Morning sunlight streamed into my room, warm and golden. The kind of light that, if you were in a movie, would be accompanied by inspirational music.
Perfect weather to bask in the glory of my own genius.
"Ah," I muttered as I stretched, "another day in the life of Damien Cross, savior of farmlands, bringer of irrigation, patron saint of canals."
Yes, I'd mentally awarded myself an honorary engineering degree. Don't judge me.
The Great Canal Project was going to change everything. Once the water flowed, crops would grow, money would come in, and my infamously ruined estate would transform into something out of a tourist brochure.
I could already picture it: lush green fields, peasants singing happily as they worked, maybe a statue of me somewhere—nothing too big. Just life-size. Or twice life-size.
Of course, that dream lasted exactly three minutes.
"Lord Damien!" I turned to see Roger, my Head of Canal Excavation Operations. Which sounds impressive until you realize he's basically the only guy who knows how to swing a shovel without hitting himself. His expression was somewhere between panic and constipation.
"We've… encountered a small issue."
Small issue? Sure. And the Titanic had a "small leak."
We walked down to the canal site, and my glorious vision shattered like fine porcelain under a hammer.
The canal, my precious canal, looked like it had been attacked by a herd of drunk moles.
One section had collapsed entirely, forming a pit where three very confused sheep were standing knee-deep in mud. Another section wasn't so much "a canal" as "a gentle suggestion of a ditch."
And then there was the swamp. Oh, the swamp.
When I'd drawn up my plan, I had clearly marked "Avoid swamp." Somehow, the canal had decided, "Nah, let's merge with the swamp instead."
The result? A lovely brown sludge river now oozing its way into nearby farmland.
"Don't worry, my lord," said Old Bernard, my estate steward and part-time chaos generator. "I've already devised a solution."
He gestured proudly to… a dam made entirely of broken chairs, barrels, and what looked like my missing dining table.
"You built a dam… out of my furniture?"
"It was that or the chapel benches, my lord. And you said never to touch the chapel."
I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Bernard, wood rots in water."
"Yes, but it looks very official."
Meanwhile, Sally—the cook—was yelling at two laborers who had used her largest soup pot to bail water out of the canal. The pot was now dented and full of swamp leeches.
I had to fix this before my entire estate turned into a historical reenactment of Atlantis.
"Alright," I said, putting on my best "confident leader" face. "We're going to redirect the water with… uh… a temporary bypass channel."
Roger blinked. "A what now?"
"A ditch. We dig another ditch. Angled. So the water flows away from the swamp and into that—" I pointed vaguely toward a low field.
"That's Old Merton's grazing pasture," Bernard said.
"Perfect. His cows look thirsty."
It was pure nonsense. But with enough hand-waving and shouting, people started moving dirt. And—miraculously—it worked. The water stopped flooding the fields and started flowing somewhere vaguely useful.
Everyone stared at me like I'd just invented fire.
"My lord," Bernard whispered, "you truly are a visionary."
Yes. A visionary who had accidentally redirected the canal in the wrong direction but somehow impressed everyone anyway.
As I was basking in my accidental success, Sally wandered over. "Oh, by the way, my lord. Word is, Baron Halwick's coming to visit."
"Halwick? That pompous horse-faced windbag?"
"The same. He says he's 'curious' about the progress on your land."
Translation: He's coming to laugh at my ruins and tell everyone about it.
I grinned. "Then we'll give him something worth seeing."
Bernard leaned closer. "My lord… do you mean—"
"Yes. We're going to make this place look like it's thriving, even if we have to fake half of it."
In my head, triumphant music swelled. In reality, a sheep bleated in the background while still standing in the mud pit.
But I didn't care. The Battle of Appearances had begun.