"Ah, you made it to Long Dock, good. How was the market?"

"I did, and it was a little overwhelming, but, I saw magic items, and that alone is worth it, bags of holding, they're real, I can't wait to have my own."

"A bag of holding? Of all that, this world offers in magic, and you are pulled in by a bag that is bigger on the inside?"

"Yup, If I find a Handy haversack, that would take the cake, but a bag of holding has always been the item that if I ever got to pick one, that would be it."

"Hmmm I know your world is a strange place, but why not an item that would slay your enemies in a single hit, or an item that could let you teleport from one end of the world to the other?"

"Wait, is that last one a real thing?"

"Yes, the Way-finders map, it opens portals that let you and a small group instantly travel to any spot that you have been to."

"Fast travel? There is fast travel here?"

"Fast travel? No there is no such things, purely portals that you can walk through like doorways."

"But only places that I've been?"

"Yes, why do you seem to be struggling to follow this logic?"

"Because that isn't a thing where I'm from, the fastest we can travel is in planes and that was still a long process, three hundred miles took around an hour."

"You could travel three hundred miles in a single hour?!"

"I mean, planes moved just short of six hundred miles an hour, a bit closer to five hundred. A car could move at upwards of a hundred and thirty miles an hour, but was only safe to drive around seventy an hour."

"That is insane, why would you ever need to move that fast? What kind of hurry were you in?"

"Well to start I lived fifteen miles from work, so I would commute every day, took me about thirty minutes."

"And you could talk to anyone in the world in an instant with your 'phones'? Why did you still need to travel so much?"

"Fun, work, some people had traveled as part of their job, like truck drivers, train engineers, and pilots."

"Truck drivers? What is a truck driver?"

"They drove large vehicles full of product from one place to another, so that way you could get things like mostly fresh fish in the desert, that is simplifying it of course."

"Your world is going to bring a lot to one, and I've felt the touch, you were close to one today, but I couldn’t tell where, it was too small and it seemed to be moving."

"Any idea what form they're going to take?"

"At this point, I do not, there are too many factors to take into account, and each is never the same, but I feel that you should recognize them if you saw them, most that have seen things from their worlds feel something iconic about them."

"Iconic? Like something that would stir up feelings of nostalgia and I don’t know why?"

"Yes, that is a very apt description, why? Do you think you recognized one?"

"I do, there was a lantern in the market that had a floating patch of TV static."

"TV Static?"

"More from when I was young, but when there was no input televisions would make a type of sound akin to a waterfall but far more mechanical, and it would be accompanied by an ever-shifting screen of black and white dots, that was very small."

"Hmmm, I will keep my eyes open for this. But the sound should stand out?"

"It didn’t make the sound, but I could feel it when I looked at it, it was as if I could hear it."

"That does make things a bit more difficult."

"Look at my memories, that way you can see what you're looking for."

"Good plan, I will see what I can find, talk to you soon."

The darkness engulfed his mind once again, and then Davin was awake and hungry, but he had a kitchen and a thank you to make, He figured that his host would have been up before he was since he seemed to come from a fishers background, but from the soft rhythmic breathing from the other room, he was still quite asleep. He got to work, turning his few items and a few supplies that he found in the cupboards, he made some biscuits and a bacon gravy, and the smell of the cooking bacon pulled the sleepy rat from his bed.

"Heh, I figured I would have been up before you, but that smells amazing." The nose on the rat kin moving faster than anything else he'd seen before from him.

"I figured I owed you one, and I've been wanting to cook, so it was two birds with one stone as the saying goes." He shrugged as he dished up the plates of biscuits stacked with bacon and eggs and eggs and some cheese he found and the whole thing slathered in a pepper gravy.

"If this is what I knew I was going to wake up to, I might have thrown you a few more tokes for some extra ingredients, but any time you find yourself at this end of the docks, you can always stay with me." He took another deep breath, nose hovering just above the beautiful pile of food, a glisten in his mouth and eyes suggested that he was either about to cry or drool over the plate of food.

"It’s a deal, and any time I'm here, I'll make you something." sitting down to his own plate dug his fork into the pile and took his first bite, letting out a low moan of pleasure as the flavors overtook his senses.

The two ate in almost total silence, only the sound of soft moans occasionally breaking the silence. The large rat let out a long sigh as he finished the last bite of food.

"That was some of the best food that I've eaten in some time, thank you." Offering his hand to Davin.

