Ana has to go meditate again.

The kobold makes puppy dog eyes at Ana, until Raafi makes a stern face at her.

Kobold is extra hugged but Master Olo'i was very insistent and Ana sort of promised.

Well, all right then.

So she sits with Raafi for a while, and Raafi pets her and quietly talks Aren through some of what he's doing, specifically, with watching her body language and helping her get ready to go, and then she does.

It's closer to ten minutes later than five, that she appears back in the cave, and she basically lights up when she does, and plunks herself down between the two of them. "Hi." Lean.

"Did it go well?"

"Ugh. No."

Raafi takes this as a cue to massage her shoulders. "Something you can talk about?"

"Yeah; chief wanted a spot, other tribe got there early too, big fight. Other tribe didn't have a speaker. Ugh."

Aren doesn't know enough about kobold culture or politics to offer an opinion. He offers hugs, instead.

Aren's hugs are appreciated!

"...fluency, right... 'sec..."

"I'm not sure I mentioned, but kobolds don't normally speak," she explains to Aren. "The fact that I can is about as big of a deal at home as the fact that I can do magic, and it means I work as kind of a diplomat for my tribe when there's a conflict with a different one. But it doesn't help much when nobody in the other tribe can talk."

"Oh. I hope it wasn't too bad."

"I got my chief to agree to take a different campsite without it turning into a fistfight," she says, "which is about as good as I can expect to do in a situation like that. It's just frustrating." She looks around the cave. "Where's Ana?"

"Meditating," says Raafi.

"Oh. ...right. Right. I can wait, I guess. Um. Satele? ... Master Satele."

"You didn't tell them when exactly you were leaving, but we could go look for them, if you'd like."

The kobold considers. "Maybe wait a little while."

Aren will continue providing hugs.

The kobold continues leaning into them, and Raafi passes her her most recent sketchbook to look at, and that helps tremendously.

"Okay, I think I want to go see Master Satele now. Do you know," she asks Raafi, "if I'd told her about the droids?"

"I don't believe so, but you didn't specifically say."

"All right." She gives Aren a hug, and then stands and offers both of them her hands.

Aren takes one.

And Raafi takes the other and then they're outside Satele's room. Is she in?

She is.

Raafi isn't very inclined to go in; the kobold hovers by him for a few seconds, getting her bearings, before entering, but once she does she's not hesitant at all: Satele is hugged. "Missed you."

Aren stays outside with Raafi.

Satele hugs the kobold back. "It is good to see you again."

Raafi, apparently satisfied, asks Aren how to get to the cafeteria from here, and casts his translation spell before heading in that direction.

The kobold snuggles Satele. "Thank you for not being a jerk," she chuckles. "I got a reminder of that while I was gone."

Aren wanders off as well.

"Tell me about it," invites Satele.

"My chief kind of is a jerk, sometimes. It's not really their fault, but it's still true. It's been better recently, with my magic - they're calmer when they feel safe, so that helps. But... every summer, all the tribes in the area get together, it's an important tradition for a lot of reasons. We camp with our tribes but it's a chance to catch up with the other ones, swap skills and resources, move to a new tribe if you want to... anyway, the tribes get to pick where they camp from whatever space is open when they get there, and the chief was expecting us to be the first tribe in, and we weren't, and the other tribe was in the spot they wanted, and they decided to pick a fight about it. Which is my job to handle, since I'm the Speaker, but the other tribe was one of the ones that doesn't have a Speaker, so there wasn't very much I could do... I did eventually convince the chief to take the tribe to a different spot, but the whole situation was just ridiculous."

Pat pat.

"It is good that you were able to resolve the situation peacefully. You have a gift for negotiations."

The kobold chuckles and hugs her again. "Yeah, it is hard to argue with how things worked out with that, even if there are some ways it's really not perfect." She thinks. "Have I, actually, told you about how I came to have the roles I do?"

"You have not."

"Well," she says, snuggling in, "the first thing to know is that I'm chief's-kin, which is... kobolds are adopted more often than we're raised by our egg-parents, and usually who your egg-parent is doesn't matter at all, but for chiefs' eggs it does matter; they're given, more often than taken, and people who hatch from them are raised with the understanding that they might take over the tribe some day - loyalty and impartiality and prudence and all that stuff, where most little kobolds are much more free to do what they like. I didn't like it much - I've always been adventurous, and especially with the war going on that just wasn't allowed, for me."

"I see." Kobold hugs are an important part of storytime, they are provided.

Hugs are always important, but especially during storytime, yes.

"So, the war ended when I was five, and things got a little bit better after that, but not very much - only one other egg-child of the old chief had survived the war, so they were really trying to be careful with me. It ended up having the exact opposite of the effect they wanted - I wanted to have an adventure, and I knew I wasn't going to get away with that with my parent around - love 'em, but, yeah - so the spring when I was eight, when the rest of the tribe packed up to go to the meetup for the summer, I hid. I don't think I was honestly expecting it to work, but it did, they left without me. I got my adventure and then some, though; I ended up spending that summer with a tribe of tigerfolk I found. It, uh, didn't go very well for me; I survived it, but only barely. But that's how I learned to speak, when I usually never would have been allowed to; you can't be a Speaker and a chief at the same time."

Satele hugs the kobold more tightly when the tigerfolk are brought up.

"Kobolds prefer to not concentrate power?"