After conferring with Rom and the lexicon some more, noticing some additional words that they've been equipped with, using more drawings and some childish metaphors (like referring to the brain as 'inside head meat') to acquire the proper word for things, this is Thea's attempt to answer the question regarding them being sure about not living in one of the skyscrapers. "This is not a real question, but could we be in a skyscraper that no one else is in, there is only us? I don't think we can do this. Children with us get sick, or get always sleeping, or die when too many people are nearby feeling or thinking at them. People with the same problem are mostly okay, but even Rom and me are careful about thinking and feeling close to the children. Other people who don't know and live in the same skyscraper think about the children living in the skyscraper, the children get sick. Other people who don't know and live in the same floor, the floor above, the floor below feel big feelings, the children get sick. A skyscraper with other people is not easy to make work."

Getting more cars to bring tents would probably be good, as well as food. But for the same reason that living in a skyscraper is not really feasible, Rom and Thea, as well as the other adults in their group, Marie-Louise, Roland, and maybe Hildre if he's recovered by the time they get back, need to be the only ones who actually bring the tents and food and things to the place where their people are staying. The children might be able to handle one or two strangers, but it will still make them sick, just hopefully not more than they'll be able to recover from with time and shelter and food, and more people than that at once will likely cause permanent damage to at least a few of the kids.

Charon is incredibly confused. But he thinks to himself for a few moments. "We can't really empty a skyscraper to fit in just 84 people, no. We could have... farmsteads, with 84 people. But that'd need time. We can get you shelter, and take you to farmsteads to live on. There, you won't have many people around. That's probably the best thing. And we want a doctor for the children, to be there if anyone ends up needing help."

Thea and Rom both nod as Thea replies, "Farmsteads eventually, tents now. A doctor is okay, for not getting sick from normal things, but the doctor needs training to not hurt the children with thinking or feeling. We have two people who can help with that."

Presumably they are still getting tents and food and things, possibly while Charon calls for more cars?

"We'd want to get a doctor to start training rather soon, I'd think." Charon is helping them pick out and get some tents; he also calls the mayor, who helps with the logistics of getting more cars to move things around. "Food will also be coming with the cars, yes." Eventually, he's filled up the car he used to get to the city with tents. "Let's get these over. And start heading somewhere better to set them up."

Rom and Thea both nods to it being a good idea to get a doctor trained as soon as possible, but they're less certain about finding a new place to set up the tents. "Moving the children seems hard. I think strangers would think or feel about many children coming out of the forest. It is not normal to see."

"We want to be moving them into the forest. Not where people are looking. I know a good place." He starts making his way to the tent-packed car. "We start now?" he suggests.

"We should talk to Malou first, at least, right?" Rom asks Thea (not in Charon's language), which she nods to.

Turning to Charon, she relays, "We talk with our people first, so they know what is happening. But yes, after that."

And thus into the car, and presumably back to the park.

Charon drives them back, stopping near the edge of the forest. "So, talk to Malou, and get back here. And I can start taking you somewhere that's a good place to stay?"

They both nod to that. "I don't know when we'll be back here. Things maybe happened after Rom and I left. We will bring the others here maybe soon."

Then the two of them start hurriedly hiking back, following the signs they left earlier today (assuming they're still there).

Fortunately, the path back hasn't been lost, and when Rom and Thea can see the clearing again, things seem to have improved from before. Hildre is awake, though he's still resting against a tree, while Roland most of the children enthralled in some kind of meditation or mental exercise, and Malou is constructing a shelter from branches and leaves, with Daniel, Evan, Sigge, Tim, and Varts wordlessly following her example, with several basic shelters having been completed. The youngest, Daniel, looks in Rom and Thea's direction as their attention passes over him, prompting the others to follow suit, eventually prompting Malou to check what they're all looking at.

Rom and Thea keep their focus on Malou as they continue their approach, before explaining everything that's happened so far. There's a considerable back and forth as Malou comes to grips with the nature of their situation, the advanced technology, the generosity of the people Rom and Thea encountered (and what it implies about their broader society, that an entirely random encounter has had this positive an outcome), the short- and long-term movements of the group, the need prepare the children for outside contact with a doctor at least and possibly with any other locals that may be involved in helping them set up in the new location, and more besides.

While Malou thinks and discuss things with Rom, Thea heads over Hildre, who smiles wanly as she approaches. "It sounds like you and Rom have met with considerable success," he says.

