They've left him alone in his cell.
He can't really be said to be lucid but he has very acute instincts for when there's someone and when he's alone - it's the last of his senses to depart him - and he's alone.
And then suddenly he isn't.
All right. I'll go do that now, then, it'll only take a few seconds to start, and she disappears.
After the promised few seconds the sound of churning water comes from the basin; it's not very loud but it is pretty sudden. After a few minutes it stops, just as abruptly as it started.
She pops back in a minute later. Sun's not up yet, I'm going to wait a while before I go out again.
...
She sends a wordless acknowledement, and then goes still, her thoughts careful but not guarded. Something's wrong, she caught that; she doesn't know what it is, she doesn't know if it's something she can fix at all. She's still doing better than leaving him, she thinks - she flinches away from the thought, aware that he's probably watching, but it's still a reassuring touchstone. Beside the point, though; there's a long way between 'better than that' and 'actually good enough'. So, what might the problem be... basics, food, water, warmth, safety, companionship... she still doesn't quite believe that he doesn't need to eat. She'll bring that up again later. Water, warmth, sorted out as well as she can. Safety... they talked about that a little, but she can certainly go into more detail about it... if that would even help, which it probably wouldn't, if he thinks she's just lying. That might not be one she can fix; at very least probably not anytime soon.
She can ask, though. Is there anything I can do that will help you feel safer?
Sigh. Yeah. Don't want to, it'd involve more... thinking about what I was doing, which is why that's not the impulse that grabbed me. But I have hunting spells that'd work.
I know you don't believe that this is real, but I know it is.
But. Yes. If that's what you need.
Right. I...
She takes a deep breath, lets it out, shakily, takes another.
Okay. What kind of trigger do you want.
She's gone for nearly three hours. If he's paying attention, he may notice the quiet sounds of things appearing in a nearby cave.
When she does reappear, she's accompanied by a furry brown animal skin larger than she is, which she carefully wrestles over to the other side of the fire and spreads out to dry.
She works on the fur, her thoughts focused on the work at hand, or planning for future projects, or speculating on the weather of the next few weeks and how it's likely to affect what she can gather. She thinks of him only distantly, as a factor to take into account in these things.
After a few hours, she goes down to her pantry and returns with some fruit, which she bakes. These wouldn't keep anyway, it won't hurt anything if you'd like to have some.