Riding the gondola to the docks of Provo's outermost district proved uneventful, for the most part. Rather than pass time with the oarsman by making small talk, Clyde used the silence between them to formulate a list of supplies he would need to purchase before returning home for the day. Sifting through the contents of his busy mind allowed him to remember that a number of his tools were on the verge of going dull from overuse, and because sharp tools are the safest tools, he made it a point to buy a new whetstone or two for the sake of thwarting future accidents. Further contemplation gives Clyde enough incentive to pick up some more rope, as well as a few hunting traps to fend off the vermin trying to scavenge his garden for food. Winter was coming, and these could prove useful as the weather gets colder.

Clyde waits for the gondola to be moored securely against the docks before departing the vessel without a word, simply offering the oarsman a small cluster of gil coins as payment for services rendered. The transportation fee was largely token in nature, he had learned weeks ago, yet it served a crucial purpose nonetheless; the funds collected this way went towards sustaining the upkeep of Provo's canal systems, ensuring smooth operations citywide for all of the seafaring merchants and tradespeople while also offering pedestrians a mode of passage between the districts.

Only a cynical person, or someone used to ambulating their way from place to place, would have thought such a method of travel was too good to be true. How could a boat ride cost as much as a mere apple, yet manage to contribute to such a well-maintained network of clean waterways and fully functional sluice gates? No one throughout all of Provo knew of it, but Clyde was very much used to living as a drifter, and it made him every bit as cynical about the world as he is today. Even he had to be convinced the gondola system was a feature and not a government privilege that came with numerous strings attached.

Then again, Clyde had seen the Gestahlian Empire's handiwork for himself, how they openly neglected the welfare of their subjects, how they refused to meaningfully improve their lives while they conducted hideous Magitek experiments and hunted Espers with gleeful abandon. They had the audacity to incorporate trains and flying machines into their blueprints for military expansion, and still the Empire balked at the concept of allowing its citizens to use these vehicles for the purposes of municipal transportation, evidently satisfied with wringing taxes out of old-fashioned sea travel and the occasional toll gates at various Imperial checkpoints.

Between sacrificing an almost negligible amount of money or being legally robbed by hired goons, contributing to Provo's gondola service seemed a vast improvement.

Of course, old habits die stubbornly, and Clyde preferred to navigate most of Provo on foot, hence why he opted to disembark here. It allowed him to continue studying the city's layout, memorizing every street and back alley connected to them so that he can form the shortest paths to his destinations. Silent eyes absorb the details of each and every building, their idiosyncrasies, their nooks and crannies, as they scanned for information relevant to the items he wished to procure. Clyde found nothing useful where he stood, but a nearby signpost might be able to guide him in the proper direction.

One by one, Clyde looked at each of the wooden planks affixed to the oak pole, each carved with arrows and wordage denoting specific areas of Provo and the directions he needed to follow to arrive at these locations. Although he could do much of his shopping with traders around the city borders, Clyde could not get whetstones, rope, or traps unless he bought them from shops nearer the center. As he was still in the process of familiarizing himself with Provo's geography, he came to the rather unenthusiastic conclusion that he would have to venture his way to where the greatest number of people tended to congregate in situations like these.

He needed to visit Help Wanted Avenue.

-----

Since finding himself displaced to Zephon, Clyde had only visited this bustling commercial center a small number of times in his endeavors to acclimate and get a feel for his new surroundings. During these instances, it quickly dawned on him that nearly any kind of business could be found here if he simply looked hard enough. From skilled laborers and tradesmen to swords-for-hire and nearly everything in between, if there was work to be done in Provo, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, he could be guaranteed to find at least one establishment that specialized in it on Help Wanted Avenue.

Right now, he needed to find a general store, or perhaps a smithy, which he knew for certain could both be found at the marketplace. But odds are pretty high that he could end up finding one on this street, as well. If nothing else, a little quality comparison never hurts.

As touched upon earlier, old habits die stubbornly, but Clyde is also a man of innumerable secrets, and it has reflected itself involuntarily from time to time. In this instance, his current gait and posture is that of a man devoting conscious effort into going about his business unnoticed by anyone else, as if he is projecting into the world an unspoken wish to be completely ignored. Clyde's face hangs low to the ground entirely out of habit, obscured by only by his long hair; it is a vestigial remnant of a time where it was utterly critical to keep his appearance a secret from the world.

It would seem that such habits were of no help here in Provo, in Zephon, now that a young woman had abruptly called out to him from a nearby box booth, asking if he had any interest in healing magic. Like the buzzing of a gnat, Clyde almost wrote her entirely innocent question off as nothing more than a distraction to keep him from seeing to his responsibilities, until she mentioned its scarcity in Zephon and her endeavors to find people wanting to make a difference with their talents.

