Nothing immediately jumps out to attack him.

It's another hour or so to Lane's house, with occasional detours to stay out of the way of something they hear.  The forest is quite dense outside of the clearing, to start with, but it lightens up as they go on until it becomes open fields and orchards, then a road - first dirt, then paved in stones - lined with the occasional house or barn.

The town is completely empty of people as they enter, which is probably to be expected for one of this size at this hour; there are a few bats flying their irregular patterns overhead and a cat or two watching from the shadows.

Lane doesn't say a word till they're standing in front of what is presumably their door - yes, there's an engraved wood sign hung on the wall next to it reading 'Emilane'.

"Well.  Here we are."

“Are there other people who can be woken up.”

"Hypothetically.  What for."

“I don’t love the idea of being alone, in an enclosed space, with someone who might experience mind control at any moment.”

"That's pretty reasonable."  They sigh and run a hand through their hair.  "I was going to drug myself; I have something to knock a person flat for long enough you'd be able to get a full sleep in without a chance of me....interrupting.  Dosing's the same on it for Lyssdians as beasts, by weight, so I wouldn't expect anything weird from - me maybe being both.  I," they scrunch their eyes closed.  "I want to do the right thing here, the safe thing.  And I also would quite like to avoid talking to anyone else before morning, if that can be done within those constraints."

“So there are three major possibilities here. Either you’re wrong about how your drug interacts with uncharted medical space and you kill me in my sleep, or you have to talk to someone else and hand me over. Or neither of those things happen. Can you see why I’m weighing those options like I am.”

"Yeah.  Yeah.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't kill you, just try and drag you back through the portal - that's not actually reassuring, given that I have drugs.  Never mind.  Do - what if....what if I go inside, you wait out here, I grab the wakeravel, I go sleep in - somebody's - barn, you take my house."

“There’s not really anything stopping you from walking in after me, or entering the house while I’m sleeping. I can’t actually verify how many keys or side entrances you have. Do you want me to wake up someone random while you wait in the bushes.”

"Oh, would you?  - Probably not somebody random, but yes; that'd be brilliant.  ....Also I don't know what you mean about keys but that's probably beside the point."

“Do you not have - nevermind. Point me at a house.”

"You probably want a farmer, given that I was," fidgety claw-flex, "going for physical attacks, before.  And probably don't have magical ones yet.  - They all live a bit out of town; do you have brooms?  Can you ride one?"

“- do your brooms grow on hackberry trees.”

"Some of them?"

“Probably not the same thing, I might not be able to ride it.”

"Do you want to try or should we start walking."

“Second one.”

"Okay."  Lane starts to go for the one leaning against the house anyway, but stops.  They start walking back in the direction they came into town from.

Walking, walking, walking, oh wow this is so exciting and interesting except for how it isn’t, walking, walking, walking, at least the scenery is kind of novel, walking, walking, walking.

And after ten or fifteen minutes they turn off the road and into the yard of a little farmhouse, or rather, it actually seems bigger than most of the ones they've passed, but none of them are particularly expansive.  Lane stops a fair distance from the door, inhales to start saying something -

- and is interrupted by a voice from behind them both.

"Emilane.  Whoever-you-are."  A greeting, from the - probably a farmer, based on Lane's previous description - sitting sidesaddle and oh-so-casually on a broomstick, her feet a few inches off the ground.

(Lane, perhaps predictably, startles violently at the broken silence.)

Is this person planning on murdering them. He’s going to be really annoyed if this person is planning on murdering them. They probably aren’t but it’s been a day.

“Could you rank your current desire to commit homicide on a scale from one to ten, I’m not in the mood to guess.”

"Zero."

“Great. The person I’m standing next to recently experienced mind control and might resume being mind controlled at any time, watch out for that. I’m Jamie.”

"Fabulous.  What are you doing in my yard."

"She needs somewhere to spend the night, can't use my place since.  Aforementioned mind control."