Oh, it can keep a forge hot?

If regular fires work, yeah, it should be straightforward.

That'll be very useful, then, yes.

Mmhmm.. Still need to find out if it's even possible, though. I'm guessing you can learn my magic with osanwe, maybe even better than the regular way, but it hasn't been tested yet, and if not, someone'd have to go talk to the people with that magic, and they're dangerous and easy to provoke and I really don't like the idea.

Okay. We'll keep that in mind. Dangerous even once we have our own magic?

I mean, they can't teleport. They might still figure something out to capture and hex whoever was talking to them, but it's at least a limited amount of risk in that direction. But depending on how they were provoked they wouldn't necessarily just go after you; if they find out there's a kobold with teleportation magic I'm very sure they'll try to wipe us out again, and probably succeed this time.

...that's very worrying.

Yup. I will be surprised if osanwe doesn't work, but if it doesn't it's going to take a lot to convince me to take that risk.

How many do they number?

Not many compared to you, in the village, but more come from somewhere else sometimes; I don't know how many there are altogether. And I'm not sure I want to see them wiped out, either.

If they are wiping out other peoples on minimal provocation then they seem likely to do it eventually and I'd want to make sure they cannot. I wasn't planning to achieve that by killing anyone.

...how?

If they're much like Elves they probably kill because they want something, maybe there's another way to give it to them and to make it clear they can't get it if they hurt people. 

That works out to clearing the kobolds out of the forest, based on what we do know about what they want. Which might not be impossible - might - but would definitely be very hard, and extremely stressful and somewhat dangerous for the kobolds.

I don't mean giving them exactly what they want. Why do they want that? Do kobolds eat food they need? Are they very sensitive to noises kobolds make? Do the kobolds do something that hurts them, even if you don't know it? Giving them what they want might be 'a way to live with kobolds' not 'a way not to need to'. And if they don't want to be your neighbors, they can move.

Sigh. Kobolds hurting them is part of it. Kobold culture doesn't have a concept of property - trying to keep something for yourself is considered antisocial, there's no idea of theft as a thing, stuff like that. It extends to outsiders, too, and retrieving something that's challenging to get is basically a game - kobolds don't actually make very good neighbors either. Their response to that one theft was seriously disproportionate and we don't know why, but they weren't actually unprovoked.

Okay, so maybe making sure they have enough things, or putting up magic so that kobolds can't trespass, and making sure your leaders know each other - so if, for example, that stolen thing was very very important to them, they could have told you that...

Putting up magic to stop kobolds would have some kind of effect, I have no idea what - kobolds are all enspelled as babies to be invisible to our world's magic, unexpectedly running into magic that works anyway would be very alarming, especially if the elves had it.

Getting elves and kobolds to talk to each other is probably impossible. Most likely they don't even think we're people, and.... well. Speakers have always been kind of a tight-knit group, and before the war there were like fifty of them, and now there are fourteen - thirteen, with me gone. And that's almost entirely the elves' doing. Among other reasons to be terrified of them. She shudders. Plus our main way of staying safe from them is not letting them know where we are, if they can find us to talk to us they can find us to kill us. She's clinging and trembling a little, now.

He hugs her. Then maybe we get the elves to move. It doesn't sound like just hoping they're never provoked again - especially if learning of your magic would provoke them - is the best we can possibly do for your people.

She leans into the hug but doesn't stop trembling. I mean, we survived last time. We're rebuilding. We're being more careful now. It might happen again, but as long as it's not too soon, we can probably survive it again. They don't have to know about my magic, it's not like any of the other mages are going to learn it from me, it's not going to be the problem they'd assume it was.

I don't know your people but I want more things for my people than that we probably won't be annihilated the next time someone wants to kill us on a whim.

She whines, quietly, distressed, but thinks about it.

Maybe, in the summer, if we're very careful, we can get in touch with the other Speakers and see if they think it's worth trying. But I really think we're just too vulnerable to take the risk anytime soon.

And there's no way for us to do it while leaving kobolds out of it entirely?

I don't know enough about elves to know; the other Speakers will be able to tell us more. And about how bad it'd be for their tribes if something went wrong right now.

All right.