"Yeah, there's some dairy cows around. Apparently some people can't have milk or cheese or cream, but butter is usually still okay, according to the books I got."

"Which people can't have those? You don't have a word for most of the species I know."

"Some humans can't have dairy, that is. I don't know about other species of sentients seeing as we haven't got any."

"Oh, weird. I guess that explains why the first two people I met happened to be human."

"Yeah, I don't really know what's up with the menagerie of people Har has. That seems weird to me."

"I can't wait to see what your cities are like."

"Beautiful, I think. The well-made ones, anyway."

They approach a farming village. It's a loose collection of little islands with rope-and-wood bridges between them. Some houses are built right into the side and bottom of the islands rather than on top. One almost looks like a little face, with windows for eyes, a door-nose, a catwalk of a mouth, and a field of grain on top as hair. The place also has a pair of tall poles with booms and ropes that makes the process of tying the ship down much easier than on Kar's undeveloped island.

Maybe someday he'll stop being excited about every new person here but this place is great.

"Will we tell them, or not?"

"Well, they won't necessarily be able to use any particular metal we give them, except as trade good. Maybe tell them we have cheap pure copper or bronze or iron? That's relatively easy to smith, I think. Can you make alloys directly?"

"It's not impossible in theory but I can't guarantee even if I make the right elements it'll be what you want, structure matters too."

"Well, it's possible they can do something useful with a lot of cheap iron or copper. Even if that's just 'sell it'. Up to you, I suppose."

"I'll make some from whatever scrap you want me to use and you can tell them whatever you think is best about where it came from."

"Alright. And do you want ownership of the food I get from it, or just an acknowledgment that I owe ya, or what?"

"If it's not too much trouble it'd be more convenient if I didn't have to figure out what to do with all the food, if we could just agree on how much you owe me for it until I figure out what I can actually use. What kind of cut do you want for bringing me here and negotiating the deals?"

"There's only so much food that can fit in my hold, only so much they have available to sell all at once. I'd honestly want a pretty large cut since this deal is also an opportunity cost for me, but I'm not sure what you would think is reasonable. Fifty-fifty?"

"Sounds fine to me."

"No more scrap wood, really. Let's get you some buckets of water to metallize. If it looks like random lumps one could have found in an island somewhere, even better."

Once that's done, he goes out and merchantizes! He's still good at it. Valanda could probably talk to some of the villagers.

He makes himself visible and looks around at things but he's not sure if it's polite to just start talking to people. If it is maybe someone else will just strike up a conversation with him so he doesn't have to figure out how to do that.

"You his kid or something?" Asks one woman holding a wooden cage with some kind of weird bird in it.

"He's giving me a ride to a town, we just met a few days ago."

"Kids your age always want to go off somewhere else and never be seen again, what happened to family, what happened to working the farm? Bah."

She moves closer to where Nick is haggling with three people at once, leaving him alone.

Well, that could've gone better.

He'll just wander anywhere that doesn't look like private property and hope no one else wants him to have been born on a farm.

He seems to want to be left alone - most people do that. One adolescent boy asks where he's from in defiance of the silent agreement.

"I'm from Anavel Sani. It's pretty terrible there, they have slavery."

"Ewwww. My papa said his mama was a slave in a big town, but she snuck on a ship that was leaving the evil slave town and came here."