Is there fog rolling in? It seems like there's fog rolling in. The woods continue to do their best to be low-key unnerving...

They breach a final treeline and all of a sudden everything seems normal again. There's a stone wall around a small garden with several decorations - monuments? Graves? Unclear. And a well and two buildings made of neat stonework, though the smaller one is more like a shed. The light is coming out from a window on the larger one. It's orange and flickering, as if coming from a fire. They see a figure walk past the window. Perhaps that was the source of the flickering?

There's no sign of the fox, and the fur trail stops right at the treeline.

The figure opens a wooden door and steps out of the building, headed for the well with a bucket, and then startles slightly and blinks owlishly at the group.

The four turn to approach the figure. "Keep your hands where they can see them" mutters Ian. "Don't want to look like bandits in the night." He takes the lead, stopping a respectful two metres away from the white-robed woman.

"Hello, we're so sorry to bother you, but we seem to be entirely lost."

The woman stares at them blankly.

"Um, do you speak English?"

No response. She clearly does not.

Niels is right behind Ian.

"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

No comprehension.

"Tallar du svenska?"

Nope.

"Parlez-vous Français?" Ronja had entirely mangled the pronunciation, but it didn't seem to matter.

She tries three languages too- One seeming almost Romance, one tonal and otherwise unfamiliar, and one really weird and jarring and over 60% vowels. Then, she shrugs widely and gestures as if to hand the bucket to Niels.

If he takes it she gestures to the well (the hook, rope, and pulley mechanism is pretty obvious) and then makes hand signs in the air and says something that seems like a prayer from the cadence, and raises her hands to the sky and waits a moment. Finally, she nods with a smile and gestures to the door.

Niels attaches the bucket to the hook, and attempts to draw water from the well.

There's a wooden crank. It locks if you press it in and it tries to spin downwards with the bucket's weight as soon as you unlock it. The pulley just above the hook means the rope wound around a shaft at the top unwinds twice as far and the load of the bucket is halved. The result is very smooth and light.

"This is strangely overbuilt for a well." Niels studies the mechanism. "Are they filling their buckets with rocks?" He chuckles. "Well, it should be easy enough to operate." He attaches the bucket, unlocks the handle, and watches it fill up with water before winding it back up. The mechanical advantage means very little force is required. "Maybe children use it sometimes" he muses.

Pulling the bucket out, Niels carries it with both hands towards the house. The other three have gone on ahead. He looks about for the mysterious white-robed woman, wondering where he should put the bucket.

The inside of this building looks like- A shrine. There's no other word for it. The space inside is one large open room, and is devoted to a series of - altars? Displays? Arranged along the walls. The central one, though no larger than the others, is of a fox. There's also the sun and moon, a bird, a cloud, and a comet, and three more that are a little harder to identify at a glance. There are painted carvings, and bowls before them. There is a fire in a brazier in the center. The woman takes the bucket and pours out a little water into each bowl.

Once this is done, she takes a clay slate with wax on one side from a small storage chest near the entrance and starts drawing on it with a brass stylus.

A sun and an empty shrine. Moon sun moon sun full moon, the fullness being emphasized as important somehow, shrine with person in it, holding a broom and sweeping. Then four more stick figures. Then another sun and moon and sun, and an empty shrine again.

She hands over the tablet to whoever seems to want it.

Ian scans around, taking in the interior. It certainly looks somehow religious in nature, but the art doesn't match up with any tradition he's aware of. Maybe Egyptian, if they were more astronomically inclined? Greek influence, perhaps? 

He takes the tablet and looks at it, the other three crowding over his shoulder. "Sun, emptiness, night and day... upon a full moon, somebody is here? I think she's telling us she only comes here during the full moon and for... two days following?"

"It looks like it. Should you tell her where we came from?"

"It's obvious we're not from here. I don't think there's any harm in saying what happened to us."

"Concealing information doesn't seem very wise at this point."

Ian takes the stylus and draws four stick figures on a road with a half moon in the sky, followed by four stick figures in a forest, then the four in a clearing with a crude drawing of a fox and a full moon. He then draws a fox leading them down a path (close enough to what happened, and easier to depict than a map). Finally, he draws the four of them next to the shrine.

She smiles broadly at the fox drawing and indicates the fox-altar. She mimes leaving something on it, next to the bowl.

...Then she draws something that's obviously intended to be a scary monster, lurking in the trees and looking at the four, and the fox seeing the monster and then leading them away.

"I think she's saying that the fox protected us?"

"Seems that way."

"Should we be providing thanks in some way?"

"Maybe she wants us to leave an offering at the bowl. Which seems reasonable, under the circumstances."

"Monster or no monster, we do need a place to stay the night."

Ian fishes through his pocket and produces a few coins. He doesn't know if they're worth anything here, but it should be clear enough that they're at least worth something to him. Mimicking the robed woman's movements, he places the coins next to the bowl in what he hopes is a respectful manner.

She seems slightly amused, if anything, but she nods in approval.

She heads out to the smaller building, which does seem to be just for storage. Among various other supplies and firewood, there are six packed wood-frame cots with some kind of waxy woven leaf for bedding. She points alternately at the cots and the shrine, then gathers up some jars and a sack and an iron pot and something made of long iron rods from the shed's shelves.

"We're to carry the cots over, I think."

They don't have much gear on them; it was all left in the car. Each of them picks up one cot, and they begin schlepping them towards the shrine.

The local follows behind them, and then sets up a tripod over the brazier and hangs the pot on it. The sack contains rice.

She starts cooking, just a big pot of boiled rice and veggies and a little of what is probably butter from a jar.

Once that's set, she'll draw - five eating and five sleeping and then sunrise and then five walking to three building-shapes drawn close together. "Wo Liua," is the name she repeats when tapping the presumable-village. (The wax tablet is getting kind of full. She smudges a spot near the top smooth to make room.)

"We will go to Wo Liua." Ian nods, having noted that their benefactor also used a head-motion to signify approval. He wants to contribute something to the meal, but he realizes that the group is now as poor as poor can be. They have, quite literally, nothing to give. Instead, he simply accepts the food with gratitude.

She sits on one of the cots and starts trying to give basic language lessons- In the second language she demonstrated earlier, the tonal one. Numbers and things that can be pointed to or easily drawn. Also, introductions. She introduces herself as "Megi".

After the food is ready, she fetches bowls and forks and lets everyone eat, and leaves the scraps by the fox bowl, too, and demonstrates the local hard soap to clean the dishes and packs them away and then everyone can sleep on the cots, the fire at the brazier helpfully burning lower and lower as it is not refilled.