Uh.

Uh.

"Okay?"

I found out what the kobolds need. They want to know a list of all the things that might set elves off, so they can be very careful.

It hasn't clicked yet that she could use osanwë rather than talking; surprises are hard and she's still processing this one. She has the list she wrote, though, she was expecting this - she manages to get herself together enough to fish it out of her belt pouch and hand it to him.

I don't know your alphabet, can you read it to me? Or just read through it, and I can hear your thoughts...

Reading, yeah, she can do that. Wow, she is definitely going out for a ride after this, just let Ila pick the route and enjoy it, that'll be nice... reading, right, reading.

The list isn't terribly long. It starts with 'ideally they'll just leave the village alone altogether, because there's always the risk of hitting someone in just the wrong mood, but that won't cause a huge problem, unless...' Messing with religious stuff is the main thing; she has an itemized list and a description of the building where it's stored. Messing with the meditation hall would be a problem, too, but kobolds aren't usually destructive, just mischievous, so she doesn't expect that to come up. Stealing animals would get... inconsistent... results, ranging all the way from 'nobody would notice' to 'yeah, they'd probably start a war over that'; better to avoid that altogether, since the most dangerous stuff also changes pretty often. Stealing magical things would get a pretty big response if they started making a habit of it. So would rescuing a tigerperson, if they happen to be around when there's a captured one. (Yes, this is awful. She does what she can about it; it's not much.) Outside the village, they seem to already know what to avoid - killing or damaging trees, clearing land, over-hunting, over-harvesting, leaving animals trapped for long periods; straightforward stuff, most of it - but she has a list of the types of trees the other elves will be especially upset at damage to, and a little map of the groves they consider particularly sacred in the area.

Thanks. Should I come back later?

She has pulled herself back together a little bit by now. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about? She wants him to stay, she doesn't get to be around people who're good about this kind of stuff often. Or, uh, ever.

Yeah, actually, if you don't mind. We've been learning about your people and how we could convince them to change, uh, the stuff they're doing that hurts people. Who's in charge in the cities? How do you get to be in charge?

The druids are basically in charge, and they pick new ones - the druid here actually wants her for one, she's pretty baffled at that. They don't handle the secular side of things at all, but they choose who does. Here and in the city she's from that's handled by a council - a group of six or so (she's not sure how many the city had) elves, each basically in charge of a particular aspect of the place, magic or forestry or crafting or whatever - but there's also a queen in the capital who can make laws for the whole queendom, and a princess - chosen, again, by the druids, they use a game to do it but she's pretty sure it's semi-rigged in favor of who they want, there are upsets but they're rarer than they should be - who's in line to inherit the position if that ever comes up. Any given princess probably won't, though; it's a military position, when there's a war the princess is expected to go lead it.

She kind of thinks of the whole thing as distant trivia, except for the bit about the local druid and council, and she likes it that way; the world is complicated enough without having to worry about that stuff. Hopefully he'll find it useful, though.

It's a good sign that the druid here wants you for one. Can I meet them?

I'm not sure what he's doing, but we can go check. Why? She goes to let Ila out and starts putting her riding tack on.

Well, if we want to get all of the elf outposts to cut it out on the mass murder, we've probably got to convince the elven leadership to change their orders, right?

I don't think I could do much as a druid, they wouldn't have me be in charge of anything or anything I don't think. Not because of that - I'd be in big trouble if they knew about that; because I have trouble doing stuff.

Oh, I was thinking that if they wanted someone to be a druid and that person agreed that mass murder was bad, that suggested that maybe the druids think that and will be amenable to us changing things. No?

Oh. No, that's very sacrilegious. I just hide it well enough, and they've decided that a bunch of the things I do mean I'm more spiritual or something.

Can outsiders become druids? Or the princess, or the queen?

An outsider could become a princess. It'd be really hard, though, and I don't know what'd happen if she refused to do the job once she had it. Druid - maybe? You'd have to make them think you agreed with them about things.

Okay. Thank you. That's all the questions I had; do you have any?

Yes; she's very curious about him, and it takes a couple seconds for her to narrow that down to a specific question. What's it like, where you're from?

It had some nice things about it. It was completely safe and no one ever suffered. So I guess that's a lot of nice things, compared to most places. But the gods lived with us and wanted a lot of things from us, and some of those things were impossible to be and hard to even pretend to be.

Nod.

And you got away?

Yeah. 

Good.

Lot of people don't understand that. But yeah.

Yeah.

That's loosely how it was for her in the city - too many people, too complicated, not too much work but the wrong kind of work - go here, be there, remember who wants what, don't stay up all night, don't wander off alone you'll make trouble for the scouts - joke's on them, she's the scout now, and maybe the village isn't a perfect fit, either, but it's livable, being able to be mostly what she is.