SCM2814

Demesne 410 - Returning The Children

As Rian had promised, there was stew ready for them, and some bread as well. Both were no longer warm, but after how hot it had been in River's Fork, Lori had no objections to that.

Umu and Mikon had already finished eating by the time they'd arrived, but the two lingered as Rian and Riz sat down to eat. Taeclas—thankfully, she was wearing her headcloth today—and her wife had left, already finished eating.

"So, a few matters came up when I was talking to Yllian," Rian said. He...

Weekly Digest 129 - (#407 - #409)

Rest And Regret

Lori wasn't sure when she woke up the next day. She had not bothered to go outside and look.

She wouldn't have left her bed, never mind the sweet blackness of unconsciousness, if it were not for the fact her gold water wanted to flow and her inner darkness was very insistent on being released, and while her bath was very usefull, it could not be used for dealing with human waste. So it was down her dungeon it was to use the latrin...

Demesne 409 - Mine Shelter Development Planning

The second fruit orchard was rather small compared to the one that they were currently relying on for fruits. As Lidzuga had said, most of the fruit trees were stunted. A few were clearly saplings that had been grown from seeds and even with Deadspeaking were probably still several weeks away from growing fruit, but a few appeared to be branches he'd cut off from other trees that he'd stuck into the ground.

"I induced root growth on the branches before I cut them off and planted them," ...

Demesne 408 - Probation's End

After the holinight, it was back to work. While the new wood curing and storage shed had been raised, it still lacked doors on either end. It wasn't needed at the moment, since most of the planks cut were going straight to roofing the sawmill, so that as all right.

Unfortunately, Lori had to remove the darkwisps over the fields, as Rian and Taeclas—according to the headcloth she was wearing—pointed out that it would block the light the crops needed. She'd considered keeping the shad...

Demesne 407 - Rest And Regret

Lori wasn't sure when she woke up the next day. She had not bothered to go outside and look.

She wouldn't have left her bed, never mind the sweet blackness of unconsciousness, if it were not for the fact her gold water wanted to flow and her inner darkness was very insistent on being released, and while her bath was very usefull, it could not be used for dealing with human waste. So it was down her dungeon it was to use the latrines there. Thankfully the seats were clean, even ...

Weekly Digest 128 - (#404 - #406)

Resuming Excavation

As much as Lori wanted to only excavate for half the day and spend the rest of the day continuing to expand her demesne, since the harvest was occurring now and they needed the space to store their grains, she didn't have the option of doing that. She would need to excavate as quickly as possible, and without any horotracting, all of the stone for the room would have to be removed.

Technically, they didn't need much storage sp...

Demesne 406 - Post-Shed And Harvest Exhaustion

Building the new wood storage shed took two days, coinciding with the end of most of the work on the harvest. It was so hot that the sheaves of grain left out in the sun dried in a day, ready to be winnowed. The carpenters had made some kind of strange… big comb…thing… to make the winnowing easier, consisting of a wooden beam with teeth-like wooden spikes. The crops were… well, 'combed' through the teeth, and the vigas would be stripped off the sheaves the by motion, where it would fa...

Demesne 405 - Building Another Wood Shed

"You can start moving grain into the new storage room," Lori told Rian at dinner, which was admittedly later than usual. As with the previous harvest, people had worked for as long as there was sun in the sky to work by.

"Just me? Did I do something to annoy you to have to do all that heavy lifting my myself? More so than usual, I mean?" Rian said.

Lori rolled her eyes. "If you don't think you can do it all by yourself, you can ask people for help. I'm sure Umu would be more than ...

Demesne 404 - Resuming Excavation

As much as Lori wanted to only excavate for half the day and spend the rest of the day continuing to expand her demesne, since the harvest was occurring now and they needed the space to store their grains, she didn't have the option of doing that. She would need to excavate as quickly as possible, and without any horotracting, all of the stone for the room would have to be removed.

Technically, they didn't need much storage space to store the harvest, but they'd have another ha...

25/2/24 Update

So, I'm angling to end Volume Three soon. Now, by 'soon' I don't mean in the next two weeks, but more like... on this half of the year? I've stopped trying to forecast how long it'll take me to finish any part of my stories anymore. However, it's unlikely to happen in March, so April at the soonest. Maybe. 

I'm telling you all this because once i finish Volume 3, I thought i'd take a little break. I've been writing Demesne 3 times a week since 2021, which... well, thank you all for...

Weekly Digest 127 - (#401 - #403)

Dedicated Expansion

“Ugh, I’ve forgotten how painful using pens could be,” Rian sighed at dinner, his right hand opening and closing as if he was trying to loosen up muscles.

Lori and—she checked the rocks in her pouch, pulling out the right one on the second try—Taeclas both winced, their own hands clenching and sympathy. “I don’t miss that part of school,” the Deadspeaker muttered.

“At least you could heal,” Lori muttered back....

