“That’s Freeport?” I asked skeptically, staring at a small collection of shacks on a tiny beach. We were the only ship in the area and the waters were too shallow for us to even come close to the shore. We had to send a smaller boat in to gather supplies.
There was a snort of laughter from some of the crew and a sigh from Thuvvik. He tilted his ears back indicating patient frustration and explained in Porforo.
“No, this isn’t Freeport. This is just stop for supplies. Barrels they took ashore will be filled with fresh water and crates will be traded for some fresh fish. Or at least fresher.”
I nearly blushed before remembering where I was and instead nodded.
“We maybe three weeks away from Freeport proper, give or take few days depending on wind,” Thuvvik said, gracefully moving past my embarrassment.
“But we are in Runnan lands?” I asked, trying to make out details of the people on shore. I could certainly count the number of people on the beach, there were far more watching the smaller boat heading to shore than the huts we saw suggested, but from this distance I couldn’t make out many specific details like ear structures. If these were elves, humans, one of the People, or something else entirely I could not tell.
“Yes,” Thuvvik said with a sharp nod. “Or at least Runnan claimed lands. I doubt people here have ever seen Runnan Military officer or have ever had to deal with government official, but all would say they Runnan.”
That, more than anything, helped put the scale of the Empire into context for me. It had been explained to me by Eninald that a boat travelled roughly five times faster than someone walked. The Wood was maybe three weeks of walking across and two weeks of walking tall. Which meant that, at minimum, the empire was five times larger than Wood was wide. I supposed there was some compensation to be made for us not travelling in straight lines and possibly stopping other ports, but I didn’t have the math or map skills to really…
“Ahem,” Thuvvik said, drawing me back to the present. I blinked and shook my head before offering him a sheepish smile.
“The, uh, Empire is very large, isn’t it?”
Thuvvik snorted in amusement. “That is like saying stars are overhead. All of Wood could fit into Empire ten times over with space to spare.”
That… I didn’t know how to respond to that. I had known that the Empire was large, and a problem, but literally ten times the size, which likely meant ten times the people. And despite what Elder Yamamoto said about fighting the Empire off, I didn’t think being out numbered ten to one would go well for us at all.
"Worse if we don’t have access to our magical abilities," Rin noted.
I nodded to no one in particular, suddenly a lot more convinced to finish this quest as quickly as possible.
*************************************************************************************************
From the small fishing village, we started hopping along the coast, moving from port to port. While the Ragged Anne had been able to make it across the ocean in one trip without stopping, it was a lot cheaper and easier to stop regularly for fresh food and water than try and stock up again to make it to Freeport in a single trip. Plus, but following the coast, we had a lot easier time navigating and were supposedly safer. I didn’t quite understand how it was safer outside of navigationally being easier, but I didn’t question it.
The next stop was at another small fishing village like the one we had stopped at previously, but the one after that was a proper port called Uvenallos. It was the first place we had been since Tsuruga where the Ragged Anne could tie up to a dock and everyone could leave the ship. Eninald had immediately sought me out, looking to show me around the town, but Thuvvik had quite politely and firmly insisted we had errands to run.
“Sorry,” I said, giving Eninald a smile. He smiled back, which set my stomach a flutter.
“Next time then,” he said, undaunted. Thuvvik smiled but didn’t say anything.
Errands turned out to be, once again, clothing and tools to help me fit in. The clothes we had acquired in Tsuruga were not fitting well. Thuvvik attributed it to me getting a proper amount of meat in my diet for the first time in my life, but I was far more inclined to attribute the changes in my body to the ongoing effects of becoming Starborn. Not to say that I hadn’t been eating more, my appetite had been slowly, but steadily, increasing the longer we spent on the ship, but this was the most I had grown since I had first moon blood. Mostly vertically, but enough everywhere that I needed to get my current clothes retailored and a few additional outfits.
