the stork drops, the snake swallows | Glowfic Constellation

secondchance

"What else do you want to do while we're here?"

"I've been just walking around looking at things, I can think of a hundred avenues for further investigation but they're all safer done at home -"

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"Wandering it is."

This city-state has some tourist attractions, all of which are rather lackluster compared to random city blocks in Tirion but are at least illustrative of human taste and capacity.

About which he has lots of questions, and they tend to spur new ones. They've already established that there are physical differences, but didn't dive into human construction techniques or things that economies enabled.

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Kib has reasonably good general knowledge about the economy and humans!

And eventually they vanish, with baby and cargo, and reappear in the palace in Tirion.

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Kib hopes nobody wants him to explain why he let Fëanáro take home a random baby!

Kib is not really expected to have stopped the High Prince from doing exactly as he pleases. There is a hubbub. Maitimo comes out, sees the baby, and has a complicated expression on his face for a second before it changes to utter delight and he comes over to meet her.

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There's not much to meet. She's a baby. She can pretty much blink at things and wave her arms around.

"...I should make her shades."

"Oh, good idea,' Fëanáro says. "We can also move somewhere farther from the Trees -"

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"Yeah, she's not gonna be able to move her own shades on and off for a while, that might be more convenient for her not having to squint all the time until she can learn to do that."

"You could move back into the palace, father," Maitimo says, "less bright than outside, plenty of space for her to run around..."

Fëanáro looks torn.

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"Things are downright visible in here."

"Well, let's do shades now, so we can take her home," he says firmly, and starts telling Maitimo about Kib's world - 'he wasn't exaggerating about the architecture, but they used some interesting materials, the plants mostly looked familiar but I took cuttings of a few I want someone to go track down for me - I assume we have them somewhere - Kib's unusually pretty for a human, let me show you what a bunch of them look like..."

Maitimo's expression is very very patient and barely twitches.

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Kib makes shades for the baby. He laughs a little at the "unusually pretty" assertion.

They give Eonwë their respects and he departs. And then another man comes sweeping in. He looks like Fëanáro but perhaps slightly older. Everyone bows. "You have a granddaughter," Fëanáro says.

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Kib is a little late to the bowing but he follows suit.

And the King holds the granddaughter and is delighted and asks Fëanáro a number of questions along the lines of 'what were you thinking' and then proclaims his granddaughter a very healthy baby and a great gift in time for the festival.

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Well, that seems to have gone well.

And now they can take the baby home. Though more people are coming in to meet her.

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Kib has simply never found babies that interesting. If he is not needed as a consult on human characteristics he will go work on his scribe.

He is not! People will barely notice him slipping off.

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Scribe it is. Scribe scribe scribe. It'll be useful for all those books. ...Fëanáro may have been distracted by the baby to the point where he's not going to remember to take care of the animals; he goes back to see if they've been whisked away.

Maitimo has taken the animals back to his desk. I told Tyelcormo to come and get them once he tires of our sister. Will they be okay until then?

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