He snorts. "I have seals. Skin for whatever's vital, scrolls for whatever's not."

Hashirama stops and blinks. "You can seal? That's amazing! Only the Uzumaki can, that I've run into, though my brother's trying to get them to teach him..."

"Guess it really did used to be a lost art." Sasuke shrugs. "I just know enough for transporting items."

"Still, that'll help a lot! We can carry so much... Though do you have ink?"

"Some. I know what's needed to make more, though, or blood works. One of the animals seems to attack by squirting ink, which's probably the best source - biological inks work better than mineral usually."

"I can catch some of those while you work on the seals, then."

"Just don't get punched by another shrimp."

And Hashirama's back in his funk!

"It was one time..." he mutters.

Sasuke rolls his eyes, and says, "Come on, idiot. We don't want to waste daylight."

Hashirama perks back up and follows him to help with the harvesting.

They're not able to set out before nightfall, and Hashirama curls up a respectful distance from Sasuke with a nest he's made out of seaweed. They'll be bringing the building supplies, too - no sense in having to redo all the preparatory work, and not everywhere's going to have the same resources.

Hashirama's currently humming, having finally figured out how to coax his Mokuton - he's still not having much luck with the soil here, it lacks something apparently vital, but growing a bowl from his arm wasn't too hard after a bit of experimenting. Seaweed-fruit soup is surprisingly good.

"You know," he says, humming happily, "I'm glad to have gotten dropped alongside you. You're a good person for this."

Oh no, feelings.

Sasuke huffs and looks away, muttering, "It's fine..."

(He's not too disappointed by Hashirama, either - the other boy's competent, if silly...)

He just smiles at the other boy, then volunteers to take first watch, since Sasuke stayed up all yesterday.

Sasuke nods, a bit grateful for the change in topic, and turns to go to sleep.

(His dreams are restless. He keeps flipping through his fight with Itachi, everything he's ever known about Itachi, like a thorn under his skin and there was something horribly wrong with that fight - )

He wakes to the morning chorus of the fish-birds, still groggy, and turns over.

"You let me sleep," he says accusingly to Hashirama.

The boy shrugs. "Wasn't tired. No point in having both of us up." He doesn't mention Sasuke's clear nightmares. He gets those, too. Pretty much only doesn't when he's in a healing sleep.

"Whatever," he mumbles, and stands.

Hashirama lets it drop, and, after they finish sealing their shelter supplies, they're off to the volcano. At shinobi speeds it's relatively close, but it still takes them two hours to get to the top since they agreed to be careful with chakra for now.

The view stretches pretty far - there's not a lot obscuring the horizon around here. There's a place where the land drops off suddenly, likely a steep cliff, a few dozen miles to the north-ish (the sun-like-thing is mostly staying on a consistent path, making some effort to map cardinal directions onto this planet possible). There's a dark forest of seaweed to their south, that takes up the entirety of a gently rising slope. The cliff-edge as it progresses both east and west curves to the south.

To the west is what very well might be buildings - rounded corners too smooth and regular to be likely naturally grown. It'll take a day or two to get there going at a reasonable pace, though they could likely manage it in a few hours sprinting. Still, that'd leave them exhausted and unable to respond as well to any threats.

Sasuke votes for going more slowly towards the maybe-village.

It's practical, they don't want to be exhausted when they arrive...

But also he doesn't want this - break of sorts - to end.

(Doesn't actually want to return to his home world).

"Yeah, that makes sense," Hashirama says, nodding. He doesn't really touch Sasuke's obvious reluctance; it feels like it'd be rude and presumptuous to do that. 

He nods, quiet, and pauses, examining the horizon a little longer.

"You know, we can spend a bit exploring. I've never been inside a volcano! And there's a lot to learn about this place."

He pauses, and - "That'd be kind of stupid..."

Hashirama shrugs. "It - look, my clan will need me back eventually. But I've been gone for months before without things collapsing, and... They didn't need me at that time. It's... If you have something to return to, we can rush, but I don't need to. Somewhere the only things trying to kill me are cheating shrimp is... Nice."

He pauses. "I guess I shouldn't be assuming the animals here aren't sapient, but... Do they send kids out? To fight in your time?"

"Not standard. Most people graduate at twelve." He pauses, looks down. "My brother graduated at seven."

Hashirama frowns. "That's too young. Twelve... I don't know. I don't know when people are ready, just that seven year olds aren't. I wouldn't have allowed seven. Not in my village..."

He takes a deep breath. "Most clans send kids out between five and seven, the first time. Skilled ones especially."