"Big mama."

"Varai's a respected elder of the village. A little spacey but real clever. Sees trouble coming. Little stuff like dealing with holes in roofs or a wrecked boat, we go to Makose instead, but strangers and magic stuff? That's Varai. She's also my great-grandma."

"Sounds like a good kind of person to have on hand."

"That's why she's one of our pogoms. If there's trouble or big news, the pogoms talk it over and then decide what to do next, y'see. They're s'posed to be like a family. Grandmother and grandfather wise and storied, mother nurturing, father protective, uncle hunter who wanders and travels, older son the fisher and younger sister the weaver. The pog has someone anyone in the village can relate to."

"I've never heard of anything like that before."

"How do you figure out what to do about trouble in Har, then?"

"We have judges whose job it is to figure out if someone did something wrong and what to do about it if they did, and the judges are chosen by people whose job is to pick good people for that job, and - it goes a couple levels because there are a lot of us - the people ultimately responsible for choosing judges are chosen by everyone. A bunch of people who think they could do it explain why they think so and what their plans are, and we all say who we think would be good at it. We have a cool trick to doing the choosing privately so that you only know how many people support each person, not which people, so you can't threaten people into supporting you."

"That sounds stressful and confusing."

"There's a lot of 'em. Like the lands to the north. Imagine if the pog lived two weeks away and didn't know any of our names? And what would we do if Mahan or Link stole stuff?"

"...Take it to the pog? Maybe they had a good reason, maybe it was a mistake, whatever. If they were just greedy... Lecture 'em and tell them to give it back or they're not welcome here?"

"If there are lots of people, lots and lots and lots of people, probably someone steals something every day. Assembling the pog every day would not be good. They've got lives to live too. A judge is almost like... Someone the pog asks to keep the worst troublemakers in line so they don't have to. That person figures out if there was a good reason or a mistake and how to keep their noses clean in the future and the pog can worry about more important stuff than a missing basket."

"I suppose..."

"Yeah, it's like that. Your way is probably better for the number of people you have here."

"If we had more people we'd need to do other stuff. Some of the old stories say they did things different before the Calamity, when there were more sea people."

"Nothing I hear about the Calamity sounds good at all. How'd you do things then?"

"There was a Sea King who made decisions for all the sea people. He and his pog talked to northerners, and travelers, and the traders from the far east. He answered to the King of Hyrule and did what Hyrule wanted sometimes, but that was alright. Hyrule wanted peace and prosperity. He built big towns organized in ways that didn't make people overfish or have problems with trash, and he set out rules for how crimes should be punished and the new king would be chosen. Then, the Calamity. There's few enough of us now that we haven't needed a new Sea King."

"That sounds like a good way to do it, we have something a little like that in some of the states in Har."

"Anyway, d'you want to come to the meet or not, sha?"

"If it's okay, yeah."

He strides off into one of the bigger huts and comes back after a minute.

"Yeah, you can come along if you sit with the kids when it's time for rituals."

"Thank you!"

"Trade's a big part of a meet but you don't have too much to trade, right? Maybe they'll know about some monsters you can kill."

"It's always worth finding out what people are offering, anyway."

"The village we're meeting has a salt pit. Salt's good stuff. I think folks'll start heading out soon. We'll let you on our boat if you wield the leaf most of the way there and back."

"I can probably do that! How long's the trip?"

"Like an hour? Bit less?" Shrug. "It's harder than walking but not as hard as running. Should be doable, sha. If you can't keep it up I'll think of something else to make up for it but I bet you can."

"Yeah, I think I can do that."

The two guys idly chatter for another few minutes, and then at some unseen signal everyone decides at once it's time to head out. They get up and start hauling their boat into the water alongside the dozens of other boats, which are forming a rough line in the sea. All together it's quite a procession.

Fascinating.

He can wield the leaf the whole way there.

Everyone makes landfall by a wide sandbar, including almost as many boats coming from the opposite direction. Some people are already building fires and laying out stuff to trade on the beach.

Hey, Sebasto is here! Trying to light another fire, at the moment.