They've left him alone in his cell.
He can't really be said to be lucid but he has very acute instincts for when there's someone and when he's alone - it's the last of his senses to depart him - and he's alone.
And then suddenly he isn't.
They've left him alone in his cell.
He can't really be said to be lucid but he has very acute instincts for when there's someone and when he's alone - it's the last of his senses to depart him - and he's alone.
And then suddenly he isn't.
Probably? She's never heard of people choosing to have kids before, it seems like that's probably an Eldar thing with all the other body-related stuff that she'd also never heard of before.
But her people do choose to have kids! Choose to lay eggs, maybe not, but there won't be a baby unless someone decides they want to raise one!
Well yes that, but kobolds still don't get to chose whether they're pregnant or not, they just have a bit more choice about what happens afterward. And eggs going unhatched is rare, they are more like humans in actual practice, it is possible to run a society that way.
The plants aren't actually used for that, most of the time, letting someone who wants an egg have one is generally considered the better option. Look, this is weird and different and scary, that happens when you're dealing with a different species, panicking almost never helps. Calm down, tell the humans what we've come up with, see what they think about it all.
They calm down but they do not want to suggest to humans that it's normal to have unwanted people growing inside of them, it is wrong and an injustice and it's okay to feel upset, they are working hard on a solution.
...
It is normal for humans, though. Having surprise people growing inside of them, not so much, and maybe this batch who didn't know the risk they were taking should be handled differently because of that - she should come by and see if there's anything she can do with her magic, surgical uses of it are hard but it won't be the first time she's been useful, maybe there's a point where the fetuses are big enough to teleport out and not big enough to have thoughts - but you do not lie to people about what they are, she's firm on this.
'normal' here does not mean 'typical of the populations', it means 'a thing that ought to be considered okay', if all humans were born in horrible pain that would not be normal, it would be common, a wrong common state of the world, it is not right for people to bear children they don't want and it is evil and it is a common evil but it is still horrible and wrong.
Turns out humans have accidental pregnancy, the Eldar who're with them are fucking up pretty badly about it, I don't know the language, come help me talk to them?
So do kobolds; I think so do most species in my world. It doesn't have to be a big deal and they're making it one, which might be okay if we can come up with a really good solution, but if we can't the humans are going to have to live with that.
I mean, that's objectively horrible. I guess we could play it off as no big deal but that's kind of dishonest.
It gets more horrible if you think it is, though. It's the same kind of thing as how I can accidentally get sick, or how I'm easier to poison and don't heal as well - those're just true, for me, I don't think my life is horrible because of them, it's just life. If I thought they shouldn't happen I would be a lot more miserable than just what happens when they do - and they'd probably happen more often, 'cause I'd have a harder time taking care of myself in the right ways for them.
I guess, but accidentally bringing a person into the world seems inherently way scarier than any of those things. And there's got to be some way to avoid it -
Sigh. That happens with kobolds all the time, if you count eggs. It's really not a big deal if your society is set up for it. And we are looking for ways to let them avoid it, too, but in the meantime I don't want them panicking that we haven't got one yet or thinking there's something wrong with them just because their species traits are inconvenient.
Not panicking's good, but they ought to feel like they deserve to not worry they'll suddenly be incubating a child.
If we can give them things to let them choose, of course we should do that - kobolds have those, we just don't use them for that very often, because we have better ways to deal with the situation. But until we do, and if we can't, and if they decide they'd rather not use whatever we come up with - this is how their species works, and it's important that they at least have the option to feel okay about that. Like - it's okay if they're upset, but it needs to be okay if they're not upset, too, and I don't think they're being given that option, not really.
They won't be unwanted if the humans' society is set up to handle this well. Which gets harder if they're thinking about it as something awful.
I think you're too optimistic about being able to set up a society to handle this - maybe with a ton of magic - kids need a lot of individual attention and - how long does it take a human kid to reach adulthood -
There haven't been any human kids, but it's twelve years for kobolds. And I know it's possible because kobolds do it. We have an advantage that we have eggs and that makes adoption really easy - it's practically the default, for us - but I don't think it'd be that much harder without.