A Lost boy somehow gets even more lost.
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It's no harder to find than before.

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Will his recent acquaintances buy squirrel pelt, duck feathers, and two kinds of meat, or know who will?

He'll hold onto the berries and nuts for now.

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He can sell the squirrel pelt and get a referral to someone who'll take the feathers. The perpetual stew can accept a squirrel; duck is recognizable enough that he can flip it to an establishment with a spit, and they'll slide it on there to roast.

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Excellent. He'll thank everyone involved and walk around until all that's done, though he'll save a few of the largest duck feathers for potential future arrows.

How many moneys does he now have?

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Enough for the bag he was looking at!

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Huzzah! He'll go do that.

And he even has a decent chunk left over. He'll save it for his travel fund, and head back to the farmhouse to finally get some rest.

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Now that he considers it, how does society even decide what time it is to sleep without nights? Does everyone go to sleep at the same time? Probably, or else tracking "wakes" might be hard...

He asks Ashimba when he arrives at the farm, curious about her schedule in general.

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Ashimba's asleep! Her housemate says that they usually alternate shifts so there's always someone to take care of the farm.

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Huh, that makes sense. Does Ashimba's housemate have a time keeper, if such things exist, or date tracker Danny can study to better understand this round?

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"Do you have an irregular sleep cycle?"

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"I do, yeah. I sleep a different amount of hours depending how tired I am and how much sleep I've gotten in the past few wakes." He's not actually sure about the numbers anymore, for all he knows something in the Hedge messed with his sleep.

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"Wow, that sounds so inconvenient. If you really need to know how much time is passing there are things with sand or candles or whatever that you can do, but most people don't need to know that."

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"It's less about tracking time as it passes, and more about figuring out what the current time is." He knows this explanation isn't likely to help, so adds, "There's a ship leaving in a few wakes that I'd like to be on. Do you track wakes until next harvest anywhere, or..." He's probably going to say they just look at the crops and know they're ready. "Celebrations? The time you or friends were made?"

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"...why would you need to know what time it is to notice that you'd just made someone new?"

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Danny isn't sure if it's a translation issue or if they just think of time in such an unstructured way that this conversation is going to be endlessly frustrating.

Still, he knows there's something here that could potentially exist in the man's worldview and matters to Danny practically. "On the ship that brought me here, there was a celebration for the captain. It was something related to when he was made, a certain amount of time passing. Do you do things like that on this round?"

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"Oh, you mean like a large round number of wakes? We don't do that here but I've heard it. You'd just count wakes, though."

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"Right, that makes sense." He has a sinking feeling he knows what's coming, but he has to ask... "Do you record that count, anywhere?"

"Why would we? It's obvious, isn't it, how many wakes it's been since everyone you know was made, why would that be a thing anyone ever loses track of..."

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"I think in some cities they have a big jar of stones or tallies on a wall or whatever, one per wake since the founding."

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Well that puts some limit on these superhumans' memory, at least.

"The what?"

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"The founding of the city in question."

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"Unlike here, where everyone can remember the amount of wakes since Creekcross was founded, along with when all their friends were made?" he asks, just to confirm.

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"- unlike here where nobody cares."

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"Fair!" He shrugs. "I guess I'll just check with the ships after each wake to see how much more time until the ship arrives. Thanks for answering my questions, I'll head to sleep now."

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"Ships are usually in dock for a few wakes so you don't need to be exact. Sleep well!"

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Oh, that makes sense. "Thank you!"

He heads to the swept floor of the barn where the folded blanket was left, gathers some straw in a pile to put his newly purchased bag on top of, then lies down with a sigh.

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