Nash stops short of a building. There are two middle aged men standing outside having a conversation about the growth of their settlement. Neither of them are armed, which is a relief to see, as he doesn't want to be targeted by a swordsman or an archer when he approaches the camp.
He breaks away from the treeline and walks towards them, waving his hands over his head to catch their attention. As he comes near them, they notice his approach, and he pauses, holding up a peace sign and waiting for their response. They flash him a peace sign and beckon him over.
"Are you new?" shouts one of the men by the house.
"Yes. Is this a peaceful settlement?" He replies.
"Yes sir it is" the other man says, "and before you ask us, yes, we hear the voices too."
This eases Nash's concern, as he walks closer to the men. "Do you folks know how we got here?" Nash asks.
"We woke up, same as you," the first man says.
"We've established a local currency here, and several shops," the second man chimed in. "If you've attained anything that could be useful to the settlement, they'll pay you in silver," he added.
With that, Nash turned and jogged back to the treeline, running back to his canoe once he broke into the forest. "Jay!" he shouted excitedly.
Jay jumps up off the canoe and shouts, "Nash, are you alright?!"
"Yea, I'm okay. It's a peaceful settlement, and they have an established currency there. They have no clue what's going on, or any explanation as to how we woke up here. The same happened to them," Nash explains.
"Should we pull our canoe into the bay, then," Jay asks.
"I don't see why not. I don't think anyone will steal it. They have cabins and solid structures there, I'm sure they could make a canoe or a boat if they wanted to. They probably have some water crafts up on the shore somewhere," Nash says as he hops in the canoe.
Jay jumps in after him and stumbles into Nash awkwardly. "Oof, I'm sorry, are you ok?" Jay asks bashfully.
"I'm fine," Nash says, holding Jay, helping him gain his footing, "are you okay?"
"Yea," Jay says, as he settles into one side of the canoe.
They row the canoe up to the shoreline, and dismount, pulling it up onto dry land. They grab the basket of meat, and begin walking towards what looks like a butcher. They set the basket of meat down on the table in front of him.
"How much silver can we get for this meat?" Nash asks the butcher.
The butcher eyes the basket of meat, lifting it up and setting it down "Feels like 50 pounds or so, what animal was it from?" he asks.
"It was a Blue Eurasian Lynx with an ice enchantment," Nash says, seeing the interest in the butcher's face.
"An ice enchantment means it won't spoil, and doesn't need to be frozen," the butcher says, "I'll give one silver per pound for the frozen cat."
Nash agrees to the price, with no former knowledge of the value of silver in the settlement. He only hopes he wasn't conned out of a better price. The butcher's face doesn't reveal anything, as he smiles and puts the meat on the ground beside him, and digs through a chest on the ground under the table. He grabs a handful of coins and counts 50 of them out. He hands Jay 25 coins, and puts the other 25 in his backpack.
"Do you know where we can acquire an ax?" he asks the butcher.
The butcher points Nash over to a table in front of a building with several tools hanging on the front of it. He and Jay walk over to the man in front of the building.
"Hello sir, I'm looking for a good tree cutting ax," he says to the man.
The man just smiles and lifts a large ax onto the table. "That'll be 15 silver coin," he says to Nash.
Nash hands him 15 coins and grabs the ax, gaining a skill point in trade. "Jay, is there anything here you're interested in?" he asks.
"I don't see anything of use to us, but I saw a sawmill over there," he points to a man standing by a machine.
"Good eye," Nash says, grabbing Jay's hand and walking with him to the mill.
Jay looks down at his hand and blushes, then looks away from Nash trying to hide his face. Nash doesn't notice, his attention on the sawmill in front of them. "What is your price for lumber, and can we sell wood here?" Nash asks.
"We sell two by fours for three silver apiece, two by eights for five silver, and four by four posts for six silver, all at eight feet in length," he says. "We do buy lumber, and I'll buy trees of any diameter over six inches for one silver per foot, and any over 10 inches in diameter for two silver per foot."
"Do you sell sawmill kits? Could we possibly set one up at our camp?" Nash asks.
"We don't, but there is a local engineer who could for the right price," the man says.
Nash grabs Jay's hand again, and leads him back to the canoe. "Let's head back to our camp, and try to improve our shelter," Nash says to Jay.
They push the canoe into the water, and climb aboard, paddling back to the camp. As they pull into the campsite, Nash grabs the ax from the canoe, and climbs out. He reaches a hand to Jay, and Jay happily grabs it, as he helps pull him onto dry land. They both drag the canoe up onto the land, and start walking towards their camp.
"Do you wanna find some stones we could build the fireplace up with?" Nash asks.
"Sure. Are you gonna be using the ax?" Jay asks him.
"Yea, I'm gonna chop down some trees we can build with. Why, do you need it?" Nash asks him.
"Just wondering," Jay replies quickly as he follows Nash into the woods.
Nash finds a large tree and starts chopping with the ax. Jay finds a flat rock and picks it up, and stands in place for a minute, watching Nash cut the tree down. His eyes glance along Nash's upper body, as he thinks of how close they were that morning.
Jay breaks out of his trance and begins carrying the rock to the firepit. As Nash hacks down tree after tree, Jay collects several small stones and drops them in a pile by the ashes of their fire, taking breaks every so often to watch Nash work.
He begins digging a small pit in the ground with a rock, and once he has a good hole dug, he places a large flat stone in the bottom, then he circles the pit with smaller stones, stacking them together in a ring. When he's done he sits on the edge of the wall, and stares, entranced by Nash's stamina.
Nash hadn't taken a single break. He'd already chopped five trees down, and was working on a sixth, and received another point for wood cutting.
After another hour of felling trees, he had 12 large trees to work with. He remembered an old trick to make concrete using ash, mud, and grass. His plan was to flatten the top and bottom of the logs, mortar them together, and then drill holes through two logs at a time, sliding a hollow bamboo shoot filled with mortar through the holes to fasten the logs together.
He was getting hungry, and dropped his ax to go back to the lean to. When he turned towards camp, he saw Jay look away quickly and laughed quietly.
He walked up to the lean to and grabbed his bow, then turned to Jay and asked, "Would you like to join me in a hunt?"