...That. Is probably not a thing an Elf should just be able to do. She thinks. It's not as bad as the Helcaraxe, though...

He sees the humans and approaches them. He points at things and encourages them to teach him their language.

...Idaia and Imliss will engage in language-teaching solely as prompted, with no sign they've ever done this before, but mimic him, suggesting he return the favor.

He misses the hint. What are their names?

Fuck.

They're dead if he's a servant of the Enemy and they tell the truth. They're also dead if they lie and someone calls them on it. Well. One of those options contains an uncertainty. "I'm Juni. She's Lan. You?"

"Sindel."

Okay, back to naming stuff at him.

And once he has enough vocabulary "you should build houses. it is not safe here in the open."

"How do we do that?"

"I can show you. You can move stone along the ground -" and he shows them how they can do that by rolling logs under it.

Okay that's actually really useful. Maybe he's not a servant of the Enemy.

If he is, he is one who wants to help them build buildings. He leaves, after teaching this, to talk to the other clusters of humans.

Stone buildings: more defensible and less containing-unfriendly-neighbors than the available forest. Yay.

Well, they will take a while to even partially resemble buildings. But it's a start.

It's better than they had before! ...And possibly horribly booby-trapped in some way if the guy is a servant of the Enemy, but it's hard to figure out how...

Well, there's the fact that some of the other human groups he's passed through have started singing hymns to Melkor.

What a good thing Idaia lied about their names and no one called them on it, look how not dead they are.

Okay.

What the fuck leverage does she have to get people not to trust this guy--almost none. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

At night the next night there are wolves. Very real, wolfy wolves. People run away. The wolves only chase them for a little.

Auuugh why did the forest Elves have to be right.

The night after that the wolves drag some people away with them.

Maybe they should leave.

Everyone is pretty in favor of that. South it is.

Sindel comes back around. If you sing hymns to Melkor, he explains, Melkor will protect you and the wolves won't hurt you.

And who is Melkor supposed to be?

Melkor is one of the gods. The only one paying attention to this land.

Sadly that isn't even a lie.

...So are most of the people satisfied with that or do they still want to go south?