There's still singing out here, since there's people operating the sails - it requires a lot of active and three-dimensional maintenance to keep the ship going in the right direction - but it's a little more distant than the echoing inside, at least.

God, don't their throats get tired?

It's fine. It's not all around him anymore, and while his headache doesn't fade, he feels his muscles slowly relaxing.

He's just going to drift a bit, and try not to worry about how bad this musical aversion might get. Or what other surprises might be waiting to mark him as unfit to be around others.

How close is the round now, anyway?

They might get there in a day or two.

Right. A day or two, to learn enough of the language that he can get by in whatever society is waiting for him on the round, because the life of a sailor seems not for him.

Unless the music gets more tolerable, he's pretty sure he'll lose his mind eventually.

He thought he dodged the madness, in the Hedge. Everyone else he met was touched by it, one way or another, sooner or later, but he really thought he made it through okay, all things considered.

Okay. That's enough of that.

He's alive. He's still human, he thinks. He's mostly sane. He's got all his limbs. He's even still got most of his awesome rocks.

And he's out of the Hedge.

That's a miracle all on its own, and he's going to appreciate it much more when he's around people who aren't singing all the time.

Plus, he needs better goals. He's not just going to get enough language to get by. He's gong to try and find someone who's aware of other worlds and how to get to them.

And, he's going to teach people here about the fae and the Hedge, and what to look out for if they end up there.

It's something he promised, years ago. A promise to the world, and to himself, for if he made it back home. No matter how crazy people might think him, it would be worth doing if even a single other person who heard him remembered, when they needed to.

No reason to wait until he gets to Earth for that. He'll just need to make sure he can navigate the culture here, first.

He takes another look around, enjoying the beauty of this strange world again, letting himself bask in the feeling of being somewhere that his younger self would have absolutely loved to explore.

Then he heads back inside to see if there's still food that they need help preparing.

The kitchen operates around the clock, since the sails do and the crew must. They're baking eggs in their shells and serving them with sliced cheese and bread rolls; the bread rolls are baked all stuck together around a roughly spherical rock which has protrusions sufficient to wedge in the oven but come out again easily if turned.

He's not actually hungry yet, the leafdew is going to sustain him for a while, but it's been so long since he had any sort of cheese or bread that he happily takes one to try.

He forces himself to keep chewing and swallow, then take another bite. He doesn't want to waste their food, or seem ungrateful.

But it's hard. It's like the music all over again, but on his tastebuds...

No, the food tastes fine, really. Almost good? Almost. He can sort of sense that it's something he would otherwise enjoy.

But the feeling of offness is there again. Not in the texture, not even in the flavor, which is only slightly different than what his brain was expecting from distant memories of breakfast sandwiches from Dunkin Donuts or Burger King.

It's the lack of something more. It's like whatever he's eating is... empty or lifeless in some vital way. Like he's just eating paper that's shaped and flavored to seem like real food.

He's not sure what he's going to do if all food is like this for him, now. He can probably avoid music, but  once the leafdew is out of his system, forcing himself through meals three times a day is going to suuuuuck.

He manages to finish his food, then starts wandering the ship, searching for any areas where songs he hasn't heard before are being sung.

They haven't repeated any songs yet, actually, they all seem to know a ton of them. The most useful vocabulary he comes across is a song about building a house, since it has measurements and stuff.

Oh man, yeah, numbers. He forgot about numbers. It would probably be useful to know the full arithmetic set.

If he happens to spot Chesabit and she's free, he'll ask if there are any nursery songs she can sing him about numbers or farm animals or household appliances or whatever.

"Songs for... sick people...?"

"Huh, 'nurse'ry, I never thought of it like that... but no, I mean for babies. Or really young kids, you know, to teach them basic words."

"I don't know any of those, sorry, kids aren't very popular on ships!"

"Right... wait, have you lived on ships your whole life?"

"...I was made yesterday, remember?"

"Okay so just to be super clear when you say 'made' you mean literally made. Like you didn't exist before yesterday. You're... one day old. And... a robot?" That would kind of explain how she learned his language in a day.

Wait no it wouldn't. Not without them also having a way to pull knowledge from him, which sounds more like... a fetch?

Don't fetches not know they're fetches? Isn't that the point?

But maybe that's not how it works here. Or his information was bad in the first place.

The sheer weight of his ignorance feels overwhelming, suddenly, heart pounding as everything around him feels slightly less real than it had a minute ago.

Maybe he didn't leave the Hedge after all.

"I don't know what a robot is. I'm a normal person and one day old. I'm pretty sure I told you this - how else would I know a language nobody knew we were going to need till you showed up?"