"It's a tube with explosive in it, and the explosive propels small hard objects really really fast," says Cassiel. "I couldn't make a very complicated one but even a simple one could conceivably be better than whatever you're doing now."

She squints suspiciously at this description. "What does it usually look like, can you show me?"

Cassiel pulls up a picture of a rifle.

"The hunter might've had one but I'm not sure. I could try it. I do find weapons out there, but not always as fast as I'd like."

"I can make you something with fewer moving parts, to start, and work on getting a functional gun while you're on your next walk, if you want."

"That sounds good. Thanks."

"Do you want a sword, or a spear or something, what can I get you?" asks Cassiel, pulling off some fluff.

"Hmmm..."

She switches to another face.

"What kind of a sword can you manage?"

"Basically any kind, they're not complicated like guns are." She pulls up a visual dictionary of swords.

She asks after some likely-looking ones and eventually narrows down to a single favourite based on swordy characteristics like weight and balance and durability.

Cassiel whips up one of those and hands it over for checking-over.

She picks it up, hefts it, studies it from several angles, gives it a very careful swing in a corner facing a wall so nobody's in range to accidentally get hit. "Great, thanks. See you later."

"See you."

Cassiel starts working on a rifle.

The Hero heads out armed and armoured to see what comes next after the Awful Star Dogs Man.

She comes back half an hour later to report that she lost her sword but it was pretty handy and she'd like another one if it's not too much trouble.

"Sure." Cassiel makes another sword and also shows her the rifle, demonstrates its action.

She squints suspiciously at the rifle. "How hard is it to learn how to, uh, be any good with it? I'd probably need a place set aside for target practice, like I would if I was learning archery, right?"

"Target practice will help but guns became popular originally because they're much faster to get acceptably good with than bows are," Cassiel says.

"Huh. Okay. I'll take another walk or two while I think about how to set up somewhere for target practice. In the meantime, thanks for the sword." She grabs it and goes.

Cassiel makes a backup sword in advance and then switches from piling up rocks to firewood in case that's useful to anyone. Lunch is chicken noodle soup and caprese sandwiches and brownies.

The villagers are delighted to partake of this bizarre foreign lunch.

Oh good. It's nice to have things be relatively simple sometimes.