Shopping with Thuvvik was a novel experience. Unlike the bartering and reciprocal gift giving I had learned at the academy, he was far more… aggressive in his negotiations. While everything was talked about in terms of coin and value, Thuvvik spent just as much time arguing the price of his goods and coin up as he did arguing the prices the merchants offered down. I wasn’t sure how he managed it, but we typically walked out of shops with twice the items our coins should have bought. It was quite honestly impressive and something I started asking questions about as the day went on.
Thuvvik responded with unbridled enthusiasm. While he had treated the language lessons during voyage as formal and rigorously as possible, his lessons on negotiation and bartering were far more animated and engaged. There was a passion he had for bartering, both doing and teaching, that just wasn’t present elsewhere. And the joy he clearly got in extracting a good deal was even more palpable.
It also gave me an insight that he had come out far ahead in the negotiations we had done in the village. There was a way his ears flicked right before he undercut someone or got a particularly good deal that I remembered from when we were trading for my necklace.
“How much would you have accepted for the necklace?” I asked as we left that particular shop.
“What you mean?”
“This necklace, the one I bought from you. How many blooms was the minimum you would have taken.”
“Two,” he answered immediately. “One would have paid for the silver and gem, the other in profit.”
I breathed out in surprise and shook my head.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“And here I thought I had gotten a good deal.”
“The fact you thought that meant I did job right. Customer should feel satisfied with purchase, merchant should be satisfied with coin. Sign of good sale.”
“Still, I paid three times your expected price.”
Thuvvik shrugged unashamedly, “You didn’t get bad one. Just not best one. There are many who would have just accepted first price to start.”
After shopping around at several stores, we eventually settled on two more skirt and tunic combinations that were of similar make and color to my existing set that I could easily rotate between them and keep them washed. While older pieces were being adjusted, he then took me to a smaller public bath where I could get a proper wash after all the time at sea.
I hadn’t realized how much I missed bathing until I settled into the warm water and could just stretch out. Fresh water was a luxury aboard a ship at sea, which meant all of the ‘bathing’ had been done via wetting sponges and running them over your body. I had been able to cheat the system a bit by evoking some additional water as practice, but not enough for a full tub of water since I hadn’t had the Energy to make that much water or the tub to put it in. Further, if I had been notably cleaner than the rest of the ship, it would have drawn attention to myself.
But now I could relax and enjoy the warmth while considering how different Uvenallos was from… everything.
The buildings here were so different than the ones I was used to. The buildings had solid wooden door instead of the paper, wood, and bamboo combinations I was used to. Tiled roofs instead of thatching. Even the houses were different. Instead of the small homes I had been used to, the buildings here were tall and wide, easily five times wider than our house and three times as deep while being twice as tall. I had been surprised that a single family could live in such luxury when Thuvvik explained that each of those buildings housed three to six families instead of one. There was apparently a common courtyard they all shared as a communal gathering space, but they all had their own sections of the building, divided inside by walls based on the size of the family within. Some buildings were all related families, siblings who had been married and stayed close, but often they were completely unrelated families. The idea of sharing a wall Ms. Haruko, our neighbor and risking her overhearing us as we ate, seemed weird and slightly horrifying, but Thuvvik had just laughed. He hadn’t explained why he laughed however and so I eventually let the matter drop.
When the water had grown cold for the second time, me having heated it with foxfire to stretch the time I could spend relaxing after checking that I was alone in the bath, I finally climbed out of the tub and into the fresh outfit we had purchased, reluctantly tucking my tails again when my stomach rumbled. Sighing to myself, I let myself out of the bath and walked directly into an elf.
It wasn’t the first elf I had seen, almost the entirety of Uvenallos were what Thuvvik referred to as Sea Elves, which I found strange. Tsuruga had a collection of merchants and a large smattering of all the People present - Tengu, Usagi, Bakeneko, Ningyo, Tanuki, and Kitsune - it seemed like only one type of elf lived in Uvenallos.
