...okay.

She sets a mouse to alert her when he comes back, and goes back to her carving.

He comes back with fruit to show her. One fresh apricot and one dried.

...okay...

He holds both in one hand so he can gesture with the other. He points to the fresh apricot, then to the sun. He mimes sweating, like earlier. He points to the dried apricot. He enthusiastically mimes dying, taking some artistic license with heat stroke symptoms.

...oh.

Well that's alarming.

He mimes drinking. He offers her both apricots.

...yeah. She takes them, thanks him, takes a good drink from the canteen and a bite of the fresh one, and then looks back to him, still concerned.

Good. He tries to make it very clear with his face and body language how relieved he is. It would be bad if they had a Dosk prune instead of a live Dosk.

She's still a little worried, but if he thinks that's good enough it probably is.

She gives the mouse a little pinch of apricot and sits in the shade to finish it.

He leaves her alone for another while.

She's being more careful, when he checks this time; she still hasn't done anything about the pants, but she's staying in the shade and drinking more. She has a little artifact set up with a glowing dot on a folded-over piece of cardboard, too, with a mouse napping inside.

In that case he'll just watch for a while, as long as she's not bothered by that.

She doesn't notice, intent as she is on her work. The dot moves along the cardboard, though, slowly, and a few minutes after it reaches the edge, she notices that, and stops to take a drink.

"Oh, hello."

He figures that's probably a greeting and repeats it.

He doesn't have the vocabulary to tell her her work is fascinating and important but he sure can look conspicuously delighted and fascinated by all the carving.

Hee.

She can mime at least a vague explanation - this part makes it go, and this part that she's working on right now does the steering, and over here she's going to put the part that lets it see, so that it can't accidentally run into anything.

Wow. He applauds softly. He figures she might be familiar with the idea. It's worth a try anyway.

He watches delightedly until he decides that having lent her his hat and left his water inside he should probably not try to stay out too long.

It's a lot of carving, and not particularly interesting to watch. She's pretty engrossed, though; she'll work through almost to sunset, left to her own devices.

By then people are making dinner. Vaayo invites Dosk to come eat with him and a few others.

She's definitely up for a meal by then.

Inside the building Vaayo invited her to earlier they're having chunks of hard old cheese and salted raw potato, artistically carved carrots, some of the year's last cherries. Someone seems to have decided that cooking is for cooler weather.

It's probably not a coincidence that less than half the people there are adults.

There's a little water and soap for handwashing before dinner.

She washes up and checks out the selection. She's dubious of the potato, but takes a piece to try, and another one for her pets, and some of everything else - it's all finger food, so that's convenient. At the table, she sets a piece of cardboard that she's done using for servantmaking notes down to give the mice a clearly delineated place to be, and arranges their meal before starting on her own.

One of the children points to the mice and says something. The man who showed her the map earlier responds. The child watches the mice but eats without mentioning them again.

The old woman who was telling a story to children earlier says something congratulatory to Vaayo and asks something that Vaayo responds to with a long story.

She waits for Vaayo's story to be done, and then instructs the mice to listen to him before getting his attention and miming that he should try talking to them.

"Hi, mouse, I think I'm supposed to talk to you? I'm going to feel really silly if that's not what she means."

Dosk chuckles and shakes her head. She gestures for the mouse to twirl, causing her to spin in place, and then she gestures from Vaayo to the mouse again.