Not too far from the pier, there was a new, second beachside gate, adjacent to the lumber yard on the town’s interior. A large amount of planks was being processed in the lumber yard and carried out to the new work area, where they were being worked on by a number of the sailors. As Kaldalis approached, he saw they were, in groups, exposing the planks to steam and carefully bending them once the heat and moisture had made them pliable. In their new bent positions they were being dried and cooled on racks. He vaguely recognized this process as a part of shipbuilding.

Most of the workers engaged in this process were of the larger races. Talsar and Bhogad were just built taller and with longer arms than the rest, making it much easier for just one of them to carefully control the bend of the planks as they steamed. But they weren’t the only ones who were up to the task. A few taller Vathon were present, as well as just a few female Finnian, though both of those seemed to struggle taking to the task alone, often coming up short by just a few inches in their arm span.

The person he was looking for was, naturally, one of this last group. Heluna’s grey skin was so drenched in sweat that she shimmered in the sun as if actually made of gunmetal. The abnormally chatty Finnian had a particularly long plank fixed in a vice, and it was threatening to wiggle out of place as she held it from the other end, too far out of reach to correct the vice. Her face was twisted in concentration, lips peeled back and teeth gritted as she tried to keep the board from slipping its bonds by pure force of will.

Before he knew what he was doing, his hands were closing around the far end of the board, holding it in place as he started tightening the vice to recover its grip on the now-pliable steamed wood.

“Holy shit,” Heluna said, letting out a puff of a sigh as she un-clenched her jaw. “Thank you.” She looked up at him for just a moment with a friendly grin before she returned her attention to the now-secure board, bending it just enough to match the curve of a boat’s hull.

“So how do you do this?” Kaldalis asked. “Is it just-”

“Kal,” Heluna said, “you’re my friend and I like talking to you, but can I just have like… One minute? This is kind of precise and we don’t exactly have guides out here.”

“Sorry.”

Despite the tightened vice, the board still started to slip - the pliability of the wood was giving it the chance to slip free, and so he locked his hands over the sides of the vice, holding the board in place until Heluna was satisfied with it.

“Okay, undo the vice, and we move it carefully to the rack. Can you do that?”

“I’ll follow your lead,” he said, spinning the vice to free that end of the board.

The pair of them working together were able to carry the board to the rack without it returning to its original shape - or taking on any new bends - and Heluna gave him a friendly punch to the shoulder.

“My hero,” she said with a laugh. “I bit off more than I could fuckin’ chew with that one, that’s for damn sure.”

“Want to grab another big one?” Kaldalis asked. “I’ll help.”

“I could… but then I’d have to fucking concentrate on it. It’s been a boring fucking day and I need a distraction or I’m going to fall asleep out here.”

“Alright, alright. But I gotta help somehow or I’m going to feel like a dork just standing there staring at you while everyone else is working.”

Heluna grabbed another plank that was of a middling length and brought it back to her workstation, setting it up over the steam to wait for it to soften.

“So I guess you folks are putting the Persimmon back together?” Kaldalis asked. “Is that even possible out here without a proper… What’sitcalled. Dock… Thingy… Place?”

“Dry dock?” Heluna asked with a laugh. “It’s possible to do without, but it’s gonna be a pain in all our asses.”

“Dare I ask how?”

“Well...” Heluna tested the board, noting that it was still extremely stiff and resistant. “Some fucker is doing design work on a frame to set up on the beach. The current plan is to get all the planks ready, build the boat in sections, and then set up the frame just after high tide, and then start assembling the hull and fucking hope that we can get her watertight before the next high tide. And then we can use runners on the frame to take her down past the Arma tide line and do the rest of the work while she’s moored.” She shook her head. “It sounds like a fucking dream that it’ll go down that way, but if the captain believes it’ll work there’s not one asshole on the island who can change her mind.”

“You’re right,” Kaldalis said, “that does sound pretty fucking ridiculous.”

“This is why I like you,” Heluna said with a toothy grin. “You get it.” She tested the board again, and while it had a bit more give, it wasn’t enough to start yet. “So what the fuck brings you down here?”

“I just saw you were struggling,” Kaldalis lied. “It looked like you needed the hand.”

“Don’t fucking do that again,” Heluna said with a laugh. “You’re the fucking king of needing to talk about something and not talking about it. If you want to play that game again, go the fuck ahead - like I said, boring-ass day - but don’t try and bullshit me.”

Kaldalis grimaced.

The problem with going back to the same shoulder to lean on over and over meant that she had learned really quickly how to read him like a book.

“Hold that end for me?” she asked as she took a hold of the board and found that it would move now, and she started to carefully bend it, one hand on the end, and the other on the middle of the plank to control the angle of its bow.

