Nothing happens.

It takes a couple weeks for her to completely relax, but she does.

She continues working in the stables. 'Can't handle long hours' turns out to be a lie, at least in that context; the horses are all well-cared-for - she specializes in important details that others tend to miss or not recognize the value of attending to - and in her spare time she organizes their supplies and looks after their gear, too.

He notices. He appreciates it. He takes the horses out on his scouting trips; on rare occasions they come back injured.

She's glad he appreciates it.

She has a pretty good grasp of basic-to-intermediate first aid, if not much specific to horses exactly. When she runs into something she's not sure how to take care of, she asks him who she should get to handle it.

They don't have experts at that either; the gods used to do it. They were hoping maybe someone somewhere had a healing spell form.

Oh.

Not that I know of, but maybe someone does.

I'll do what I can for her, anyway.

Thanks.

Hug.

She does her best, and takes careful notes on what she tries and how it works.

The horses are from Valinor and heal quickly for horses, which is still very slow compared to many animals she's used to.

The projected timeline is still months. She keeps at it.

More human babies are born. The ones not born early have a much better survival rate. It's not all of them. The Elves sing.

Not all the mothers, either. The kobold's working on a plant that'll produce a milk substitute, but it's a hard problem and it's not ready yet; the plant that induces lactation in kobolds should be pretty safe to try, or they can pair the orphans with the bereaved.

They do that. Things that work for a completely different species don't seem like a safe bet and humans are upsettingly easy to poison.

Yeah, fair.

Summer approaches, and the kobold starts clearing a couple of days in her schedule.

He does not comment.

Oh good.

She takes her couple days - she's been assigned a little room in the Ñolofinwëan city, now, it was easier than having to keep finding her one when she needed a place to sleep - and returns to her usual schedule just fine, if a little distant, afterward.

He still doesn't comment.

Ila does, a couple days later: Tyelkormo, there's something wrong with your kobold. She smells funny.

Yeah, Huan noticed. King says not to bother her about it.

All right. Someone should keep an eye on her, though.

You wanna?

I can, I guess. When she's here.

We don't talk to the other camp, I can't make sure there's someone there looking out for her.

Okay.

If people need stuff, they need to say so, okay? We're trying to win a war and we can't go around just guessing who needs attention and who'd be stressed by it if they're not going to say anything.