"If we're refusing to engage with the 'odd sites', that seems like a big decision itself, not the default."

"Maybe Theo will be up to investigate again with more people. Should probably talk to him about it. We haven't talked about it in a long time. I just - stopped, because it didn't seem to be helping. We're almost there, just a bit further there's a little valley with better soil than anywhere else on the island."

The wetness and extreme insect density is receding again. It's more standard jungle now, with only the path and different plants as a landmark.

-Except actually not, there's a series of odd fences off to the side. They pass two spots where crisscrossing wooden stakes are driven into the ground in long lines, creating a barrier with a small gap in the middle where the ground looks a bit funny.

"I would be happy to talk to him about that if he wants. Separately, I want to clarify if abstaining from things requires unanimity."

"Yeah, there's no need to rush him on anything."

Calsa has never seen a fence in her life. "What are you growing on those trellises?"

"-Mm. I'm not going to abstain even if he doesn't want, I don't think. So- I'm not sure about unanimity, there. Ah, those are trapping fences. Boars have to go around them and that makes them more likely to fall in the pit at the center as they wander. It's never a sure thing but occasionally one does and we get a lot of meat."

"Good."

"There's meat just wandering around? Wow. I guess it makes sense - you've got all the vegetables lying around, and the water... What happened to the salty water anyway... what else do you have lots of... What makes the good soil better than the other soil? Lots of metal for Dynafers to use, that's nice..."

"I imagine there was a bunch of salt somewhere in the whole huge area covered by the water. Does anything live in the water?"

"Yeah. Lots of things. I go fishing and forage in the tide pools on alternate days. Not that fishing is very hard with my magic, but you have to be careful not to overharvest. I'm not sure where the salt came from... I just have it as a natural fact of the universe that the ocean is salty. Deeplin learn the separation trick as children. It's a developmental milestone. And I'm not sure about the soil either. We just know that things seem to grow faster amd healthier here."

"The water on [Water] is salty, too, huh, it must be common for there to be salt in the ground somewhere, at least on planets that are capable of supporting life. Speaking of which, it occurred to me that even if most small rocky planets with life don't rotate, the ones that do rotate can support a whole lot of life. Maybe most people are on planets that rotate, and most habitable places, so it's actually not that surprising to be here meeting you.

How do the fish survive in the salty water? They don't have magic, right? Animals don't have magic?"

"Actually, how do you catch fish with your magic? Can you pick things up in a bowl made of water?"

"Animals don't have magic. They're-- They're saltwater fish, they'd die in water without salt, they just evolved that way. And- Not really a bowl but I can kind of shove things around with flowing water- Have it push and then loop back and do it again, or let go of water that is past what I'm pushing and grab new water behind it- So I end up basically flinging fish out of the water onto the sand. I fought a shark once." She smiles. "Big predator fish. Longer than I am tall. It was big enough I couldn't entirely control its motion with my magic. That was fun."

They turn a bend around a large tree and a boulder and can see before them a vibrantly green valley, maybe two miles long and one wide. There are steep hills on all sides of it. There are a few structures clustered together maybe a quarter mile away, and a series of rectangular cultivated fields around it, and a carpeting of grass and wild plants throughout the rest.

Calsa giggles at the shark fight.

"I see now why you couldn't cut through the trees with a knife made of water."

"How do you know for sure that saltwater fish evolved like that? Even if [Water] has no species capable of altering living creatures, maybe they were taken from another world that did? Do you have a magic that reads the history of a creature from its genetic material in sufficient detail to rule out tampering? [Rock] has a species, drakes, that make genetic material change in an uncontrolled way that I think would be hard to distinguish from evolution - although if a drake could make a fish require saltwater, I would be just as impressed by that as by the fish evolving naturally."

"I suppose I don't."

Theo was busy at the free standing loom, weaving more cloth and beating snakegrass into loose fibers to spin into yarn for even more cloth. Never enough cloth.

When he sees three figures approaching in the distance, he goes still and shuts his three eyes for a bit, then siiiighs and goes into one of the houses to light up a stove. Four dinners instead of two, hmm, what to make...

Calsa is used to above-ground buildings in Kef, so it's not until they're closer that she realizes that this is another rotating-planet weirdness. "What are your houses made of, plants? And clay? Too bad we don't have a werewolf." Too bad they don't have one werewolf in particular, hmph. "Werewolves can shape rock - we make almost everything out of rock on [Rock]. How many species do you have? Is the number known?"

Mmm food is cooking...

"The stone one took a lot longer. Mud bricks- You can stiffen mud into something marginally rock-ish by mixing in fibers and heating it up. That's a kilnforge, for working metal and clay, that is mud brick as well. And the sheds are palm weave and wood, yeah. Theo! I met two new people!"

She is dumping the clean water into a cistern and peering into it.

"Around half... I'll get more water later."

"I could tell! Egg fried rice and coconut fish for dinner!"

"Ah, like how we put metal wires in rock to make it stronger." Ooh what kind of eggs, she wants to ask, but she has to be gentle. "Hi, Theo. I'm Calsa. I'm pleased to meet you, apart from the circumstances. Thank you for feeding us."

"And I'm Lin. We're from the same world, [Rock]."

"Don't worry about it for today. That's the thing we worked out. I build, I cook, make things. Erebys hunts, fishes, gathers. We both help farm. So the mists are grabbing more people? I'm sorry, ladies. It's not a great situation."

"My species, catfolk, makes fire. I don't have any particular skill in cooking, or making things with clay or glass - catfolk are really common at home - but I can learn!" She frowns at the smelly fire in the process of destroying perfectly good material. "At least, I can save you time gathering fuel, if that takes up a lot of time. I also know a bit about melting out the metal that's mixed in with rocks, if you can't just pull it out yourself?"

"I'm going to go on another water run. If I'm right, it'll be about twenty minutes until food is ready so I'll be back around then."