The room at the Alta building truly was not much. When Parker arrived with a heavy sack of groceries from the market, they did their best to use the small kitchenette. The stove sat on the counter directly over the undercounter refrigerator and a sink took up most of the rest of the space. There was only a thin strip of usable counter between the stove and the sink.

  It was Parker's for two weeks though, so they intended to make the most of it while also keeping their promise to Mr. Alta to be tidy. Parker unloaded the groceries onto the small strip of counterspace. Most of the weight in the grocery sack had come from a canvas bag of rice and cans of vegetables. Parker did their best to avoid preservatives, but the cans were the only options for beans, corn, and peas.

  The lighter fare that Parker picked up included fresh fruit and vegetables. Parker was surprised by the abundance of berries, a head of lettuce, a head of cabbage, and some carrots that they had been able to pick up. While all of the produce was slightly off from what it should look like, it was still edible.

  The lettuce spiraled into long leaves that were somewhere between iceberg and romaine. The cabbage had golden veins that Parker had at first thought were rot or decay on the shell. The carrots were normal except that they were nearly hollow and crunched more like celery. All the produce had been labelled as the thing it looked like, but the local variation was a little jarring to Parker. In the end, it was exactly what they needed though.

  The dry groceries were stored in an overhead cabinet, near the few plates and dishes that came with the room. The produce was washed, patted dry, and then stored in the small fridge. Parker had wished they had money for something to drink other than water.

  At least there was power and clean water in the Alta building, even if that was almost all there was. Parker had noticed that some of the buildings in the bayside town had oil lamps outside instead of modern lights. Parker wasn't sure how some buildings had power while others didn't but the fact that there weren't powerlines or a visible grid was enough to warn Parker not to take it for granted.

  After washing a cup of rice, Parker started the slow process of cooking it on the stove. They picked through the book of monsters for a few minutes, waiting for the rice, but then decided to cut up some of the produce for a salad instead.

  The rice didn't take much longer than it took for Parker to prepare a salad. The carrots crunched when cut and that took some getting used to but everything else seemed mostly normal. With the addition of the salad, Parker stored half the cooked rice in the fridge and took their meal over to eat.

  The corner that they had been reading in the night before was a good place to eat as well. The chairside table made a nice dinner-for-one table. The day's fading light filtered in through the window. Parker was tempted to eat out on the balcony due to the nice weather. They were stopped though because the third floor wasn't high enough to really hide from passer-byers.

  The almost-strange produce made a better salad than any of the food Parker had eaten on the Nexus and the rice turned it into a nice hearty meal. The only downside was that despite how filling it was, it was just salad and rice without any frills. Maybe Parker would stop by the market to pick up some kind of dressing, oil, or sauce when they earned more currency.

  After eating, Parker picked up the book of monsters and settled onto the futon to read. The book was not the best read, but it gave them a momentary reprieve from the growing list of problems they had to solve and questions they couldn't answer. Parker refrained from kicking themselves over the idea of being unsponsored. It was not something they could change.

  While Balan hadn't directly urged Parker to give up, the teenager made sure to hint at it once more before they parted ways. It was obvious Parker needed more information and if they couldn't trade for it right now, they could at least learn more about the island.

  Between a sense of restlessness spurned by anxiety and a thirst for knowledge, Parker found themselves closing the book of monsters around dusk without every actually reading it. The bayside town had to have some kind of night life that Parker could learn from. That was their intention as they wrapped a jacket around their body and left the Alta building.

  In the fading light of the day, Parker expected the half-busy streets to fully die down. They expected they would need to seek out the receding life of the town. Instead, the opposite happened. As the sunset, business owners lit their oil lamps and a new wave of light rushed across the streets of the town.

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  Gamblers that had been waiting took to the streets. A night market that Parker had somehow missed until now sprang to life. Some shopkeepers opened just their doors, inviting Gamblers in, but others wheeled carts of goods out to the street to sell under the warm light of a couple hundred lamps.

  Aaron from the tavern was leading a mobile drink cart toward a vacant lot closer to the bayside town's gate. Balan was setting up a stand on a patch of grass alongside the street and was covering it in strange pseudo-scientific gear. It reminded Parker that they weren't exactly clear on what the teenager did on the island.

