What do you do when you have no life skills?

"I'm a god," the boy repeated. "Well, actually," he amended, "I'm the son of a reigning god, so I'm kind of in training."

"Did you hit your head?" Shai asked immediately. "Should I call a medic? What about an apothecary? Did you ingest any strange drugs?"

"No, I really am a god," he insisted. "I'm the son of the god of the East sky."

"Okay, okay," Shai said calmingly.

What a nut job! She ran her hands through her hair nervously. She had to keep him calm, otherwise who knew what kind of fit he could throw if he knew she didn't believe him? Shai practically had tears streaming down her cheeks. Tiny gods, what horrible crime did she commit to be saddled with this kind of person?

"You don't believe me." His voice was still calm. Okay, that was good. Not bad, not bad. As long as he was a calm, crazy person, things would be a lot easier.

Shai started sweating. The boy sat back with a pout, still muttering, "I am the son of the god of the East sky. I don't know what you humans call him, though." He looked at her helplessly while still clutching the water skin possessively.

Shai could feel a headache coming on. "Okay," she allowed, We'll just pretend that's true for the moment—"

"Aha, so you do believe me!"

"I said PRETEND!" she said forcefully. The boy drooped in disappointment. "Pretending that's true," Shai said again, really stressing that all important word, "what were you doing dying on the ground in the market? Wait—first, what do I even call you?" Wiping the sweat from her forehead, Shai thought, so I don't have to keep referring to you as that crazy guy.

"My mother named me Vitrinia vi Zelka, but that's because she's a river goddess, and we all know what they're like." He rolled his eyes.

Shai nodded along helplessly, as if anything he said made sense. They had some good asylums near the capital...

"You can call me Vitri."

"Okay, that I can deal with." She would be damned if he expected her to call him that Vitrina van Zellio or whatever.

"As for why I was in the market..." Vitri trailed off hesitantly, even managing to look a little embarrassed.

"What?"

"I got lost."

"..."

He hurriedly explained, "I'm looking for someone, see, but I'm not familiar with this place, so I got lost for a few months."

"Months." Shai started sweating again. He got lost for months. Fffs! How does that even happen? How can you still be alive if you get lost for months?

Not seeming to notice her reaction, Vitri continued, "I couldn't get any food or water, and I don't know how to get any of those little metal chips either. I couldn't think of anything, so I felt kind of hopeless and laid down to rest and think."

"Laying down to rest? You looked dead! What kind of resting was that?" Shai spluttered.

Vitri nodded sagely. "Yes, I managed to sleep pretty deeply. I rested well."

Shai almost threw up blood. He had made her feel partially responsible for his death! She could have happily strangled him just then. Calm, she reminded herself. If she murdered him now, surely the stable hand would notice and report her to the city guards. Be calm.

Dimly, she remembered something puzzling about what Vitri had said. "When you said 'the metal chips', do you mean money?" She showed him a few as an example.

Her biggest coin was a silver triffle though. On the inside, she cried bitterly. All her hard work, and she was still so poor. Sometimes, she thought she should have stayed and become a proper lady and settle for a nice, arranged marriage like her parents wanted her to. At least she wouldn't have to work hard, then.

On the other hand, Vitri became excited upon seeing the coins. "Yes! Those things! How did you get those? Can I touch it?"

Shai nodded numbly. His excitement looked real. There should be a limit to how dumb or ignorant a person could be, shouldn't there? How had he lived all these years without knowing what money was? Was he a really weird foreigner? A tourist? Wait, who would bother coming to tour around a dust bowl?

Oblivious to her thoughts, Vitri picked up a thick bronze bit with reverence. "Wow," he breathed. He pointed at a copper half-penny and said, "You got water with one of these. Why is a little piece of metal equal to two sacks of water? What is the point of it? You can't even do anything useful with these little bits of metal, but once it has this design on it, everyone seems to want some. Where can I get them? Can I get some metal and make them?"

"No!" Shai said sharply. "That's against the law!" Calming down, she told him, "You need to get a job."

Vitri put the coins back in her hand delicately, as if they were eggs that were about to hatch. As she tucked the coins away again, he asked, "What kind of jobs do humans have? How can I get one?"

She sighed and had to go through explaining something that was common knowledge. It was so much common knowledge that she even had difficulty explaining it, because she never had to before. With the amount of stuff in this guy's head, though, she wasn't sure if he was smart enough for even a simple job. He didn't have two thoughts to rub together. He might as well be one of the those hulking warriors who had to simply go where their commander pointed, and bash heads. It would be another matter if he had some sort of useful trade, but the guy flat out told her that he had no skills.

"Oh," he added. Annoyingly, he didn't continue with his thought.

"What?" Shai demanded impatiently.

"I don't know if it's a skill, but magic seems to be what a lot of humans can't do. I can do that."

Shai gaped at him. A lie again? Or an improbable truth? "You're a magus? I've never met one before." Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Don't you have to study for half your life to become a magus?" She looked up and down his youthful face, trying to find a hidden wrinkle somewhere. "You look surprisingly young." Her excitement vanished. It would be amazing if he was a real, live magus, but considering this guy's background, she was going to take everything he said with a grain of salt.

"Of course," he replied. "It's easy for me. I'm a god. All I have to do is wave my hand to gather the elemental power. It's always there."

Right. Back to this nonsense again.

"Sure, sure." Shai completely ignored him. "Well, the only thing you could probably do is sell your body."

"..."

"Seeing as you have no skills, you can only hope to join the army. The king is generous, so he accepts everyone. He even gives you a two week self-defence course before sending you off to die!"

He just stared at her for a moment before completely ignoring what she said. "What kind of work do you do?" he asked her.

"I'm a caravan guard," she told him, "but you have to actually have some skill for that. You can't just leech off others for it, or your caravan will abandon you the first night on the road. You can't leech!"

"You don't have to say it twice," he muttered.

She harrumphed. How could she not emphasize it well? That guy was likely thinking of something along the lines of that.

Instead, he suddenly changed the subject. "Where has it rained recently? Not like a light misting, but a real, roaring thunderstorm."

Shai blinked blankly. Obviously, she didn't see the connection between this topic and that one. The train of thought of crazy people really was hard to follow, but she said obligingly, "The Kingdom of Frastern. Why else do you think we're at war with them? Ever since our drought started, we've been trying to negotiate with them to buy water, but those selfish bastards keep raising the price, seeing as they have rain aplenty and we're left high and dry. Our king is trying to capture one of their oases, and they clearly know it, too. Even so, it seems we have no other choice right now. We have to—hey, are you even listening?"

Shai rapped Vitri on the temple with a knuckle, but he still had that far-off look, as if he was thinking about something. As if he could think.

Finally, he turned to her and asked seriously, "You want proof that I'm a god, right? Save the cat tomorrow."

"Wha—" Shai began.

"Go to sleep."

Without another word, Vitri turned away to curl up on the hay and seemed to fall asleep instantly. Shai sat there, baffled. Wasn't that a little too sudden? Did he not understand how conversations work? They went two ways! He couldn't just decide to spout some nonsense and abandon their talk.

Wait, that makes it sound like I want to keep talking to him, Shai thought irritably. Forget that.

She moved to put as much space between them as possible. It wasn't a lot of space, considering they were in a stable stall, but she was annoyed and stubborn about it by this point. Then, she drew her sword and left the naked blade beside her, in easy reach, before settling down to sleep.

The next day, Shai woke up before the sun, due to the inn's noisy bakers, who were getting ready for the day. In the dim light, she sheathed her kodaichi and looked around, puzzled.

Vitri was already gone. And he had taken both skins of water with him.

That bastard.