Nasir Al-Aasifa was the designer of the channels cut into the rock above the city and the sturdy mills that grind its grain and feed the people. He tended the mills all his life, personally rebuilding and improving the damaged sets after the storms that brought The Thousand-Year Flood also reduced a quarter of the city's capacity to matchsticks. Engineers and other crafters often go up and sit with the mills to meditate on difficult problems of design, and almost as often come down with their needs met. Some say an old man may be glimpsed sitting beside the thoughtful up there, others that it is the rhythm of the mills themselves that soothes the brain and frees up ideas.