"Hi, Mom!" I say as I enter the house, Finn hesitantly following behind.

Mom's sitting at the table, stitching some leather. It looks like she's making a bit of chest protection. She's always trying to convince me to wear a breastplate, even if just a leather one. They're a little uncomfortable, especially when fighting in the style she and Dad passed on to me.

"Hello, Sky," she greets me, her gaze quickly turning to Finn. "Who is this?"

"His name's Finn!" I make introductions. "I'm showing him around a bit, he and his master are moving to town for awhile. Finn, this is my Mom, Brooke Kadrix! She's the best leather-worker in town! She made all of the stuff I'm wearing!"

My standard outfit consists of baggy, purple shorts made of a tough material, with extra pockets on the legs for carrying more stuff and a leather belt to help keep them up and to carry a few extra pouches, with my sword and knives sheathed onto that. I also wear a purple shirt without sleeves, over top of which I wear a leather vest. I also wear a pair of leather bracers on my forearms and my boots are leather.

What else would boots be made of? Well, I guess metal, but almost no one wears metal boots. Everyone wears leather boots and shoes.

"Just the leather bits," Mom chuckles. "And I did have some help with those boots, the hide you brought for those was pretty tough."

"All the better to protect my feet with!" I agree. "Sara said to show him some of my favorite hunting and fishing spots, so we're grabbing my fishing pole."

"Be safe," Mom tells me.

"I will!" I promise her. "When are you heading to the market?"

Mom told me she was planning on selling some stuff there today. While she has her own shop here and makes things to-order for residents, there's nothing like making stuff for those who came in for the market. Some of her best leathers are saved just to make quick orders that customers can place today and pick up on the last day of market.

Normally, she's already left by now. The orders from the market make a lot of money because residents and visitors alike place them. Visitors because they like her work, residents because they know she's saved some of her best leathers for now. If the person making the order is a resident, they have to wait until after the market ends so that she can make the items for those leaving before they do.

"Just as soon as I finish this piece," Mom tells me. "It won't be more than ten minutes, then I'll head down. How busy was it when you got there?"

"The floatship had just landed," I tell her. "So everyone's still setting up. You'll probably miss out on a good spot, but you'll get plenty of customers, anyway!"

"Always do," she smiles. "Aren't you going to check out the goods that were brought in? It seems a bit early for you to stop, especially since I'm sure none of the Crystal Merchants are set up yet."

"His master is a Crystal Merchant!" I tell her. "I bet she'll let me look at her stuff after I finish showing Finn my favorite hunting island, and something tells me she's got much better ones than the flashier merchants."

"Oh?"

"Yeah!" I nod. "The others probably don't have any I haven't seen before, but I bet she does! She doesn't even look like a merchant at first glance, so her goods are probably better."

There's always the chance that a merchant who doesn't dress up has worse goods, but since I could sense Sara's Crystals, I know she's got the good ones.

"I really hope I can see something amazing later," I tell Mom. "And I'm sure Sara can give me the current prices for the normal Crystals. I doubt they've changed too much."

I look at Finn, who gives me an uncomfortable shrug. He doesn't want to speak for Sara, I guess. Chances are high she'll let me look at her goods once we return, as a bonus for showing Finn around. Considering she's a Crystal Merchant, it's also unlikely she'll sell more than one or two Crystals today.

We just don't have as many adventurers as other places, and most people won't buy a Crystal just because they can afford one.

"Alright," Mom chuckles. "Have fun, and remember that not everyone is as energetic as you, okay?"

"Will do!"

I grab my fishing pole from where it's stored by the door, then lead Finn out of town. He really doesn't speak much. No matter how much I tried to engage him in conversation on the way to my house, he didn't say a word. As much as I want to get to know him, I don't bother trying on the way to the edge of this island because it's clear he won't bite.

Finn doesn't seem comfortable around people in general, and I think that might be part of why Sara wanted me to take him out of town. That way, he's only around me rather than around a bunch of people.

"Here we are!" I announce once we reach one of the many small docks littering the border of the island. There's a wooden boat tied up to it. "My boat, the Kadrix Boy. Dad named it, not me. I'm going to show you the island with those bunnies first, we can catch some of the good fish off its shore, too."

I get into the boat and set my fishing rod down, then Finn follows me in. He does his best to do so without letting me help him in, and he stumbles, falling forward. His hands thrust out and I catch him by the shoulders, noticing several things.

First, he's wearing a blue tunic. Second, he's wearing black fingerless gloves. Third, there's a bulge in the back of his pants, a movement of something that protrudes out from under the backpack for a moment before disappearing back under. Fourth, the top of his hood lifts up from underneath, as if something on his head pushed up for a moment, then went back down.

That was weird. Did I imagine the third and fourth things? They were only there for a moment, but I'm sure I saw them. Since they're gone and whatever it is, Finn seems to want to hide, I'm not going to bring it up. I am, however, going to file it away for future reference.

