Just moments ago, Faelyn had been strategically retreating from the vague threat of… well, people. Now, in a comedic reversal worthy of a badly scripted play, he was marching headfirst into the largest congregation of people he’d yet encountered. Logic, it seemed, was a fickle mistress, especially when imaginary skill systems were involved.
As he navigated the bustling thoroughfare, his newly minted ‘Learning by Listening’ skill was less ‘working’ and more ‘hyperventilating’ with effort. It was like strapping a high-performance engine onto a tricycle. But, remarkably, it was working. He could practically feel his brain synapses firing off in manic glee as he absorbed the cacophony of sounds. He was actually noticing patterns, subtle rhythms in the spoken words, a hesitant pause here, an emphatic inflection there. It was still mostly gibberish, but it was organized gibberish, and that felt like progress, however microscopically ridiculous.
Scanning the scene, his gaze snagged on what, from this distance, appeared to be a vibrant ribbon of color and movement – a line of vendors hawking what he hoped were not shrunken heads or equally unsettling trinkets. A marketplace. Perfect. If his skill was going to blossom anywhere, it would be in the linguistic greenhouse of commerce.
He ambled towards the vendor stalls, feeling like a particularly conspicuous dandelion seed blown into a meticulously manicured Japanese garden. His decidedly modern attire, a jarring symphony of synthetic fabrics, and his vaguely tan complexion were definitely registering on the local radar. Eyebrows were raised higher than kites in a gale. Curious glances, ranging from polite to openly suspicious, tracked his every step. He was, in essence, a walking, talking anachronism in desperate need of a less eye-catching wardrobe.
But then, the food stalls. Oh, the food stalls. The aromas, a tantalizing medley of savory spices and sweet, caramelized something-or-others, wafted towards him, lassoing his nostrils and dragging them on an involuntary tour of culinary delights. His stomach, a previously dormant grumbling machine, suddenly roared to life with a sound that could generously be described as ‘anguished opera.’ Saliva flooded his mouth, a Pavlovian response of embarrassing intensity.
“Communication first, then money, then, and only then, glorious food,” he mentally lectured his rebellious digestive system. Steeling his resolve (mostly against the siren song of fried dough), he began to eavesdrop. He immersed himself in the bustling conversations swirling around him. Vendors and customers bartering with rapid-fire exchanges, greetings exchanged with practiced ease, fingers pointing at wares, prices haggled with theatrical flourishes, children chattering at their parents with adorable, and probably demanding, intonation. He was a linguistic sponge, soaking it all in. Words began to tentatively link themselves to objects in his mind – a gesture towards a brightly colored cloth, a sharp, staccato phrase that must mean ‘how much?’.
He even dared to mimic the sounds under his breath, his lips silently forming unfamiliar syllables. He sounded, in his own internal auditory landscape, like a demented parrot attempting to learn opera in a wind tunnel. Many words remained stubbornly opaque, resisting his mental attempts to pry open their meaning. But some, like hesitant seedlings pushing through hard earth, started to take root.
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As the sun, a yellow orb moments ago, began to bleed into a fiery orange on the horizon, a small miracle occurred. He understood something. Not complex philosophical treatises, mind you, but… greetings. Polite salutations. Common words. Rudimentary Japanese. It was like emerging from a soundproof booth into a room where people were actually speaking, not just making abstract noises.
Hope, fragile and tentative as a newborn butterfly, fluttered within him. His skill, against all rational expectation, was working, and with surprising efficiency. And even better, the more he listened, the more familiar he became, the faster he seemed to learn. He dared to entertain a ludicrously optimistic thought: fluency? Native-level fluency? Perhaps not today, or tomorrow, or even this week, but… maybe. Just maybe.
“Graaawwwllll.” His nascent hope deflated like a punctured balloon, punctured by the agonizingly loud protest emanating from his stomach. Food. The persistent, inconvenient, and utterly necessary bane of his existence.
“Ah, food, the great leveler, the ultimate antagonist,” he muttered with a touch of theatrical despair as he mentally toggled off ‘Learning by Listening.’ His brain felt like it had just run a marathon, pleasantly buzzing, but also slightly muddled from sensory overload. Overuse, apparently, was a thing, even for imaginary skills.
“So, now what?” he wondered, the question hanging heavy in the twilight air. “No money. And vendors radiating the generosity of… well, hungry wolves.” Free samples were clearly not a thing in this marketplace.
“Let’s see, inventory check,” he mumbled under his breath, taking stock of his meager possessions. “Hmm, clothes. Fashionable… for a time traveler accidentally transported from 2023 to who-knows-when-is.” He eyed his jacket with a sigh. The synthetic fabric might, might pique the curiosity of a particularly avant-garde cloth merchant. But selling his used jacket? Unlikely. And it reeked of desperation, possibly attracting the wrong kind of attention, like the local equivalent of fashion police, or worse, actual police.
He discarded the jacket-selling scheme as quickly as it had formed. Next best option? He cast his mind back to the marketplace chatter, recalling snippets of conversation that had now, thanks to his skill, become semi-intelligible. Dockyard. He’d overheard mentions of the dockyard.
Employment. That was the ticket. Dockyards, in every fictional and historical portrayal he’d ever encountered, were havens for the down-on-their-luck and the questionably employed. He might even find some foreign merchants there, perhaps ones with a more… cosmopolitan… appreciation for synthetic fabrics and vaguely modern style. Perhaps, just perhaps, he could sell his clothes to someone who’d consider them ‘exotic’ rather than ‘tragically out of date’. And, more importantly, perhaps they’d pay him actual, edible money. The dockyard. It wasn't a Michelin-starred restaurant, but it smelled vaguely like hope, and slightly less like abject starvation. For now, that was more than enough.