"Fair." He asks to borrow a simple bowl, then washes each egg and uses the very tip of an arrowhead to makes a tiny hole in the bottom and top of one's shell. He'll take turns doing this with each egg, positioning them one at a time over the bowl and pressing his lips around the top to gently blowing through the hole and give gravity an assist.

Yeah no he got late-stage eggs. There's baby birds in there.

Unfortunate.

Okay. Feelings later, new plan now.

"No luck. Thanks anyway."

Bowl returned, he'll head back through the market on his way to the closest river, where he can carefully crack the eggs open without losing too much of their shells. The fish will feed well, at least, and he can thoroughly clean the eggs inside and out, one palmful of shell fragments at a time.

Once that's done, he'd look for any piece of wood he can carve and shave into a two-by-two-by-quarter-inch square. He knows pine resin can be made into glue, and presumably other tree sap can too, but he never learned how. Hopefully someone in town could sell him a bit?

He can buy glue! He can find wood!

Two huzzahs. Now to find a shaded tree and spend some time laying out all the shell bits he's collected...

Putting together any sort of seamless image with the shell fragments would take hours. He considered, briefly, trying to reform a two-dimensional image of an egg on the board, but it felt hollow, like a taxidermy lion stuck in a position that's meant to convey alive fierceness, but only comes off as stiff and sad.

But there's a beauty in broken things.

The part of him that feels sad about the baby birds is the part of him that cried the first time he went hunting. The Hedge tore that part with a million tiny cuts and scrapes, layer after layer of empathy shredded and left trailing behind him like threads from his clothing, until something new could take its place, something more primal and practical, without being cold.

(Something that felt, at times, like the eyes of a predator, looking out through his, moving through his body when he hunted... a Beast, simple and primordial, whose Mother Nature had a red smile and dried blood under her nails.)

But some part of that younger him is still in here, and his time in the Hedge made it easier to find that beauty in broken things.

He spent some time organizing the shells in shape and shade, then began his work, carefully tracing an outline in the wood, until, one careful application of glue at a time, he began to cover the carving in blue.

Two outstretched wings. A tufted tail below. The suggestion of a beak above the head.

He doesn't make it perfect, though there's something in him that demands perfection. Another part of him knows that's not the point, not this time. He's not forming a shape. He's setting the bones.

The wings are made of spread out "feathers," irregular but mostly symmetrical on either side of the bird's body. He keeps dark colors for the tops of the wings and head and torso, using the lighter fragments in fading hues downward from each, and for the lower layers of the tail.

Time passes. He doesn't notice, seeing nothing but the image in front of him and what else it could be, feeling little but the thin, delicate edges of shard after shard.

Until he's finally done.

Right, aaaand stretch, stretch, streeeetch... drink some waaateeer... quick powernap as we let the glue finish setting...

It feels good to have made something. Even if the captain doesn't want it, or takes it but doesn't let him come with them, he'll have been glad he did this.

He lets himself rest a bit longer, and then it's time to check if the captain has been seen anywhere lately.

The captain is attending a celebration at an animist temple. They are excited about the existence of sweets today.

Seems sensible. He didn't have the opportunity to miss candy much in the Hedge, what with all the crazy flavors and experiences eating provided there, but he did miss the occasional simple, uncomplicated experience of an ice cream or brownie.

Not that he expects he'll like the sweets in this world any more than the regular food.

But he'll try them, at least, if any are on offer. Is it the kind of celebration open to outsiders? And does the captain look intertuptable?

Anybody can come have some of the sugared fruits and tiny maple candies they're handing out! The captain is in animated conversation about custards.

Neat! He knows nothing about custards, so he'll try out the free sweets...

...maintain a fixed smile despite the offness of the experience...

...and then wait a respectful distance from the captain to listen in on the conversation until there's an opening to talk.

"You don't have to be super careful about getting all the eggwhite out, that's probably why yours keep breaking, yeah. Hello there!"

"Hello again! I just learned about your faith recently, and this festival has been a great introduction." He's decided not to ask them how their faith decides what objects are celebrated through eating and which ones aren't, just yet. "Where I'm from, expressing gratitude for things regularly helps people have happier lives, but we don't have celebrations for it, which seems a shame, now that I've seen this one."

"That does seem a shame! Have you tried the maple, it's a specialty of the round."

"I did, yeah. It was a unique experience." The last thing he needs right now is to have that feeling of exposure get any worse... "I was actually wondering, there's a sweet I used to have when I was a child that I haven't seen in years, and don't know the name of in this language. It's brown, and kind of bittersweet? You can melt it into milk for a hot, tasty drink, or mix it with custard, or eat it in solid pieces. It's often mixed with milk to make it sweeter."

The gathered people make some guesses but the only word he recognizes is "coffee".

In retrospect it's clear them just listing guesses won't help, but maybe this is a good time to test out the limits of his language learning ability...