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Who: Meyer & Daneel
Where: Near the edge of the woods
When: Day 101, also known as happy fun blackout times
What: They're both gathering firewood (gotta keep productive during unexpected blackouts, after all!) and run into each other.

Meyer had been wary of the woods ever since the incident with the tiger. It strikes him as something isolated, something statistically unlikely to occur again, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't give the denser clumps of trees wide berth, aware that some kind of large animal could be lurking within them. There's good reason to be on the edge of the woods this afternoon, though, and that's because of the blackout; more firewood will be needed soon enough, and gathering it makes him feel as though he's doing something productive.

He's alone, for the moment -- he'd convinced the freshly returned Charlie to stay back, to get some rest, still not entirely convinced that Charlie is as physically healthy as he seems, still not sure what those days of disappearance had done to him. Pausing for a moment in his meticulous gathering of any sticks that look usable for the large fire, he takes a second to light a cigarette (an indulgence which he wouldn't normally allow himself, not when supplies are low, but which seems appropriate at the moment) and takes a long drag on it, surveying the woods with an intent eye, ready to go for his gun in case anything suddenly leaps out at him.

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Daneel thinks about this, runs over the emotional reactions in his mind, thinks about what he's witnessed in the past.

"This sounds correct. I believe this matches with my past observations. You have an advantage over me in this: you understand better than I do the why of an emotional reaction. I hope to learn this in time, but it is still a relatively new thing for me, and there are seemingly an endless number of emotional combinations."

"It's all observational. You watch people enough, you pick up certain things. Especially around here, where emotions tend to run high."

That is, perhaps, telling about his own personality; he's rather strongly implying that he understands emotional reactions from witnessing them in other people and putting the pieces together in his head, not from having his own emotional reactions. Maybe that's true. Maybe it's just another bluff, another layer of his well-practiced poker face -- after all, it's obvious that he does have emotions.

"Then I need to observe more. I am relatively new to the ability to be aware of other minds, and for much of my twenty decades of existence I have had limited opportunity to observe more than a handful of people. In this respect, being here has been very instructive."

It's... one good thing, though surely not something he wouldn't have been able to learn elsewhere, eventually.

"Being here has been instructive to all of us, I think."

In different ways, of course. To him, it's introduced the idea that people can be capable of having powers and abilities he thought unimaginable, impossible. For someone like Daneel, perhaps the instruction comes in the form of being able to observe people up close and personal, and learn about their motivations. Their lessons may not be comfortable, exactly, but they can be seen as a benefit.

He looks down at his stack of firewood guiltily. He really should have collected more, but he'd been caught up in the conversation, and completely neglected it. "I didn't mean to keep you so long," he says apologetically.

"There is no need to apologise," Daneel says by way of reassurance. "I've found our conversation to be both educational and enlightening."

He offers one of his small, too-serious smiles as he bends to pick up his load of firewood again.

"If there is ever anything I can do for you, please don't hesitate to ask."

"So have I."

And educational and enlightening remains his favorite kind of conversation -- it's that unceasing desire to learn everything he possibly can that drives him, and he's pleased that he's learned so much just from speaking with Daneel for a brief time.

He picks up his own firewood, and gives Daneel a nod. "Thank you. I'll keep that in mind."