“I go by Adam nowadays, Alexander.” Adam responded to the somewhat tense greeting the stranger provided. Gladys and Jim were both staying quiet, clearly not sure as to what exactly was happening between these two men.

“You sure? Cause from where I’m standing it looks like you’re sitting in a boat right now.”

“Well I wasn’t about to walk to get here, now was I?” The joke seems to break the tension, even if Alexander doesn’t laugh, and after another pause Adam continued in a more relaxed tone. “On a technical level, it doesn’t have sails, and I wasn’t the one moving us about. I was just a passenger, and only then because it was needed.”

“Very well.” Alexander accepts the explanation with aplomb. “I’m not the one who’ll be judging you, after all, so I suppose I can have a little faith in you yet. I guess you’re looking for a place to stay for a few days, again?”

“More or less the size of it. Have a few more things with me this time, so it shouldn’t take long for me to get me feet under me once more.” Adam confirms, even as he quickly makes his way to his feet, leaving the boat rocking slightly. A small clap is the sound of the two men clasping hands, and a moment later I can feel as Adam steps into the building with Alexander’s help.

“Come in and be welcome!” Alexander intones, his voice taking on a more ritual intonement. “For so long as you do no harm and dream no ill, take shelter here from the trials of the world.”

Gladys is the next to get to her feet. Lacking her husband's experience with boats she takes her time, and more than once the boat quivered as she tries to adjust her balance, but soon she was upright enough to lightly take Alexander’s hand and enter the building as well.

“Now how did a lovely lady like yourself end up with a rascal like Adam, I wonder? Friar Alexander, at your service. And that must be your son there. He takes after you in looks, ma’am, even if he does have his father’s eyes.”

“Thank you.” Gladys politely responded to the more conventional introduction she had received.

“ I’m Gladys, formerly of Treefall. And even with his mysterious and checkered past, Adam here managed to show me a level of maturity I found lacking in the other boys at the time. It was attractive enough that I decided I wanted to keep him around, and one thing led to another. One ‘another’ is our son, James, although he usually goes by Jim. He’s our pride and joy.”

“Don’t get out of the boat just yet, son.” Alexander cautioned Jim, who had started to get up himself. “I’m afraid that I don’t have any place to store your little craft there, so why don’t you hand the cargo up to us, and once your rowboat is empty you can take it west of here, to a relatively quiet pier.

Adam corrects the friar. “He can do the unloading, but I’ll see about getting Slappy here squared away. Jim hasn’t spent all that much time in places like Dirint, while I could probably find my way back here from anywhere in the city.

“Your boat, your son, your call.” Alexander said. “It’s not just your oath, however, and while you’ve never been one to do what anyone else has told you to do, I figured you should keep that firmly in your mind for the moment.

“Trust me, it’s never far from my thoughts.” Adam said quietly, and the people got to work, rapidly clearing my interior of all the bags and boxes of supplies that they had brought along. Once everything had been handed up to his parents, Jim quickly clambered up and out, transitioning into the building without bothering to fully stand up first.

Adam’s return a moment later came as a bit of a shock, as the man didn't lower himself down so much as he simply landed solidly on one bench in a seated position. Even with his hands gripping my oars, Adam didn’t row me himself, preferring to provide simple instructions as we travelled towards the pier that Alexander had recommended.

I waited till we arrived and couldn't hear anyone before I started with my questions. Intentionally or not, Alexander had given me a good number of pieces to the puzzle that was Adam from Treefall, but I wasn’t willing to bring any of that up at the moment. Not only did I want to take some time to process things first, but I also wasn’t about to interrogate the person who had saved me from that sea monster.

It took a bit to convince Adam that I wasn’t interested in an explanation or an excuse, but instead was looking for a business partner. In the end I had had to resort to tapping multiple times to count out each letter for a couple of words, before Adam had caught on. And then it had taken a couple minutes of yes/no questions to get the details figured out.

