Different ways for different tribes. Doing math, sometimes, or answering questions, or telling stories, or helping them with things. Teaching them things, sometimes - when I managed to find a tribe that was just moving in, telling them where things were in the area was a good one. Basically anything that'd show them that I could think, and that was too complicated to be a trick.

You shouldn't have had to do that.

I didn't have to - my tribe would have loved it if I'd just stayed home and not kept risking myself like that. But it was important to me that it happen, so I did it.

I mean they should already have known that you were a person.

Oh. Hug.

That, yeah. I don't really blame them - they mostly didn't know a lot about kobolds, for some of them I was the first one they'd ever seen, and that's because we stay so carefully away from them, but it'd've been nice if they hadn't assumed.

And you couldn't just tell them?

I tried that, and they thought it was a trick... there's something I'm leaving out, here, 'cause it's really upsetting, but it's a reason they didn't want to believe we were people, because if we were it meant they'd done something horrible. I convinced most of them anyway, but making it easy for them to believe and hard for them to believe that it was a trick was an important part of that. So was being calm and friendly; if I'd gone and just demanded it, or been angry, that wouldn't have worked and would have been very dangerous for me.

I would probably have been very angry and demanded it.

She grins fondly at him. That almost never works, you know. I mean, maybe here - your customs around Kings and their children are pretty weird compared to what I'm used to, I think is what I'm seeing? - but if you're talking to people who don't care about that, they're not going to do what you say just because you're angry unless they're scared of you, and even then sometimes they won't.

It's not that it works it's that it's hard to do anything else.

That gets easier as you get older, for most people.

I want to be grown up.

Nod, hug. Well, maybe I'll eventually be able to talk your parent around to doing things kobold-style. That'll help a lot, if I can, I think; we age faster and we're adults at twelve but we start making most of our own decisions at seven or eight, which I don't think is all that far away for you.

I'm twelve.

Yeah, but kobolds age faster - it's not just about how much experience you have, things like how easy it is for you to stop and think before doing things or decide not to be angry are important too. If you were a kobold I'd guess you were about five, maybe a really mature four or an impulsive six. Which still means you'd have more choices about your life than you do, but you would have a parent keeping an eye on you to make sure your decisions were good ones for another couple years.

I could tolerate it if it were a few more years. But it's forty more of them.

Yeah. Hug. Fifty years is a long time. I'm not that old yet.

I wish I grew up fast like a kobold and was grown already.

I wonder what the Valar would say if I asked about that.

I bet they'd say no. They're very stubborn.

Nod. Your parent probably wouldn't like it, either, but I'm not sure I care very much about that. Do you want me to ask anyway, to see if they're willing?

Yes. Very much. But I think they'll say no.

Nod. Well, we'll see.

Do you want to go work on the fountain some more, or get started on those errands?

Fountain!

Giggle, all right. And she teleports the dishes to the sink to be cleaned and the two of them back to the garden.