The guard who had been with the two village leaders escorted me outside, maintaining a respectful distance as he did so. Outside, the passing humans turned to look at him and myself, paying less attention to us than they had when I was initially being escorted to the building with Mpahray and Dayvao. I guess I need to spend some time, I realized as the fact that I didn't have any immediately achievable goal set in, I wonder how long it's going to take for them to get what I asked for and deliver it to my new residence. I couldn't help but be confused with how the negotiations had gone. What a strange people, locking someone up and trying to sell them, then attempting to buy their services after they escape, I thought with a reflexive click of my tongue.

“I have to admit, I didn't expect you to be so paobeyleyngeyv,” the guard said beside me. I looked at him, meeting his stern gaze with one of my own. His body language indicated that the statement was a test and that he would be judging my reply. From his tone, I could infer that the word I didn’t understand was a positive quality.

“There is no sense holding grudges,” I replied, “I benefit from this deal as well.”

“What little I do know of your kind wouldn't lead me to believe you would be the type to bargain like that,” the guard said. “Your reputation better fits the brutality you showed yesterday than what occurred just now.” Another test, I thought, though less serious than the first.

“What would you know of what happened to the merchant and his guards?” I asked. “I don't recall you being there. In fact, I have never seen you before today.” The guard sighed, disappointed and frustrated but not with me.

“I know enough from hearing the witness reports and cleaning up your mess,” he replied. “You fight like a wild animal. You spilled more of your own blood than you did the blood of your enemies, merchant excepted. Just be aware that we are a civilized people here and that kind of brutality isn't to be displayed openly.” Begrudging respect, I read in the man's posture and expressions, that's one that I know very well.

“I understand the kind of behavior you expect from me,” I assured him. “When do you plan to have the belongings of the merchant and guards delivered to me?”

“I will have them brought to your cabin by sundown,” the guard replied, “also I will have some meals brought for you within the hour. Do you have a preference in type of food?”

“A mix of meat and vegetables,” I said after checking my heads-up display. All of the green bars were low, so I figured a wide spread of nutrients was best. “Fruits as well if you have them,” I added, “raw, cooked, or preserved doesn't matter to me at all for now.” I was going to take note of which bars each food affected and try to map out patterns between them.

“Easy enough,” the guard nodded, “do you need an escort back or can you stay out of trouble?”

“I'll be fine,” I answered.

“Make sure that you are,” the guard said, then he turned and walked off. I took a moment to orient myself then began the walk back to my cabin. Luckily it was almost a straight line from the village center. Maybe I can find some hidden spots to observe these people from, I thought as I walked, I wouldn't want to be accused of “staring” again now that I'm supposed to be friendly with them.

There were no clocks in the town, so I found myself wondering how the humans actually measured the time for an “hour”. Of course, the word they used was uway, but the period of time was roughly analogous with there being twenty of them in a day. Regardless, just as promised my food arrived about an hour later, carried on a wagon by the same farmer who had tried to sell me the day before. Two small barrels of preserves, one of meat and one of vegetables which were pickled in brine, and a crate of assorted fruits which had been picked nearby. I took the food inside, stashed it near the stove, and began experimenting with it.

The meat was all one type, clearly from the deer-like animals which could be hunted nearby, but the fruits and vegetables ran a large range. In particular, some of the vegetables more resembled leaves and grasses than food as I was coming to understand it but were still consumable and contained decent amounts of nutrients. The fruits, multicolored and multi-sized, were also quite good. After filling up I decided to prioritize the fruits first so they wouldn't have a chance to spoil, since the meat was preserved.

Behind the cabin was a small outhouse, which I was thankful for. After taking care of business I decided to head out into the nearby woods and see where the nearest source of freshwater was. If I had to estimate, it took me around ten minutes to walk to the nearest creek but only five to walk back to the cabin once I knew where it was. It's acceptable, I suppose, I thought as I washed up and took a few gulps. More of the crab creatures could be seen some distance down the creek from me, but I decided to leave them alone for the time being. Do they also eat those in the village? I wondered, they're probably a bit too small since it took so many to feed me last time.

Night fell and once the sun was down the delivery of what I requested was completed. Mpahray, along with several other villagers, approached my door and gave me two much larger crates which contained, as he put it, “the metal in that one and the rest in the other one.” Since both crates were around a meter and a half cubed I had no way of bringing them inside, so I simply brought them behind the cabin and resolved to open them up and examine them in the morning. Mpahray and the villagers gave me strange looks as I dragged each crate to the back of the cabin and stored them.

In the morning I examined the crates' contents and saw that they did in fact contain what I was told. The first crate I opened was the light one which was filled with clothing. The villagers had washed the blood off of the clothes before giving them to me, so they didn't smell as badly as I thought they would. Sadly, almost none of the clothes fit me with the exception of a single jacket and a pair of pants. I can use these for raw materials at least, I thought as I moved to check the second crate.

The metal crate was much more chaotic than the clothing crate. The metal plate armor that the guards had been wearing was composed of many pieces which were tied together onto the individual, and as such many parts had fallen apart during their hasty removal. Sitting in the middle of the mess was the merchant's knife, sitting in the sheath which was originally strapped to its previous owner's chest. The crate also contained two broken swords, one which I had broken by swinging and the other which I had broken while swinging at. I'll see if I can have these melted down, I thought, the scrap must be worth something. The other two swords were in a state of minor disrepair but bending them and doing some test swings revealed that they at least wouldn't fall apart.

