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It's winter, and all is well with the tribe. Their new magic, an ability to make portals from one place to another, which was found by one of their members during the early-summer trip to meet with the other tribes in the area, let them both build up a decadent food stockpile and move to a much deeper part of the cave system without the worry of being unable to find their way back out. No-one has had to go hungry, and even the fiercest ice storm doesn't reach them; they are as content as kobolds can be.
Well, aside from their new mage, that is. She's bored, and curious. Making portals to known places is straightforward enough, with the magic she found, but that's far from the limit of what it can do... so one day, she slips away, portals off to a different cave system - one can't be too careful, after all - and experiments.
Temperature roughly the same... gravity roughly the same... air the same, not into stone or underwater or in a volcano or on top of a mountain... but, instead of patterning it after a place she knows, what happens if she only specifies those things, and lets the innate patterns of the spot she's casting on do the rest? Particularly this one part, which seems to specify the world...
She finishes the spell, and hesitates for just a moment before activating it.
lurkingkobold
calescent
The kobold is no longer exactly secret, and neither is the teleportation, but Kiri shoos the stablehand anyway just to avoid having the conversation about teleporting horses right away.
lurkingkobold
The kobold examines the location, lets Kiri know where exactly she intends to put the carriage, and goes back to get it.
A few moments later, there is the carriage, with Aleko and a couple of alarmed horses, and then another moment after that, the kobold.
A few moments later, there is the carriage, with Aleko and a couple of alarmed horses, and then another moment after that, the kobold.
calescent
"Want to go install the last few bellpulls and then help me practice magic?" Kiri asks the kobold.
lurkingkobold
Sure.
...they're going to need to go back to that one town to figure out where to put its bellpull, huh. The kobold is nervous about it.
...they're going to need to go back to that one town to figure out where to put its bellpull, huh. The kobold is nervous about it.
lurkingkobold
The kobold examines the spot, and then teleports back and gets to work finishing up the bellpull collection.
calescent
Scritches. "I'm trying to think if there's anything else about humans I should warn you about," she murmurs.
lurkingkobold
There's... a couple other things, that would be really bad if they were true, yeah. She doesn't want to think about the details, but it'd probably be pretty obvious that those were things the kobold would find upsetting? So if Kiri needs to actually think of it, those are probably not issues here.
(Most kobolds would find the ownership thing just as unsettling, too, but she's used to that one at least. Ugh, dealing with cultural differences is hard.)
(Most kobolds would find the ownership thing just as unsettling, too, but she's used to that one at least. Ugh, dealing with cultural differences is hard.)
calescent
"...I can't tell what you're not thinking about, but - I don't know, I don't want you to be surprised again, but it doesn't seem like you actually want to have a conversation about all the ways humans are sometimes terrible."
lurkingkobold
Yeah.
Not that she can't put up with it, probably? She puts up with the tigerfolk, and they certainly have their issues. But it took her a while to be able to live with that (cringe, sigh - yeah, 'that' is 'they captured and ate a bunch of kobolds'; thought about from this particular angle it just makes her very sad, though, there were mitigating circumstances)... she expects to be able to live with this, too, so long as it's being worked on, just, it's going to take a while.
Not that she can't put up with it, probably? She puts up with the tigerfolk, and they certainly have their issues. But it took her a while to be able to live with that (cringe, sigh - yeah, 'that' is 'they captured and ate a bunch of kobolds'; thought about from this particular angle it just makes her very sad, though, there were mitigating circumstances)... she expects to be able to live with this, too, so long as it's being worked on, just, it's going to take a while.
lurkingkobold
The kobold is darkly amused: Probably not, given this world doesn't seem to have kobolds. But if they're not in the habit of eating other kinds of people at all - or each other, but she expects that they wouldn't be willing to live so close to strangers if that was the case - that does help, yes.
calescent
"I think humans are the only kind of person in this world. I couldn't swear that no one makes a habit of eating other humans but I've never actually heard of it happening anywhere."
calescent
...Kiri decides this is not the moment to mention that she doesn't see a particular point to caring about whether already-dead people happen to get eaten. It is a minor philosophical quibble at best, and it's not like she wants to eat anyone.
Scritches.
Scritches.
lurkingkobold
Scritches are such a good.
The kobold mulls some more, then eventually remembers that she ought to be getting back to her tribe soon. She would kind of like to go see if that shelter Kiri mentioned wants any spells first, though.
The kobold mulls some more, then eventually remembers that she ought to be getting back to her tribe soon. She would kind of like to go see if that shelter Kiri mentioned wants any spells first, though.