"We have! And you seem to be making a quick recovery. Roland mentioned that making contact with...that, might have put you out of commission for a day or more, but it seems like that was an overestimate?"

Hildre gently waves a hand. "It was a good guess, what I would've said if you asked me how long I might be out beforehand. But it was surprisingly gentle, like it knew what it was doing, knew how to take as much of the burden as it could. Easier than making contact with most people, honestly, even if it was also much more...just more, I suppose. You saw what it was like physically, big-but-small, bright-but-dark. It was like that mentally, too. I'm not certain whether I'll never forget it or never truly remember it." He shrugs with a chuckle. "Maybe both?"

Thea shares Hildre's chuckle, and they chat for a while longer, before Malou beckons her back over and begins to explain the plan to her and Rom, but projecting enough that the children can also all hear. "I'll be heading out with Hildre and you two to meet with the locals, while Roland and the children will keep quiet and stay back, out of sight. We'll signal Roland if he needs to take the children back deeper into the woods, but if everything goes alright, we'll coordinate with the locals to get us all moved to a better place to camp, distribute the food they're bringing, and start talking about getting us all settled somewhere else on a more permanent basis."

No one said anything in response, but Rom and Thea both nodded, and there was a particular character to the silence, perhaps in particular the absence of sounds of distress or confusion, that indicated all the children understood. Thus, the group began to move, following Rom and Thea's track one more time, Roland and the children halting at a point that, to the unafflicted's senses, was not really distinct, but which to the afflicted, was just beyond the edge of the hazy stinging sensation of broad visibility to people waiting for them beyond the trees.

The party of four continues forwards, with Thea and Rom at the front while Malou and Hildre follow behind, reviewing the lexicon their younger colleagues built up during their first expedition. To Charon, if he's there, he'll see the familiar faces of Rom and Thea, as well as a middle-aged woman, hard-faced with streaks of silver in her hair, and a surprisingly spry elderly man with wispy white hair walking behind them.

Charon, waiting next to his car, waves at the 4 people approaching him. "Food now, what food?", he tells them when they get close enough that he won't need to shout.

Rom and Thea quickly consult with Malou, since she's the one who generally did the cooking back at the orphanage. It wasn't feasible to keep individual records what each orphan's diet was, given the affliction, but Malou still knows what foods tended to get eaten first and what things tend to have the most left-overs.

With Thea and Rom's help, Malou communicates that, overall, the children's tastes are maybe a bit more conservative than you might expect from kids and teens whose eating isn't subject to strict control. Bread is popular, naturally, but sweets or fruit (other than nuts, which seem to be the most common between-meal snack) aren't, and vegetables are quite popular, alongside fish for protein (at least when Malou can get it fresh from the fishery). There don't seem to be any children with lactose intolerance, nor any allergies, at least to any of the foods that Malou has made. She can sort through the food that's been brought and pick things that she can't affirmatively declare are safe.

Eventually, several vans, all carrying huge portions of together with plastic cutlery, arrive on the outskirts, close enough to make it relatively easy to carry them the rest of the way. It's all vegetarian; there are chickpeas, lentils, soups, and beans, all of it hearty, filling and vegetarian. Someone also hands over a map of the nearby forest, with the city clearly to the south, with one building maybe 3 or 4 miles in clearly marked on the map.

Malou is a little dubious about all of the protein being plant-based, but if it's what they have then it's what they have.

Thea will consider the map for a little while, consulting with the others on how much information to share, before deciding to labeling the clearing where they all first appeared, a little over a mile and a half into the wood (though the path that Rom and Thea took and have been following since is a bit longer, on account of being a slightly diagonal). Everybody had moved out by now, and if somebody did try and track the children down they'd have to follow their tracks through the woods, which would hopefully take long enough that it won't be a problem.

Eventually, heading towards the area marked on the map, they find a small building in the middle of a small clearing in the woods. It's just a public bathroom, and the clearing is wide enough to let a few of the kids set up tent within it, although the majority will have to find space between the trees.

Distributing out the food takes a little while, carrying 84 people's worth of food on four backs is just always going to take time, even if two of those people weren't past their prime. They'll manage, though, and actively request that the locals don't help carry the food any further than the edge of the forest, to minimize the risk of exposing one of the children to them.

