That's... possibly encouraging about anatomy still existing around here.

"Do you both buy and sell iridium lava eels?"

"Naw, I don't sell fish, except for little tiny ones for bait. I'll buy fish, though."

"Well, thanks immensely for that fishing rod!  I'm sure my Grandpa would've appreciated it.  I'm still trying to understand exactly what sort of wet things exist around here, really, but I'm hoping to give some rods a try."  Oliver picks up the offered fishing pole.

"Have a good one! If you can't figure out how to use yer rod, let me know and maybe I can give you some pointers!"

Emily doesn't seem to have followed him in, so... actually Oliver is going to go for it.

"Actually, sir, if it's not an overwhelming amount of trouble... I'm wondering how metaphorically you mean that pointers offer, there."

"Uh... Well, people do often find fishing confusing at first..." Willy offers, in the way of a person who doesn't want to make the first wrong move.

"I've led a sad life, sir, and lack experience with more than just fish."

"I find that hard to believe, strapping young farmer that you are. I keep callin' you young, but if you're a day under thirty I'll eat my hat, and I ain't hungry."

"What's yer story, son?"

"My father was a strict man, sir, very strict."  Everyone who has ever known Oliver for longer than thirty seconds has said 'Clearly not strict enough' to him at some point.  "He told me a number of stories which I now suspect to be less than entirely veracitorious, aimed at discouraging me from getting into trouble, with the result, I'd say, that I've not had enough trouble to be nearly as strapping as I look."

"I see." said Willy.

Willy has decided to swallow this tale, because why not.

"So... you're looking for advice about the ladies of Pelican Town, is that it? Or is it the gents?"

"More like... I need to confirm in a very general way that some scary things my father told me are false.  I'm sure the lady in question would be able to handle the rest of matters herself, so long as it's not true that beneath her clothing is a... giant spider mouth."

"A what?"

Willy spits out his pipe.

"Good grief, man."

Willy squints at Oliver. "Yer havin' me on, aren't you. You've known me for... zero minutes. Why'd you pick me for yer little heart to heart about SPIDER LADY PARTS sweet Yoba's necktie."

Why did they have to pick NOW to upgrade the NPC model from GPT-3 to GPT-4?

"Because you're the first person here who has hinted that they can provide advice about man parts and lady parts, and I admit my father didn't tell me that but I also wanted to check whether you'd play along with anything my father told me the way some other people in my life have."

Willy heaves a deep sigh. This conversation has fallen to him, somehow.

"All right, all right!"

"So. When one little fishy loves another little fishy very much..."

Willy shakes his head. Fish stories are not actually going to help here.

"What is it you actually want to know, son? Spit'er out."

The conversation has frankly gotten kind of agonizing for Oliver too.

"Is sex in fact an act where a man has a part which grows into a shape like a rod, which then gets inserted into a correspondingly shaped and wet place inside a woman, and then there is a lot of motion which people are alive and alert and aware for, and nobody suddenly blanks out and finds themselves in a different mental state afterwards without a very detailed memory of what happened?  Or is there something else that goes on instead?"

"Yep that's about the size of it. I'd say you're all set."

It doesn't actually prove that reality won't fade to black because Willy would not necessarily remember things that way.

Still, it's at least an overtly good sign.

"Thank you, sir.  I owe you one agonizingly awkward conversation on the important topic of your own choice."

"It's going to be about The Legend and how I allllmost caught him and you're going to act interested for the whole thing."

"Er, uh... good luck. With everything."

"Fair.  I'll endeavor to have good luck."

Exit Oliver, kind of quickly.

"So, Emily, Robin's up next, right?"

Emily has been standing on the pier looking out over the ocean and enjoying the salty sea spray on her face for the last twenty minutes while Oliver was in the shop.

"Oh, the Mayor wasn't in there? Bummer. Sure, let's go to Robin's. It's a bit of a walk... we mostly have to retrace our steps and go completely the other way, up into the mountain."

"Can we talk about that thing you brought up before?"

Emily is in the mood for a Big Relationship Talk!

"You mean the highly uncertain prospect of attaining vast powers?"  Oliver is ready for a change of subject too!

"Noooo... not so much the vast power thing... though of course I want to talk about that too!"

"What I really meant was that thing where you asked me how I want my heart to be won, should it be about cloth, or should it be about something else? And I've been thinking about that, while I looked at the ocean."

"I care about animals and never like to see them suffer. I care about fashion and color and lighting people up by dressing them well. I believe in mermaids and dwarves and junimos and everything weird and wonderful. I want my life to be bold and bright. I want to look upon the world with wonder and know that what I see is a gift woven out of magic and fantasy and the miracle of Yoba's blessings."

"And I want to spend time with someone who cares about those things too, or at least some of those things, and who will be goofy with me. Somebody who wants to try Gotoran meditation. Somebody who wants to try to put on Elvish jewelry and play that we're enacting an ancient rite. Somebody who wants to try to find and hatch a dino egg, and then be kind to that dino forever even if it grows up big and scary."

"And... if that person also wants to give me cloth, I'm definitely going to like that too. I'm always going to need more cloth. But I don't think it's really the main thing."

"It's not a bad start!  If you were a woman of the outside world, I'd probably warn you at this point that after going through your first three boyfriends you may find your top list of priorities shifting to 'Will not get angry with me every time I say anything suggesting he might possibly be wrong about something' and 'Is theoretically capable of not listening to loud music while I am trying to sleep' and 'Rich enough that our combined income suffices for a house with two bathrooms', and finding yourself increasingly willing to compromise about that Gotoran meditation part.  I'd also warn you that the first boy you meet who acts really enthusiastic about Gotoran meditation is probably just trying to sleep with you, and that you face a stark and awful choice between living your life inside a dreamworld he constructs and maintains to get into your pants, knowing deep down on some level that none of it is real; or alternatively accepting some boy who doesn't actually care about Gotoran meditation, even though there are boys genuinely enthusiastic about Gotoran meditation somewhere in the world, because you can't find them anymore since OKCupid sold out and nothing really replaced it and now true love is dead."

"In this situation, it's incredibly unclear what your options really are.  Cards on the table, I'd probably try Gotoran meditation once but if I didn't gain incredible powers from that I'd probably table it until I'd tested all the other means of attaining ultimate cosmic power.  I'd try Elvish jewelry if it looked cool but I'd only want to try the ancient ritual if it did something.  Raising a dino egg... man, depends on how much work it is, because I would not like to raise something like that and then abandon it."

"That's probably not perfect according to your standards!  So the question you want to ask yourself is maybe more like, do you want to hold out for the possibility of our gaining enough incredible cosmic powers that you can make your perfect man, and then also, do you want to maybe date any imperfect guys along the way?"

"Make my perfect man? Out of what, exactly? I mean, the usual way of making people results in children and I don't think that's actually going to help, and can't possibly be what you mean?"

Emily's line of thought has taken a disturbing turn and she beats a hasty retreat.

"But yeah, I think I'd be willing to date some imperfect guys along the way." She looks up through her eyelashes at Oliver as they walk north through town.

Before stopping to think at at the beach, Oliver had racked up a pretty high score in her heart's old method of accounting, and has done nothing so far to lose any of those points. She's got a new scoring system on board now and she'll have to see how he fares. He seems game to try the things she cares about, at least, and that counts for a lot with Emily.