Lori had decided to take her lord's advice. Both pieces of it, really, but one after the other. First, she'd build a dedicated laundry area that would use the runoff water, since she could always build something for a water wheel later. Then, tomorrow, she'd go check the accuracy of the new map, which was now securely locked in her room.
So, after a good, hearty breakfast—actual amount of beast or seel heart in the stew unknown—she'd grabbed her stone-shaping tool, bound some of the stone next to the Dungeon's entrance to follow her, and gone off towards the end of the runoff channel to start building a laundry area.
The first thing she had to do was build a whole new runoff aqueduct a little bit further downriver and redirect the runoff to pass through that instead. Now that it would be an area that people were meant to occupy, there were new design considerations. The old runoff was too close to the claypit. While she could have built the laundry area on the side away from the claypit, that was the sunny side, and if she had to be outside to do her laundry, she'd want to be under some shade. Short of trying to move a tree, the best she could provide was the shade of the aqueduct itself.
So, she moved the aqueduct a little further down so people could sit under it for shade, then used the stone to start building a cistern to hold the runoff. It was a long, wide trough of stone that would fill from the runoff, and when it was overfull the water would then fall into one last runoff channel to take it to the river.
Lori found herself nodding in satisfaction as she finished it. Then she stood there awkwardly, staring at it. She imagined herself doing her laundry here.
No, it wouldn't do, it wouldn't do at all. She used more of the stone to pave the area around the cistern for about a pace, cutting little lines so that the water would drain away and keep from being slippery, using the edge of her stone tool to put in a slightly rough texture on the rock to give people traction.
She looked down at the ground. She looked at the cistern. She knelt down and imagined herself doing her laundry. She mimed taking imaginary clothes and laying them down on the ground, then hitting them with an imaginary rock…
Lori didn't even finish miming before the texture she'd cut into the stone started making her shins hurt. Grimacing, she stood, softened the stone, and smoothed it out. She knelt down again. Better, but now people were more likely to slip, which could lead to injury, which would lead to lowered productivity…
She eyed the cistern. From where she was kneeling, it was too high and too far away…
Lori cut down the cistern's size to be only a third as tall so it would be more accessible to people kneeling on the ground, then changed the design to make it deliberately overflow down to lower basins deep enough to soak a lot of clothes at the same time. From there, the water would finally fall down to a stone gutter that would catch the water and direct it to the river. That way, it was convenient for both people who were kneeling and needed water to soak clothes, and those standing with a bucket of some sort. On consideration, there needed to be more than one cistern, which people could kneel around and get water from while they beat their clothes clean. They'd have to bring their own rocks, but that was their problem.
Maybe she should have just taken the map and gone for a walk after all, this was starting to get irritating.
Using the stone she'd removed by cutting the cistern's size, she built another one, with basins beneath it, paving the area around that as well so people wouldn't have to kneel in mud. She looked around with a frown. Actually, she'd need to pave the whole area, not just the area directly around the cistern, or else the place would still get muddy and inconvenient. While it wasn't her convenience that would be affected, she was disinclined to make a place that would potentially make it easier to track mud into her Dungeon. They had people whose job was to clean the floors now, but the quality of the brooms they could make from twigs and a ropeweed cords wasn't the best, so any mess could be prevented was best prevented.
She twitched. That last thought sounded far too much like one of her mothers scolding her after she'd come back home during a rainy day.
Lori walked up to the cistern and mimed filling a bucket full of water. No, that wouldn't do, now it was too low…
She decided to put a high-sided round under the flow of water from the aqueduct, sized for people just filling up buckets, that would then overflow down to the low cistern for people kneeling and doing laundry. That way, there was a convenient source of water at all heights. She narrowed the cistern too, allowing her to make it longer, making more room for people to do laundry…
Maybe she should move a tree there, it was getting really hot.
No, that can be something for other people to do later. She'd put up some pillars, they could put some kind of roof covering on it.
She finished moving earthwisps and inspected her handiwork. The low cisterns came to just under her knees, which was just accessible enough for someone kneeling down. The low basins were halfway down from the ground, just high enough to be reachable without bending, and the gutter that caught the water to channel it back to the river was below that, a hand's-width off the ground.
It all seemed right. She'd use it to do her laundry. All nice and convenient, with a lot of running water…
Not that she would, she had her own bathroom and water source for that. And in her room she didn’t do it while drying out in the sun.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
She shrugged and decided it was a job done, and went off to have lunch.
––––––––––––––––––
"I saw the laundry area," Rian said as he came with their lunch. "It looked nice."
"It's going to need a roof," Lori said, picking one of the bowls. She'd already finished her move.
"I'll tell people to be ready to make it," Rian said, delaying his inevitable defeat by having a spoonful of food first and swallowing. "Still, it looks really good."
"Hmm…" Lori 'hmm'-ed as she ate thoughtfully.
"Is something wrong?" Rian asked as he made his move.
"No, nothing's wrong," Lori said.
"Hmm…" Rian said, finishing his move. "Well, could something be better, then?"
Lori blinked. "Be better?"
"Yeah. Something might not be wrong, but it could be better," Rian said. "Like, this stew isn't wrong, but it would be better if there were fewer pieces of blue gourd–"
"Eat your food and be thankful you have any, Lord 'do I deserve the food I'm eating'," Lori said, rolling her eyes.
