No problem. And she settles in a chair and starts fiddling with a spell she's been working on to make a rock light up prettily when sung to.

And he arranges for them to be able to spare enough healers.

After half an hour, she switches over to something more productive; she stays until late in the afternoon.

The next week is a flurry of activity. The kobold identifies pregnant women while the healers identify the best candidates for trying various remedies and the ones who need the most careful observation. The kobold works out an approach to providing magical abortions; with no way to know if it's safe, she's not willing to try it on anyone who's not already in considerable danger. She takes Findekáno out to talk to the nearby Speaker again, and then invites Tyelkormo to give her a lift to the healer-Speaker. And in between everything, she keeps an eye on Maitimo.

Who is functional. 

Well, that's all she can ask, really.

She gathers plants. Most of them don't have seeds yet, but they start planting the ones that do. They start experimenting, carefully. Some work; some don't; some have unacceptable side effects. One or two turn out to harm the babies; this leads to her explaining that with fragile species sometimes people are born with impairments even when everything is done right. It's not a fun day.

The agreed-upon day to meet the Speaker comes. She settles the healers in a portal tent a few miles away, brings one of the least intimidating of her friends to serve as a relay and example of her species, and waits.

Remember, she tells her, don't make eye contact; pretend they aren't there until they're clearly acknowledging you.

Okay.

A little while later, another kobold emerges tentatively from the underbrush, this one a little taller with chestnut-brown fur just starting to go grey around the muzzle and ears. They stay there for a moment, looking wide-eyed from their friend to the Elda, and then they speak: "C'mere, you."

She goes, they hug. After a moment the new kobold breaks it off to check that the Elda hasn't moved.

"Elda friend, safe."

"Okay." They check again.

"...Elda talk, okay? Think talk."

"...Okay."

Say something to them, they're nervous of you.

Okay. A star shines on the hour of our meeting, kobold.

They look up, confused, at the morning sky.

Greetings, I mean.

Okay. The other kobold gently leads them to sit on the ground and leans comfortingly on them; this helps, somewhat.

Your friend has been very nice to us, we really appreciate them.

...

We're trying to take good care of them, they said you might be worried about that.

Yeah. Thank you. They wrap an arm protectively around her.

You're welcome.

You wanted to know about how to take care of pregnant people?

Mmhmm. They said we should have questions for you?

Yeah, what do you want to know?

And there are questions, most of which have answers. When they run out of them, the kobold sends her Elda friend home, spends the rest of the afternoon cuddling and catching up with her Speaker friend, and then looks for Findekáno to perhaps talk to over dinner.

How'd it go?

Well, mostly. She snuggles up; she's more relaxed than he's seen her in a long time, possibly ever. They had some interesting news about my old tribe that I'm not sure how I feel about.

Oh?

Nod. They suspect it's dissolving - part over me having been exiled, part over badly the chief handled themselves for the rest of the summer last year. Apparently a lot of people switched to different tribes at the end of the season, and they're kind of expecting even more to switch this year - enough that they won't be able to keep it going.

I'd be upset to hear that about my people.

Nod. I expect they're all okay, that helps a lot. Not sure how my old chief is going to handle it, though, if the tribe does dissolve.

Will there be a tribe for them to join?

She blinks. Of course.

But they'll be sad not to be the chief anymore?

Yeah, but not for its own sake. They actually kind of hate being chief, they just hate change and having things forced on them even more than that.

How did you end up with a chief who hates it?

Well, they and I were the only of the previous chief's egg-children to survive the war with the elves, she snuggles a little closer, and then I went and disqualified myself by learning to talk, and nobody else had been trained for it. And they did a good enough job that people stuck around - I helped, that seems to have been more important than I realized. I thought a couple other people would step up to handle it when I was gone, and it sounds like they tried but it wasn't enough.

Ah. We too have the rule that only the previous chief's children can be chief.

Sigh.

It's not a rule, exactly, for us, but it is a tradition and my tribe tends to care about those. I think if the old chief hadn't been so close to retiring when I learned to talk they would've started training someone else, but there wasn't really time, it's not something you can just pick up in a couple years.

No, it really isn't.

Nod. So this is what we ended up with. Everybody'll be okay, the other tribes will take them all in no problem, but it's weird to think that my tribe probably won't exist any more in another few months. Or that I might've been that important to it - that's not supposed to happen.

People aren't supposed to be important to their tribes functioning?

People aren't supposed to be so important that they can't leave without the tribe falling apart. It's - sort of, peoples' individual safety and the tribe's safety, both at the same time? Being able to switch tribes is important; you can't treat people too badly, knowing that they'll just leave the following summer if you do, and at the same time there's, sort of, less pressure to let people get away with things if they can just switch tribes and find one that'll be okay with them doing what they want - that one's more complicated, though, if a tribe is driving people off like that they'll start having a really hard time getting people with good skills and talents to switch to them, and they might even have extra people move out because of it.

Ah, I see. That does make sense.

She nods.

I guess it didn't really matter, but it's still a little alarming in retrospect.