Well, that's good news except for the part where it's kind of horrible news. At least she's probably not going to have to deal with figuring out who gets all the stuff the Dwarves are going to presumably insist on giving her, that would have been awful.

Word has gotten out not to talk to her about Dwarf things, yeah. Everyone makes a point of telling her things they are doing that are totally unrelated to Dwarves.

That's helpful. She relaxes again, slowly.

Lots of what is going on continues to be about Dwarves, about as much as is about humans, but they do make an effort to minimize it around her.

The occasional Dwarf thing that isn't about plans to trade magic for things gets a much calmer reaction from her.

In that case everybody can calibrate to be way more careful to avoid discussing trading things while being happy to mention how Dwarves don't have genders and Dwarves have plural marriages and Dwarves don't have chiefs or people in charge at all...

That all sounds pretty cool, actually.

After a week and a half, she asks Findekáno, okay, so, what's the plan with the Dwarves?

So, if we want to provide magic things for free - I did ask - they will just have their people who are not busy in line to receive and then resell the free things. If we want to provide them for credit to use later, we can do that. We can also directly trade for lots of things, and we're talking about how to do that. I haven't promised anything only you can do, my cousin said that you are really upset that they work the way they do.

She blinks at him, relaxes noticeably, and hugs him. Okay. Good. I didn't follow all of that, but, good.

We don't have to understand each other to accommodate each other. Hug. 

Hug: yes.

The problem is that I really don't want to own things, and it looked like I might have to, at least sort of, to make that work.

Ah. I don't think so, not even if you did things for them. It's entirely fine to have the things they want to trade go to a trust or to someone else. They're really very willing to be flexible.

And there's her the rest of the way relaxed. Good. Snuggle.

I'm glad you're okay.

Aww. I do bounce back okay from most things. I would've been okay if I had to deal with it, too, it just would've been harder.

I don't understand, but I guess I don't need to.

I don't mind talking about it.  Part of it is how owning things is taboo among kobolds, but it's more than that - because I was spending time with tigerfolk, and because of some of the things that happened after I spent that summer with them, they never quite trusted that I wouldn't pick it up, so I got into the habit of being really careful about not even giving the appearance of it. And when I was around the tigerfolk - well, kobolds have a reputation for theft, I had to be really careful there, too. And learning that in the first place was... unpleasant. So it's always been something that's been dangerous for people to even think I was doing, in whichever context. I'm kind of getting over it - the way things are organized here it's just easier if the things I need are in my room, even if it does look like that, and nobody else cares - but I'm not to the point where I can easily give up the - deniability, I guess - yet.

And so it wasn't that it bothered you that Dwarves like trading, you just thought people were going to demand you participate?

Exactly. There's a war on; if you tell me to do that I will. But it'd be hard.

We don't need you to do things that are that upsetting to you. 

So far it's worked out that way, yeah. If it doesn't, though - I dunno, there might be something I wouldn't be willing to do to make Angband stop existing, but if there is I haven't thought of it yet.

Squeeze. I know that feeling very well.

Snuggle. Yeah.

The other mages aren't as fast as you but we're getting good enough to do some things.

Mmhmm. I'm not going to assume it can't come up, though. This isn't the first trouble I've been through, not being ready to handle things doesn't help anybody.