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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.
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lurkingkobold
calescent
"Humans can't... go live in the woods or something," agrees Kiri. "But there are places to get privacy."
calescent
"The belt is to move me around when there are fires, but the portals are to move stuff around, so it's easier to get food and other things across Welce."
lurkingkobold
...That seems risky. The kobold did explain that the spell will break if the portal frame is damaged, right? A bunch of people being dependent on a spell for food in a place that can't support them without it isn't a very good idea without a mage around to re-cast the spell if there's an earthquake or landslide or something.
calescent
"It will just make it faster. People in all these places can already get food. And the portals will be made of stone."
lurkingkobold
Okay, good.
She should probably try to come up with a way for Kiri to get in touch with her again, though, just in case. She moves around enough that that might be a bit tricky, but she can probably work something out.
(...and she should take on an apprentice, too. That's going to be weird. And finding someone who wants to learn magery and speaking and who'll be willing to go to other worlds will definitely be tricky. She's got a while to work on it, though; she's still fairly young for a kobold.)
She should probably try to come up with a way for Kiri to get in touch with her again, though, just in case. She moves around enough that that might be a bit tricky, but she can probably work something out.
(...and she should take on an apprentice, too. That's going to be weird. And finding someone who wants to learn magery and speaking and who'll be willing to go to other worlds will definitely be tricky. She's got a while to work on it, though; she's still fairly young for a kobold.)
lurkingkobold
...not strictly speaking, no. Splitting her time between her tribe and her apprentice might cause some problems, though, given that she still intends to be away from the tribe to do diplomacy, too.
calescent
Kiri nods. "Well, there are a lot of humans to choose from if you wanted a human apprentice. Although you probably don't want to interview dozens of them. If not me I'd probably suggest Jayce." That would be the other person who lives in Kiri's house who has been named but that the kobold hasn't met in person yet.
lurkingkobold
Maybe. She hasn't had a chance to see how diplomacy will go with portals in the mix, or how the portals will affect her tribe's yearly habits; she might have more spare time than she's expecting.
It probably makes the most sense to look for an apprentice among the kobolds first, though, and if no likely prospects turn up in the next few years, then start considering off-worlders.
It probably makes the most sense to look for an apprentice among the kobolds first, though, and if no likely prospects turn up in the next few years, then start considering off-worlders.
calescent
More places, and then they have gone all the places (stopping for lunch, which Kiri brings some of into the carriage for the kobold) and returned to the house.
lurkingkobold
Excellent.
The kobold can probably get all the Chialto portals done before dinnertime, if everything is ready for her at the house - where does Kiri want the portals to the day's places to be put?
The kobold can probably get all the Chialto portals done before dinnertime, if everything is ready for her at the house - where does Kiri want the portals to the day's places to be put?
calescent
Kiri designates and - with little bottles of colored lacquer Aleko finds somewhere - color-codes the rivets on her belt and indicates how each should correspond to a destination. And here go the bells.
calescent
Kiri cooks this one.
Kiri does not cook in a conventional way.
Kiri does not cook in a conventional way.
lurkingkobold
Of course she doesn't.
The kobold hangs out and watches, and offers some unusual ingredients from her tribe's stores. (Kiri probably doesn't want the crickets, no matter how interesting the added crunch would be in that one dish, but the nuts and dried fruit might go over a bit better.)
The kobold hangs out and watches, and offers some unusual ingredients from her tribe's stores. (Kiri probably doesn't want the crickets, no matter how interesting the added crunch would be in that one dish, but the nuts and dried fruit might go over a bit better.)
calescent
Kiri indeed does not want crickets, but nuts and dried fruit (after she samples one of each offered kind) are incorporated.
calescent
Delicious dinner.
And more language lessons - grammar! Irregular verbs! Punctuation!
And then humans go to bed.
And more language lessons - grammar! Irregular verbs! Punctuation!
And then humans go to bed.
lurkingkobold
The kobold thinks there should be, like, three or four times that many things, for punctuation; tone matters, and the current setup leaves it woefully under-specified. But she's already sort of planning to make some adjustments, for her own note-taking purposes and also if she teaches anyone else to read, so she'll just fix that too while she's at it.
She's once again not sleepy when Kiri turns in for the night; she reads for a while and then pops back home to check on her tribe - they're fine, though they want her to make a few more portal-buckets so everyone who wants to can help with the water-gathering expedition in the morning - before she's ready to go to bed herself.
She's once again not sleepy when Kiri turns in for the night; she reads for a while and then pops back home to check on her tribe - they're fine, though they want her to make a few more portal-buckets so everyone who wants to can help with the water-gathering expedition in the morning - before she's ready to go to bed herself.
calescent
And in the morning they can all get in the carriage again and go to a different town.
lurkingkobold
The kobold spends most of the ride reading - she can still only read very simple things, but she expects that practicing what she's already been taught will help her more than learning anything new, right now.
calescent
Makes sense. Kiri doesn't keep a lot of really simple books around on purpose, but she had some, previous generations of Ardelay children having accumulated them in the house and then not seen a reason to bring them along when they grew up and moved out.
The next town has some farms and some wilderness and some more farms between it and Chialto. The road is decent-quality the whole way except for a recently washed-out bit that gives them a jostling as they go over the best-hastily-repaired part. The trip takes eight hours; they pass road-branches to other, nearer towns, but it's the bigger, closely built settlements that really need the fire protection lest an entire market district go up in flames.
And here's the edge of town! Kiri tells Aleko to take them to the library; they wind through the streets. Humans buying things. Humans arguing. Human playing a musical instrument. Humans eating fried dough. Human getting fed up with their screaming children and smacking the eldest of the lot. Humans drawing well-water. Human chalking the day's prices on a slate sign. Human sitting on a roof painting the scene.
The next town has some farms and some wilderness and some more farms between it and Chialto. The road is decent-quality the whole way except for a recently washed-out bit that gives them a jostling as they go over the best-hastily-repaired part. The trip takes eight hours; they pass road-branches to other, nearer towns, but it's the bigger, closely built settlements that really need the fire protection lest an entire market district go up in flames.
And here's the edge of town! Kiri tells Aleko to take them to the library; they wind through the streets. Humans buying things. Humans arguing. Human playing a musical instrument. Humans eating fried dough. Human getting fed up with their screaming children and smacking the eldest of the lot. Humans drawing well-water. Human chalking the day's prices on a slate sign. Human sitting on a roof painting the scene.