Yeah. It bothers me that my presence would get you to stop doing those things. So I really wish you wouldn't apologize to me for doing them.

No response, unless trembling just slightly harder counts.

If you want to leave that's fine. I'll survive if I decide I want to, you do not owe me anything.

No response.

No, that's not quite true; after a moment, over osanwe, there's a wordless, careful, utterly terrified assertion of personhood, and, inextricably, of not being the kind of person who would do that.

I promise you that I think you're almost certainly working for my Enemy to torture me but that I haven't ever doubted your personhood.

Still wordless, still terrified: People have reactions, emotions, needs; to think that you can cause someone not to do those things is to think that they are not actually a person; to do that to a person anyway is to cause grave harm.

Do you want to discuss this when you're calmer? Or more relevantly, are you going to get calmer if we haven't discussed this? People can train themselves out of their reactions, out of noticing or acknowledging their emotional needs. People can do that accidentally. People can have expectations of others which make those others do that, accidentally. Which of those beliefs is 'to think that they are not actually a person'?

It takes her a while to make any kind of sense of that. She's still not very present when she responds; it's not clear whether she's actually calmer or just dissociating too badly to be that afraid.

Causing someone not to notice or acknowledge is a thing, attempting to cause someone not to have is a different thing.

Maybe it's a species thing.

Maybe it's a how-long-has-it-been-definitely-Years thing.

Maybe. Can't. Don't.

This entire thing started because I said I didn't want you to avoid acknowledging your emotional needs. I don't think I follow why you got from that that I did want to make you avoid having them.

There's a pause, and then she sends her impression of him as someone who's confident that they can do that thing, who considers it a valid tool to use even if it's one they wouldn't choose to use in this case.

She's back to 'clearly terrified', but calming down, slowly.

 I said that it's not necessary for you to stop yourself from doing things out of fear they might hurt me and I'd have no recourse. Because if they were actual problems they could be addressed at the point where they became problems, not the much earlier point where you're hiding or apologizing for or trying to suppress things on the off chance they'll hurt me.

I didn't mean 'all things you might do I can in full generality get you to stop doing, and would if they annoyed me'.

She waits the several seconds it takes for her to become able to send words again.

Choosing when and where and how I express things isn't fear, it's courtesy. Normal, better than waiting for there to be problems that would take effort to solve. The situation makes it important to be more careful but that's all, it's not... personal or unusual or anything. It's a way of showing I'm taking your wellbeing seriously but I'd always do that.

The other thing I may have misunderstood but you've already pushed at my limits and that's a really bad one.

So leave. I think you work for the Enemy and you are terrified of me.

Do you actually want me to do that.

I do not have any preferences, but people being unhappy in my presence and being made moreso by me is a thing I'll disprefer if I start having preferences, it'd once have distressed me a lot - course, then I would also have known how to avoid it...

Fuck.

Okay.

I'm not going.

Please try to be careful not to bring that up again. I'll try not to panic if you do but I can't promise I won't.

Sure.

He is still not clear what 'that' is, but he can avoid anything even touching on interaction between the two of them and how it'd be least frustrating to him. 

Thank you.

She sits there and worries silently for ten minutes or so and then goes to make herself an omelette.

He'll sing and communicate delight at the sunrise, both demonstratedly safe topics of conversation.

She's pretty sure he's faking. She doesn't like it. She plays along.

She makes him pumpkin-lentil broth with powdered eggshells in it.

He has some. Just a little, and slowly, but he has some.

That, she's genuinely pleased about. When he's done, she heads back to the jungle for a few more hours, and returns with a piece of fruit to try.

Think the place you found will have food all winter?