Elya would love to lie here all day but she does in fact need to eat to stay alive. She makes her way back towards the path and decides to see where it leads.

It winds through the grass for a couple of minutes, past a scattered stand of trees, around a low hill, and finally deposits her at the end of a long lane leading up through assorted small crop fields to a charming little farmhouse. There are fences at the edge of the property but no gate barring the path.

Well, here's hoping that it's only the people out and about who like to randomly sexually assault strangers and farmers with charming houses are hospitable and friendly. She heads up to the front door and knocks.

"Just a minute!" calls a voice from inside. It sounds like a woman, probably somewhat older than Elya, friendly and cheerful.

Promising! Elya waits patiently and takes this time to regret not attempting to fashion some sort of grass skirt for herself.

The woman who answers the door has the head of a wolf.

Not exactly—her skull is mostly human-shaped, with a wolf's grey-furred muzzle and triangular ears but a very humanlike mop of curly black hair.

She's wearing dusty denim overalls and sturdy leather boots, and her furry black eyebrows lift in mild surprise when she sees Elya. "Another one!" she says. "—I'm sorry, where are my manners?" She smiles, an odd expression on her canine face. "My name's Lily. I was just about to start the morning's harvest; I'll trade you some clothes for your help bringing in the apples, if you like."

Elya is at least as surprised to see Lily as Lily is to see her, but once she gets over her lupine appearance, she's more than happy to accept the offer.

"That sounds great to me. Thank you!"

"Over here!"

She leads Elya around to an orchard. Many of the trees are unrecognizable, but the two rows of apple trees seem to bear a perfectly ordinary mix of green, red, and yellow-red apples, each shiny and delicious-looking. Lily grabs a basket and hands one to Elya and demonstrates appropriate apple-picking technique.

Elya picks apples! If it's okay with Lily, she also eats apples.

She can have a few while she works. They're tasty and have no bizarre side effects!

As the sun climbs the sky toward noon, Lily calls a break, invites Elya in for lunch, and gives her some clothes to go put on while Lily makes lemonade and serves stew. The stew and the lemonade are both delicious. The clothes are nothing special—shirt, pants, underwear—but definitely a lot better than nothing.

No bizarre side effects is Elya's favorite kind of apple!

She is so incredibly grateful for the lemonade and stew and clothing and thanks Lily profusely.

"Happy to help," she says. "You're not even the first human in need of clothes to come to my door this month. Though the other one bought my spare backpack, so you'll have to chase him down if you want to bargain for it."

"Are naked humans coming by a particularly common problem in this area?"

"Not usually! I'm not sure I've even seen a human this year besides you and Torok. It's not a popular look."

"Huh. I've played with my look a little, but I've never been anything other than human."

"Whatever works for you, I guess!" she says, swishing her long furry tail.

"Well, where I'm from pretty much everyone is human. I fell through some sort of portal or something yesterday and I have no idea where I am or how to get back and not long after I got here I was attacked by these little red men and, and..."

She looks increasingly upset as she babbles on - by the time she trails off, she's on the verge of tears.

Lily looks sympathetic. "Yeah. Welcome to Mareth. The red guys are imps; I can tell they haven't corrupted you too badly yet, but watch out, they've got a factory at the south end of the lake and you don't wanna get caught there. The rest of the lakeshore is pretty safe, though, maybe the safest place west of Tel'Adre. And if you do meet a few too many imps, I hear the bee-folk in the forest have ways of dealing with corruption, though you might not like the price."

"I'll... keep an eye out and steer clear of any lake factories I see. Thanks for the advice."

"Anytime," she says. "D'you have somewhere to stay? You can kip in my barn for a few days if you keep helping with the harvest, but I don't take guests any longer than that."

"I don't have anywhere to stay, yet. I had been planning on building a camp somewhere out of the way. I'm happy to help with the harvest, but... you mentioned a place called Tel'Adre?"

"It's the closest city but that's not saying much, there aren't many cities left. It's a ways out in the desert, past the other side of the wasteland."

"Is there a safe way to get there from here?"

"Depends what you mean by safe. If you bring lots of water and don't get lost and don't run into any witches you'll be fine, probably. It's not the worst place you could go."

"Sounds like probably not the way for me, then." She sighs. "How'd you come to have a nice place like this of your own?"