New faces, new tasks

The next morning my two guides, guards, doctors, or whatever role they now claimed for themselves, met me as soon as everybody in the village had already woken up and started with their daily routines. This way they wanted to make sure that everybody would get the opportunity to get to know me firsthand. As we reached the main body of the village the man left us to go on with his original tasks.

I understood the importance of saying hello to your new neighbors, but somehow, they overdid it in some moments to the point that I felt less like I was introducing myself, but more like they wanted to offer me on a market.

Maybe it was just my own imagination, but sometimes I felt like the person I was introduced to was considering to take the offer. I just hoped there wasn’t any slavery in this world. I still had my revolver up my sleeve and my gunbelt, of which the people here were suspiciously unsuspicious, but using that thing against someone here, would likely mean to start killing and never stop until only those were left who couldn’t fight and they in turn would try to kill me with my pillow while I was asleep.

In reality I probably didn’t have to fear a thing. Slave traders wouldn’t have returned my bag to me.

After they had done so I had checked if anything survived the long time being soaked with water. To my surprise they had thoroughly dried everything so the notebook’s pages were quite wavy, but completely dry and didn’t stick together. Even more surprising was the ink. Of course, the black writings had dissolved a little, coloring the pages a little grey but the original lines were still clearly visible, meaning that the notes I had taken so far, weren’t lost, as I had expected.

In the end I had to accept that they likely wouldn’t sell me to somebody. This in turn could only mean, that I understood their words, but not their culture or way of thinking.

“A healthy young man!”, repeated the old woman yet another time. She didn’t get tired of stressing that I was healthy and male, whenever introducing me to somebody.

“Why are you saying this always?”, I finally asked sometime after we had left another person behind on our way around the village and its outposts.

“Well, we have to Integrate you, don’t we?”, she replied.

“And what does me being a healthy young man have to do with it?”, I asked.

“Later. We arrive now at our next stop.”

I hadn’t expected so many people to live in a village that was living off whatever grew on a turtles back and whatever could be caught in the waters around it. The sun had reached its peak when we were finally done with presenting me to the people. I was quite sure it was more of a presentation than an introduction.

“Have you met anybody of your liking?”, the woman asked.

“Of my liking?”, I responded, not understanding what she was going for.

“Don’t worry, you will get to know everybody soon enough. That’s one of the pros of living in such a small community.”, she explained.

I silently nodded. This I could understand at least. Having good relations with the people around you actually could pay off, even if it was just by having a drink together after a day of done work.

Thinking about this, I turned to her.

“What should I do if I stay here? I’m sure being a slacker isn’t perceived well here.”

“That depends on what you can do.”, she replied.

“I’m not much of a fighter, but what else has to be done? I would just continue trying until we find something that works.”

“That’s the spirit.”

And thus began our pursuit of finding me a task that I could actually handle. It would be a long one.

I wasn’t very skilled in construction, which we would soon find out, after letting me build different stools out of bamboo, which all just immediately collapsed after somebody put a little weight on them. The clothes I sewed were falling apart from their own weight as soon as somebody wore them, the food that I cooked was edible, but far from enjoyable and as I had stated before, I also wasn’t fit to be a fighter as long as it didn’t come to the worst case.

Seeing them with their shields and spears actually made me think why there were guards on such a small island.

“Are there any dangerous animals here?”, I asked.

“No. Why are you asking? Have you seen any?”, the old woman asked as we made our way to the next place where I hoped to find a hidden talent of mine.

“Then why do you even have to guard this village? Are there other people here?”

“We will talk about that later. For now you should know that you shouldn’t trust anybody you haven’t met so far.”, she said grimly.

I felt a little uneasy upon hearing this, especially since I wasn’t sure if I could even recognize the people I already had met today.

The next stop seemed to also be the last. Apparently, the tasks they had in this town weren’t too various and I had proven useless in almost all of them. So I needed to make this last chance count.

Of course the last task was fishing. I had been fishing before in my life but it had been at least ten or fifteen years since I did it the last time and back then I hadn’t paid too much attention on the process itself but more on the result.

And now it meant either fishing, or being useless. Great possibilities.

I should better try my best to remember what I once knew about it., I thought to myself as we approached the beach.

They handed me a simple fishing rod made out of bamboo and a long thread which was tied to the fishing rod on several points and a hook at the other end.

I forced myself to not show my disgust as I grabbed one of the worms used as bait and stuck it onto the hook. I swung the rod and after the hook sank into the water, I waited.

At least, so I told myself, failing at fishing wasn’t just my own fault but also always kind of the fish’s. By now I had done everything exactly like everybody else, but still was the only one who had not caught a fish yet. But getting impatient would not help my situation, so I sat down and calmly waited until something happened.

From time to time I moved the bamboo a little in my hands to make the bait look more like a living object worth of a fish’s time and then continued to wait.

That’s when I had an idea to maybe, or maybe not catch something larger, since the small fish didn’t seem to like my technique. I took the hook out of the water and placed one of the smaller fish somebody had already caught as new bait onto it. Then I swung my fishing rod again and let the hook fly as far as the threat allowed it to.

Then I waited again. It wasn’t long before something lightly tugged on the bait. I stood up, trying not to move the fishing rod too much until finally, with a more decisive jolt, whatever had taken interest into the bait, tried to leave into the opposite direction, the hook in its mouth.

“That’s a big one!”, I exclaimed.

The others, who had already started to store their things or to prepare the fish they had caught to be eaten the same day, since they always only caught as much as they could eat immediately or dry to make them more durable, gathered around me as they watched my fight against the fish. Sometimes it fought harder, that was when I used less force in order to prevent the threat from tearing, then again, the fish tried to regain its forces for the next attempt to escape. These were the moments I used to pull it closer to the beach until it finally helplessly jumped up and down on the hot sand.

The others immediately carried it further onto the land to prevent it from escaping back into the sea and started to prepare the fish for further processing.

What had been important to me was just the thought that no matter how long I would stay here, I would at least not be complete and utterly useless. That was something at least.