Mmhmm. Like I said, hopefully it won't ever come up, but.

Anyway, how've you been?

Well! It's exciting to meet a new species, we have a lot to teach each other.

Yeah. It's neat seeing what they've come up with to use magic for, I'll be bringing a few of their ideas back here once things slow down a little there.

Great!

If you'd like to go meet them sometime I can bring you. Or invite them here, if you'd rather, but their city is really worth seeing.

I would be delighted to see it!

Let me know when you have the time, then, it seems like I'll be out there pretty often for the next while.

I certainly will!

Good.

Well, I should get to bed, have a good night.

You as well.

And off she goes.

The next day, she makes a guess at when Findekáno might not be too busy, and stops by.

He is not too busy!

Hey. Snuggle?

Snuggle! You look better.

Yeah, I do bounce back pretty well from stuff. How've things been here?

Good! Everyone's really happy to have made contact with Dwarves, and now that the city's set we can settle in a little.

Good.

I took some time to chat with the Dwarves, yesterday, it turns out I really like them.

Oh, good.

Yeah. Lean. I told them some things about kobolds and the first thing they wanted to do was figure out how to make it work if they ever find themselves with a tribe of us for neighbors. Turns out it'd be a little tricky to set up but it'd probably work fine after that, if that happens somehow.

Oh, good. That seems like it might end badly.

The thing nobody realizes is that kobolds stealing things usually isn't about the things, it's about showing off their sneaking-around skills. So if the tribe - or we, if the tribe couldn't do it - gave them a bunch of things to be stolen, and showed them how to set those up so they looked like a better challenge than anything else, pretty much nothing they cared about would get stolen - maybe not never, but I bet we could get it down to not even once a year - and everybody would be happy.

And, just, I really like that they want to do that, if it comes up.

Yeah, I can see why.

Mmhmm.

Maitimo's probably going to go visit them soon.

Oh, good. I expect they'll get along.

Yeah. And I wonder if they'll be interested in that thing they were talking about - a way of organizing things so you don't need a leader, even with big groups in wartime? I didn't understand it, but they seemed really enthusiastic about it.