The next morning was the same as the first. The stranger trotted downstairs to find the elven woman at her kitchen table, breakfast and tea waiting.

Did… were they a late sleeper? Or was this lady just a super morning person? It was hard to tell without clocks.

“Morning,” they said, trying to be nice.

She looked up, greeting them back. She asked something and the stranger squinted, failing to read any real context clues. She asked again, pointing towards their feet.

“Oh! Yes, they are good. I need to get used to the fit and stretch them out, I think, but they are much better than having no shoes.”

They gave a thumbs up to the woman, who nodded. That hand gesture was universal too. Or was it planar?

A few days had passed, but their sketch paper and pen were still waiting. They picked it up while they munched on a breakfast of small fruit slices and cheese, absorbing the ink to play with line weights and curves.

Was there anything they could reasonably draw to help? Pictures weren’t words but they did convey meaning.

The stranger sketched a little person, roughly equivalent to what they looked like, with a hammer and piece of paper with scrolled edges. They quickly added a pair of boots before the person, drawing an arrow leading to the person. Another arrow afterward, leading away, and?

It would have to do.

They tapped the table, pointing at the doodle when the woman looked up.

She took some time to analyze the pictograph but seemed to have an answer, pointing in a direction and nodding. So she did have a work plan for today.

The stranger finished their tea, watching the woman sort her paperwork. She did need a name. They remembered brainstorming the concept last night and passing out before thinking of any options.

She was a strawberry blonde with coarse, wavy hair. Berry seemed… infantilizing.

Elf was rude, or the stranger assumed it was. In the same way that Guy or Lady could b— Weren’t those names? They distinctly remembered a Guy Somebody who was famous for food.

Her eyes were green, so that was an option. Emerald was… too much. It felt too unironically precious. The same went for Jade, except that Jade felt more like a real name.

Forest? No. Ivy? Fern?

Fern… was pretty good. Fern would work.

Her eyes were roughly that color, a warm, yellow-tinged green with brown dotting the middle. They reminded the stranger of those curled up fern fronds, a sign of good health in the woods.

Eventually, the stranger would need their own name. That felt like a daunting task for another day. It could wait; no one was champing at the bit to say it, after all.

Fern stood up, declaring the day was to begin by touching the stranger’s arm and leading them outside. They could smell the earthy stink of stables on the left as they approached the courtyard garden – much lovelier in the daylight – and neared the big building.

That same insignia was carved into a hanging sign: an ax and sword over a star-dotted shield. Well, it wasn’t a weapons shop. This organization had to do with combat unless it was severely misrepresented, but that didn’t mesh with the large information desks inside and quiet feeling the stranger remembered.

It was less quiet this morning.

There were people in the waiting area, sprawled over an armchair chatting with companions or peering at the map pinned to a large board in the front.

Two uniformed people stood behind the desks. First, a young man with a solemn face, wheat-colored hair matching thin brass glasses. Second, a surprisingly tall and muscular woman with long hair tied up with flowing green and blue ribbons.

Oh, they should name people if they planned to be around for a while. That guy or that girl was probably rude. Uh. Brass and Ribbon. Next.

Fern pointed the stranger to an empty chair and hurried off as Ribbon waved her over to help with some sort of transaction. The stranger didn’t sit down immediately, watching Fern touch a metal card to a similar disk on the counter to activate a… a display.

A table of information popped up like a hologram, undeniably magical. The stranger eyed it, not surprised as much as intrigued. This world had glass deer ghosts. A pop-up magical accounting table didn’t seem too wild.

Their interest waned since the table wasn’t legible. Even though the words wouldn’t have been obvious at this distance regardless, the stranger could feel their mind unfocus as the symbols in the table wiggled and blurred. Not even magical words could be read.

Sighing, they glanced back at their chair, remembering how much they felt like a toddler last time they were here. Supervised, told to sit and behave.

There was, however, a map. They couldn’t get into any trouble by looking at a map, right?

There were already people at this… corkboard, pointing to small pieces of paper arranged haphazardly next to a large map. The stranger tried to scoot closer without getting in the way, eyeing the map curiously.

It had to be a local map.

The stranger was accustomed to reading site maps and vegetation maps so it wasn’t difficult to figure out this one. There was a pin with the building’s insignia at the upper edge of a walled city, with a large castle structure due south at the highest point of the area’s elevation. Bless old maps and their use of stippling to indicate the shadows of cliffs and rocky rises.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Around the city lay various forests, what looked to be a prairie, some farmland in the west, and rocky spots farther north.

Immediately to the stranger’s right, the group of armed folks were arguing over some paperwork, so the stranger had long since tuned them out to think about maps. They were guessing where their original, uh, spawn point occurred, not that it mattered, when someone tapped their arm.

The stranger was a little startled, looking over with unease to face a grin wider than that of the oft-quoted fairy tale feline. It belonged to a large man with a big sword, the dream of a maxed-out video game character.

He said something with great enthusiasm, pointing at a few papers on the board. All of them had non-Euclidean writing but shared drawings of a variety of plants.

The stranger blinked, looking back at the cheerful man who very much deserved to be called Buster.

A flicker of confusion passed over Buster’s face and the man spoke again. When the stranger sighed, Buster pointed at his own ear to question the stranger’s hearing.

“No, regrettably, I can speak and hear you.”

The fighter looked like he wanted to say more, but he turned his head, as if called from across the room.

The stranger spared a glance, noting that Fern was no longer occupied, saying something in a cryptic tongue to their new friend Buster.

