Ana sits next to her, and very gently will offer pats. They seemed to be well-received last night.

It quickly becomes obvious that that's a good call; the kobold is still very upset, but instantly is less overwhelmed by it.

"I should tell you," she says after a few moments, without looking up, "some things about my people, and our history."

Pat pat.

"I'm listening."

"So the first thing is, we don't, most of us, talk. Can't, and trying to learn is dangerous. Used to be there were two or three Speakers in most tribes, now some don't even have one." She pauses to drag her attention back on track. "But even before... before, most kobolds couldn't, and the people around us knew that, and didn't think we were people because of it." This is helping, too, a little; some of it, probably most, is painful to think about, but it's a familiar pain, well worn around the edges, and not even a little bit frightening.

Pat pat. Soothe soothe.

"That's awful."

"It might have been. I don't know. Kobolds stay away from other people, mostly; it doesn't matter very much what they think of you if you're not there to know it. But then eventually we couldn't."

"What happened then?"

The kobold sighs, and snuggles in closer to Ana. "There was a war. Sort of. I've heard about other wars, in the last few years, and I don't think most people would call it one; we weren't fighting. It was," monsters, incomprehensible ones, "the elves; one of us provoked them the wrong way and they decided we shouldn't live in their forest any more. I hatched during that; some of my earliest memories are of it."

"It's a hard thing, to be born into a war. I was five when the Sith sacked the Temple on Coruscant. I wasn't there, but I remember hearing about it."

The kobold nods. "The thing I want to explain, there, is that - " she sighs. "I'm not sure I want to tell you what happened, that started the whole thing; I'm not sure you'd understand. Your culture is more similar to theirs than to mine, in a way that I know matters, and I'm not sure I understand how it matters to know if I can explain it well enough to make sense. But it was either a dramatic overreaction, on their part, or they're just... incomprehensible. And either way, they're not safe to talk to, and probably can't be made safe to talk to. I haven't tried it, I don't have a death wish. We stay farther away from them, now, and warn everyone as they grow up not to provoke them in that way again, and it's been enough so far."

"Similar how? Elves sound like Sith to me."

Another sigh: She's not very comfortable answering this one. "Kobolds don't do ownership, basically at all. Elves do; you do. Most people do; it doesn't mean anything, except that it's hard for me to explain things about that."

"Okay."

Pat pat.

Snuggle.

"So, we survived that. Not well, but we did, started building ourselves back up and training people in skills that'd gotten scarce. Then twelve years later, there was a famine. All the rabbits died, some kind of disease. It didn't affect us much - it was a lean year, but there are plenty of other things we can eat. But it did affect the tigerfolk, the other species of people in the area; they only eat meat, can't even manage on insects. And they didn't think we were people, just usually too much trouble to bother catching, so... they started putting in the effort." This is a sharper pain, more personal, just as familiar. "And that was awful."

Oh no. Ana can't go back in time and protect the kobolds but she can hug this one right now. So she does.

The kobold hugs her back. Clings, just a little.

"Yeah. My world isn't very nice, sometimes. We didn't have the teleportation magic, then; it'll be harder for that to happen again a second time. But with the tigerfolk - it was awful, but it was us or them; of course I'm not going to let them do that again, but I understand why they did it - starving to death is pretty awful, too. And... I've gone and talked to them, since then. Started the very next year, just as soon as I thought I could do it without panicking. They were surprised, and it took me a while to figure out how to convince them that it wasn't a trick, but it is possible, to show them that we're people and have them believe it."

"That was brave of you."

Shrug.

"I knew it needed to be done, and I knew nobody else was going to do it. They're people too; they didn't want to be making that mistake."

The kobold's emotional state is... odd, here. Sort of weirdly flat. Ana might recognize what that is, if she's been around the right sort of abuse survivor in the right - or perhaps wrong - sort of situation.

Ana is no healer but- "Are you okay, talking about this? Your affect is... strange."

"Hmm? ...oh. That's... huh." Her emotions return to a semblance of normal - normal-normal, not her previous state of upset, which seems to have gotten lost in the transition. "I'm okay. There's a thing I'm leaving out, and I didn't realize that was related to it. Probably not a story you want to hear."

Ana is not a healer. She sort of wishes she was. "Okay."

Cuddle.

"Anyway," at least her confidence seems to be coming back? "The point I wanted to make is that just because someone's doing something awful, doesn't mean they can't be worked with, and it's not always obvious. Most people in my tribe think the tigerfolk are just as bad as the elves. I don't know, about the Sith, but I think at least some of them are somewhere in between."

"We've tried talking with the Sith. We haven't stopped trying. But they're not interested in peace. There was a summit, on Alderaan, twenty years ago. We were trying to negotiate an end to the war. On the third day of talks, the Sith attacked Coruscant. They burned the Temple, slaughtered all those Jedi, while Master Satele was sitting across a conference table from them trying to stop the fighting!"

Now it is Ana who is hugged. "I know. I'm sorry."

There's that flatness back again. She notices it by herself this time, and pushes back through to normalcy.

"It's just... there's probably some Sith that aren't completely awful. But so many of them are. And I only tend to meet those ones. And then they tend to kill people around me."