't write down—had left a much thicker layer of grime on her skin that needed to be removed. As she couldn't use her scrubbing rock on all places that needed cleaning, she'd needed to exfoliate it with her hands, and occasionally her nails.
The water trailing across her floor and into the drainage hole in one corner—covered by a wooden grate after one too many instances of her dropping her soap and the thing sliding into the hole—had been a disturbing shade of dark gray, even accounting for the soap, and had made her shiver at the thought of it on her body. And given the circumstances, it was no doubt on her bedroll as well. She would need to wash it as soon as possible. It would have happened that very day if she didn't so urgently need to get her hands on Rian and those notes and… and…
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…and the fact she had the aftermath of the dragon's passing to deal with.
…
But after she found out where her notes were! Now that there were important things she had to do that she couldn't just do quickly between waking up and having breakfast—ugh, had she actually thought it was a good idea to get to work first thing in the morning immediately after waking up?—she of course wouldn't just be tempted to sit around and continue adding to her notes while her samples persisted… even though a casual count through her awareness of the wisps in her demesne showed her she'd lost some more samples while she was asleep, and the rest needed to be imbued again…
…
No, she wasn't going to be distracted!
After a much longer than usual bath, Lori was feeling comfortable and refreshed again, and the temperatures around her had returned to normal levels. She'd left the clothes she'd been wearing—socks, loin cloth, chest wrap, trousers and shirt—to soak in a hastily made basin while she couldn't deal with them yet, while she put on fresher clothes and slipped on her reed tsinelas. Taking one last deep breath and enjoying the feeling of being properly clean again, Lori opened her door—ugh, she'd left it unlocked while she'd slept—with the intention of seeking out Rian.
She found a pair of bedrolls laid out on the floor of the passageway outside of her room, and stared down at Riz and Mikon. The latter was sitting with her back against the wall opposite Lori's door and her legs stretched out, while the former was lying down with her head on the weaver's lap. Both had looked up at Lori when she'd opened the door, looking surprised. A moment later, Riz pulled her hand away from where it had been cupping the weaver's posterior. Another moment, and she was scrambling to her feet, tugging her shirt into place before standing straight and resolutely staring directly ahead. "Uh, Great Binder! You're awake! We were just, ah, I was guarding your door to make sure no one disturbed your rest and, ah, Mikon was keeping me company!"
Lori gave them both a flat look, then deliberately sniffed the air. Thanks to her recent bath, the overwhelming smell wasn't—
She paused, reached out to claim some airwisps, and made a binding across her doorway that kept the air from her room from passing through it.
That done, Lori once more deliberately sniffed the air. Thanks to her recent bath and the binding keeping the air in her room from passing through the open door, she was able to smell the passageway clearly. Finding the air clear, she directed her gaze at Riz. "Erzebed, where is Rian?" she demanded.
"He's still in River's Fork, Great Binder," Riz said, still staring straight ahead.
Colors. "Colors!" Lori swore, making Riz jump in surprise. "When will he be back?"
"Uh… that depends, Great Binder."
Her eyes narrowed. "On what?"
"On… uh, on whether you're just going to go back to your room, stop bathing, and just write," Riz said, then swallowed, "or if you're going to, ah, start putting the demesne back together now that the dragon is gone."
Mikon let out a quiet gasp as Lori met Riz's eyes, deliberately stepping into the non-officer's line of sight and leaning in. "What did you say?"
"I'm, ah, just repeating what Rian said, Great Binder," Riz said, staring straight ahead and somehow managing to give the impression she was looking past Lori despite the fact that Lori's face was probably most of what she could see. "After all, the dragon is gone, so we should focus on getting things back to normal, putting the bound tools back in the baths, getting the sawmill working, planting a last autumn crop that we can harvest before planting some winter grain, all those things, r-right?"
Despite herself, Lori tilted her head. "Did Rian also tell you that last?"
"N-no, Great Binder. Just remembering what happened last year."
Lori hummed, glancing down at Mikon, who was staring up at Riz. "Tell me, Erzebed. Do you enjoy your position of being a Perpetual Non-Officer?"
Riz blinked at the sudden question, and she forgot herself enough to focus on Lori. "Your Bindership?"
"Because for a someone who espouses their desire to never be an officer, you are certainly acting like one. Have you tired of your hard-earned position? Do you wish to be promoted? "
The woman leaned back slightly as if she wanted to recoil. However, she took a deep breath and said, "That depends. How's the pay? How much do I make per week? Is there an officer's bar where I can get free booze?"
Lori's head titled back the other way. "So if you had those things, you'd agree to be an officer?"
"No, but I want to be sure what I'm turning down."
Huh. Lori could actually respect that last.
"We can revisit the subject once I establish taxes to pay you with," Lori said, waving a hand dismissively.
"Aren't you the one making beads? Can't you just make as many as you want?"
Lori twitched, repressing a shudder at the horrific idea. That way lay uncontrolled hyper-inflation, even for a fiat commodity currency like beads! And that was just the reasonable problems that would be caused.
Then she shook her head, brushing aside the distraction. So, Rian wasn't here, but in River's Fork. Her notes had better be there as well, or she might start kicking him and not stop until her feet hurt too much to keep doing it! And then she'd have Shana heal and get back to it! "What time is it?" Lori asked.
"Uh, it's about midmorning, Great Binder. Maybe a bit later, there aren't any windows here, and it's hard to tell with the dragon blocking the sun. I had them set aside some fruits for you to eat so you wouldn't have to be hungry while waiting for—"
"What was that last?" Lori interrupted.
Riz blinked. "Uh, fruit?"
"No, before that!"
"The dragon blocking the sun?"
"Yes, that! How can that be? The dragon is gone." She certainly couldn't feel it anymore.
"Ah… I think you should see what it's like outside, Great Binder. I'm not sure how to describe it beyond 'the dragon is blocking the sun'."
Lori stared at her, then pointed looked down at the bedroll laid out on the passage.
"Ah… let me get that out of your way, Great Binder."
As Mikon stood up so that Riz could remove the bedroll—which turned out to be two bedrolls and a pair of blankets—Lori let out a frustrated sigh. A part of her was tempted to just take one of their boats, go back to River's Fork, get her notes back—they had to be still there—from Rian, and lock herself up in her room to continue making her observations. The rest of her knew it was time to set aside such self-indulgence for the moment. Things needed to go back to how they were, which meant bringing her demesne back from dragon readiness—the latrines must be utterly full, as she guiltily recalled that she hadn't desiccated the waste to add more, ah, 'storage' space—and back to its day-to-day state.
It was what a Dungeon Binder did, after all.
But once all this was over, she was going straight back to making more observations and writing more notes while her samples lasted!