The woman seemed exasperated as she turned to look at him, almost with a hesitation, as if she were hoping that he would simply go away. He picked up on that a little, but still a little less than he should have.
He opened his mouth to respond, but shut it again slowly. He was going to say what he had felt, that it did not feel goodness as he normally did back at home but that he had definitely felt a wrongness. But he had moved since then, having gotten closer to the mound of discarded material things. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at the things more, trying to draw some conclusion on the waste. He didn't have one. He then searched his mind and body for the most innate, delicate senses, and at long last, arrived at the conclusion that his sense of wrongness was less.
A few breaths had passed of silence now, and he walked calmly to the outermost circle and sat cross-legged, and was still. He heard the air in the trees, felt the sun weakly as it was winter, and detected the slightest smell of moisture - perhaps it might snow, later.
"My instincts are less wrong here, but they are still not right.", and he reached his hand forwards to hover close to the pile, as if warming his hands on a fire, and touching nothing. He withdrew his hand and they both rested in his lap.
"So what is it?", and he knew on an instinctual level that it was supposed to be something regarding divinity, but what it was felt all clogged up with people, hopes, dreams, footprints, all the traffic congesting whatever it was. He waited to be told which god it was and what they did and what offerings they preffered and when they visited this place and when to beseech them and when one should and shouldn't visit themselves.
The thought that he hadn't answered her question directly never occurred to him. He had thought of her question, pondered it, and even said words, and that was enough.