Finn jerks out of my grip, and in the brief moment I see his cheeks before he turns away, they're red. Either he's shy, or he thinks I'm attractive and is uncomfortable getting touched by me because of that.

I hope it's the latter but accept that it's probably the former.

"Have a seat," I tell Finn as I pull the oars out from the bottom of the boat, and he goes to sit on the back bench. "No, no, in the front."

He moves to the front bench and I untie the boat, then sit down and begin rowing. The water here is clear enough that we can see down to the bottom. Not only that, but it looks like the water is pretty shallow despite reaching thirty feet in depth after we've traveled only ten feet from the shore in this particular part.

Rather than going straight for the hunting ground I was planning on, I give Finn a tour. It takes a few hours to reach the island, so going around a few extra isn't much of an issue.

"The island we're passing by now," I tell Finn once we start passing a forested island of note. "Is home to two variety of deer. One can manifest and shoot stones with their antlers, the other have antlers made of ice and usually aren't seen outside of winter. The former are pretty vicious, they won't hesitate to shoot stones at you constantly until you flee. They sell for a decent price, if you can manage to kill one. I learned the hard way not to go on that island."

Finn doesn't say anything, but he does turn his head enough I know he's looking at the island. I continue rowing us for a bit, until we begin to pass the next island of note. This one doesn't have as many trees on it, though it does have plenty of rocks and rock formations, and there are several streams flowing out of it.

"This island," I tell him. "Has water of a depth of about ten to fifteen feet all around it except in the spot right with the mini-cliffs with a stream flowing out from between them are. There, it's only about two feet. I discovered this when I was eight years old and jumped off those cliffs, only to break my arm. That was quite disappointing to me because my parents began teaching me how to use a sword when I was a toddler, and I actually quite enjoyed the lessons. I couldn't do that while my arm was broken and had to wait until it was healed, then build its strength back up."

The next island of note is a few past that and around a couple of others. It's another rocky island, and the temperature rises as we draw near to it. We can see some trees scattered throughout it, standing up over the rest of the terrain.

"On the island to our left," I say. "Are a bunch of deer with flaming antlers that can shoot fire at you as well as a bunch of fire slimes. Believing I could handle them, I snuck onto this island when I was ten, only to suffer some burns. Fortunately, they were nowhere near as bad as my mom likes to make them out to be, and some salve was all that was needed to clear them right up. Well, and a few days."

I row us about the hundred feet to the next island, this one covered in trees with one of the skybeast's mountains rising up from its back. Two everfalls cascade down it, falling into a small lake that feeds a river that flows into the sea. We can't see the lake or the river from here, but we'll pass the river up on our way by.

"When I was six," I tell Finn. "I found a vase on this island. It was a pretty old vase, half-buried in the sand on the shore of the lake at the base of the mountain, where those falls end. You can see its pieces in the museum. Yes, pieces. See, when I was digging it up, I got attacked by this bear with six legs instead of four. The thing broke the vase to pieces, but I managed to recover them all afterwards."

As I continue rowing, I continue telling Finn about the interesting islands and my experiences on them. Finally, at a little before noon, we reach the island with the bunnies I told him about.

It's about four hundred feet at its widest, and about two hundred fifty feet at its narrowest. For the most part, it's just grassy, but there are a few trees on it, along with some boulders.

When we reach it, I put my oars back to their resting place and pull off my boots, then hop out of the boat. The water here nearly reaches my knees, soaking the very bottom of my shorts. The bottom of the sea here is sandy, which feels weird under my toes, but I don't really care that much.

I grab the boat and pull it to the shore, then wait for Finn to exit it before I pull it onto the shore, up to where the sand meets grass. This way, it won't drift away from us.

Now that we're on the shore, I pull off my bracers, vest, and shirt, dropping them into the boat. After rowing that much, I'm soaked with sweat and kind of hot, regardless of the fact that the spring air is nice and cool. It feels good to have it against my bare skin, rather than a sticky shirt.

"Come on," I grab my fishing rod. "The best rocks to fish on are over here."

I lead Finn over to some boulders at the edge of the island and set my fishing rod down, then step over to the grassy section and start digging for worms. Once I have a few of them, I return to the boulders, which Finn is standing beside.

"You can sit," I tell him as I take a seat, placing the worms on the boulder as I dangle my legs over the edge, my feet and half of my lower legs in the water here. "We can catch rabbits after, but I hope we get a bite fast. I'm really hungry after rowing that much! I bet you're hungry, too, despite having just sat there. It is about lunchtime."

Finn sits on the boulder, keeping his distance from me and the worms. He's sitting cross-legged, allowing me to see his boots and black pants. They look nice, of the same good quality as Sara's clothes.

He didn't take off his cloak. That's disappointing, I was hoping he'd take it off to make it easier to get his feet wet. Or he could just pull it up, pull off his boots, and roll up his pants. But it seems he's not interested in doing that.

Damn.

I fix a hook to the rod's line, then bait it before making my cast.

"Don't worry about my voice scaring the fish off," I tell Finn. "The only ones that care would be scared off by my feet moving about in the water."

