In the hours spent languidly kicking around the shallows looking for dinner, there was plenty of time to think.

If I tried to get out of here by selling fish to Frankie I’d keep losing money each time I had to repair the speargun. I’m 100% sure he’s gouging me on prices too. It would be better to try and get money from the visiting sailors. They would never buy raw shellfish from me, but if I could play some music while they’re drinking Frankie's noxious grog... just a few drunks in a tipping mood would be as good as an entire day spent fishing.

When I got back on dry land I tried my best to mess around with the violin and experiment while limiting myself to a single string.

---

Skill Gained: Fiddler

Increased dexterity when playing music

Increased effect of music

---

Nice! Everyone knew the effect rock and roll had on groupies. This might get dangerous if I level it up too much. I giggled to myself imagining all kinds of unlikely scenarios.

That night I burst into the bar once again. My floral shirt was dirty and muted but it had become locally famous by this point and my entrance was met with a cheer.

“What did the great hero slay today?” Taunted one

“I hear he’s hunting mermaids these days.” Chimed in another

Before they could really get going I jumped in, adopting the expected bravado.

“Nay! I have battled with a foe much more vicious than mermaids today. I have done combat with boredom itself! I have hunted for entertainment! Listen to my conquest!”

The crowd watched, bemused as I put the fiddle to my chin and made sure my fingers were placed correctly. There was no need to find a stage, the room was small enough that it didn’t matter where I played from.

I took a moment to break out into a sweat at all the attention, then I tore into a one-string violin rendition of the super mario theme. I had to concentrate on the neck of the violin while playing and a few of the notes still screeched unpleasantly but when I looked up, there was a mixed reaction in the crowd. Some people were mildly interested, others mildly confused. In for a penny, in for a pound.

I tried the other song I was able to figure out. The song of storms from zelda. The upbeat tune got some heads nodding the first time around. It was a short song but it was composed to repeat endlessly and by the time I finished the second round the sailors were tapping their feet. By the fifth, I was really getting into the music as the habitually bored sailors danced and toasted around me.

I almost forgot why I started playing when one of the sailors pegged me in the forehead with a copper coin.

“Hey.” I shouted and stopped playing to rub my forehead. The crowd didn’t like that. They turned on me, taking the recent example to pelt me with coins. It wasn’t long until stew was flying as well and Frankie put a stop to the mayhem. No one wasted food at Frankie’s place.

“Oy! Blaggard! If you throw my stew, I, throw, you.”

The one time I had seen a sailor take offense to the threat, Frankie took the man’s face in one hand before casually throwing him out the largest window and into the harbor beyond. It looked like he did it with about the same effort it would take me to throw some dirty underwear into the laundry machine.

After that, I collected nine copper coins off the ground around me and hurried over to the bar where I exchanged a lobster for a bowl of stew.

“Never expected you to make anything besides noise with that thing. You’re not the best I’ve ever heard, not by a long shot but you’re the best performer in town. It’s a good thing I know the owner of a popular restaurant who would let you play in his establishment, for a small fee.”

I sighed and bowed to the inevitable

“Just the cost of doing business,” I said while handing over a few coppers. I was hoping that my take would increase over time. While 30% of the haul was generous now, setting a low fee upfront might pay off later.

A nearly pleasant month passed like this. I figured out a half a dozen half-remembered songs from video-games, a couple of catchy commercial jingles, and a Christmas song or two. The simple sorts of songs that get stuck in your head forever. I finally earned enough money to buy passage to the nearest town with an adventurers guild. I was even able to haggle the captain down a whole silver piece on the condition that I provide nightly entertainment during the trip. My grand life of adventure was about to begin! Despite all the trouble Outset Island gave me, I found myself looking back on the time spent there fondly.

Frankie gave me the hat in his lost and found as a parting gift. It was a small gesture but it seemed huge coming from the man who had ripped me off for a month and a half straight.

---

Foppish cap

+1 Charisma

---

The felt triangle with a flamboyant but chewed-looking feather sticking out of its peak wasn’t a great match for my current wardrobe but the stat boost would definitely be helpful in a new town. I could always pawn it off when I found something better too.

Frankie wasn’t much for goodbyes. Besides the hat, he gave me a grunt and a pat on the back which sent me stumbling.

“You’re the strangest person I know, but if you ever get tired of chasing dragons, feel free to come back and visit. I’ll trade my stew for your adventure stories. Make sure not to get yourself killed before then.”

I thanked Frankie. Despite everything he had put me through, he was also the only person on the island who would give me the time of day when I arrived. If it wasn’t for him, I’d probably have been left with no option but to sit on the beach and choke down raw shellfish.

Playing my literally otherworldly music night after night even gave me a reputation with the crew of the sea-cow. A pudgy little merchant ship that came through once every week and a half. I was leaving with them and their cargo of molasses, coffee, and tobacco to the free city of Navarone that very night.