For his part, all Kaldalis had to do was hold onto the sides poking out of the vice to make sure it stayed in place. It seemed silly to do a job that could be accomplished with three feet of rope, but he was glad to help a friend. Especially when that help mostly involved just standing here while she did all the actual work instead of running around all of creation doing the heavy lifting for them.

With a sigh, he realized he wasn’t going to get out of this one. Last time, he’d managed to dance around the issue that was really bothering him, but if he did that again, Heluna might never actually trust him. Besides, this was an issue of time management. It’s not like it was something horribly traumatic that was really bothering him this time.

Not to mention that Heluna wasn’t a real person. She was just an NPC. A surprisingly intricate and convincing part of the immersive computer program being projected to his senses. He could bitch to her about his friends without worrying. Historically, no matter what he told her, she would provide a sympathetic viewpoint at best, and just laugh it off at worst.

“People need my help,” he said at last, breaking the silence as Heluna concentrated on bending the plank.

“No shit, you colossal fucking genius,” Heluna said calmly, focusing on the angle of the plank. “And you help people. It’s not just what you do, it’s what you’re literally fucking doing literally right fucking now.”

“I mean,” Kaldalis started to protest, but she wasn’t wrong. “Yeah, okay, you got me. I have old friends who just got off the boat and need help getting established here so they can catch up to me. But Balrim and Myrin still need my assistance with bigger things than farming levels when the two of them aren’t enough for it. And on top of that, there’s all the other people who need my help in smaller ways, like Garyung putting me on the spot for his big master plan, or Sivima needing help getting materials for some new upgrade.”

“Fuck,” Heluna said, though her focus was still on the plank she was manipulating. “That sounds like a lot.”

“But I think I’ve made a horrible mistake. I’ve got too many people who need my time and now I’m spread just a little too thin. Everyone depends on me and they seem to want to take it as a personal offense when I make someone else a priority. Or make fun of me for it.”

“Sounds like they’re the assholes here, not you.”

“Thank you,” Kaldalis said with a laugh. “I gathered. But that doesn’t change that I feel like shit when they need me and I’m committed elsewhere.”

“Listen to you,” Heluna said, the corner of her lip quirking up into a smirk. “You know people are being huge assholes about you being a mortal fucking man, and you still feel shitty when you can’t give them the help they want? I’m not convinced you’re a real person.”

She had finished bending the plank to its desired position, and so they took it back to the rack to grab another, and then got to work on it as well.

“So what do I do?” Kaldalis asked. “You twisted my arm until you got it out of me, so you gotta have some advice.”

“You need to set some fucking boundaries, dumbass,” Heluna said, pushing him away by the arm while she waited for the steam to soften the board. “I can’t imagine telling your stupid idealistic ass to stop helping people. But you need to make them understand that you’ve got your own fucking life going on.”

“Yeah, but isn’t that a dick move?”

“Any more of a dick move than making you feel like the asshole for not being a dutiful husband to someone you’re not even married to?”

Kaldalis didn’t really have a response for that. He wasn’t positive how to go about setting boundaries at this point, but Heluna was right. It was understandable.

He needed to take steps to ensure that his friends understood that he was a person, not a machine.

“Okay, fine. You win. You’re smarter than me.”

“Fucking right,” Heluna said, shooting him a grin as she finished with the plank. “I wish more people would realize that.”

They finished a few more planks before the sun started to get low in the sky. With that matter settled, their conversation turned back to the rebuilding of the ship, and the absurdity of the planned timeline. Eventually, rather than grab a fresh plank, she gave a stretch and announced that her quota was met.

“I appreciate the help, by the way,” she said, giving him a friendly smile even as she nudged him with her shoulder. “No way I’d be fucking done before sunset without you.”

“It’s no problem. Really. You helped me out, too. I won’t forget it.”

Heluna hesitated for a moment, peering at his face like she wanted to ask something else.

His first instinct was to fear it was in pursuit of the thing he’d refused to talk about just yesterday, now that she’d forced him to the core of this problem so quickly. But her eyes weren’t filled with the concern that he associated with her reaction during that conversation.

He didn’t have a good enough bead on her mannerisms to put together what she was going to say.

“I would love to chat more,” Kaldalis said, breaking the silence just as it started to become awkward, “but, uh, I’m sure you understand, I have to run.”

“Oh!” Heluna blinked up at the sky as if she’d just noticed the time. “Yeah, fuck, of course. You just finished bitching at me that you’re always fucking busy. It’d be a dick move on my part to demand more of your help when you just gave me a fucking hour and a half of your time.”

They parted with a friendly wave. Kaldalis went to seek dinner, hoping to find Balrim and Myrin to be able to cement the boundaries Heluna had advised.