Sitting still is hard for me, so I tend to move my feet back and forth, causing ripples in the water. As a result, the fish close by never come to me. Thankfully, I've got a good cast, so I can get fish that are further out and not disturbed by this.

I begin reeling the line back in, and it's about twenty feet away when there's a tug on the line.

"Ooh! Got one!"

I begin reeling in more, shifting my line left and right as I do rather than pulling straight on. The fish here like it better when I do that. It seems I caught a bigger fish than normal because this one takes me longer to pull in.

Once the fish is finally here, I grin in excitement. The fish I caught isn't one that normally goes for worms – I usually have to catch smaller ones, like minnows, to catch this thing. It's about nineteen inches in length and fairly large, making it big enough to feed both of us if we catch a rabbit or two, too.

I pull the fish off the hook and snap its neck with a sharp motion, something my dad taught me how to do when I was little, then set it on the boulder. Since I don't need the bait anymore, I pick up the worms and toss them into the water, then stand and look at Finn for a moment.

"Want to see how I catch the rabbits here?" I ask.

He gives me a slight nod, then turns around and begins to stand. I pull a throwing knife from where I kept it hidden, then flick my wrist, causing Finn to jump. The knife soars through the air, slamming into something near a boulder about twenty feet away.

A small bit of blood sprays out, and I look over at Finn, grinning when I see his eyes widening.

"The bunnies here blend in with the boulders," I tell him as I walk over and grab the bunny. "I like practicing my throws on this island, then eating my catches. It serves two purposes!"

"Good throw."

"You talked!"

His face reddens at my exclamation.

"Why don't you gather up some wood?" I ask him. "You can see the fire ring I made a few years ago, just start building one in there. I'll prep the food for lunch."

Finn gives me a slight nod, then gets to work on his task as I get to work on mine, gutting the fish and the bunny. It's a messy job, but since we're right by the sea, I wash my hands off in it after. By the time I've finished, Finn's got a small fire going. I spear the bunny and the fish on sticks, then put them over the fire to cook.

"I didn't do any of the herbs we could have," I tell Finn. "Or the berries. This way, your first experience with the fish and the bunnies is in their plain form, so you can see how good they are by themselves."

He gives me a slight nod, then we sit in silence as we wait for the food to finish. Sitting like this is hard, but it's necessary to make sure the food finishes cooking but doesn't overcook. The fish finishes first, and I split it in half, giving one half to Finn and beginning to eat the other.

I watch Finn from the corner of my eye so that he's not as conscious about eating. He still hasn't pushed back his hood or taken off his pack, and he's doing his best to keep his cloak covering his lap, even if I can see his feet and part of his legs. Finn is definitely a shy guy.

Instead of eating it immediately, Finn inspects the steaming fish, then sniffs it. Curiosity fills his face after he sniffs it up close, then he takes a small bite of the meat. His eyes widen and he lets out a small gasp, then he slowly begins to eat more of it, taking bigger bites now.

If I weren't watching him eat, I wouldn't have noticed it. He has fangs. They're not that long, just a little bit longer than canines usually are, but with how sharp they are, they're definitely fangs. The rest of his teeth I can see look normal, but still, he has fangs.

Are his fangs part of the reason why he's so shy? Well, whatever. I don't think anyone here would judge him for that, though I guess some people elsewhere might have.

It takes a few more minutes after we finish eating our fish for the bunny to finish cooking, then I split it up as well, and Finn eats it with similar hesitancy, then enjoyment. How does he manage to eat so slow? I don't think I ever have in my life.

Then again, Mom and Dad always said that others don't eat slow, I just eat fast. It's still a mystery to me, though. Seriously, how do people manage to eat so slow? Put the food in your mouth, chew, swallow. Even when trying to savor the flavor, there's no point in making it take longer, that just feels weird and gross.

"Did you like the food?" I ask as I use a stick to separate the sticks and branches so that the fire will die down faster.

Finn nods in response as I contemplate scooping water from the sea with my hands to dump on the fire.

"Why don't we come back here tomorrow?" I ask him. "We should be heading back now so that you're back in time to have dinner with Sara. I want to show you the island where I wrestled a wolf last year before we go, though."

He nods as he stands, but doesn't say a word.

"You're not a very talkative guy, are you?" I ask, and he doesn't respond. "When you do talk, your speak really softly. Is it because you want to hide your fangs?"

Finn's eyes widen in fear and he takes a step back, only to trip on a branch that was on the ground behind him. He yelps in shock and I bolt forward to catch him, managing to grab his arms and pull him forward. The sudden movement causes his hood to continue falling backward, revealing a head of pure-white hair.

And the fact that he doesn't have human or elf ears. No, instead, he has a pair of wolf's ears a little further up, at the top of the sides of his head.

I did see something for a moment earlier! That explains the sudden movement under his cloak, too! In fact, his fall and my catch caused his cloak to part at the front, allowing me to see the fluffy white wolf's tail that's tucked between his legs.

"You're a wolfkin!"