Gladly taking and shaking it, "Thanks for letting me stay, I can't imagine how difficult it would have been to find an inn."

"Eh, there are a few down there, but they are inflated if you ask me." Shaking his head in distaste.

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"Sadly expected, we did the same thing in my world, usually around tourist hot spots."

"Okay, enough of that, let's get you some fish, I'll show you where to go, but you have to do all the talking, and you can't say that I helped you." He pulled himself up from his chair, and crossed the room, waving for Davin to follow him.

Remembering the noise from the busy market from the day before didn’t hold a candle to the sheer wall of noise that he stepped out into, the densest crowd noise he could honestly remember hit him almost as if it was a physical thing. The two of them walked down the long set of steps, as they got closer to the bottom Warf Rat's posture changed, shifting to a far more mobile stance, Davin felt as if he'd start sprinting at any moment. Davin was impressed, as soon as they made it to the bottom of the stairs, the rat man moved with a grace far beyond anything he'd shown so far, practically flowing through the crowd. Davin kept up the best he could, feeling that Warf Rat was intentionally slowing down for him to be able to keep up, the busy market being a far more different environment than he'd experienced so far. The path they made through the market took them passed some of the stalls he'd seen at night that now had food vendors starting to set up, the smells of roasting foods already filling the air, and no signs that the magical item vendors had ever been there.

Davin nearly tripped over the rat as he came to a sudden stop, pointing to a small ship that was unloading its cargo into one of the larger stalls. "They usually have some of the best variety of fish in the market, if you do a bulk without wanting it sorted, you can get an amazing deal."

Davin casually nodded, patting himself down and making sure he was as ready as he could be for this, he walked over slowly, watching as the fish were being moved in huge nets right into the middle of the stall, teams jumping in to start sorting without a chance for the now empty net to clear. Continuing to move up, he found himself leaning on the counter as he watched the huge number of fish fill the inner area of the stall, one of the younger blue-skinned elves eventually noticed and walked over.

"What can I get for you? And just so you know, we're just getting started for the day, so if you want anything specific it may take some time to find it." The elf waved his arm to the flopping pile of fish, it shifting with each newly emptied net.

"Nothing specific, just need two barrels of fish, and these look the freshest, was hoping to get a good mix if that’s possible." The grin that spread over the elf's face was unnerving, taking on a stalker or hunter-like feel.

"Oh, yeah we can do that, do you already have the barrels?" The question made Davin's stomach sink.

"Didn't bring one, was hoping to get them as part of the whole set up." Davin could feel a small "cha-ching" ring in his mind as the elf's already wide smile seemed to get wider.

"I can do two barrels for sixteen onyx, and that is a screaming deal, if I do say so myself, that fills the barrels, gets you the barrels, and we can even do delivery at a small fee if you want." The smile not reaching his eyes, but far wider than it needed to be.

Davin's stomach dropped, that was far more than he had the tokens for. "I don’t need them cleaned or salted, I'll take whole fish in a barrel with some seawater in there to help keep them fresh." His counteroffer clearly threw off the fishmonger.

"Whole fish? So just a pile of fish in a barrel?" His smile fell. "Any fish specifically?"

"Nope, you can just scoop and fill, and I'll give you eight onyx tokens, how's that sound?" the sinking pit in his stomach lifting some.

"Pfft, eight? I'm sure that the least I could do is fourteen at that deal." The pit in his stomach sank again.

"You can even just set the barrels under the nets and let that catch, and then top me off, minimal work for you, and eight tokens should more than cover it." He pulled out the eight tokens and set them on the counter.

The monger scooped up the tokens and stashed them quickly. "Fine, eight onyx for two barrels right from the nets, and topped off with any random fish to fill them up." He grumbled as he put the tokens in his pocket and stood up two barrels as the nets swung in.

If Davin had counted right, he had just about five onyx tokens left from the bag that Big Green had given him, which was a bit of a windfall for him. That gave him a total of just about ten onyx to work with to buy some basic supplies. The fishmonger had the two barrels filled and sealed within moments, barely giving Davin a chance to see what all ended up in them.

"Okay, get outta here." The fish mongers tone changed vastly as he pushed the barrels out of the stall.

Davin rolled the barrels over a few stalls and he was quickly joined by Warf Rat. "How much did that set you back?" Easily getting behind one of the barrels and rolling it. "I have a cart you can use, just gotta promise to bring it back to me the next time you find yourself here."

