Tom raised the root vegetable up to his mouth and began to chew, trying not to let any expression cross his face. Nema was watching him while sucking on some kind of licorice root.

The slight woman had brought him breakfast, and was watching him eat with an intensity reserved for hunters and serial killers. In either case, Tom was the prey.

The food was…fine. Tom was raised by old people, so they had the ‘finish your plate’ mentality, which helped him now, because the roots themselves were filled with long fibers that refused to be chewed apart, and it had a bit of an acrid tang. They also had a tough, fibrous exterior that tasted like ass.

Not for the first time, Tom wished for pizza, but this would do. He hadn’t had anything but sun-fried lizard in over a month, and he was twenty pounds underweight. Getting other nutrients was a good way to avoid scurvy.

“~?~” She asked something softly that sounded like a question.

“It’s food. It’ll keep me going. You don’t have to worry about whether or not I like it.” Tom offered.

“~!~” She said, giving him a bright smile before climbing onto his lap. Tom stiffened as Nema sat down on his left thigh and took his ceramic plate from his hands and picked up the food, swiftly shucking the fibrous root with an experienced hand.

Tom was too distracted to see how she did it, because his brain was busy lighting up like a roman candle at the sensation of an attractive girl sitting on his lap. How long has it been? Over a year?

The communication barrier is going to be a problem. I can tell.

Tom opened his mouth and accepted the skinned root.

“Can you do that again, but slower?” Tom asked.

She swiftly peeled another root and offered it to him. Tom ate it.

“Slower,” he said, mimicking the motions she made, but slower.

She seemed to get the idea, and peeled one of the roast veggies with slow, deliberate motions, using her thumbnail as a blade that split the skin, then peeling it open.

“Let me try,” Tom said, reaching past her to grab another baked root. Everywhere his chest slid past her shoulder tingled with anticipation.

“This is nice, but it’s probably bad for my heart.” Tom muttered, putting the root in front of him where Nema could see it. His nails were pretty long since he’d last cut them with the blood-sword.

Let’s see, just puncture the skin with…my thumb… Tom grunted in frustration as his thumbnail failed to puncture the skin.

“No.” She said, the first English word anyone learns. She pointed at the edge of the root where it had been cut, and pantomimed slipping his nail inside and pulling outward.

Tom tried that, but it didn’t work, and the harder he tried, the more he smushed his metallic-tasting potato. By the end, he wound up with a bunch of root mush inside an impenetrable tube.

Normally that would be frustrating, but Nema laughing at him made her bottom wiggle against his leg, and Tom decided it was a win-win.

She took the root out of his hand and opened it with ease, offering him the baby-food mush. Tom ate it as best he could while she snickered at him.

“I see how it is,” Tom said, eyes narrowed. “You don’t think I can figure this out? How about this?”

Tom took the next root and carefully bit a little of the good stuff out of the center, then wrapped the freed skin around the ends so it was airtight. He then mashed the crap out of the insides with his hands.

Tom Graves, Inventor of go-gurt.

“How about that?” He asked, holding his tube of mush up to Nema. “That look appetizing?”

Nema leaned forward and put it in her mouth, her cheeks hollowing as she sucked the gooey center out of his phallic snack, maintaining intense eye contact.

…Aaand I’m hard as a rock, Tom thought.

“I get it, you’re sexy,” Tom said, rolling his eyes. “Quit eating my food.” He pulled the mush tube out of her mouth and she gave a frustrated growl, climbing up his chest to reach the it.

Alas, she was far too small to reach it when he held it above his head. Tom had no sympathy for her pathetic mewling, especially when it encouraged her to climb him, setting every nerve in his skin ablaze with anticipation.

Her chest pressed against his face as she strained to reach the food he’d denied her, her hips wiggling against his stomach. Tom was absolutely sure Nema knew what she was doing to him, and by God, he’d missed it.

Their fun was aborted when the village chief stuck his head in.

“~?~” He asked, his sudden appearance nearly giving Tom a heart attack.

“~!~” Nema responded. With a burst of power, she leapt up and snatched the tube out of his hands, landing beside him like an acrobat. Yep, she was totally playing along.