After that comes the move to the new location, which will probably end up continuing a while into the night. There might be room for tents around the bathroom, but none of the tents are getting set up there since it's too exposed to potential people coming and going from the bathroom. Instead, all the tents will be set up among the trees, and additionally camouflaged with vines, fallen branches, leaf-litter, and similar material. To the average observer, it would probably be clear that something has been done in the surrounding forest, but hopefully not clear what, or that it's currently being inhabited by a few dozen children and their caretakers. While the tents were being put up and covered, some of the teens were also filling up water-bottles and containers that came with the food with water from the bathroom taps and sharing it around the group.

Once that's all well under way, Malou, Hildre, and Thea will make the trek to meet back up with the locals and start getting into the weeds of preparing a doctor for working with the children and the matter of long-term movement to proper housing.

They can speak to Charon, who has sent for help from some logistics help with the moving. They suggest moving them towards a sparsely populated farmstead on an island a good distance away from the city; they're not sure how to avoid the children being exposed to people, but they could be sedated on the way over if that's necessary to let the captain and crew take the ship with them on it. They don't have many ideas for getting the children a doctor; their main idea is again to have the children sedated and then taken to the doctor, with the more resilient adults informing the doctor about the condition of the children, but they think it'd be tough to find a way for the doctor to head to the children without also hurting them through thinking.

They aren't sure that being sedated actually prevents the damage caused by the Affliction? With Rom and Thea's help, Hildre communicates that the feeling of other people's minds are like fires, and that if your hand falls into a fire while you're unconscious, your hand will still burn even if you don't feel it.

Moving to a farmstead on an island does seem like basically the ideal, though. Hildre (again with help) will say that there is something that he and Roland can do to take on the burden of attention, for a while at least. This might be useful during any intensive medical inspection, and maybe during the the move as well if some additional mitigation can be used. For the latter case, Malou (likewise translated) suggests that the children might be housed in containers with sound-proofing, which the ship's crew and captain are told contain living things but not given further information, and Hildre says he'd want to test something like that first before he can be confident that he and Roland could handle it for the long-haul but that it sounds promising to him.

Hildre continues that, for the long-term, he would like to do some training with an individual doctor who is willing to become a part of this new community. In a one-on-one setting, he will be able to guide the doctor through the particular mental gymnastics to achieve the mindfulness and careful thinking-and-feeling that allow Malou, Rom, and Thea to be tolerable presences for the children. It likely won't be instant, but he's had some success with this process in the village they fled here from and believes it shouldn't take more than maybe a couple weeks to see sufficient gentleness of mind to allow for regular contact between the doctor and children without himself or Roland there to mitigate the harm directly.

Charon is struggling to wrap his head around how things work, but nods to himself. "So, if the captain has no idea of the existence of the boat's other passengers, the children are safe from the attention? And if you need a doctor, we're happy to send you one of ours. Meditation is a common practice; perhaps the doctor's presence would already be tolerable, thanks to how well he can manage to still his mind."

"Yes, the crew and captain may still direct some attention towards the children, but the fact that it will be general and not specific makes it...softer?" Thea explains, quickly glancing over to Hildre in case he objects to the metaphor, which he doesn't. "Like having a heavy and rough metal weight on top of your head, or the same heavy metal weight on top of your head but with a pillow between it and you."

"Meditation wasn't common back in Tunn, so I can't for certain, but experience with stilling his mind does seem likely to help," Hildre admits.

"Are you ready to experiment with it? I'm ready to call over a doctor and see whether that works, if you're ready."

"Yes, I'm ready," Hildre nods.

"So, yes." Charon calls someone on his phone; eventually, they find a doctor who's happy to treat the children and relatively good at meditaion. He arrives on the outskirts of the forest some 40 minutes later. "I was sent here to help care for some children, who can't really have me pay them any mind? I'll try my best, but I think I'll need time to get used to things working like this."

"It is strange, yes. I am an expert on this issue, and would like to help you get used to it, and to help the children handle the attention until you do. Would it be alright if I asked you to meditate here, and maybe to pantomime some basic diagnostic practices on me while you meditate, to see what sort of baseline we're building on?"

"Well, sure? I'll meditate here a bit, and show you what a medical examination might look like. Probably starting with the examination." He plays at using a stethoscope, using his thermometer, taking a cotton swab, asking about any symptoms of rashes, and going through the motions of trying to diagnose common problems and doing a preventive checkup.