With the same spontaneity that she had demonstrated in trying to reach out for conversation, Clyde ceases all movement forward, stands still for a brief couple of seconds, then cranes his head backwards with a deep sigh, as if he were grappling with the thought of actually humoring her assertion. A small part of him was admittedly curious to know if healing magic was as rare as she claimed it to be, and if this extended to all kinds of magic in general. A part of him simply didn't care; killing a god of magic makes a person ambivalent to its existence and practice all the same.

Clyde shook his head, then took it upon himself to at least pay proper consideration to the person who can't even be bothered to—

Oh.

He was looking at someone no older than nineteen or twenty, cropped brown hair, and both eyes colored differently from one another. An exotic floral dress that seemed closer to something a temple priestess might wear. Pamphlets outlining a healing clinic operating in Provo sat atop the box booth's surface, organized neatly yet given utterly no attention by anyone that passed by. Based on what he could tell at a glance, she had resolved to go about recruiting others with the ability to cast healing magic with nothing short of plucky determination and virtually nothing else aside from some brochures. Was this entirely her decision, or was this all she had been given to work with?

Clyde may have been from another world, but this girl was entirely out of her element.

He shifts his attention away from her to the booth, to his own clothes, then back to her. The disconnect seemed pretty clear in his own mind. “Your scouting talents could use some improvement,” Clyde said, wryly. But it was also possible that her commentary was sincere, and that healing magic was virtually considered a novelty in Zephon. But maybe his response came off a little harsh... “Sorry. I'm not a mage.”

For someone who didn't like to make assumptions about other people, the young woman certainly had no trouble spontaneously picking him out of the crowd at random to ask if he had an interest in magic, let alone the sort that can mend wounds and cleanse afflictions. But for someone as aloof and detached as Clyde in the moment, he remained perceptive where it mattered, and even he could spot the noticeable dark rings sitting beneath her eyes, a symptom of prolonged sleep deprivation. And though she made the choice to bury the issue and move on, her strained veneer of gratitude did nothing to obfuscate the disappointment she clearly felt.

He didn't bother to answer her other question. That should have gone without saying.

Well. It should have, anyway.

Prompted by no one, and nothing, the young woman identifies herself as Yuna. If she expected him to do the same, Clyde was prepared to disappoint her again, since he was under no obligation to do so, but mostly because he didn't want to, even as a social courtesy, and while she had gingerly tried to acknowledge his obvious lack of enthusiasm over having his time frivolously wasted, Yuna elaborates on her role and overarching intentions for being in Provo. She had come from Torensten, a city-state south of this one that Clyde had yet to visit, as an envoy of a mercenary guild.

The Dragonblades. Another name frequently mentioned on the streets, although he'd first heard it spoken by a tavern patron between tankards of ale as they slurred proudly of their long-standing policy for so-called honorable conduct, how they never accept a job that would tarnish or sully their reputation for protecting the innocent and fostering peaceful relations. On the surface, Clyde perceived no faults in the guild's code of ethics; a sellsword can accept or decline any contract they wish, on whatever grounds they want to establish.

It just seemed a touch dogmatic, is all.

And, truthfully speaking, a lot of good can be accomplished through unscrupulous means.

According to Yuna, though, these Dragonblades had plans to stretch their influence up north and into Provo, which justified the foundation of a healing clinic. She invited Clyde to pay the facility a visit the next time he needed healing, handing out one of the brochures with a weary smile. Open for emergencies, even. How progressive.

“Mm.” Gloved fingers carefully take the folded pamphlet from Yuna's so that they could flip between sides while Clyde's half-lidded gaze scrutinously, silently, poured over the written contents, but finding nothing that hadn't already been explained so far.

Except the clinic's name itself.

The subtle twitch of his eyes as they study the words on the pages illustrate Clyde's growing awareness of this fact. An address to find the building could be seen, though, which led him to better comprehend her present situation as one built on desperate conditions. “Sure,” Clyde said, tersely, “I'll think about it.” Perhaps, assuming it wasn't going to take an entire pilgrimage to get there. He already lived far enough outside of Provo as it stood.

Clyde never really considered himself an expert on reading the feelings of other people, but even he could tell when expectations were being set too high, and Yuna was practically free-falling her way into further disappointment. First, she tried to encourage him to prioritize his own schedule, which immediately told Clyde she lacked the confidence to drive home the importance of her business or its services. Her subsequent insistence that he not worry about the costs of treatment came off more like an admission of self-ignorance, like she didn't actually know how much money to charge people for magic healing, which prompted Clyde to give the brochure another cursory glance out of silent concern.