Understanding – albeit an apprehensive understanding – washed over Buster’s face, and he patted the stranger on the shoulder with sympathy.

This would become a too-familiar gesture, the stranger was sure.

Acting on some unknown order from Fern, Buster grabbed a few of the papers on the board – the ones with the plants. He folded them so that the images were clearly visible then pointed to the map.

Ah, so these were quests?

Buster, in his infinite kindness, chose plants that were close together, in a wetland northeast of this building and along the connecting river.

Oh, okay. The stranger could do this. They looked over the flyers, trying to discern any additional information. Nope. It looked like it was charades time again.

They pointed at one of the images – a lily-adjacent flower with three dots on the interior of every petal – and glanced up at Buster. He was watching. Right. The stranger mimed picking the flower then made a little circle with their hands, stretching into a much wider length that spanned their shoulders.

Buster furrowed his brows and tapped the flower again, circling it.

Well, the stranger lost that round. Time for another.

They rubbed the bridge of their nose. When they looked up, another person was joining the game, a companion of Buster.

The new person was short, much shorter than either the stranger or Buster, and they had a septum piercing and a set of knives strapped to their side. Right. Septum and Buster.

Ugh. The stranger was too over this to feel much embarrassment, but more people certainly didn’t help their confidence.

They made a second attempt – they mimed picking three flowers, paused with an awkward hand gesture, trying to convey the concept of or, then pretended to pick a lot of flowers, arms held out wide as if they were carrying a big basket.

Buster still looked confused. Septum, however, seemed to grasp the basics.

Septum reached for the papers, leading the stranger toward a countertop. With a pen, they made a few marks.

||||| ||||| ➔ ✖

Ten is ✖. The stranger could follow this. They hadn’t been amazing at statistics but certainly this was easier.

Septum started to write at the top of each paper before waving down one of the clerks – the placid Brass, was it? – who gave them a pair of scissors. They cut out the request into easy-to-manage rectangles with only the images, then went to work with the pen.

The page with the dotted lily now had an ✖ on the back.

✖✖✖, or thirty, on the wetlands grass with a peacock plume shape.

And finally, a fruticose lichen with tiny stalks only had six lines for its count.

The stranger smiled brightly as they looked over the papers, speaking out of gratitude. “I have no idea how to begin to convey thanks, but I hope you understand how helpful this was. I was completely lost.”

More static words were exchanged before the pair returned to their group.

The stranger was fairly set now, they thought. They had something to do that presumably would get them money or brownie points, at minimum, and there were clear directions about the quests’ what, how many, and where.

Thirty, ten, six… forty-six plants total.

Oh, wait.

The stranger turned swiftly, hoping to catch Brass before he helped another… client, or whatever they were called here. They waved him down, trying to make the gesture of a strap across their chest and the swoop of a satchel.

The man nodded.

“Do we have a bag in the lost and found?” he called out to the other staff.

Rami, known as Brass for his eyeglass frames, didn’t make a point to poke around in that box. The only things that were lost at the Guild were generally broken or uselessly niche.

“Not yesterday,” the tall woman replied.

Ribbon’s work tasks were incredibly simple compared to the clerks, so she tended to be nosier about what was new in the front hall.

Zarin was, politely, the muscle. A brawler hired for intimidation purposes to keep new adventurers from getting too rowdy with the other staff.

(Rami and Stella were both mages, and highly capable ones at that. It simply helped to have someone who looked scary as a preventative measure.)

She gestured behind her, toward the small central hallway that led to the back of the Guild, to the storage and more house-like features. “I can go look, if you need—”

“No one will look,” came the plainly stated reply, but not from Rami.

The guildmaster had no need to raise his voice or convey more than a simple statement with his order. The finality was implied, for the same reason that the Guild was now quiet with anticipation and the eight occupants focused on the guildmaster.

Bewildered at the sudden quiet, the stranger glanced around nervously. So, the looming old man from the other day had power here? Great.

It felt like maybe that wasn’t the worst news because the looming man had indeed helped, yet the stranger wasn’t exactly soothed. Buster and Septum, both vaguely formidable in appearances, watched in rapt attention.

Cool, so the old man was powerful and scary.

Magnanimously the guildmaster gave an explanation from his stance in the doorway, outlined dramatically by the shadows of the storage room.

“That is the Foreigner. He is inflicted with an impressive curse, thus the lack of language skills. If you want him to survive—” The guildmaster paused for emphasis, as if someone wanted to contradict that point. “—then any help needs to be an education, not a gift.”

People desired to be needed and useful, if not seeking kindness for kindness’ sake. That was the way of commoners, townsfolk. A community helped each other.

Later, the foreigner would encounter the other type of people, those who took to flaunt their control. That’s when the effort of building connections and community would be the most beneficial.

The guildmaster knew – many decades of his life were spent as the latter person, and it was still a struggle to give back without a strategical purpose.

“What do you recommend then, sir?” Rami queried.

No one would act against the guildmaster, so a little clarification of the boundaries was needed.

The guildmaster watched the foreigner while he contemplated, tapping the curve of a pipe stem softly against his leg. The red-haired man was practically sweating from the tension in the room, unsure and unable to ask why.

“Point out the market on the map.”

“He doesn’t have any money, sir.” Stella interjected.

The guildmaster did not shift his cat’s-eye gaze from the foreigner. “He has hands. Let him learn to persevere.”

Or develop nimble fingers, the time-honored option.