There's someone who really didn't expect to be here. He's short and thin and has dark circles under his lack of eyes. He's got a backpack and a sturdy collared shirt over a soft cotton tee, both of which have seen better days, and grass-stained blue jeans and only mildly ratty tennis shoes.

There's no one right there. It's weird that there's no one there. He sits and waits, terrified, until it starts to seem loosely possible that there really isn't anyone there, and then he starts feeling around a bit, and then he takes a napkin out of his backpack and coughs into it and goes looking for a trash can.

There isn't a trash can; there is a compost pile, a little ways away from the bushes, bordered with some things in the shape of logs but with an oddly smooth texture.

That's probably fine.

So - it's an inhabited area. It's deserted. Maybe he's being watched to see what he does when he thinks he's alone? He's not doing anything interesting. He really misses coffee.

He's left alone; it's still and quiet. At one point after a few hours he'll find that he's oddly aware of the presence of a particular crow, above and to the side of him, at a distance that might suggest it being perched in a tree, but the impression passes very quickly.

He curls up very tightly and DISLIKES THAT EXPERIENCE.

It doesn't happen again. After another hour or so the birds start to sing and call in the trees; the sun will be rising soon.

Yeah. So it will. It's wonderful how predictable that is.

The birds sing; the river burbles; the air warms; eventually someone comes up the trail. She isn't trying to be quiet, and isn't expecting anyone else to be out here first thing in the morning at all nevermind sitting under a tree rather than at the tables, so the stranger will have plenty of opportunity to notice her before she notices him. When she does, her presence becomes obvious just like the crow's was, but more persistently and with more detail: she's startled at his presence and concerned about his ragged appearance and apparent malnourishment and what they probably imply about his situation, and wants to know if he's all right.

That's terrifying. Either he's going mad or they have magic that just puts thoughts into his head without any intermediate steps and he doesn't like either of those things! All of this not looking at flowers and blue skies he's been doing has been totally pointless if there's nothing he can do - or maybe he's dreaming. Maybe that's all. Maybe it's not real.

At any rate he obviously doesn't answer telepathically. Since he's not telepathic.

She seems to think there's an obvious explanation for the lack of answer, and she doesn't like it very much at all.

She can have the crows go get the healer, if he wants; if he taps his finger on his leg she'll take it to mean that she should. Otherwise, well, it's a public place, he has just as much right to be here as anyone.

He doesn't do that but it's not super clear that he's not too frozen to.

She only intends to stay for a couple of hours, but she'll make sure whoever comes after her knows that they should keep an eye on him and get the healer if he taps his leg like she said. ...or if he hasn't moved by dinnertime; he seems to be in really rough shape and she doesn't think they should just let him be indefinitely if he's too unsettled to communicate.

After a while he starts almost falling asleep and then jerking awake. He doesn't seem to enjoy this process at all.

Gosh, this poor guy. She doesn't have enough crafting material with her to make him a tent, either.

She could go ask someone nearby to loan them some crafting material, that might work. If she made him a tent would he use it?

He nods.

She considers this, concludes that it seems like a plausibly yes-ish kind of gesture, and heads up the trail to see about getting some crafting material. The sense of her presence winks out when she gets a bit farther away from him than she was before when she was addressing him.

Creepy. Fucking creepy. Is the mind control basically arbitrary? He can't tell. Does he think the demons can't just do that because they made him think so? Whenever she gets back he'll just be having a crisis about that.

It takes about forty-five minutes for her to get back, followed closely by something somewhat quadrupedal-sounding. She leads it around him, not getting too close, and sits there to begin work, keeping him updated as she goes: the quadrupedal-sounding thing is the crafting material, in normal robotic form for transport since it was a bit much to carry; she disassembles it a bit at a time to make a soft surface for him to lie on, then the walls and roof with a hole left in the side of the structure for her to work through, and then she adds programming and a textured control panel with buttons that he can press to make it warmer or cooler inside - she's doing it the simple way with hot and cold patches in the roof that he can turn various numbers of on and off, she's not good enough at this kind of crafting to make heated or variable-firmness bedding without a template, unfortunately - and to make it soundproof or sound-permeable, and - he probably doesn't care about windows - adds a door on one end that he can lock into a groove in the floor so it won't move and colors the edges of the roof so people will know the crafting material belongs to the Crafter who loaned it to them and not walk off with it. She closes up the hole when she's done and lets him know that he can try it out; she hopes he'll be more comfortable in there.

...He goes inside nervously.

The floor is soft and squishy; the walls are sturdy and just slightly padded, reminiscent of thick fabric over wood or plaster. The structure isn't big enough to stand up in but there's plenty of headroom for sitting and more than enough length and width to lie down comfortably, if not quite enough to stretch his arms out above his head or to both sides. The forest sounds are slightly muffled inside; if he tries the button that she indicated would turn on the soundproofing they cut out almost entirely, leaking in only around the edges of the door. If he checks where the floor meets the walls, he'll find that he can peel up a layer of the floor to serve as a very cozy blanket, and the surface underneath it is still comfortably soft and springy. He could theoretically catch his finger in the door if he tried to adjust it by the edge instead of the provided handle, but aside from that there are no sharp edges or painful bits anywhere; if he tries the heating and cooling feature the sections of the ceiling that heat and cool in response are notably warm or cool but not so much so that he could hurt himself if he touched one by accident.

So. Why is this happening?

They can put thoughts straight into his head; he’s noticed that, which is some evidence about exactly how much mind control they can do, but he might not have noticed it every time. Is there anything they can’t do? If they’re the people who had him before, it's noteworthy that they didn't do this before. Did they just gain the ability? Were they holding back? Why would they hold back? To have something left to convince him they're not the same people? (In that case, they do need to convince him; they can't just make him believe them. And they can't just make him take whatever actions they want, or at least there are limits of some kind on that.) Are there other possible reasons to hold back? Maybe they can only do so much outright mind control? (In that case, should he make them waste as much of it as possible on him?)

So why are they being nice? To get him to trust them? Genuine kindness? Are there other options? Do they want him out of sight in the shelter? Maybe they do. Any other options? It’s hard to think. Can he tease these options apart? Wanting him out of sight and being genuinely kind can maybe be distinguished by whether they offer him nice things in view of other people. Trying to win his trust for something nefarious is the hardest and most important one to distinguish, since they can just act exactly like they would if they were nice people right up until it's time to stop doing that.

It’s hard to say what to do about that. But he listens for signs of people gathering nearby.

He can hear a few more people coming into the clearing as the morning progresses; these ones don't send him any more thoughts, except that the third one gently lets him know a few minutes after arriving that they've left a bowl of persimmons just outside the tent in case he's hungry. They don't talk amongst themselves at all but he can hear one messing around in the river after a while.

He doesn’t want the persimmons but he does leave the tent and sit outside for a while.

This doesn't get any particular reaction at first, but a few minutes after he comes out one of them indicates that he's welcome to communicate with them - in the same way they're communicating with him, implicitly - if he needs anything or even just wants to chat.

He raises an eyebrow.