"Eight onyx's, but it’s all random fish, so I likely ended up with some big wins and some basics, so not the worst setup, the next time I come into town for fish I can likely figure out a better setup."

"Two barrels for eight onyx? That is a pretty good deal, but yeah, I'm guessing you have some junk in these barrels." Nodding along as the two of them pushed the barrels toward the base of the rock.

The small cart that Davin was lent was just big enough to hold the two barrels, but he was glad that he had it. The trip back to the bastion felt like it was a lot slower than any of the other trips, but he wasn’t sure if that was just the trip itself or if it was from the anticipation that he'd been feeling. The whole trip Davin had thought about what he and Hugh would need in order to survive out in the wilds, he kept thinking about the cart that he was using to move the fish and when he was getting the beer from a few days ago, he had the skills to build something, his wildly varied hobbies from his life left him well set up to make just about anything he could imagine, and a cart would be helpful. One of the biggest problems he could think of to this was the fact that he hadn't seen a single mount in the few trips outside of the city, he could understand not having them in the city proper due to the contained nature of the bastion, and the buildup of refuse could be a problem if they let it get out of control. So for now he wanted to make a cart, or more likely at this point a rickshaw that he could use to store the items that they wanted to keep with them but not carry, his thoughts then leaned to Hugh and his desire to be a scribe….

Books were heavy, and a bag or chest of holding was going to be high on the shopping list when they got a little more adventure under their belt, but for now, a hiking cart might be one of the best options that he could think of since he wasn’t sure the terrain was passed the walls of edges rest. By the time he had made it back to the city, he had a good idea of what he would need to get his hands on, the hardest part would be balancing the weight of the cart, he wasn’t sure how his strength compared to his previous life, but in general he knew that pulling or carrying any amount of weight over the course of a day, let alone an unknown amount of time would get old, so making the whole thing as light as possible was going to be a goal, but he should find out from Big Green about whether or not there were beasts of burden here in the afterlife, and he couldn't see why there wouldn’t be.

Moving through the city with the barrels of fish was a bit more difficult than it was for the beer, the extra weight was exhausting, and he kept having to take breaks as he progressed. Before he'd left, Big Green had shown him how to get to the back of the bar so that way he wouldn’t have to try and push the barrels through the crowded hall again. Davin's knock on the heavy door surprised him, sounding far louder than he felt it should, hed tested the door before knocking, and it was locked. After only having to wait a few minutes the "cuchunk" of a bar lock sliding made Davin jump as it broke his idle thoughts about wagons and carts.

"Gah" Davin yelped.

"Hello? Oh, Davin, you got my fish?" Big Green quickly put his eyes on the large barrels. "Fantastic! Get in here, let's see what you got."

Davin pushed the cart into the kitchen of the hall and got the barrels set up with Big Green's help. "These things are heavy, I am glad to be done with them."

"Heh, yeah, but I'm glad you did all the same, let's see what we got." As the fishes struggled and splashed in the barrels as the first one was opened surprised him. "They're alive!" his voice was a mix of shock and happiness. "I was expecting some cleaned and salted fish, this is better than I could've hoped for." He grabbed out one of the fish, and looked it over, nodding as he started sorting the fish into bins of ice calling over a few other staff to help start cleaning and sorting.

"I talked with Warf Rat, and he suggested that getting them uncut would save me some tokens and it did." Davin stood and watched as they sorted the fish.

"Warf Rat? Is he still up on that rock? Good on you for finding him, he's forgotten more about fish than some of those kids will ever know." With that Big Green stood, held out his hand, and offered it to Davin. "You did good, this will keep me in fish for at least a week, any time you need a way to score a few tokens, you come to me first, I know I can find you something."

Davin shook the offered hand with gusto. "Then I'll be back tomorrow." Davin laughed. "While I'm at it, I haven't seen any horses, are there any beasts of burden?"

"Not sure what a horse is, but yeah, Edges Rest has a few beasts you can buy, but they aren't cheap, to ride?"

"To pull a cart, bags of holding are expensive, that will be the easiest place to start, need to look into that, can't put the cart before the horse." The idiom fell flat as Big Green eyed him.

Big Green chuckled. "Whatever that means, but If you need supplies I'm your guy, I'll even throw in some, good help is hard to find."

The screen that popped up in front of Davin made his heart jump.

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