Small Lurker in Milliways

[lurkingkobold]

Here is a kobold.

To people familiar with the species, it's obviously a young one, not quite three feet tall to the adults' three and a half foot average. Its fur is blueish-grey and relatively dull, a sign that it hasn't been eating properly recently, though it's not thin. It's wearing a simple animal-skin skirt and carrying a stick, not quite long enough to serve as a walking stick, but useful for shielding itself from the worst of the undergrowth at least.

It is moving through the forest at speed, not following any path, and then suddenly it is elsewhere. After a few minutes, it notices the difference in the light; after a few more, it notices that the trees are subtly wrong - wrong species, wrong growth patterns, wrong in subtler ways that defy describing, but that tell the kobold that it is not in the forest where it grew up.

After even more minutes, it stops, having come to a clearing. There is a building, which, despite not being alarmingly large, cannot be traveled around.

The kobold does not have permission to enter the building.

The kobold cannot go back to where it was.

The kobold sits, and waits.

Comments

[lurkingkobold]

Hm.

She takes a minute to consider this confusion, then asks, "Bar do of more of figurine of small of kobold? ...do of figurine of... tree, tree of apple?"

Another dozen kobold figurines appear, or rather eleven kobolds and one kobold egg. The new set, when combined with the six old ones, run the full range of sizes from newly hatched to just shy of adult. The kobold arranges them that way, with the egg figurine at one end of the line and an adult figurine at the other end, then turns to the set of four tree figurines and arranges them in a diamond - the one with green leaves farthest from her, the one with bare branches nearest, the one with pale pink flowers to the right, and the one with hanging red fruit to the left.

She then looks to make sure Tyche is paying attention, and draws a counterclockwise circle in the air over the trees with one finger. "One," she says, and looks back to Tyche to see if this is having the intended effect.

[scatteredstars]

Tyche looks intently at the tree figures. "Harvest?" ze asks of the left one. "Or -- Autumn?"

[lurkingkobold]

This gets a nod and a smile. Then, the kobold repeats the counterclockwise motion and "one", and gestures between the two smallest kobold figurines and repeats, "one".

[scatteredstars]

"Autumn... Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer? One year?" Tyche looks over a the kobold figurines. "One...?" Ze is clearly puzzled.

[lurkingkobold]

This gets another nod, at the season names, and a confused look at the confusion. She tries again: Tap the smallest figurine, tap the second smallest one, tap the bar top between them, "one of year". Tap the smallest figurine, tap the third smallest figurine, draw a curved line between them on the bar top, tap the imaginary line, "two of year".

[scatteredstars]

"...the distance between them, in time? Why would that -- oh! Naturally-grown biomorphs, of course. The years are age?"

This is followed by a thoughtful look at the kobold.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold understood nearly none of the words, there, but it's clear enough from Tyche's tone that ze's got the idea.

At the look, she sets her own figurine in front of a similarly-sized one - the ninth kobold in the row, just shy of the midway point between egg and adult. She then sets the spear holders up again behind the fourth and fifth kobolds, and counts out the years between the spear figurine and her own. "Four of year, tribe do of see of one of thing of elf."