The roar started at the rope line and rolled the whole length of the valley.
"Note the color!" Gideon Lorien lectured the front row, which contained a queen. "Verdanal chased this seven thousand years ago and got mud! My daughter got soil you could grow a ship's mast in! Of course, she was already brilliant at six, there was the time she transmuted my-"
"Dad!"
"Dear," Naomi smiled and planted an elbow in her husband's side.
"Ah. Got carried away," Gideon wheezed through gritted teeth.
Down on the new loam, Kaelira had the plow teams lined up, and there was no shy elf anywhere in her.
"First team, walk it in," the Runeweaver Titan called down the row, sleeves rolled in the cold.
The enchanted plow parted half-frozen earth like a keel through still water, and the furrow it left glowed faintly along its edges before the glow sank in and faded.
"No oxen," a farmwife at the rope said, to nobody, to everybody. "It's cutting frozen ground and there's no oxen."