"Aw, you remember that conversation," Rian said. "Why do you have to bring it up in the context of blue gourd?" But he did eat the blue gourd.
Lori made her move as he made faces, trying to force the gourd through his mouth. Useless thespian.
"So," he said as she dropped stones into the boards bowls. "What's not wrong but could be better? I assume it's the laundry, but it's never safe to assume anything with you."
Lori gave him a level look, then grunted. "I finished the laundry area but I don't know how useable it is. It looks useable, but…"
"It… looks very useable," Rian said.
"And you can tell from your extensive laundry experience, I'm sure."
"Ow," Rian said, miming grabbing something stabbing him in the chest. "Harsh. True, but harsh. Well, if you want to know, ask someone. Someone besides me I mean, despite my extensive laundry experience."
She gave him a level look.
"Yes, that would involve talking to a human being besides me, but do you really want my extensive experience on the subject?"
Lori grunted, looking down at her bowl and taking another spoonful to eat.
"Wow, we're only discussing talking to another human being and you're already acting like you're talking to someone other than me," Rian said. "And Karina, I suppose. Maybe you can ask her? She's probably helped her mother with the laundry, right? I mean, I'm guessing, but it's even odds she's helped with laundry before."
Lori paused, tilting her head thoughtfully. Then she shook her head.
"Okay, not Karina," Rian said. "Who else do you know by name? And who can apparently do laundry, so they can give an assessment of the usability of the laundry area?"
Lori blinked and stared at him. Then she tilted her head.
––––––––––––––––––
It was not the first time Lori had debated ignoring her lord's advice.
Some had been easy to ignore, like his occasional suggestions she indulge in his weird voting fetish, or that she try and remember people's names.
Then there was times like now, where he had given her a usable, serviceable course of action… but she really didn’t want to do it because it was distasteful. On the other hand, the alternative was having something mildly annoy her about the laundry area, but not knowing what. And that would be with her forever every time she saw it, reminding her that she didn't do it right…
So, unfortunately, there was only one thing to do. At least knowing the name would finally be good for something.
As Rian took their bowls back to the kitchen to be washed—to hopefully be washed, and oooh, was that what the area needed, an area for them to wash the dishes?—Lori put away her board by the simple expedient of sinking it into a hollow in the floor under the table, instead of taking back up to her room. If she spent the time to do that, they might be gone and she'd have to look for them, and this was bad enough as it was without her having to waste more time too. She stood up and rounded the table they'd been sitting at, towards the table next to them, the table situated behind Rian. The others at the table saw her coming, of course, and eyed her warily. All but the ones she was there for. They were busy watching Rian's backside. By the time they noticed her, she was sitting across from them in the spot where no one ever sat, because it would have blocked their view, and so people had apparently learned to stop sitting there.
For a moment, there was a twinge of uncertainty and annoyance as she tried to remember how her parents had kept telling her she should talk to strangers, how she should be respectful and polite and—but then she remembered she was Binder now, so she didn't have to follow stupid rules made for lesser people.
"You two," she said curtly, making the three of them who'd been staring at her lord jerk in surprise. She ignored the third. Lori wasn't sure she knew how to do laundry. "Yes, you two," she repeated as their gazes fell on her, their eyes going wide. "Umu and Mikon. You two."
"Y-your Bindership!" Umu managed to get out a little before Mikon did, so their words weren't completely synchronized, resulting in an annoying dissonance. "W-what can we do f-for you"/"W-what do you n-need?" Yes, very annoyingly dissonant.
"The two of you know how to wash laundry, correct?" she said, though she was fairly confident they did, and was rewarded with jerky nods. "Excellent. The two of you, come with me."
Amber gold and bright green eyes somehow became even wider. "Y-your Bindership?" Mikon repeated.
"I didn't do anything wrong!" Umu cried. "She did it! She did it, whatever it was!"
Whatever speech and thought impediment they were experiencing, it wasn't enough for Mikon to miss the fact she was being covered in colors as she managed to direct a glare towards the blonde next to her. "Why you–"
Lori gave both of them a withering look, already regretting this. "I didn't say you did anything wrong, I said you two are to come with me." When it looked like they were going to stay where they were, she snapped out, "Now!"
They both jumped, and then got tangled between the bench and the table causing the bench to slide loudly as they pulled themselves out and got to their feet. People were staring now, but Lori ignored them as she pointed towards the Dungeon's entrance. "Follow me," she said.
Some people—like that really short, really stern teacher she'd once had who could silence a room with sheer sarcastic corrosion even before she resorted to airwisp amplification—could probably have walked on, confidently secure in the certainty that they'd have done what she said with no other prompting. Lori really wanted to be that sort of person… but unfortunately, she wasn't confident these two were smart enough to know they should do that, and so she had to look over her shoulder every so often to make sure that they were, in fact, following her, relying on her sense of the demesne's wisps and the voids people produced to make sure no one ran into her.
It was only when they were all three out of the Dungeon and walking that she finally stopped looking back at them, content to rely on the sense of the void they made to tell her if they tried to run away.
"Y-your Bindership? W-where are we going?" Umu asked.
Lori glanced over her shoulder at the blonde. "We," she said, pointing towards the laundry area, "are going there. I need your…" She almost said opinion, but then remembered they weren't her parents or anyone that mattered. "… assessment of its usability."