Not only did this place lack a distinctive name, but also a list of established procedures, and their associated costs? If healing magic isn't native to Zephon, like she claimed, then it also stood to reason that she based this entire operation on the naive presumption that its population would suddenly come to awareness and simply recognize the intrinsic value of a facility specialized in its practice. Do people not lick their wounds at inns anymore? What happened to drinking potions? Those are as cheap as they tasted, generally.

Taking her god-awful approach toward recruitment into consideration, Clyde wouldn't have bothered to give Yuna the benefit of the doubt, were it not for the prominent bags below her eyes and the veil of torpor that clung to her shoulders like an overly-familiar ghost; evidently, her operation was experiencing a moderate amount of success, or else she'd be far more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for this endeavor. Whatever the case was, Yuna's accompanying pitch had arguably been the worst he'd ever heard, and it did nothing to convince him that her clinic's services would be necessary any time soon. Maybe later, but not right now. As for her specialists, she'd have to look elsewhere for those.

Again, Clyde was no expert at reading people's feelings, but he could tell when someone was trying to mine for information, and she had made a rather blatant effort to learn his name by masking her intentions as an apology for consuming time out of his schedule. He was under no obligation to reveal it, nor did his body language convey any desire to cozy up and get familiar with a total stranger, harmless as she was in the moment. To underscore his disinterest in the matter, he turned his face in the direction of the central market square; he still needed to purchase supplies for his home.

He glanced back at Yuna, then toward the markets again.

An idea emerges. Well, this was "Help Wanted Avenue", and it would serve as a kind of soft reimbursement for the time she abjectly wasted.

“Hey,” said Clyde, plainly, “if you want to show me how sorry you are, you can help me find a few things in the square. Ten minutes of your time, for ten minutes of mine.” It was a brusque request, sure, but the destination was barely a few paces away, and he only needed a small number of specific items; he figured it was the least Yuna could contribute for occupying a small part of his morning. “Unless you're too preoccupied with all this foot traffic.” Sarcasm.

Whether she chose to tag along didn't really matter to Clyde in the long run — he was going to get his shopping done today, with or without help.

Yuna

Yuna, bless her little heart, really tried her best to sound upset over the way Clyde, a nobody without any kind of importance or value to her life, verbally formed his blunt request for assistance. Barely, just barely, his colorless gaze thins at her when she quickly, and blatantly, admitted that her clinic received more business through the power of gossip before moving her way around the ramshackle booth and voiced a willingness to show him the markets with a better understanding of what it had to offer.

Much like the young woman, who had probably guessed he would be particularly callous to her for whatever nebulous reasons she may have initially conjured, Clyde had half-way expected Yuna to simply tell him off, if only so that it would hand him an easy alibi to continue on his way without any further distractions. Assumptions were running rampant today, it seems like.

Instead, she chose to comply with the bidding of a total stranger. Rather menially, at that. Anyone else would have been rightfully bothered by her decision, seeing that he was much older than her and glowered at his surroundings without any semblance of friendliness or gentleness. What if he was some kind of a creep, or worse?

Frivolous thoughts. Clyde was an adult, and if Yuna was out here hawking for clientele like she knew what she was doing, then she was an adult, as well, which meant she could make her own choices and feel comfortable in the knowledge of it. Being afforded that right was the least she deserved, even if other people wouldn’t be confident in her ability to make correct judgments for herself.

She comments about his residency in Provo, wondering aloud if he was new to the area. Clyde refused to offer Yuna the answers she craved; that should have been evident from his earlier dictation to help him search for supplies. Her next question was objectively more useful to him, as she would then point out that things like groceries—foodstuffs and the like—were sold closer to the market’s center.

But these were things he didn’t need right now.

Which meant what he actually needed, wouldn’t be where he was looking to go.

Fuck.

Clyde paused, breathing quietly from behind the curtain of hair that concealed most of his bearish and sullen features. He would have wasted more time trying to find his required parcels by wandering aimlessly around Provo’s streets. At the very least, this woman had familiarity with the city’s geography.

“Snares,” he said, plainly, following with another word, “traps,” then another, “rope,” and another, “whetstones,” until he found himself creating a verbal list of things he not only needed, but had forgotten to consider getting replaced before leaving the house. More essential tools, for more essential projects. “I also need a knife, a woodcutting axe, and a spade...for digging holes.” Yuna could interpret this list however she wanted, but she would find no reason to suspect Clyde of lying about it, because he had no reason to lie in the first place.

Yuna