Thanks. We were working on explaining osanwë to them and I guess even going slow it was a little much. She sends the location.

And he follows the idiot kid around.

Tirinquo would object to this description if they were in any way aware of it, probably.

They walk, and occasionally stop to peek in a window or watch someone work for a little while before continuing on.

As long as nothing gets stolen and no one gets hurt, all okay.

Neither of those things happen.

Tirinquo does get lost, but that's not particularly obvious to casual observation.

He'd notice it from their thoughts, though. Then he can walk in front of them and back to where they're staying.

Of course that only works if the kobold realizes there's a reason to follow him, which they don't.

Idiot kid. He can try one more time, trying to get their attention before doing the same?

Well, it gets them to stop and look confused at him, at least. Why is this stranger trying to interact with them?

He walks towards the kid's house. If the kid does not follow, that's his own problem.

They follow. They still want to know what he wants.

He opens the door to their house.

This gets Tyelkormo a extremely dubious look: Tirinquo is not sure she's being propositioned, but that's certainly one interpretation of this situation.

Sigh. He finds a discolored brick on the house and starts fixing it, singing.

...okay.

The kobold heads back toward the wood shop.

Well presumably now the kobold is not lost. He ignores them.

And a few minutes later: Thank you.

No problem. They okay?

Yeah, why?

Means the afternoon wasn't wasted. Take care.

Ah. You too.

And he heads back out.

The next few days go well enough; the kobolds spend them at the wood shop or walk around the city to take care of whatever casting needs to be done. They go to the magic workshop once, and while it's not a disaster, keeping a close enough eye on Tirinquo to make sure they don't interfere with anything delicate is hard enough that they don't go again.

She keeps Maitimo updated - Tirinquo is doing well, and getting steadily more comfortable with not knowing where she is; they should still have someone keeping an eye on them but soon it won't need to be her. He also suggests that she take a name as well; at his recommendation she starts going by Rána, wanderer.

One day, they head to the library; Rána has been asked to add some light spells there. When she comes out of her casting trance, Tirinquo is standing in front of her with a book, and chirps curiously at her; she explains by pretending to read it aloud, gently tapping each word with her finger as she speaks, and Tirinquo's eyes light up.

"Well, you'd have to learn the language first," she muses, "but I suppose there's no reason not to try." She starts going through a modified version of the exercise used to check prospective Speakers: if she claims that a particular written word is spoken like so, and asks them to repeat it back when the word is pointed at a few seconds later, can they do that?

Yes, yes they can!

Excellent. And that night she tells Maitimo about it. I don't know if they'll actually be able to learn to speak or write, or if they'll want to. But they might be able to learn to read without doing either of those.