"Well. Okay. That's going to be complicated but we'll probably come up with something. Do you know what kinds of things you can eat in the woods -"

"Nuts, fruits, blackberries, maybe other berries but I'm not sure I can tell which ones are poisonous, wild carrots, onions, meat, honey if we're very lucky and can get it without being stung by giant bees..."

"Insects?"

She makes a face. "Not sure. If we're desperate I can try them."

"There're probably nuts and seeds and berries around somewhere. - it's important to find them when you're small, otherwise we'll go through everything in the area in no time at all."

Nodnodnod.

"With a bit of practice you can see which paths are small ones, and how small. I don't know how to describe it, just go through a couple and you'll get a sense for it." He's frowning now. "You look - unhappy."

"It would just be - upsetting, to have come here to escape the Emperor and then to end up starving because there isn't enough food."

He steps forwards and pulls her into his arms, somewhat like he knows that people hug but not how they do it exactly. "It'll be all right. It might mean we have to travel a lot and spend a lot of time scavenging and lean on my court more than I'd like to, but forests have lots of food, really, and not many people with a claim to it, not out here."

Nodnodnod.

She's not sure anybody older than six has given her a proper hug since she was a child, so she's actually just going to cling for a bit.

What a good human. 

What a mess it's going to be to feed her. 

Eventually she gets ahold of herself and stops clinging.

"I don't really know whether it's customary to thank people for things, here. But... thank you."

"I wonder if humans have - verbal debt-acknowledgements - since they can't track it otherwise."

"Maybe so. I never thought of it that way before, but I suppose it makes sense."

He seems to consider this for a second, then shake himself. "Well, I'm going to go out looking for food."

"OK. I think I'm going to get some more water and then sleep pretty soon. If that's OK."

"Sounds good."

She takes her son to get some water, then tucks him in to his little moss bed underneath her cloak and tells him a story. She nurses Ragna down to sleep again, and then she closes the door to their little dirt room.

When she's done, she settles down in the moss a ways away and sleeps.

He goes looking for food. It's hard. There's a reason people don't usually bother. Actually he's not entirely sure that they ever bother, he can't think of any stories in which someone had a human and no other help. But then, most people are lazy, aren't they?

There's a blackberry bush with no good paths at it and another one with an annoying, circuitous path that he has to run over and over again to bring the berries back, and they're not even quite ripe, but they're probably still fine? He doesn't know much about human food needs. 

He's out when she wakes up but six blackberries, dented and red and taller than her, are there.

Well. That's - either a lot of food or none of it, she's not sure whether you can eat blackberries when they're red. She'll try eating them anyway.

They taste sour, but not, like, poisonous, though who knows if they'd taste poisonous.

...she'll just grimace a little and eat them, she's never heard of anybody dying of eating underripe blackberries.

He is back a while later soaking wet with a single sunflower seed. "Are the berries all right? There's no point in waiting until they change colors, it'll be a hundred years."

"I think I can eat them. If I get sick and throw up then, uh, we'll know I was wrong. But I don't think anything worse than that will happen."

"Okay." He drops the sunflower seed. "There's more where that came from but they're a pain to get to."