All right.

I should keep working on the language, but aside from that I can start getting back to my usual schedule now, I think - Tirinquo's still going to want to spend time with me, probably a lot of it, but I think they'll be all right so long as someone's keeping an eye on them.

That is very good news. Congratulations on handling a difficult situation so well.

Thanks.

Let me know if you need anything.

Mmhmm. You too.

And over the next few days she does that.

They continue to make progress at building a camp Quendi can live in.

And on learning to read and/or speak Quenya; Tirinquo still isn't interested in talking, and mostly doesn't write, but Rána starts getting reports on how the camp is doing (I can't read them well enough yet, but it'll be good practice), and they read them too before they're passed along to the next person on the list.

When Tyelkormo gets back from his trip, she asks if he'd like to join her on her visit to her old meetup group's Speakers.

Lemme check if they need me for anything. How long would it be?

I'm not sure, but probably not more than a couple days. They'll be sneaking away, if they want to all come at once they won't be able to be gone more than a couple hours.

When're you leaving?

Pretty much whenever, I'm flexible.

He checks. If he clears up everything for the next week he can leave for a couple days.

Cool.

(She's going home, she's going home, she's going home...

Get it together, kobold, no you're not, not really...

Yeah, but, home.)

The chosen day comes quickly, and they teleport to the designated meeting place, where they're greeted by a yelp and a flash of fur as the kobold who was waiting there for them dives into the underbrush.

Uh, oops? Should I go?

No, you're fine. Sit, maybe, that'll help.

"Hey, it's me, it's okay."

I wasn't expecting them to be waiting for me, she explains while she waits for the other kobold to reappear.

He sits.

And after a couple minutes, the kobold slowly emerges from behind the bush.

"It's okay. They're a friend; they're from one of the Quendi tribes I've been working with. They can hear thoughts, if you think to them they'll hear you."

...hello. They're still hanging back by the bush, more shyly than nervously.

Hello.

They smile and step into the clearing to give Rána a hug. "Are they taking good care of you? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay. How have things been here?"

"...let me go get everybody and we can tell you."

Rána blinks. "Is everybody okay?"

"More or less? Nobody's in danger."

"All right." And the kobold steps away and taps the ring they're wearing and disappears.

They're getting the other Speakers, they'll be gone for a while. And something's up, they wanted to wait until everybody's here to tell me what though.

Yeah, caught that. He stretches out and looks at the sky.

The Speakers arrive a little over an hour later - she spends the intervening time building a simple fire pit and collecting fallen branches to burn -  and immediately drag Rána into a cuddle pile. A few of them, as they're getting settled, address Tyelkormo with various invitations to join them if he'd like.

Sure, okay.

Kobolds are very cuddlesome. One of the Speakers is some other kind of person - a little taller, furless, with greenish skin and smaller upright ears and a flatter Quendi-style face - and a little less cuddlesome (and a little more curious of him) but still pretty much that.

The first thing they want to do is reassure themselves that Rána is really okay, and hear what happened - they thought she was dead, they thought the tigerfolk had finally gotten her, they thought she'd decided to do something even crazier than that, what happened? Something about magic, she's a mage now? How did that happen? And where'd the Quendi come from?

She's very patient about letting them ask all their questions and then settles in to tell them the story, petting two of them while she talks.

He can mostly follow the conversation by mindreading.

When she gets to the part about being exiled, there's a chorus of dismayed sounds and cuddling. She mostly glosses over the six months after that; she explains the teleportation to Angband as 'exploring', but several of the kobolds guess that it was a suicide attempt, on the basis that being exiled is awful and they'd totally expect that to happen. (The rest also think that being exiled is awful, but doing something that risky - and particularly taking that type of risk - seems in character enough for her that they don't especially question it.) Maitimo she gives a brief overview of: badly traumatized, dead-and-reborn and struggling with it, sort of hard to get a handle on as a person, obviously, but if you just accept the surface stuff he's nice enough; also he's the chief of one of the Quendi tribes, Tyelkormo is his egg-sibling and another egg-sibling of theirs was running the tribe but now Maitimo's doing it again. The kobolds think this is very strange - the new chief gave the tribe back? The old chief wanted that? So soon after that kind of trauma? And everybody's just okay with that? - and she explains that it's their tradition to do it that way, she's not certain he wanted it back but he was definitely expecting it back and chose to claim it, and Quendi don't seem to do tribe-switching (this gets both her and Tyelkormo some worried looks) but everybody seems to be okay with it, yeah.