A couple of hours - and forty more pale perch - later, Kaldalis bid Foturns and good evening and made his way through the camp to meet up with Heluna for dinner. His mood had been vastly improved by the time spent out on the ocean, and he had a spring in his step and a smile on his face when he got to the part of the encampment that had been settled by the Persimmon’s sailors.

This part of the camp also served as a lumber yard, and Kaldalis was surprised to find that the smell of sawdust was almost refreshing. He hadn’t had a real reason to visit this part of the camp, since all of the turn-in points for quests requiring gathered timber were near where the finished lumber would be used rather than the more logical location of the yard itself.

Another thing he noticed was all the evidence of the task Heluna had mentioned - salvage work. Several of the structures in this part of the camp were constructed from boards that had the unmistakable curve of the hull of a ship. There were also a few noteworthy decorations, like an enormous anchor half-buried in the dirt acting as a tent pole for one of the larger tents.

Kaldalis also noticed a wooden building that he assumed was where the captain was staying. It had a broken segment of mast sticking out of the top of it. Kaldalis found himself wondering how much of the ship they’d actually recovered. It had been an enormous ship, after all.

Perhaps there was still more to find, too.

The larger tent supported by the anchor turned out to be the sailors’ answer to the mess hall tent near the middle of the main camp. That was where he finally spotted Heluna, and she guided him to a table near the back of the tent where there was already a meal waiting. The tent was oddly arranged, with the canvas reaching the ground at one end, while the anchor held the entrance wide open to the air. It made it feel both cozy and open at the same time. However, the thick canvas meant that the light of the evening sun didn’t get all the way back to this part of the tent, and so someone had put a barnacle-encrusted candelabra in the middle of the table.

Once Heluna lit the candles, he could actually see his meal.

“I called in a few favors,” Heluna explained as they sat. “There’s almost jack shit remaining when it comes to Baimer foodstuffs among the salvage, and some people want to save what little we still got for a real celebration. But a few fuckers owe me a few favors, and I figured you deserved a bit of a treat after all your hard work.”

“Thank you,” Kaldalis said. His mood had been improved by the fishing, but it was buoyed even further by the gesture. The meal didn’t look like anything special by normal standards, but after two weeks at sea and another week and a half of eating foraged fruit and strange meats, it seemed a treat enough to have something different.

The central item in the dish was a relatively simple-looking pasta with a white sauce. Mixed into the sauce were some fried root vegetables that he recognized as local to the islands - he’d been foraging them for quests the last few days - as well as a sprinkle of some green herbs. His Earth-adapted brain guessed it was oregano, but honestly in this world it was probably some strange plant he’d never heard of that happened to be oregano-flavored. On the side were a few slices of roasted green veggies that he didn’t recognize - they looked like a lumpy sort of cross between brussels sprouts and broccoli - with a sprinkle of cheese over the top. Just beside that was an unmistakable half of an apple, neatly sliced and artfully fanned out along the edge of the plate.

“This is quite the spread,” he had to admit. It felt like the first time he’d seen a non-native fruit since he arrived on the island, and it was definitely the first time he’d seen pasta since the fried mashi from his last night back on Earth. “Though I’ll warn you, where I come from, we’re very picky about our apples.”

Heluna laughed at that. “Most of the rest were lost with the ship, so unless the seeds we cut out of this one are magic fast-growing bullshit, it’ll be awhile. Be picky all you like; it’s not gonna change shit.”

They both dug into the meal, and Kaldalis found it to be the best food he’d had in a long while. The pasta was well-cooked, and the white sauce was just the way he liked it - just shy of drowning in garlic. The cheese-covered greens, despite looking like brussels sprouts broccoli, had a flavor more reminiscent of asparagus. The apple was very fine, and had benefited greatly from this world’s apparent lack of food spoilage. It was crisp and juicy, as if straight off the tree despite having been in storage for at least three weeks. His carefully cultivated Washingtonian tastebuds guessed it was a fuji apple, but considering that name corresponded to a real place on Earth, it had to have a different name here.

“I’m sorry,” he said when he realized he’d silently stuffed the entire meal into his face. “You wanted to catch up, and I haven’t said a word.”

“It’s fine,” Heluna chuckled around a mouthful of pasta. “I’m doing the same fucking thing.” She gestured around the table with her fork, swallowing her food before she continued. “Besides, this isn’t the best place to spend all night. A gloomy-ass corner with just some shitty candles? What are we doing here, arranging a fucking assassination? Shit.”

“I don’t know,” Kaldalis said. “It seems kind of cozy.”

“We can stay if you want,” she offered with a shrug.

“Nah,” he waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “We don’t want to sit here with our empty plates all night, right?”

“Alright,” she said, popping the last slice of apple into her mouth. “Where are we going then?”