Demesne 403 - Prototype And Storage

Lori stayed up a bit later that night that she usually did, testing the mechanism as she said she would. She connected the wire from the mechanism to the wisplight she'd used for the previous darkwisp alloy testing and wrapped another wire around the copper rod, the other end of which she held down onto one of the flattened copper samples to use as an impromptu bead receptacle.

When she carefully touched the flattened copper sample—from the stamped letter, it was the firewisp alloy—...

Demesne Patron EX SS 33 – Good Morning

In the militia, Riz had learned to be aware of the smallest disturbance while she slept, while also not being so light a sleeper that she woke up for every little thing. If she'd woken up every time someone had gotten up to use the latrines, woke up crying from a nightmare of staring down a beast's teeth and nearly dying, or her bunkmates sneaking into each other's beds, she'd never have gotten any sleep.

When she'd started sleeping with Rian—and Mikon and Umu as well, since they were...

Demesne 402 - The Prototype Sliding Switch

“With another week of similar growth, the surface area of the demesne will increase by almost half of it original size,” Rian practically cheered after he did some calculations on his slate, muttering to himself the whole time. “At this rate, we might even be the size of Covehold Demesne in a year or two!”

“Unlikely,” Lori said flatly. “It’s clear the summer heat is some kind of factor, so growth will be slowed over winter. And your estimate is assuming that I do nothing...

Demesne 401 - Dedicated Expansion

“Ugh, I’ve forgotten how painful using pens could be,” Rian sighed at dinner, his right hand opening and closing as if he was trying to loosen up muscles.

Lori and—she checked the rocks in her pouch, pulling out the right one on the second try—Taeclas both winced, their own hands clenching and sympathy. “I don’t miss that part of school,” the Deadspeaker muttered.

“At least you could heal,” Lori muttered back.

“Only afterwards,” Taeclas countered.

Weekly Digest 126 - (#398 - #400)

A Fourth Alloy

They were able to quickly ascertain that the new alloy had the same properties of copper. It bent like unalloyed copper did, it was easily shaped by simply hammering it, and it wasn't any harder or more elastic than copper was normally.

It was when they heated the alloy sample again—both to undo the work-hardening from the hammering and to confirm what Lori had perceived earlier—that it showed an unusual property. While copper was known...

Demesne 400 - Sliders And Dials

Once the crucible was ready, Lori went out to get some lightningwisps. The quartz in her staff had long since run out—she should probably do something about that before the next time she had to leave her demesne—so she walked to the binding that kept bugs out of her Dungeon. It was made of lightningwisps, and left little sparks in the air as a result. Lori collected those lightningwisps and formed them into a binding. Once she felt she had enough wisps, she carried the binding back to the...

2024 Demesne Anniversary Special: Good Night

It was well after dinner and even the line of hopefuls at the Um had long dispersed, deciding they’d rather have sleep than sex. Despite the strangeness—and once you know why it was called that, silliness—of the name, people actually had taken to calling it that. Perhaps it was just to humor the Great Binder, or perhaps the name was just silly enough to be amusing to say. At least it was better than calling it a bellhouse or a belfry. The Um wasn’t that sort of place at all, and as a ...

Demesne 399 - Alloys Of Light And Dark

Iridescence in the crucible. As with the airwisps, the lightwisps seemed to occupy the same space as the firewisps of the molten metal. Also like the airwisps, once the slag was scooped out the copper was poured into the mold and allowed to slowly cool in the air, the lightwisps disappeared with the earthwisps.

Unlike the previous alloys however, the altered physical properties of the alloy were immediately evident under the soot covering the metal. Because of the altered properties, th...

Demesne 398 - A Fourth Alloy

They were able to quickly ascertain that the new alloy had the same properties of copper. It bent like unalloyed copper did, it was easily shaped by simply hammering it, and it wasn't any harder or more elastic than copper was normally.

It was when they heated the alloy sample again—both to undo the work-hardening from the hammering and to confirm what Lori had perceived earlier—that it showed an unusual property. While copper was known for getting hot easily and conducting that hea...

Weekly Digest 125 - (#395 - #397)

Resuming Expansion

At the end of the week, Rian had a gathered a small group of men who decided that working the whole day in a shaded mine was preferable to working until it was too hot to stay outside. The morning that they set out to River's Fork, there was another crowd at the docks, which caused the usual delay, though to Lori's surprise the delay seemed shorter than usual. While there was hugging, there didn't seem to be as much crying?

Were her idi...

Demesne 397 - A Third Alloy

The next morning, Rian and the three women seemed to be back on their usual terms. at least, Umu was back to leaning against him, and Riz was sitting next to him once more.

"I take it you've resolved your issues?" Lori said blandly.

Rian glanced sideways at the women on either side of them. "We're in the process of resolving issues."

Lori stared at the wide smile that had appeared on Mikon's face. "I see. Well, this is a 'dealing with people matter', so—"

"—yes, ye...