There's no sense from her that she thinks she's doing him a big favor; if anything, the undertone to her communication is that she expects this to not quite meet his needs. She doesn't comment on it directly, though, just asks if there's any foods he likes that he wants to draw for her so she can see if she has them available.

Well, he's eaten... fruits... which are... round... and nuts, he might as well try to draw a pecan if only because pecans are pretty distinct and known to be edible for humans... and, uh... fish? He can draw fish pretty recognizably.

She doesn't recognize that fruit but she can ask around about it, she does know where she can get a pecan tree cutting but she'll have to find out if the owner of the tree is willing, and she doesn't have a good fishing spot in her territory but she'll see what she can do for fish - he's not in bad enough shape that she thinks she needs to call in favors about it unless he turns out to have trouble with eggs or something, but it's pretty likely that someone has extra or will take the excuse to set out extra traps just for being asked.

Does he want to tag along while she gets some staples from her gardens?

Sure, he might as well go see.

So she leads the way back up the path to the mesh-enclosed platforms; the chickens in one of them bunch up against the edge of their cage to watch her as she goes by. She offers them a greeting, but otherwise ignores them in favor of going into one of the planted enclosures, pausing to make sure he follows her through the doorway without trouble.

The plants inside aren't bearing any obvious fruit or vegetables to start with, but she takes a basket from by the door and makes her way between the plants anyway, pausing here and there to touch a plant and make it grow a melon or squash or ear of corn or sprig of grapes for her to harvest.

Huh. It looks like green magic but that's awfully dramatic for green magic.

He doesn't have any trouble following. He doesn't touch the plants.

Once she's made a circuit of the first platform, she goes to the second one, where she fills the basket out with chestnuts and butternuts grown from miniature trees.

On the way back, it occurs to her to ask him if he knows how to cook.

Shrug.

He doesn't really have a good way to provide her with a useful answer to that question.

Well, the majority of what she has here can be eaten raw, and the rest should be basically fine roasted, she'll sort it out for him and make sure he's okay using the oven. And they'll be bringing him meals in addition, of course.

(She's really curious what his whole deal is; it is of course none of her business and she's definitely not going to push for information while he's in a vulnerable position here, but for the record, if he does want to tell her once he's able, she'd like to know.)

Back at the house, she sorts the food out as promised, and steps out for a minute to get another cold box from one of the other cottages to separate the piles into; with that taken care of she'd like to make sure he's okay with cooking - she'll walk him through preparing that squash, if that sounds good, and she'll give it to the chickens if he isn't hungry again so soon.

...Well, he wouldn't say that he's hungry again, but he can't really usefully say anything, and also he could use the tutorial, so.

So first he needs to craft a knife, something with pretty good heft to it; the crafting material is in the cabinet there.

...He examines the crafting material. What is crafting material.

The substance in the cabinet she directed him to looks like clay and is just as moldable, though it's a bit smoother to the touch and doesn't stick to his hands at all.

Well. He can smoosh some clay-or-whatever into a blade shape and enchant it to stay that way. If it'll stay enchanted, anyway.

It stays enchanted just fine.

His host keeps watching, though, seeming somewhat confused.

Well, he was probably supposed to do something different, but instead he's done the thing he's done. ...Is he supposed to turn it orange? He hasn't missed that that's how they signal that he's using something but he can't do that without paint.

So he'll just... do nothing and wait and see what she complains about.

She doesn't complain, but when it's clear that he's done she walks him through cutting the squash in half, reshaping the knife into a scoop to deal with the stringy bits inside and then back to a knife to score it, then making a tray to put it into the oven on and setting the oven to bake it.

When it's in he oven, she indicates somewhat hesitantly that it seems like he might not have learned to craft properly - though he's obviously got some aspects of it down - and that's not strictly speaking her business but she's worried about his ability to live on his own if he can't craft... is something going on with that that he's going to want or need help with?

Conveniently he has already been taught a glyph for "something else" and can therefore at least sort of try to answer that question.

...help but not the obvious kind, or...?

Something else!

...This conversation might turn out to be extremely frustrating but who knows.

She's not actually sure what else it could be; probably she should just get a dictionary printing and that'll help Val explain himself.

Yes! Yes, she should.

...Assuming the dictionary is readable without already knowing the writing system.

Okay. That'll be maybe an hour, and she'll go handle some other urgent chores while it's printing and then she can read some of it to him, since he won't be able to read it on his own at first - it'll be organized by topic, though, so they'll hopefully be able to get somewhere on communicating things tonight even if he can't put sentences together or anything.

Does he need anything before she goes to do that? If not she'll be back in an hour or so.

Nope.

In that case she'll be back in an hour!

She has a dozen eggs, which she puts in the cold box with the other food that needs to be cooked, and two set of slim books in orange and peach, and explains that it seemed like it'd be easier to work with the dictionary in several parts like this - this edition also has some more specialized books available that she didn't print, if he needs vocabulary about advanced genecrafting or something, but this will hopefully get them at least to the point where he can ask for what he needs. The most obvious place to start would be this one that covers basic things like modifiers and relational words, but if he wants to skip to one of the others that's fine by her - the set includes vocabulary about general crafting, crafters and interpersonal things between them, tools and other common objects, plants and animals (including talking animals, she notes, with the subtext that that categorization choice doesn't go without saying), and other natural phenomena like terrain and weather.