"There's not, it's one of the more frustrating things about early practice. I'm gonna go ask Rynaeri if she wants to borrow you tomorrow."

"Okay."  Should he - no, she would have told him if she wanted him to come along.  He'll just keep on practicing until she gets back.

Off she goes.

Three and knot and stretch and wine-glass squoosh and wiggle wrap and pinch and nubbins and twist-join and preeeeess, and push and nest and braid (he used to braid his mom's hair sometimes, so he knows how those work) - oh no now he's thinking about his mom.  He really wishes there was a way to tell her that he's okay (which he would want to do regardless of whether he was, but he kind of mostly seems to be, so far...)

Belmarniss comes back before the light expires. "Rynaeri isn't working tomorrow but she'll take you the day after that."

Nod nod nod.  "Just - lifting things and stuff?"

"Yeah. Pick things up, put them on her disk, follow her through the mine, take the things off the disk again. Don't hurt yourself, healing's not cheap."

"Okay.  And, um...."

"Mm?"

"She knows that... I'm yours?  - If I'm anyone's!  And isn't, um, going to, try, and..."

"- my mom knows that. Uh, unfortunately we are not a super important family? We have enough magic to be comfortable but if someone does decide to - borrow something of mine without asking - there's not a lot I can obviously do about that."

He nods.

"I don't think this is a huge rampant problem you need to be super anxious about. Everybody has slaves - or, well, no, obviously not everybody. Drow have slaves. You'd be looking at the very specific situation of someone who can't afford to feed a human sized one - since otherwise they'd have their own - yet is cocky enough to piss me off, picky enough to want exactly your type, brash to do it right in front of Rynaeri, etcetera."

Nod nod nod.  He should say words about this.  "Okay."  Or one word.  One word is probably fine.

"I wish I could do better than that."

"It's okay," he standard-social-noises.

"The good news is if you can get to first circle it'll probably be relatively safe for you to venture upstairs. I think."

"That would be nice."

"Yeah, you'll be able to sell spells like Rynaeri does, like I sometimes do, make a living up there. If you pick up Drow well enough after a few weeks of Share Language I can give you what I know of Taldane with the same spell, but I don't have abundant opportunities to practice it with native speakers so I don't know if it's that good. Should get you started."

"Oh, you mean - to stay.  How long will it take to get the first circle stuff, about?"

"I'll have a better guess when you hang your first cantrip. But it's more likely to be five years than one."

"Oh, alright.  But we still might be able to visit before then?  How long a hike is it, exactly?"

"- no, I don't think short term visits are on the table, we are talking here about an unescorted weeklong trip through passages I've never been to. I will do this for you to release you into the surface where you won't necessarily be instantly caught and enslaved, I will not do it for a day trip."

"...Oh.  Okay."

"The monster that tried to eat your face was barely twenty minutes out from the farm belt, there's bigger nastier shit the farther away from a city you get."