  The noise of the night market exploded faster and faster. It kept Parker from making any sudden moves. Instead, they just watched from the front of the Alta building as the life of the town continued to grow. From where Parker stood, they could see nearly a dozen shops selling everything from weapons, to clothes, to food and furniture. Why Gamblers would buy furniture was beyond Parker but that didn't stop anyone from looking.

  It turned out that Parker had been underestimating the life and society of the island. While they were looking to move on as quickly as possible, to reach the end and open the Odyssey Vault, that wasn't the case for everyone. Balan had hinted at it, but to see it was different. There were people who lived here on this island and it wasn't clear to Parker if they were Gamblers, EA employees, or just regular people.

  There was a strange natural chaos to the night market. Parker felt it in their core as they started to walk through the streets. During the day, everything in the bayside town had felt so fabricated, so controlled. Now, it felt alive. It felt like a thing that had carved space for itself out of a manufactured hole.

  Slowly Parker made their way to the pier where lights shone even brighter. It was a carnival of sorts. Booths of games and entertainment and art had been constructed out of nowhere.

  Parker would learn later that this was not a nightly market, but a weekly night market. In that moment, though, it was magical enough that they were swept up in the lights and motion. Unlike normal, Parker did not even try to grasp the logistics of it all. There was no desire to understand, just to experience.

  In the blur of the night, Parker lost track of everything they did and why they did it. At one point, they bet their dagger against a vial of copper shavings and a bracelet at a ring toss game. Parker had spent plenty of time on these games over the years, so they won handedly.

  The bracelet was a simple cord made of reeds with a wooden charm that displayed the wispy sigil of the air element. Instead of keeping it, Parker traded it to another Gambler for a grilled mushroom skewer.

  As midnight came around, the lights of the night market faded, and Parker found themselves sitting on the sandy beach next to the pier. They had completely lost track of time. They had also spent the vial of copper shavings that they won on four more skewers that were devoured almost as quickly as they were in hand.

  Now the restlessness they felt earlier was replaced by a lulling that came with the tide and threatened to pull Parker into a deep sleep right on the side of the bay. The moon reflected on the water, pristine waves gently pulsed, and the salty mist felt wonderful.

  Parker dozed off for at least a few moments. If it wasn't for a splash that startled them, they might have slept until morning right there. Someone had knocked something or thrown something off the pier and into the bay. Parker woke up just enough to make sure it wasn't a person that needed help.

  With sleep escaping from their mind, Parker saw the surface of the water starting to bristle and bubble with movement. Then a line was cast and a fisher that Parker couldn't see pulled in a glistening, glowing, four-foot eel from the water.

  Parker had seen fishers pull in eels during the day, but never one that glowed and never one that large. Eels were the primary protein of the island because they packed in the bay for reasons Parker didn't understand. That glowing eel seemed special, and Parker wanted to get a closer look.

  Pushing the rest of the sleep from their bones, Parker hurried up to the pier. They wanted to ask the fisher for a favor but when they got there, it was empty. No fisher, no gear, and no glowing eel. Parker looked over the edge of the pier down at the bay.

  In the moonlight, dozens of eels were swarming around whatever the fisher had knocked in. Among their numbers that nearly blocked out the moonlight, Parker could see that a few of them were almost glowing. Not as brightly as the one that the fisher had reeled in, but there was a definitive glow to some of them.

  Parker turned back toward the bayside town, wondering where the fisher had gone.

  In the morning, word spread that someone had made an offering the night before and received a silver coin, a pure Blessing of Wind. No one came forward and no one commissioned a silver enchantment for their gear from any of the smiths or metalworkers, so no one knew who or what had gone to the altar.

  When Parker overheard the rumor at the tavern, while checking the Gambler Requests, they remembered that glowing eel. They knew that something had to be special about it. They planned to ask about it at the night market, so Parker did not do much other than wander around the town and read during the day.

  When the sunset and the streets quieted down, that was when Parker learned that the market only happened once a week. Their second full day on the island passed too quickly and without anything accomplished.