Ranara and her little daughter Azabel move to Urtho's Tower when the latter can say six words ("up", "mama", "milk", "no", "now", and "please") and hasn't started to walk yet. Ranara sets up to teach little children to read, ones who don't have evident Gifts yet - Ranara herself has Mindspeech, is all, with about a classroom's worth of range. Azabel sits in on classes, worn on her mother's back or later plopped in a corner with toys or, when she's only four, plopped in a corner with a book, younger than the other kids in the class. When Azabel has in fact sat through her mother's curriculum she is turned somewhat loose, to walk very carefully up and down and around the Tower, exploring.
Eventually Ta'ana seems to have the men and boys convinced that Skan is, one, real and not a demon trying to trick them, two, a person, and three, friendly.
They join Azabel and Ma'ar at the campfire. The adult men greet Ma'ar stiffly and ignore Azabel completely; the teenage and preteen boys also do, but sneak a lot of curious glances at her.
:I'm really sorry they're being so rude! They, uh, we don't have any customs for how to interact with women from other clans, let alone from off the Plains:
:Ignoring is pretty tame especially since I can't directly talk to them anyway. At least nobody's hitting me with sticks. There's never peaceful times when you can like, visit other clans?:
:I think maybe there was once? I suppose you could ask Ta'ana, I think I remember it was her telling the story. Fifty years ago, when - when there wasn't a drought, when no one's babies were starving...:
:Not continuously? And maybe it wasn't drought the whole time, maybe at the start it was some other problem. Things were good when I was born, in terms of rain I mean - gods, I think that's probably why I'm - smart, and stuff, I had enough food when I was really small. But...it takes longer than that for people to really feel safe enough to change how they do things, right? And - then it got bad again:
:You need weather mages out here. Like, more often. I can do it some? - how big is this part of the Plains:
:- A few hundred miles across? Uh, I mean all the clan lands, not just Kiyam. I - don't think there are any weather mages focused on here? The King of Predain must have some but - it's not like they'd care about nomadic cowherders:
:I don't know how much of that I can cover myself but I can make a dent... if you're doing it too that'd be better. Or - would they not stop attacking each other and stealing stuff from each other if the weather were better and there weren't a drought, are they stuck like this now?:
:...I don't know. Probably it'd help? After a while, at least. Maybe I should go try to find some mages who live nearby and teach them proper weather magic, so we don't have to keep Gating out here:
:...I don't know. I guess maybe we should test it before we leave, while it's short-range: Ma'ar makes a face. :Although then we'll have to do even more weather-magic to compensate for it:
:...That's true. Not normally what you want - and dry lightning would be really bad, here - but a rainstorm would be convenient:
:I guess it might not even be that bad. Our Gate here didn't seem to mess things up too much and that was a lot further. - I wonder if the more efficient kind we had to learn, to be able to do it this far at all, is less bad for weather?:
:Ooh, maybe. We should get permission from the weather rota to do experiments with it:
The sun is getting low in the sky, now. The children are playing some sort of game with each other, that involves throwing pebbles and trying to whack them in midair with sticks. Occasionally Ta'ana yells at them.
Ma'ar's smile fades. His expression turns serious, then eventually sort of sad.
:I - thought it would feel like coming home: he says eventually. :It doesn't. Maybe it was just stupid of me, to think it would:
:It's been a while since you were here and it's not clear how much you can explain to them about what you've been up to and have them understand:
:...Why I wanted to leave and learn magic - why I didn't think living on the Plains forever was good enough...: It feels like he should know how to explain and yet he doesn't at all.