"Oh, yeah, sorry, I couldn't hear you sing, I figured you wanted to go explore?"

"There is not obviously anything to explore, though I agree this seems rather suspicious from a plot-oriented perspective."

"Do you happen to know if there's anything that prevents me from cutting down trees beyond my own property for wood?  Does somebody else own those, that you happen to know of?"

"I think you can chop down trees almost anywhere you can get to? Though you might want to avoid any that seem especially scenic or like somebody in particular might miss them."

"...I'll avoid chopping down all the trees on this property, until I've verified that I have other sources for wood and maple syrup. Maybe with the mayor, or somebody.  I suspect we can't afford, or shouldn't afford, enough seeds to plant all over here anyways, and we'll have to buy them somewhere unless you know a better source of seeds."  Or if Oliver himself knows a better source of seeds.

"The two sources of seeds I know of are Pierre's store and JojaMart. Oh, and I guess the traveling cart."

"Traveling cart?"

"Oh, yeah, the traveling cart is a hoot! It's fun to see what they have, even though the prices are mostly pretty ludicrous. It comes through the forest south of here twice a week, on Fridays and Sundays. Sometimes they have some really good stuff."

...

"I have a funny feeling you're going to like the aesthetic of the cart, but I kind of don't want to ruin it for you."

"We'll save some room on the farm, if the question arises."  Today's Monday, so parsnips should be done by Friday, or other things they can sow with a four-day growth period.

"I'd be pretty content to go on singing with you until we'd cleared the whole farm - except for the trees - but I'm reminded by this topic, we should talk about money at some point."

"The way they'd think about this in the outside world, the fact that I owned this land would count for a lot in getting a share of what grows on it, even if you bought your own seeds from Pierre and planted them on a square you'd cleared yourself.  But I'm not sure if you couldn't just - find your own land and farm that?  Or buy it for a couple of hundred G?  I don't know to what extent this land is actually a valuable or even a unique resource, vs. something just not that hard to come by if you wanted it for yourself."

"Jeepers, let me think about that."

Emily goes through her mental map of the town, section by section.

"Y'know... I think this might actually be all the farmland in town!"

"But it sure does seem like we get a lot more done a lot faster when we work on it together?"

"Definitely faster by the world's clock, though I don't know how valuable that is, really--it's not like it costs us less time, we just get more done faster relative to the outside world."

"I'm pretty sure I'm having more fun doing this around you, and singing made-up songs as we go, to be clear."

"Is there a way to expand this farm?  Clear more land around it?  If you don't know, we should maybe go ask the Mayor in the same trip where we go to buy seeds from Pierre; it affects how valuable the land on it is."

"I don't know for sure. I know I've never heard of anybody doing anything like that... but I also never heard of anybody sending money to each other as a way of sending a telepathic distress signal!"

Emily suspects that Oliver can probably fly to the moon if he wants to.

"Exploiting the laws of reality is one thing.  Breaking them is quite another, and I wouldn't rely on my ability to do that if Reality is of the firm opinion that this area of farmland is all of the farmland that should ever exist."

Oliver has been clearing a few squares for some little time now; is he tired?

Yes, but not completely out of energy just yet.

Also, it is now 2:40pm. A little time went by when Oliver was in the cave and out of singing touch with Emily.

He wishes he knew of a way to ask Emily if she gets tired, at all, but maybe she won't have a stamina bar for exactly as long as he doesn't point out its existence to her.

He'll go on clearing farmland until he's almost out of energy, slowing on his own swinging (but not his singing) while Emily is not looking--and see if Emily notices herself running out of energy before he does.

Emily continues merrily swinging the scythe, apparently completely undaunted by her efforts!

"Oliver? What do you want me to do with all this fiber and mixed seeds I'm gathering?"

"Plant the seeds, in the land you've hoed!  ...though we haven't worked out a division of profits from the seeds, reaped from my land and planted on my land that you cleared and hoed, because I don't know whether farmland is limited and valuable or not."

He makes a mental note, to be kept in mind during future negotations, that Emily can potentially far outwork him so long as nobody points out to her at any point that she has a stamina bar.

"Could we just... figure it out later? Or does that not work for some reason?"

"I mean, I think we're going to have to, like I talk to the Mayor about whether my farm can be extended and maybe we keep out one unit of seeds to try planting somewhere that isn't the farm, and then we figure out the division.  But that does mean, we explicitly agree to figure it out later."

"Should probably head off toward the Mayor soon anyways."  Oliver doesn't mention out loud right now that this is because he's tired.  He also needs to test if he regains stamina by means other than sleeping, and whether that goes by subjective time or World Clock time.

How novel that they could not know a thing now, but agree to figure it out later!

Until now, Emily has only known two kinds of relationships: people who were getting along and people who had some kind of resentment between them. Relationships and agreements, like everything else, were static. This new dynamism is refreshing, but requires a lot of tracking.

"Okay!" is all she says, because she doesn't really know how to put the rest of it into words.

"I'll wait for you to plant all but one Mixed Seeds, and then we'll go!  Just so that you can be Officially A Real Farmer who Planted Things."

"Why am I not planting the last seed packet?"

She asks this as she places the seeds into the soil and waters them.

"Because even if the Mayor says that it's impossible and unthinkable to extend this farm out beyond its borders, we can still see whether we can plant seeds outside and reap them and sell them.  How things actually work may not be the same as how people think they work.  Gotta test it all."

"A seed packet we bought from Pierre would be more reliable for testing, because maybe the random seeds don't grow into something saleable.  But who knows, maybe something will go wrong with trying to buy seeds from Pierre."

Reality refused to let Oliver immediately make millions of G.  This shows that REALITY cannot be TRUSTED anymore.

"Gotta test everything, yikes! I wonder how you keep track of all of these things that you're testing!"

"Do you have a list of things you are still planning to test? How many questions are on it right now? Maybe I know the answers to some of them."

Can't talk about stamina bars, that's an infohazard.  Can't talk about his next planned run at cherry tree saplings, he's not sure what sort of ethical objections Emily has about what things.  Should probably not talk about his concerns about whether all the bedroom scenes around here fade to black.

"Having trouble really recollecting things in order.  I probably should keep a list at some point..."

"Oh, right.  Julinos for fixing the bus?  That was on my list of things to ask about, can't test anything until I ask about them first.  That'd be a good conversation subject for while we're heading to... the Mayor's house, I assume, unless you think he'd be elsewhere."

What unethical things can you even do to a cherry sapling?

(Never mind, maybe asking Oliver to expand on that would be like asking Emily if she has a stamina bar... it might cause more of reality to exist where it shouldn't.)