Sea Elves were, as the name implied, elves that lived by and in the sea. They had discrete flaps along their neck that would let them breathe water and slightly webbed fingers. But more notably were how they were built: tall and lithe with discrete and lithe muscles that gave the impression of them being taught like a coiled snake. Most of the ones I had seen had blue or greenish skin.
The one I had run into was one of the ones with a lighter blue skin tone, which I got quite the eyeful of because he was walking around with just a towel wrapped around his waist.
“Oh sorry there,” he said, extending a hand to help me to my feet. “Didn’t see the door open.”
I nodded, embarrassed by just how exposed he was and mortified at the thought of having gone somewhere I wasn’t supposed to. There was no way he was just casually nearly naked like this in public, right?
Flustered, I quickly took his hand and then once I was on my feet averted my eyes.
“No, it’s okay. I wasn’t looking where I was going either.”
“Well, then it seems we’re both a bit at fault. Still, no harm no foul. Especially with someone as cute as you.”
I nodded automatically before realizing what exactly he had said and then started to blush. That was… bold. Brazen even.
“Ah, uh, hrmmm,” I managed, still not quite looking at him.”
“You know can look if you want to, there’s no crime. I know I’m certainly…”
“NothankyouIhavesomoeneImsupposedtobemeeting,” I said before quickly making my way down the hallway.
Thuvvik was waiting for me in the lobby also looking freshly bathed and cleaned and rose a skeptical eyebrow at me as I stumbled in.
“What is wrong?”
“Uh, ran into a naked… nearly naked man.”
“In bath?”
“No, outside of it. In the hallway.”
“Ah,” Thuvvik said in understanding.
“Ah?” I asked confusedly.
He smiled and shrugged and I was left more confused than when I started.
The brazziness of that one elf, unfortunately, proved to start something of a trend. Throughout the rest of the day elves would frequently make passes at me in a similar manner. Both men, and confusingly, several women. Most of them were of a similar vein: you’re attractive, look at me, I’m attractive. Let’s talk. Or get dinner. One of them even jumped straight to ‘Wanna Fuck?’ after discussing the attractiveness, which was horrifying.
The most mortifying one was the person who came up to me at dinner and asked what my rates were and if I would be available tomorrow after I was done with my current ‘Patron’.
“She’s not for sale,” Thuvvik said, rather firmly, putting a hand between the elf and I. The elves’ eyes shot up in understanding, once again leaving me utterly confused.
It was only once he left that I turned to Thuvvik.
“Did he think I was a slave?” I quietly asked in Porforo.
“He, uh,” Thuvvik said, casting around for a second. “No. He didn’t think you were a slave. He did think that your time was purchasable.”
“Like contract work?”
“In a, uh, manner of speaking,” Thuvvik said, stifling laughter.
I looked at him in confusion. It was only after several embarrassingly long seconds that he wiggled his ears in what I now understood to be a suggestive manner that I put everything together. I was then torn between embarrassment and utter anger.
“At least him asking you directly implied that he thought you weren’t a slave,” Rin noted. That was a thin comfort given what he thought I was ‘free’ to do, but it was something.
“Back home,” I said before pausing to make sure I wasn’t about to break my disguise. “Or at least, back where the orphanage was, courting was a quiet and discrete process. This is…”
“Awkward for you,” Thuvvik finished. “Yes, I can imagine. I thought you might be better prepared given how you’ve been interacting with Eninald, but clearly he has a more delicate touch than I thought.”
“Eninald? What does he have to do with this?”
Thuvvik gave me a pitying look and shook his head. “Ah, to be young. Regardless, given this, perhaps we should go back to the ship and stay there for rest of time in port? Elves never take no for answer well.”
I nodded before looking at my plate. The food was gone, finished, but my stomach was still rumbling.
“Uh, before we can go, can we get a second order?”
Thuvvik rolled his eyes and put his hand up for the waitress. I tore through that plate very quickly, but the hunger didn’t quite abate. Still, given the number of eyes and the two more elves that Thuvvik had to fend off while I was eating, we decided to retreat to the ship for the night.
