The sky was turning olive again. Don trudged over the dirt road followed by a cloud of jealous whispers.

“Who does he think he-” “-Shame such fine clothes are rui-” “-ah, wasted.”

The horde of farmers had been gawking ever since he reached the village’s outskirts. All of them were human. Most were sun-kissed; some pale. And they were speaking English, though their slight accents were impossible for him to place. Don felt his stomach flip over itself. How did this happen?

Don looked up at the alien atmosphere. Don looked at the calloused hands of the paparazzi that had lived on this planet their whole life. He shuddered.

One voice rose above the rest. It was not louder, nor even quieter. It was merely hospitable. “You look like you’ve seen hell. Come on down to the bar and I’ll feed you.”

The woman who’d spoken was all corded muscle. Don found his eyes drawn to her reliable shoulders before he even noticed her face. There was a genuine grin carved into those statuesque cheeks.

Don’t trust the first person who shows you kindness, he thought. But his mouth said “Thank you kindly.”

She led him to a dilapidated shack. It nested between a field and two others like it. Don could only tell it was a business because candles burnt in the windows. They cast eerie, flickering shadows over a wooden sign. Even that was in his language. ‘Rayne Bed And Breakfast.’

The common room was unoccupied. Rayne sat him at a booth near the corner and smiled.

Don returned it. “I’ll be out with some bread and cheese momentarily. Will you take water or milk?”

Wait a minute. What counts as a Goblet?

“I’ll just have a cup of ice water, if you don’t mind, Rayne.”

“Don’t have any ice, sorry. Rayne is the name of the town. I’m Lil. You must really be lost.”

She stared at him. Don scratched his cheek. “That’s okay. Just the water, then.”

It was surreal. He had been prepared to rough it in the woods and eat monster corpses to survive. How could he have known there was civilization so close by? But then Lil returned with a steaming bread roll twice the size of his last breakfast, so Don tucked in. It tasted something like sourdough, but the spicy red cheese spread was unrecognizable to him. The whole time, he kept one hand on the glass of water. Lil brought him three more before he was satisfied.

When he finished eating some ten minutes later, Don checked on his MP.

MP: 3 / 10

A slow grin spread over his face. Around one MP every five minutes. That’s rough, but it’s better than nothing.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Though his sense of timing was no longer supplemented by the Guide, he’d grown used to thinking about life in minute-long increments.

Lil wiped down her tables with a wet rag while Don sat there and felt full for the first time in months. Every now and then, she would look at him out of the corner of her eye and smile. Don didn’t mind. He let himself sink into the food coma.

-—-

When he came back to his body, his MP was full. He’d fallen asleep at the booth with the cup in a vice-grip. A strand of drool ran from his chin to his mouth. Don licked it away.

He stood up.

Lil appeared from around the corner, smiling amiably. “Oh, welcome back to the land of the living! I’m glad you got some rest. Four chips, please.”

Don stared at her blankly. After a moment, she tried again. “Four chips. For the food? It’s the standard rate for a non-magical meal.”

He could tell her smile was cracking a little bit. Only then did he realize what he must’ve looked like. A traveler from a far-off land, wearing clothes far beyond simple linens or leather. He had assumed it was free—she had assumed being poor was beneath him. They were both to blame for the misunderstanding, but only one of them had actually spent anything.

Don remembered the three entire loaves he'd devoured in short order. His left eye twitched. “I have no local currency. Please allow me to work it off.”

Lil’s voice rose and cracked. “Are you kidding me?! Don’t sell yourself so easily! Moreover, I have a hard enough time feeding myself and my one paying customer. I’m not going to be able to feed you, even as a short-term employee!”

Don paused. Indeed, he hadn’t considered that his debt might extend to literal indenture in this world.

“You sell non-magical food. Would conjured water be useful?”

He could already tell from her stricken expression that it wasn’t—at least not to her.

“What about meat?”

Cautious optimism broke through Lil’s hardened face. “Depends on what you got the meat from. I know some of our neighbors—especially Marshod Kingdom immigrants—might, but I won't eat nor serve insects.”

“The one I hunted is no longer salvageable, but I can kill those hunched bipedal rat-things.”

Lil frowned again. “Giblet meat sells poorly, but food is food. It could work... Just don’t shortchange me again. I want four of them, fresh.”

Giblets. That’s what they’re called.

“Deal.”

Don tried to leave the store, but Lil appeared in front of the door, stern. “I mean it. If you disappear after this, I’ll have you blacklisted from the city proper. This might be a small business... but the knights take theft very seriously in this area.”

“I understand.”

“And put the cup back.”

Don winced. He wanted to take it with him for the MP regeneration, but he could tell that would discredit him entirely.

“Sorry, nervous habit.” He set it down on the table. Lil snorted and shooed him away with flapping fingers.

On the way back to the forest, the sky was turning a bruised purple. The farmers had all returned to their homes, so it was just Don and the chilling air. He trudged through rows and rows of something that wasn’t tall enough to be corn. Fields of misshapen green gourds were next. Don almost considered taking one and carving it into a cup, but he had no way to swiftly steal them off the stems.

But could I make do with any receptacle?

Don remembered the soaked ground he’d left behind and his face lit up.

That’s it! Mud!