“So you want me to claim to own you, and handle the money that people would pay to rent out a self-rowing boat.” Adam paused as he thought it over. “It’s not a bad idea, I just won’t be in a position to help you with it. I still won’t tell you what exactly my oath is, but you deserve to know that it limits me from working on or with the water. It’s possible that renting you out might count as an exception, but I’ve already pushed my limits in that regard more than I wanted to.

It's disappointing, but at least I can appreciate Adam’s honesty. To go from being a criminal on the ocean to making some sort of deal with the church to running a lumber mill was quite the series of events, and I knew that Adam had more secrets than just those few that I could guess at. Those secrets are what made me let the conversation come to an unsatisfying conclusion, instead of dragging it out or demanding that Adam do something to help me. Despite our adventure together, I still didn’t really know the man, and while I could tell that he was working towards being an honorable person, that didn’t tell me anything of how he would react if I tried to back him into a corner. Socially, that is. If I tried to physically pressure him I knew I would happen to be on the receiving end of one of his swings and that would be the end of me. So instead, I simply waited until Adam had left to make his way back to the friary, and then left myself.

Despite the vast number of ships in and around Dirint none of them bothered to stupor chase me, and in just a few minutes I had left the city and all of its inhabitants behind, at least for now. I wanted to go back and check up on Jim and Adam and Gladys at some point, probably when they weren’t busy rebuilding their life from scratch. I was curious to see what Jim decided to do with his own class and however much experience he got for leaving his whole life behind, but it could wait. For now, I wanted to simply focus on myself, and the choices in front of me.

Purchasing those Skills earlier meant that I didn’t quite have enough experience to level up right away, but I didn’t really mind the wait. I was in a pretty good spot at the moment, and knowing I had that special skill almost at hand helped a lot with giving me the confidence I needed to take risks, knowing that I could give myself a solution to any problem I might encounter. Of course, it was only one skill, so I still had to be careful not to make too much trouble for myself, but hopefully it would keep me safe once I went out searching for someone else I could work with. In the meantime, I had all that experience just sitting around doing nothing, and I had a whole slew of interactions I wanted to test.

I had managed to generate a tingly feeling last night when I tried to apply experience to my durability attribute, and I quickly confirmed that I got that same sensation and that it wasn't a once off occurrence. With confirmation that I wasn’t just imagining things, I began to test it as much as possible.

Experience was the only thing my Boat screen responded to, and I got the same sensation no matter what section I tried to spend it on. It didn't matter if it was my enchantments, my durability, or even my hull, all of them gave off that faint sensation of static. Trying to twist any of my Skills into making a similar connection was a failure, although I didn't know if it failed because I couldn’t get the skills adjusted properly, or if it failed because my boat screen simply didn’t or couldn’t respond to the Skills.

Trying to make things work the other way was simply a non-starter. As far as I could tell, my boat screen was a simple summary window, and nothing I poked or prodded at responded to my mental probing. My subconscious felt like there was something there that I was missing though, and I took a moment to think things over.

For most people, the System screen was likely the only screen they had access to. Everything they used with it was right there, from tracking their experience to spending it on skills and levels. I had a second screen, one that described my status as a boat. It listed my name, my parts, my enchantments and everything that made up what I was. The only thing was, no one seemed to be aware of it.

It was easy to lump the two screens together as the same video game nonsense, but while everyone around me chatted about their levels and their skills, and while the System was woven into the normal fabric of their lives, none of the Sailors in Shellpin, Clentim or Dirint had mentioned their vessels having a screen. Lirillin had never interacted with it, or tried to see what it said. Even that one shipbuilder I had briefly run into had seemed to treat making a boat as an entirely mundane process. They knew about and adjusted for their own attributes, but not for their creations.

Adam had been the one to give me the piece of the puzzle that I was missing. The System wasn’t some universal constant. It was something unique to an individual, who had somehow managed to share it with other people, and it wasn’t the only unique gift out there. I might be stuck here in this unwieldy form, but I had a special gift, and it was time to start figuring out how to use it to keep me safe.