Of the armor, very little of it was sized to fit me at all. Additionally, I didn't really know how to put it on at all due to its complexity, so instead I opted to create my own solution. Pulling apart the chest pieces and removing their leather bindings, I fashioned a makeshift protective vest for myself by manually bending the largest metal pieces until they fit over my torso and then using the remnants of their original bindings to keep them in place. The actual coverage was... not good, but it was better than nothing and could be worn inconspicuously under my clothing. At least I can probably avoid having my torso run through easily, I thought as I lamented the fact that not even the helmets were big enough to use.

Things were quiet for the next three days. The village was content to leave me alone, and I was content to let them do so, mostly. I gave the town smith the broken metal, as well as the pieces of armor that wouldn't fit me, and told him I wanted a spear and an axe. He was more than willing to give me a newer version of the same metal spear I had stolen from the hunter along with a very nice metal axe in exchange for the scrap. I figured that he might have been so friendly because he knew that technically the townspeople hadn't actually returned my spear, but I decided not to press the issue.

Aside from working on my lacking swordsmanship, I spent much of the three days observing the townspeople from various vantage points. Since I stood out so much when I showed myself, the only way to observe the genuine interactions of the people was to hide. While I might have looked like a strange animal sometimes while barefoot and covered in grass and leaves, I was never caught so it wasn't an issue. Besides, it's not like I'm hurting anyone by doing this, I thought, if they did complain I would just request the same information but directly.

I counted around one hundred and sixty unique people in the village including children, with skin tones ranging from deathly pale to darker than average for their population but still much lighter than my own. Their blonde hair was sometimes a bit darker or lighter but never reached fully brown, let alone black. Eye color ranged from red to orange with only one outlier having a single yellow eye. Their days were filled with simple field work and crafts, and they lived in family units. Overall the town was quite peaceful.

I learned many new words by listening to conversations as well as new concepts. Wawjhb's best translation was most likely “god”, though apparently they were treated more like powerful znoypoymz, or spirits. The people had a curious amount of faith in an absolutely absurd notion that their world was being continually controlled and influenced by forces that were beyond their sensory perception and supernatural in nature. They sometimes appealed to these forces as though such forces would care about them, another thing which I couldn't understand. Warbreed had religion, sure, but it served mainly as a way to improve morale and contained very few non-physical elements besides the notions of honor and virtue. The villagers of Suwlahtk were practically deluded by comparison.

It occurred to me that the religions of the creators were very abstract in nature, though I didn't know much about them. Many contained similar ideas, such as an afterlife where their consciousness would reside once their physical body died as well as post-death judgment and retribution. Could these people just be some lost colony of creators that survived the warbreed purges? I wondered as I listened to a man explain the “natural order” of the world to his son, where all things were subjugated by others and man was unique in that he could choose what to be subjugated by and what to make his own domain.

On the third day, around dusk, I decided to take a walk through the town to gauge how people were adjusting to me. To my surprise it seemed as though many of the villagers were out in a field some distance from the village center, having a celebration of some sort. Humans created music on crude instruments made of wood using strings, breath, and impacts. Unlike the warbreed battle songs which had a deep beat to co-ordinate movement, these people's songs mostly utilized the middle and high range of human-audible sound. Other humans danced around small campfires, laughed, ate, and drank. Almost none of them noticed my approach and those that did took no outward issue with my presence.

Not wanting to interfere, I sat down on a log which had been laid out nearby as a sort of bench and watched. What warranted such a celebration? I wondered, Maybe the acquisition of the wagons? I suppose that's worth celebrating. At the other end of the log to the one I was sitting on, a human woman sat down. She opened her arms and dropped a number of wooden planks onto the ground in front of her, then began arranging them into a shape for ignition. The ground beneath us was bare of any grass so all that was needed to contain the fire was a small indentation in the dirt.

My cabin has lanterns, I thought, but they didn't give me any flint or steel to ignite them. Maybe I should ask for some after this. Once the wooden structure was made I waited eagerly to see the type of tool these people used for fire-making. The woman paused, holding her hands nearby the wood, and began to recite something that sounded like a prayer of some sort. They even pray to the wood to ask it to light, I mused, such a strange people. I took a moment to glance away, then light drew my eyes back to the woman's campfire. Beneath the location where her hands had been laid, the wood had ignited in several places. Feeling the heat, she drew her hands back and smiled.

“What,” I thought aloud in English, drawing stares from both her and some other nearby humans. The woman looked at me nervously, then back to her fire, then back to me. How did she do that? I thought as I scanned her hands and saw nothing resembling a tool of any sort.

“Hey,” a human man said from nearby, “what’s the problem?”

“Nothing,” I muttered, “you don't need to worry about it.” I stood up and walked over to the woman, who shrunk back at my presence. I stood across the fire from her, studying her clothing and pockets for some kind of fire starter and finding them to be empty.

“W-what do you want?” she asked hesitantly.

“The fire,” I said. The woman began to get up the instant that the words left my mouth, but I gestured for her to stop. “How did you light the fire?” I asked.

“S-sorry, did I offend y-” she began to say as the tension rose in the air.

“No,” I said, cutting her off, “I'm interested in how you lit the fire. What tool did you use?”

“Tool?” she asked, sounding confused. I looked at her with greater confusion.

“You don't mean to say that it just lit by itself, right?” I asked. The woman muttered something else under her breath that sounded like another prayer before replying.

“I just used svihytaazmoydh,” she said quickly, looking away.

“Show me,” I commanded. The woman looked back at me with a pleading expression.

“The fire is already-” she began, stopping as I kicked the wood over with my bare foot, then pushed some dirt on top of it to extinguish it.

“Looks like it went out and needs to be re-ignited,” I said as I bent down and stacked the hot logs back into the shape the woman had made. “How about you show me how to do that?”