There was a big communal grill. Arlen watched as fishers and gatherers trickled in with their harvests. There were crunchy squash-like gourds said to be "the only thing that grows on Gull Crater these days". He snorted when he saw his friend the shockjaw on a spit. A man told him, "Heard you helped kill that thing, outsider."

"I wasn't very helpful. This might sound silly, but... do you fight with magic?"

"Me? No, but that guy over there does. Maybe he'll teach you."

Arlen still had the attention of a bunch of villagers who either shunned or stared at him because of his strange looks, like he was a magnet. Certainly better than ending up on the cooking spit himself.

The doctor found him, coming over with a wooden plate of roasted squash-things. "What do you think of our home?"

"I'm impressed. I've heard of horrible places where the first thing outsiders notice is that they eat people, or something. Besides that, you can... write? Does that word translate?"

"I understand. I write, but it's not something many people learn. Do you have the skill yourself?"

Arlen scrawled with a stick in the sand: Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum. He said, "In my own language. I'm not sure how I know yours."

The doc squinted at the unfamiliar letters. "Strange. Maybe you have the memory to learn how to be a healer yourself."

"I'd like that, though there are other things I'd like to learn too. Is there a way to learn magic, like you?"

"You get the spirits' blessing. That means going either to the heart of Gull Crater, or to Decim Island. What they'd make of you, I have no idea."

#

Arlen found the fighting man, who'd been there smiting the shockjaw last night. He grinned and showed off his techniques. Arlen gaped, now that he saw them clearly. His punches were decently impressive to his amateur eyes, but then the warrior jumped forward and a miniature wave appeared from nothing around his feet, surging him higher and father than should've been possible. "I call it Riptide Style," he boasted.

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A younger man razzed him. "Unlike what everyone else called it forever."

"What was that?" asked Arlen.

The teasing guy said, "Just 'water fighting methods'."

The fighter said, "Which is why it doesn't get many people interested in learning."

Arlen said, "That's what your people are missing. Marketing."

#

Arlen spent the afternoon letting the martial artist brag and show off, getting Arlen to go through the basic motions. Being a sparring partner meant getting repeatedly slammed to the beach, so he was earning his lesson in bruises. He stayed out of the water due to his arm injury, and eventually begged off rather than risk making that worse.

"What do you do with all that skill?" Arlen asked. "Hunt? Fight the raiders?"

"Some of both. But it's good to be part of the tradition. Anyone do things like this where you're from?"

"Yeah! I don't know much, but..." He gave a layman's lesson on Earth style martial arts. "And that's without anything magical."

The fighter looked thoughtful. "I'd like to try sparring with someone out there."

#

The people didn't expect much from him and didn't seem to work long hours. Making a pot or a canoe was tough work, as he learned from a few days of odd jobs, but there was only so much to do. The economy was informal enough that the people didn't even know the word, but they had a strong sense of who was contributing.

One morning he heard a scream. He came running from his doghouse hut. Three young men stood on the village green, beating the hell out of a young teenaged boy. They kicked him, yanked him to his feet and beat him down again.

Arlen called out, "Hey!" and ran by instinct to interfere.

One of the three gave him a rude gesture. Arlen tried to get closer and got shoved back, then grabbed by another bystander who told him, "He had it coming."

"What?"

The kid was moaning on the ground now, curled up. Arlen's grappler said, "The dummy sits around all day. That'll teach him."

The brawlers walked off together, laughing and shaking their injured hands.

Arlen said, "Maybe I can teach him something...?"

"Don't even look at him. Seriously."

So the bloodied guy limped away suppressing tears, and Arlen risked an educational beatdown of his own if he got any more involved.

Afterward, Arlen went to see the doc, who wasn't seeing any patients. Arlen made sure to offer to do chores, before asking what was going on.

The medic shrugged. "The lad will learn. Maybe he'll start going out to fish more often. I can't treat him till at least sundown; nobody can see him, understand?"

Arlen was more a fan of money changing hands than this kind of overdraft notice. He supposed every group had its own way of doing things, and could say this one was never warranted.

"Arlen, what did you do for a living?"

"Machines. Er, complex tools. I had just started doing real work after my training." He slicked back his dirty blonde hair. "I could tell you what I know about the tools, but things like that weapon take materials I don't know how to make."

"You're in a unique role. Nobody's sure what to do with you yet, so we'd probably accept you as a fighter, a fisher, a healer. Craftsman might be be your best bet."

"Maybe. I'll have to see if I can build something useful. I'm glad to be given the choice."