Danny feels warmth expanding in his chest as various people pick up new lines to add to the song. It feels good to be part of this, part of something he's never experienced even back home. If he ever makes it back, he's definitely going to introduce the idea of celebrating people through song.

Eventually the discordance of the music becomes too hard to ignore again, and he makes his way out to the hull again while he can still smile through the headache. He's still smiling as he floats alongside the ship, rope tied around his waist.

Something he missed a lot, turns out.

As he drifts, he lets himself face some of the worries and fears that have been buried by the daily adventure of surviving in the Hedge.

He knew time flowed differently there. He heard that people taken to Arcadia, the true realm of the fae, often emerged decades later than they should have, while others returned to the same hour they left.

He'd hoped that, if he ever returned home, he wouldn't be too far off, timewise. A couple years, he could maybe play off. But too much or too little would make things much more complicated, and might even cut him off entirely from family and friends.

Now that he's (possibly) out of the Hedge, he's not sure how time flows here relative to Earth. And being reminded of what it feels like to be part of humanity again makes it harder to ignore the fact that... he probably won't be able to return to his old life, even if he does make it home.

The round is noticeably bigger since the last time he was out here. He tries to think of anything else he should do, before he's dropped off.

A part of him doesn't want to be dropped off. Doesn't want to face the new uncertainties and dangers of what's waiting there.

But he knows he can't stay on the ship, even if he finds a useful job and can learn to bear the singing. He needs to learn more about this world and its strange people-making magic and its rounds, needs to figure out if it's actually real. And if there's a way to get home from here.

And if not, he'll have plenty of time to decide whether he wants to spend his life being a sailor.

Or, hard as it is to imagine at the moment, if he'll want to try his luck with the Hedge again.

He eventually pulls himself back into the ship, then goes to find Chesabit in case she's free for another talk.

She's on the hull, scrambling around the sails. She maneuvers over to him when she spots him.

"Heya. Is there any sort of map or chart of where the ship has been traveling, so I could find the general area you guys saw me floating again if I need to?"

"Well, it's pretty hard to find a specific patch of air again, since all the things in the air are moving all the time! But the general area, sure." She'll hop inside with him and show him the nav charts, which are stupid complicated and notated incredibly arcanely. She summarizes the important information for him (so many days along a route from this round to that one, curving on average toward a third, if you want another epicycle curve again less than that to this fourth one).

He does his best to just focus on her summary, trying to memorize the names of the rounds and number of days. Is there by chance any paper he can have, to write the relevant bits? Enough that if he learns more later he can figure it out, or show someone else?

She can find a spare scrap and scratch it out for him.

"Thanks." He puts it in his quiver, using an arrow to carefully pin it to the bottom.

He's sure it would be hard to find the portal again, and he's not sure what would happen if he goes through it... assuming it even stays in one place and stays open. He'd have to be prepared to plummet a long way after.

But he feels better having it than not, and asks if he can help her with the sails as thanks.

"You... almost certainly don't know how."

"Probably, but... I'm a fast learner?" He smiles. "I can also head back to the kitchens if it'll be too much hassle to teach."

"...I think you probably shouldn't claim to be a fast learner since you may not be accurately comparing with people who were better-made, and even if you were made well sailing a ship this size is very complicated and involves a fair amount of talking to each other so we can coordinate. Kitchens is better or if you're bored with it you could do cleaning."

"Ah, the communication might be an issue, yeah, unless everyone sings to coordinate."

He lets the 'better made' comment pass. For all he knows it's true, though he would be surprised. He was quick to pick things up even before his time in the Hedge, usually sailing through advanced classes despite constantly reading under his desk, and if anything the life and death nature of the place sharpened his knack. Or maybe it was some magic thing.

If everyone here is actually as good at learning, he'd expect their tech level not to be so low. Maybe the world is still new, or maybe there's some other thing keeping them stuck without electricity, but for now he'll just go help clean so he can pick up new skills, and maybe new songs.

New songs are perpetually available.

The way they handle human waste in zero gravity without plastic, electricity, or other modern conveniences is pretty gross. It doesn't seem to bother the people who have this as their main job.

Thankfully years of living in the woods pretty well inured him to gross things, though over the years he noticed he didn't need to "go" as often as he used to. He thought part of that might be from Hedge food being so nourishing, but he's never been sure whether it was that or some weird time stuff. He supposes he'll find out soon enough.

There are other cleaning tasks if he prefers; they scrub away things trying to grow on the hull and they haul kitchen scraps to the composter to be offloaded when they dock and so on.

He'll give a bit of time to each, wanting to broaden the variety of skills he picks up. It's why he originally joined the Scouts; the idea of collecting skills really appealed to him, even if most of them would be worthless in his adult life.

Or at least, what he thought that would be, back on Earth.

He seems most welcome on the scrubber team; they cover so much surface area that it's not so conspicuous that he has less zero-g practice and is the slowest guy on the crew.

Being slower than the others gives him something to strive for, and he treats it as a competition, watching close so he can note what they do with their bodies, then trying to copy them.

Proprioception was his latest "favorite word," before he got swallowed by the Hedge. It's something he always felt most keenly when learning new things, his attention spread like a fine mist throughout his body.

Each movement of his limbs, when and how much he shifts his mass, even how he orients his torso and waist... each is a little experiment, feeding him over a dozen points of data, prompting him to try new things with the next movement, then the next, then the next.

It's fun. Fun like learning to swim, to swing between branches, to run through the Hedge, body angling for the gaps to minimize how torn up he'd get with each step. Each time he notices himself moving a little more smoothly, a little more efficiently, he feels a burst of satisfaction that drives him to do it again, but even better.

Then he will improve noticeably over the course of the shift! People will smile at him.

Their destination round looms larger in the distance.

He does his best to practice their speech between songs, glad the grammar of the language came through as well as the meanings of each word.

On the downside, he finds himself lapsing into a sort of singsong tone without meaning to, and amusing as this might be, he also finds it a bit embarrassing. He has to spend something like three times the effort and focus to speak their language in a normal cadence.

They seem to think it's quirky but not offensive or anything for him to go tuneful when conversing.