It's a fruitless gesture to squeeze stone hands, but he does, regardless, because it's a means of reassurance familiar to him. He's reminded as soon as he does that he is not, thankfully, obscenely strong, and that stone doesn't give to hands of flesh without reason or enough force applied.

"More of those like you across the broken bridge, to the East?" He glances that direction, along the pockmarked bridge, and nods once, thoughtfully. "Then we'll do what we can to get to them, and to make contact with... their names. Enshala, to the South. Shrinlo, to the West. Is there another to the North?"

This is a course of action to be explored and taken, when otherwise he would have had what? They have all the better intentions in the world, but before people who cannot know that, and the damages they will not be aware they're generating before hitting some breaking point.