Nema gave him a smug smile as she finished off the last of the root mush before motioning for him to put his outdoor clothes on and follow her.

Tom did so, performing the age-old, tried-and-true method of tucking ‘it’ in his waistband before heading out.

Nema guided him to a gazebo beside a natural rock cluster. It seemed like the rocks somehow drew cold down from below, and the gazebo funneled a cool breeze into it.

Underneath the stretched leather were some thirty women, sitting together, chatting and singing while they worked. Many of them had babies in slings on their back, and more of them were keeping an eye on toddlers who were running around, keeping each other entertained, while slightly older children herded them here and there.

It was cacophonous, but peaceful. Nema pointed him to a stone mortar next to a stack of wheat-like seeds.

She demonstrated how to use it, laboriously crushing the seeds into powder before filling a nearby bowl and beginning the process again.

Then she sat Tom down in front of the large stone wheel. She pointed at a multicolored pole that was dyed in different colors on a mat of…

Oh, it’s a sundial. Tom thought.

She pointed at the sun, then the sundial and then at a specific spot on the sundial, then at Tom.

The message was clear: You wanna eat, you gotta work.

Before he’d crash-landed on this planet he probably would have sucked telling the time with the sun, but he’d been doing it for about a month now, so it looked like she was telling him to stay here and grind grain for about four hours.

Not bad, as far as shifts are concerned.

Tom got to work, and Nema hung around for a few minutes, clinging to him while giving other young women meaningful looks. I kinda feel like she’s peeing on me to claim her territory, Tom thought wryly as he worked the huge pestle.

Once Nema had ‘claimed’ him in front of the other women, she scurried off into the distance. The repetative labor gave Tom a chance to really think about Nema and his whole situation.

As far as Tom was aware, women don’t throw themselves at men who hit them with trucks without a good reason. Tom didn’t get an ‘evil’ or ‘selfish’ vibe from the girl. The time she’d tried to rescue him from his own truck stood out specifically.

When shit goes down, people’s real personality shines through, whether they’re the kind to try to rescue you or the kind to run away. Nema was the former.

So if she was trying to get in his pants it was because:

A: She wanted to, despite not knowing him at all.

B: She thought he wanted to, and there was some kind of custom or personality trait that favored pleasing men.

C: She felt she had to.

Of those, C was the most likely. But why? Was it to offer Tom protection by association with her, or was it to benefit Nema somehow?

Damnit. No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t figure it out, because none of the options were mutually exclusive.

It could be all of the above, and there was no way to disprove it.

I wish I could actually talk to somebody about it…I wonder if they have a written language?

The translation runes that Outsiders put on their messages and books made it easy to understand everything within their bounds, if he made some kind of white-board with those spell phrases on either side, he would be able to establish a more comprehensive communication than sexually charged roughhousing.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, sexually charged roughhousing is awesome, but I would like to know the facts, so I can make informed decisions.

Wait, What about Grant?

Grant seemed to be bilingual, but he’d been a Orsoth native until a couple months ago. He didn’t even have an accent.

Tom frowned, thinking it through.

Grant had faint golden tattoos hidden behind his sideburns, right outside his ears…

Maybe there’s a way to expedite the learning process.

I guess the question is, is that worth my time and soul pulses to pull off? Tom thought. Maybe with Nema’s help he could gather fat and ash in the quantities he’d need to summon Luz, who could give him the lowdown on how magic tattoos were applied. Then he would have to create the ink, probably buy some nice tattoo needles from Luz because he wasn’t sure these people had access to iron.

Then he’d have to get it scribed on his body. Permanently.

It was about the same amount of effort as just buckling down and learning the language.

Tom’s inner lazy American lamented being forced to learn someone else’s language before he kicked it back in its hole. That mindset relied upon having privilege and options. Tom didn’t have much of either.

Okay, I’ll learn the local language the hard way, Tom thought, planning out how he would accomplish that. Dreaming an extra day every night would definitely help with that, but it would drop his daily production dangerously low compared to his monthly soul-debt.