All of my possessions were stored safely away in my inventory. It didn’t amount to much. A thin sack of coins, a speargun that had been repaired so many times its maximum durability was reduced to 4, and my violin with it’s splintered body and rusted strings.

I didn’t have to wait by the docks for long. Duncan led a sampling of his crew down the street with a barrel of fresh water and a crate of stale biscuits. I offered a jolly wave and jogged up to the men to help them with the barrel. I’m sure I wasn’t much help but I’ve found the eager puppy approach got much better responses than the entitled customer routine.

When the provisions were loaded, the anchor raised and the island was receding into the distance; I was pulled from my ‘out of the way’ position at the stern of the ship into the hold where I continued retelling the events of the “Lord of the Rings” from where I left off last time they visited Frankie's tavern. I couldn’t remember all of the finer details but I had them salivating over the thought of the “tomatoes, sausage, some nice crispy bacon,” which Samwise saved for Mr. Frodo on Weathertop.

I was never great at remembering people’s names but sit me down in front of a movie and I could recall entire scenes verbatim even years later. I used that talent to its fullest by shamelessly plagiarizing all the most popular books and movies from my world. The crew had never heard any of these stories before for obvious reasons and they were delighted by my supposed brilliance.

The next day, I overheard a deckhand asking what he should do with the fore-sail. The officer replied with: “Put it out you fool! Put it out!” I felt unreasonably smug about that for the rest of the morning. Who knew cultural exchanges could be so satisfying?

As exciting as it was to finally set out on my adventure, excitement goes stale on a sailing ship even faster than bread. After a day of rolling back and forth, intermittently playing my violin and watching the endless expanse of water slide by the hull I eventually asked a few sailors to show me the ropes.

Jerry was all too happy to have an extra hand hauling on the lines and wrestling with the canvas. The Sea-Cow had one twenty-foot tall mast with the classic square sheet to ride swiftly downwind. Unlike what I expected, the sails were rarely set perpendicular to the rest of the ship. They were canted to the side most of the time as we sailed at an angle to the wind. A smaller triangular fore-sail could be deployed on a line running from the top of the mast to the bow. It helped the ship in the tedious beating back and forth that was necessary to move the ship upwind.

Both sails were fully unfurled now and I was hauling on a rope with another three sailors. Our combined efforts slowly turned the mainsail. The wind had shifted and we needed to adjust the sail to face it directly. It turned out that the wind was constantly shifting back and forth. It might blow harder or softer or in a completely different direction just thirty feet away.

Jerry pointed out the rare glassy patches of ocean that indicated dead zones where there was no wind at all. I began to see the water not as an endless expanse, but as an invisible maze made from swirling currents of wind. A shadowy patch of ripples swept towards us and Duncan turned the ship off course briefly to take full advantage of the incoming gust.

“Sailing is all about seizing the advantage.” He liked telling his crew “You must always be prepared to pounce on an opportunity. If you can get into port just a day earlier than your competitors, you can offload your merchandise while it’s still in high demand. Being slow doesn’t just mean less round trips, it means less profit per trip as well.”

Duncan even went so far as to bribe his crew. If they could make it to port faster than expected, they would all get an extra fistful of copper to throw at whoever made the best grog at the next stop.

I found myself getting caught up in the crew’s pace. I joined in on the imaginative but filthy work songs that helped them keep pace as a single unit. Before long, I was running back and forth across the deck shouting clipped sailor jargon in response to orders.

After all the hard work, the rock-solid biscuits just didn’t satisfy my hunger. They were so hard that I had to soften them a tin of water just so I wouldn’t lose my teeth. It gave me a new appreciation for Frankie’s stew.

I took the third day to rest. I told them that I had to practice with my violin so I wouldn’t get rusty but I really just wanted to give my blistered fingers a chance to recover. Instead of subjecting the crew to the meandering experiments required to figure out a new song, I just cycled through the crowd favorites.

When I got around to ‘Song of Storms’ a cheer went up. It was so short and I had played it so many times by this point that I didn’t have to watch the violin. I watched the sailors instead. That was why I noticed when they began to speed up.

My music was energizing them as well as entertaining them! After a dozen or so repetitions, even the wind began to respond to the song. It wasn’t very noticeable at first but after the thirtieth repetition everyone had figured out what was going on.

The rigging groaned as the boat was pushed faster and faster. After fifty repetitions, I got light-headed and started missing notes. The wind faded back to its normal bluster and I was suddenly Duncan’s favorite person.

Duncan was so enamored with my newly discovered ability that he didn’t mind when I lurked over his shoulder while he used his sextant that night or any of the following nights. He even pointed out a few important stars and constellations, explaining the rudiments of nighttime navigation.