Your world's too different from mine to say but in mine some places plants grow all year.

Nod. That seems possible, at least. I've never been out of this forest, but I know the world's not the same everywhere. The bigger question is whether I can get there.

You got to Angband.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's unlikely, just that I don't know yet.

Okay. I shall be fine either way.

Mmhmm. Do you want me to work on that today, or would you rather have that other spell as soon as possible?

Sorry, which other spell?

The backup teleportation location, in case it somehow becomes dangerous here. It's going to take me a while to find a suitable spot, I expect, but the sooner I start the sooner you'll have it.

Perhaps the backup location can be somewhere far from here and warm, if such places exist.

Hm.

I'm not sure someplace far away wouldn't be just as dangerous as here in ways I didn't know about. Going there to gather food when I can teleport right back if something startles me is one thing, planning to go there if there's a problem here doesn't sit so well.

All right. I suppose if you don't expect danger to take the form of anyone specifically looking for you distance won't help avoid it.

Yeah, this world's kind of generally dangerous - inter-species relations aren't great anywhere, from what I've heard, and everyplace has dangerous animals and the occasional monster. Knowing how to deal with the dangers where you live is the important bit. If you want to visit someplace warm, I have no problem with giving you a spell for that, but it's really not going to help with safety - my plan for that is to trek over to the far side of the forest from the elves' village and find a cave there that's as inaccessible as this one - maybe I can find one with an entrance halfway up a cliff or something, there's some good cliffs over there. Should throw them off pretty well if they don't know we can teleport, and even if they do it'll slow them down enough to give us time to decide what we want to do based on the situation at hand. Not, again, that I expect it to come up at all, I'm just not in the habit of doing half-jobs with safety plans.

I appreciate that. 

She grins.

That's several days' walk just to get to where I want to start looking, though. And figuring out whether I can cast a spell that'll put me someplace warm might be a couple days' work too, depending on how complicated it turns out to be.

I think in a month I should be able to walk, if I work at it. That would require eating, though. Once I can walk properly I should be faster than you.

You'd still need me along to show you where to go and get you out of any elven traps you happen to walk into without having to teleport back here, but I like the idea of you being in better shape just on general principles.

If the forest is still full of elven traps it doesn't sound like the elves have stopped being a danger.

Yeah, they're still dangerous, they're just not actively going after anybody, there's a pretty huge difference. And their traps aren't dangerous to kobolds; they use magical ones almost exclusively, and properly trained kobold mages have an anti-magic spell form that they cast on everybody that lets us ignore them.

What do they look like? Social organization? Do you speak their language?

She sends a memory of watching a group of five of them from a bush - they're similar to Men, but their faces are proportioned differently, especially the ears. In the memory, four of them are riding giant raccoons and the leader is riding a tiger, and all of them are carrying spears and shortbows.

I don't know much about them beyond what I need to know to stay safe, we lost a lot of lore during the war - they got more than half our Speakers, and all the ones who spoke their language.

I am very sorry.

It really isn't worth the risk of provoking them.

I promise that until I have the resources to do things that obviously improve things in this scenario I won't do anything at all. I hold innocent lives very dear. 

Thank you.

If you're the kind of person who needs problems to solve, the tigerfolk are a much safer one all around.

What's the problem with them?