He asks the nearest person if he should help with anything.

"Nah, relax! A meet's mostly a party, on a good day at least."

"Thanks!"

In that case he'll go say hi to Sebasto.

"Hey! Mahan, right? Man, I was real busy today or I would've said hi earlier."

"Yeah? With what?"

He makes a face. "Eh. Trouble. My sister needed my help."

"That doesn't sound good. Is she okay now?"

"She'll live. We'll make everything fine. But it's a little private to be honest, sha."

"Of course. So how's the fire work? I don't know how to light one without magic."

He can explain how to build a fire, seeming a bit distracted.

"You know, maybe you'll have a refreshing perspective. As an outsider from a faraway land and all. Mind if I explain the problem in broad terms and you say what your people might do?"

"Sure."

"My sister married 'bout six years ago. Four years ago, they had a little girl. She's precocious. Smart. So she messes with her dad's fishing kit trying to figure out how it works, right? And he freaks out and hits her. Not so hard, mostly just a lesson, not even really enough to bruise, but my sister doesn't like it and wants to not be married anymore. He apologizes, says it won't happen again. She forgives him. Then a few months later he - doesn't hit his daughter again, but shouts at her when she cut herself on something being a bit too curious, and my sister decides - nope, she's done, she's leaving with her daughter. The guy's well-liked in his village and good at talking. They barely even let her pack. They wanted to keep Mila too but she threatened to stab him somewhere uncomfortable if he tried." 

Sebasto chuckles.

"So, she moves somewhere else. She does simple work there and raises Mila. She finds another husband. Six months later her old husband shows up and starts spreading lies about her and makes a big fuss about being married to two people at once. He wants to take Mila back at least some of the time, since she's his daughter too and he misses her. Her new village's pog agreed that he can come visit Mila, but sis is miserable whenever he does. Now sis, she just wants to be done with all this, away from him with her daughter. And me, I want to stab him, if I'm being honest. But I won't."

"That sounds terrible. At home children are their mother's unless there's some reason for them not to be - my mother gave me to my father when they split, but they're on better terms than this - and you don't have any right to keep people's belongings if they want to move or visit them if you don't want to be visited. But... I probably don't care as much about the hitting as you do, I think at home children getting into accidents is just more dangerous than it is here, so whatever you need to do to keep them from getting the whole family killed - but that's not how it is here, here it's an overreaction, right?"

"Some people think so. Some think it's alright if you keep it occasional and light and clearly a punishment for something specific. I got spanked a couple times when I was a troublesome kid, I dunno if it really taught me anything or did me long-term harm?"

Shrug.

"But, eh, so you think they shouldn't be giving as much up for the dad? Letting him visit, letting him keep some of her stuff - he hasn't actually said she can't have it back it's just that she'd have to go there and get it, he won't deliver it, and she feels unsafe there."

"Could she go get it with some friends or something?"

"I worry if she tried that there might be a fight. And sea-people fighting sea-people would be real bad."

"I don't know what to do about that but it sounds bad."

"Yeah. It would be - it's anathema, horrible, disgusting. All the stories say so. Things get so much worse if the village over yonder might try to kill you. I'm gonna raise the issue at the meet. The village you've been staying at is, like, the most important one, and the other village here is my sister's, so maybe the important people will think of something. Thanks for listening."

"Of course."

He lights the fire and starts cooking a bunch of fish above it!

Mahan could wander around talking to the people seem to be trading, they have goods laid out and so on. The major product of the village he came with is woven things. The major product of the other village is salt - blocky salt, brown salt, white salt, salted foods.

Lots of ancillary services from both villages have come along, though. There is someone who sketches on peoples' skin for a rupee or two each, someone is offering haircuts and hair-braiding, the elixir guy is here trying to peddle some elixirs, someone is selling medical advice, someone is looking at people's hands and pronouncing things about their future (they take it seriously, might be magic?), lots of people selling containers of cooking ingredients, someone is offering tool-engraving, someone is doing fishbone carvings, a woman is selling massages, someone is selling gemstones and gemstone-based jewelry, someone is mending clothes for a few rupees each, some people are selling clothes, a man is trying to sell foul-smelling paint by brushing splotches of bright color on a piece of driftwood, people are gambling on games or sports and playing them without money changing hands too.