"That sounds great! How much is the food?"

"It is! It's great fun. Well we usually just share it all, but you're an outsider. Hmm... I don't think there will be a problem if you give one of the cooks twenty rupees or something. Maybe the one whose food you liked best."

"I can probably do that!"

He's starting to figure out what's up with these people and their weird generosity. They're just a family is all. A really big one that's not used to strangers.

That actually seems to be a pretty good model! They're all friendly to one another, they all seem to know each other. There's an argument, they're not perfect, but it gets smoothed over.

Cooked food is an innovation that Har has not seen, and despite an ingredients list consisting mostly of fish, these villagers are pretty good at it.

He has ever seen a food that was heated, actually, but nothing like this at all. ...Which does make it a little hard to tell at a glance which things are likely safe for him to eat. He tries the things where the ingredients are the most obvious.

Well, it's all humans here. They're alien humans, sure, but they seem pretty alike. So presumably it's all safe to eat.

But either way, it's pretty tasty.

He gives one of the cooks twenty rupees. This is a great place. It would be kind of nice if he could convince these people to adopt him into the family, but even if not this is a great place to stay for a day or two while he figures out what he's going to do on this planet.

One of the women invites him to dance! "And don't worry about not knowing what to do, the point is just to move."

He'll try! He can definitely move! He tries to copy what other people do.

They can dance circles around the fire. The one who invited him into the dance breaks off after a couple of minutes. More people dance with him. Mostly women, some of the guys. A few of them turn him away or only seem to be dancing with him because it's polite, or because he's shiny and new. They try to teach him the songs but continue on regardless when he can't keep up. Eventually, he gets pushed to the edge of the dance circle again.

He's included, but not really part of this little family celebration. Nonetheless, it's a fairly rousing party.

It keeps up for a good while, but eventually, the fire burns lower, the food is mostly gone, the sun starts to set. A whole bunch of couples have paired up, holding hands, watching the sunset.

Couples, huh. Well, he can watch the sunset fine without a partner. But he looks for any other people who are by themselves, just in case he has any options here.

Well, very few of the couples are the same gender, there's only two of those. A few people are alone, but it's not like anyone has a label saying 'available and interested'.

And he just lost all his savings, there's no way he's going to pay one of them if they're not interested in doing it for free.

Hard to tell who might be interested if asked, though.

He asks one of the men who's alone how people find partners here.

"Oh, you lookin' for a girl, sha?" He shrugs. "You get to know people, I guess? Lotta folks get together when the other villages come visit, or we go over there. You're, like, new, I'd say chill out for a while, talk to people."

"Not a girl, but thanks, I'll do that."

"Not a- Ohhhh. Right." He nods knowingly. "That's different. That's just having fun. Not my thing, but," He gives three names and points out one of them, standing alone looking at the sunset.

"Thank you!"

He sure is accumulating a lot of people he owes favors to now. But whatever, he'll deal with that later. At the moment he goes to say hi to the guy watching the sunset alone.

The guy barely glances at him. He seems... Sad? Distracted, at any rate. "...Hey, new guy. Mahan? I'm Sebasto."

"Hey, Sebasto. ...I was going to proposition you but you look like you could use some kind of help with something, are you okay?"

"Eh, don't mind me. I'm just worried about something." He takes a better look at Mahan, up and down, shakes his head a bit, and smiles wryly, "...Brine-soaked clothes, that doesn't look comfortable at all. I bet you want to get out of them, right?"

"Oh, you want to see what's underneath?"

"Sure do. I've got a little special spot just outside of town. Real comfy. Great place to watch the stars, too. Wanna see it?"

He sure does.

It's a while before he feels like going back to the inn.

The village is quiet at night. There's a few torches burning and a few people still chatting around the remnants of the bonfire, but it's pretty quiet. His inn room is waiting for him.

The next morning, the village is a lot emptier, and a lot of the boats are gone. Presumably they're all out fishing?

Might be. Either way he needs more rupees, he can just pay for another night if he doesn't eat anything today but obviously he does need to eat. Maybe if he heads out a ways he'll find more monsters. Or at least more leaves.