If I can only produce soul-pulses for the first twelve hours of the day, and have to save the last four hours of production for sleeping, then…

Tom rubbed his forehead. He’d been working on estimates for way too long. Over the last month, he was confident that his SPPD (Soul Pulses Per Day) had risen, but he didn’t know how much, since soul pulses had gradually stopped hurting inside him. Tom needed to purchase another gauge from Luz at the earliest opportunity to ensure the accuracy of his plans.

Even by my prior estimates, there should still be enough to go ahead with the plan, given that I don’t have to dupe gasoline anymore.

Out of curiosity, Tom had duped a liter of water, and found it had taken an estimated twenty soul pulses. Tom’s estimates were probably accurate, because he knew a single Crypt could store fifty, and after filling one up until it wouldn’t take any more, he had an easy benchmark.

The water spell phrase had created thirty gallons before it finally stopped refilling.

Twenty divided by three… six point six. Thirty divided by one quarter… one hundred and twenty.

Those two multiplied by each other…. Just shy of eight hundred.

Tom had discovered that time-duping was roughly one eight-hundredth as efficient as simply using a spell phrase to create the material in question.

At least for water, but it was a good starting value. Tom was sure there was some weirdness going on depending on the material, but an eight hundredth gave him a good idea of how incredibly inefficient duping was.

Tom would only use it for high-value items he couldn’t get any other way. And make sure nobody discovered he could do it.

*******

Tom was in his own head for a large portion of the day, which was why he was startled when he realized that the work day was already over and the women were packing up to go home.

The sun was even a little past the point Nema had pointed out on the sundial. The hottest part of the day was coming up soon, and not even a strategically located gazebo would do much to help, so the villagers were all heading toward their homes to nap through the worst of it in their well-insulated huts.

Tom packed up, covering the heaping bowl of ground seeds, ignoring the burst of feminine murmuring as he rose to his full height.

Nema was small, but that wasn’t exactly because Nema was small. Everyone was small. Even the village chief, who was taller than most, was about five-foot six. It made sense, given how sparse food was.

It made Tom feel a little guilty. He would probably eat three times as much as the next person, and he was only capable of mindlessly grinding grains. Not exactly an equitable trade for the villagers.

Add that to my list of priorities, Tom thought.

1: Learn the language

2: Contribute enough to justify my presence in the village so they don’t eat me.

3: ?

4: Rescue my daughter from alien douchebags.

5: Profit.

Try as he might, Tom couldn’t draw the line between step two and step four. He simply didn’t know enough about his current situation to be able to figure out what his long-term plans would be.

He needed to learn the language, and he needed to start right away.

“Excuse me,” he said, holding out the large bowl of flour to the nearest woman. “Where do I take this?” She gave him an odd look, let out a burst of foreign language, then moved on.

“Thank you, that was very helpful.” Tom said dryly.

Tom finally was able to figure out where to go by following the crowd and placing his bowl beside a dozen others outside an oversized hut with a large oven, probably used to cook at night when it got really cold.

Right now was nap-time.

Stretching his aching arms, Tom staggered his way back to his hut, suppressing a yawn.

When he pushed the thick leather and cloth insulated curtain out of the way, he stopped in place.

Nema was making the local equivalent of a ‘tah-dah!’ motion, standing in the middle of the hut with her arms spread wide.

Tom’s tiny bedroll had transformed into a large mat actually big enough for his entire body, with soft-looking hide covers. The gear from his truck had been carefully arranged around the home, set on a brand-new shelf made of sticks and tightly bound leather.

In the middle of the room was a short table that hadn’t existed before, made of smoothed stone and some stubby wooden legs. On top of it was a bowl of cold broth.

“Wow,” Tom said, unable to stop himself from smiling. “Thank you, Nema,” he said, patting her shoulder.

Nema glanced at his hand engulfing her shoulder, then gazed up at him and swallowed some drool, her body radiating barely restrained happiness.

Okay… Tom took his hand away, and the girl deflated. Eh, what the hell. He put his hand back on her shoulder. She brightened.

He took his hand away.

She pouted.

He put his hand back.

She smiled.

He took his hand away, unable to contain his smirk.

She jabbed him in the ribs.