“How about the beach?” Kaldalis said. “I know you’re probably sick of the ocean with all the salvaging you’ve had to do, but I could listen to the waves hitting the sand all night.”

“Please,” Heluna said, leaning over the table towards him with a playful grin. “If I could ever get sick of the fucking sea I wouldn’t have become a fucking sailor, would I?”

Kaldalis couldn’t argue with that, and let her lead him out of the encampment and back onto the sands. The tide was making its way all the way out now, and the sun was just hovering a few fingers widths over the horizon.

“You’re holding up okay, right?” Heluna said, once they were alone on the beach. “I know there’s a lot of pressure on you around here, and that’s pretty shitty, but you’re handling it alright?”

“Yeah,” Kaldalis said immediately. “Yeah, I’m fine. The constant dungeon runs are a little exhausting, but it’s only like two hours a run, and I’m only doing two runs a day. I’ll never complain about a five hour workday. I did three runs yesterday, and I’m not fucking doing that again, but I think everyone’s been through by now, so I should be able to get back to other business tomorrow.”

“And what would that be?” Heluna asked, tilting her head. “What is your other business? Pardon me for asking, but what the fuck do you adventurers do all day?”

“Well, it depends,” Kaldalis said after a moment of hesitation. “Everyone probably has their own goals. I’m working on getting this encampment upgraded to a town, however the fuck that works.”

“I’ve never helped build a town before,’’ Heluna admitted. “I don’t really have any information for you there.”

“I mean, I understand Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I’m not trying to build Rome. I’m not even trying to build Eugene, Oregon. We’ve slapped together everything the League has asked for in the last couple of days. We’ve built everything short of a football stadium. How much more do we need?”

“Well, there’s at least one asshole who knows the answer to that. Queen bitch of the universe and all that.”

Kaldalis started to respond to that, but interrupted himself with a guffaw. If Onirioago was the queen bitch of the universe, why was Kaldalis working for her instead of against her?

“What?” Heluna asked defensively.

“Sorry, just…” He hesitated and decided that they didn’t need to spend the next two hours talking about the storyline of a videogame. “Long story. I can tell you later.”

“Alright,” she said, giving him a sidelong glance. “Anyway. It sounds to me like you just need to corner the expedition leader and get some fucking questions answered.”

“You want me to confront Onirioago?” Kaldalis asked with another laugh. “Yeah, that sounds like a great fuckin’ plan. I’m trying to avoid making eye contact with her from across the camp, and you want me to talk to her on purpose? Get the fuck outta here.”

“Aren’t you Adventurers League, though?” Heluna asked. “How the shit are you afraid of your own leader?”

“You-” Kaldalis sputtered. “Do you not remember how we became friends?”

“You talked to me like I was a fucking person instead of shitty background decoration?” Heluna said with a smirk.

“You were terrified of your own captain!”

“Hey, that’s different,” Heluna said with a huff. “You didn’t destroy the Expedition Leader’s bedroom.”

“Hopefully it stays that way,” Kaldalis grumbled, “as much as she might like it to be otherwise.” He tried not to think of how it felt to be looked at like a piece of meat by the sky-blue vathon woman.

Heluna let out a real cackle at that. Most finnians Kaldalis had met limited themselves to sensible chuckles or even a mild bark of laughter. With a few exceptions - notably Heluna herself - the grey-skinned race were a terse and serious bunch, and if they all sounded like Heluna, their reputation would be destroyed if they let loose like she was now. She sounded like a seagull on cocaine, and despite the ridiculous sound, Kaldalis found her mirth infectious, and laughed along with her.

“Sorry,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “That’s fucking hilarious. The queen bitch wants to jump on your dick.”

“To be honest, I’m not even sure if it’s that,” Kaldalis admitted. “She just looks at me like a hungry dog. I’m not sure if it’s about my dick or about how good I can make her look as expedition leader.”

“It’s probably the latter,” Heluna said. “No offense, but you aren’t exactly the vathon ideal.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re thicker here than you idiots like,” she said, slapping his stomach. “Back home there was an old wive’s tale that vathon children wear collars around their guts to keep them thin in the right places.”

Kaldalis had to admit, he had aimed to be as barrel-chested as the character customization system let him. He was still pretty much hourglass shaped, despite that. He wasn’t sure if he was self-conscious about that - either that he was as far as he could get from his fantasy race’s ideal, or that he wasn’t as far as he would have made himself if the customization system had let him.

“Speaking of destroying bedrooms,” Heluna said, changing the subject, “how is the dog doing?”

Kaldalis abruptly remembered for the first time in what seemed like entirely too long that there was a pet menu in this game, and he had a dog.

“Uhhhhh…” Kaldalis said, opening the menu and hoping to find a dog still there and not a very sad little skeleton.