There's plenty of trees. There are some crabs and snails and clams on the beach, similar to some of the things that were being eaten yesterday, he could catch those?

If he walks for long enough, there's some more monsters.

He eats a clam raw on the way and eventually he finds the monsters. If he sees them before they see him he'll watch for a while. Who are they, anyway, and what do they do when they're not at war with the sea people?

They don't display anything resembling language. They loaf around, they wander, they sleep. They shout and chase a bird that lands nearby, but lose interest immediately when it flies off.

And then someone dressed in some kind of leather armor and a swoopy red cloak swoops in from above on some kind of glider thing, flying in from the cliffs, drops a glowing blue orb that - explodes with force magic? - and then lands and systematically demolishes the scattered and panicked monsters. They don't even manage to swing at her.

Must be nice to be able to do that, that's so cool.

He sure hopes she's not going to aim for him next. At best he'll just go somewhere she hasn't been and be quicker next time - make the decision to kill the monsters with less hesitation, be less curious what they're like and who they are...

Yeah, that's not cool at all, actually. He waits to see what she'll do next.

Her alert posture relaxes, she collects various loot and starts walking towards the village. She waves at him, looking tired.

He waves back, then he turns his back on her and pretends to ignore her. He listens carefully while he gets himself another clam. She's probably not from around here and there's no telling what kind of relationship her people have with the locals.

Friendly guy.

She just keeps walking towards the little village, which is slightly out of sight around a curving cliff from here. She picks up into a jog after a minute or two.

He moves a little closer to the village and listens for screams. In the mean time he'll just start climbing the leafiest tree, since that stranger got the monsters he was going to kill.

She chases down crabs as she jogs, and when she grabs them they disappear with little blue flashes of light. Soon she goes around the cliff to the village.

No screams are in evidence.

He stays leaf-hunting longer this time, since someone made sure he can't get another fifty rupees for monster parts. He'll have to feed himself with just the palm leaves. And save up to repay that Rito and everyone else.

He doesn't wish death on the stranger but only because he literally never takes risks like that with his magic.

The stranger is fitting right in, back at the village, chatting happily with the fishermen who rescued him yesterday, gesturing towards a Deku Leaf!

(He can have another fifty rupees for the leaves he got.)

Eventually he comes back and sells the leaves and looks for some relatively cheap food for sale. He avoids doing anything that could possibly be construed as staring at the stranger, but he listens in on her conversations.

She's selling gemstones that appear from nowhere with that same blue flash after she pokes something with an illusion screen from her belt! Gemstones fetch... Pretty high prices, apparently. She's buying food. She buys a Deku Leaf. She talks with one of the moms about how cute her little girl is. She asks people if they know about any other monster encampments in the area - the only ones they mention seem to be pretty far away. She chats about her travels and says that the Hebra Mountains are beautiful. She offers archery lessons to a guy and gives them and doesn't demand any payment for it, but the guy gives her some fruit anyway. She tries to sell a big shiny sword, but can't find a buyer.

She heads inland, up the steep switchback path, but branches off to the curious dark structure sitting on a little alcove of the cliff. The one that the locals call the shrine.

Clearly she's on friendly terms with the locals. Like a family friend. Maybe if these people have that kind of relationship with a lot of strangers they just start assuming that anyone they don't know belongs to one of the groups they're on good terms with. Even when told otherwise. Well, it's convenient for him that they do.

Shame he's not a structure mage. Clearly none of the locals are either.

If they know of any other monster encampments nearby maybe he can try to beat her to them, especially if she's going to take a long time in the shrine.

There's a band of Lizalfos this one guy knows about. He'll sail Mahan there if he'll kill them all - they're sitting on a prime fishing spot. They killed them a year ago, but haven't got around to it since the last Blood Moon.

"I can probably kill them. What's a Blood Moon?"

"Every couple of years or so the full moon goes blood-red, dark clouds rush through the sky, and there's a feeling of evil everywhere all night. All the monsters come back, strong as ever. It's probably the evil god Ganon that does it, the blood moon is when he's too strong for the good spirits to hold him back."

Okay, no more worrying about the monsters, clearly they don't lose much when they die.

"We don't have anything like that where I'm from. Do the good spirits raise you if you die too?"

"No. You hear different things about what happens if you die. Some say you're reborn into a new body later. Some say your soul goes to Hylia's paradise. I dunno, I never hear any answers when I pray."

"At home no one has any reason to think you can recover from being dead or do anything after you're dead. We don't have gods and spirits there, it's... very different."

"Yikes. Sure sounds like it. It's not perfect here, but I think we've got a good life."

"Yeah, this place seems nice, I guess your gods and spirits are pretty useful. ...Why do they do all this stuff for people, anyway?"

He shrugs. "Well, we revere them, we pray to Hylia and thank her and stuff. Maybe she likes that. Or they just, like, love everybody? I think good spirits are supposed to love most everybody. Hey, let's get going. It's a couple hours sailing to the Lizal nest."

"Yeah, let's."

Everything about this place is weird, but he can chew on the loving everybody idea later.

Sailing out doesn't involve the Deku Leaf right now, there's a nice steady wind mostly in the right direction already and this boat is more elaborate than a simple raft, designed so that it can make good progress with this.

"You're probably gonna want to swing the leaf on the way back, though. I'll have to do slow switchbacks otherwise. You don't know how to steer the boat and nobody else wanted to come with, or I'd suggest trading off."