glowfic | One Curious Kobold

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One Curious Kobold

It's winter, and all is well with the tribe. Their new magic, an ability to make portals from one place to another, which was found by one of their members during the early-summer trip to meet with the other tribes in the area, let them both build up a decadent food stockpile and move to a much deeper part of the cave system without the worry of being unable to find their way back out. No-one has had to go hungry, and even the fiercest ice storm doesn't reach them; they are as content as kobolds can be.

Well, aside from their new mage, that is. She's bored, and curious. Making portals to known places is straightforward enough, with the magic she found, but that's far from the limit of what it can do... so one day, she slips away, portals off to a different cave system - one can't be too careful, after all - and experiments.

Temperature roughly the same... gravity roughly the same... air the same, not into stone or underwater or in a volcano or on top of a mountain... but, instead of patterning it after a place she knows, what happens if she only specifies those things, and lets the innate patterns of the spot she's casting on do the rest? Particularly this one part, which seems to specify the world...

She finishes the spell, and hesitates for just a moment before activating it.

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He smiles slightly in acknowledgment of her sympathy, then continues with the storytelling.

As it turns out, she hasn't seen the worst of it yet.

The boss's son grows up amid a society that is not just at war, but gleefully so. Their ceremonies and entertainment and even their magic all seem to revolve around torturing and sometimes eating their war prisoners. The leader bullies his child into participating, but even from a young age he is reluctant, and his reluctance only grows as he gets older. Once he sneaks off to a deserted part of the mountain to cry tiny stone tears. His father finds him at it, flies into a rage, and attacks him.

The kobold is, by this point, scrunched down into a little ball with her arms wrapped around her legs and her nose buried in her hands. Oh no, oh no, oh no.

After that incident, the leader's child makes more of an effort to conform, but he clearly doesn't find the same joy in this life that his peers do. He is a constant disappointment to his father, who expresses his dissatisfaction with violence.

And: one day the leader catches his (now fully-grown) son self-injuring, and this is apparently the last straw, because he is dragged to the remotest cave in the mountain and imprisoned there after extensive physical punishment.

And: soon afterward, the Endarkened capture a unicorn, breaking her horn in the process. They taunt her for a while, perhaps telling her what sorts of horrible things they expect to do to her, and then their leader commands them to drag her to the remotest cave and throw her in with his son. Perhaps he thinks the pair of them will manage to kill each other.

That is not what happens.

The unicorn is afraid and uncomfortable; the captive Endarkened is likewise. But they talk a little, and become less afraid and less uncomfortable. And then the Endarkened touches the unicorn's broken horn, and breaks their chains, and she carries him out of the mountain on her back - he is too weak to walk, but he knows the way. They have a tearful parting, far away from the mountain. And then the Endarkened wanders sadly for a bit, and regains his strength, and his shredded wing membranes grow back, and he flies away to the island.

And that is the end of the story and now the kobold may have many hugs and many scritches if she likes.

It takes a little bit for the kobold to uncurl, but, yes, many and many. Oh no. Oh dear. Oh no.

Many and many! So many scritches and so many hugs.

The Endarkened is... weirdly okay about this story; it obviously affected him emotionally to tell it, he always showed a little of whatever his little stone self was feeling, but now that the story is over he is pretty much fine again. Maybe it all happened a very long time ago, or maybe he's exceptionally resilient by nature, or maybe his exceptionally awful childhood set a very high bar for how bad things have to get before he starts to be seriously upset about them.

Well, that's probably better than the alternative, anyway.

The kobold eventually calms back down, and seems thoughtful.

Snuggle, snuggle. Curious noise.

Hm, how to explain...

Let's see. Kobold figurine here, Endarkened figurine there, unshaped stone as the third point of an equilateral triangle with them. Endarkened figurine approaches kobold figurine, 'aaaaah'; she shakes her head with a frustrated little huff and puts it back at its starting point. Endarkened figurine approaches rock, she makes a hopeful little 'hmm?' noise and looks to see what he thinks of that.

Edited 2015-10-16 13:44 (UTC)

Hmm...

He frowns thoughtfully at the figurines and tries to think of a way to communicate the complications.

She gets out her loop of twine and fiddles with it contemplatively while he thinks.

Well, all right, here's one thing:

Endarkened figurine approaches unicorn figurine, 'aaa', unicorn stabs Endarkened, Endarkened dies.

Endarkened figurine approaches unicorn-ally figurine, 'aaa', both flee.

Endarkened figurine approaches unshaped rock... helpless shrug?

That's probably a solvable problem! She de-laps and uses her twine loop to retrieve a handful of extra twine loops, which she then casts on. At the third one, she makes a pleased sound, and holds it up to show the Endarkened the yellow sky and tiny bright sun of an obviously different world.

Ooh! Nod nod, smile, that seems much likelier to end well.

But... hm, thoughtful frown, there's another complication that he can't figure out how to communicate.

She keeps enspelling twine loops while she waits for him to work it out - if he does want to go, she'll need to know what kind of world he wants her to look for, and having several examples to point to can only help with that.

After a few minutes, he settles on an idea that seems at least potentially effective.

So: here is a little group of unicorn-ally figurines, and here are a few figurines of a new kind of creature, rather larger than all the other kinds of person previously mentioned, with four legs and two wings and a long neck and long tail. The two groups meet. Everyone seems reasonably friendly. Then one of the large creatures and one of the unicorn-allies stare at each other, and snuggle up to one another, and now they are going about their lives together and seem to be the best of friends. He sketches out enough scenes to portray the fact that even on the rare occasions when they are apart, each can tell if the other encounters some sort of difficulty, and rushes to come help.

The large creatures as a group: 'dragon'. The unicorn-allies as a group: 'elf'. Unicorns as a group: 'unicorn'.

The specific dragon and elf who have become nearly inseparable: 'Dragonbond'.

That's kind of weird but also very cute; she nods and grins.

Right then. He takes his particular figurine back to the area of floor previously used to represent Sad Wandering Time, and wanders it sadly for a bit to establish the reference. Then he makes a little stone egg that hatches into a wee stone dragon, and the dragon grows up a little, and the sad wandering Endarkened encounters it, and they look in each other's eyes ('Dragonbond,' he reiterates) and snuggle for a bit and then fly off to the island together and settle in.

Aww.

She doesn't seem to think that this is a problem - she pulls a slightly larger loop of twine out of her twine-portal and flies the Endarkened figurine and the dragon figurine both through it to the unshaped rock; that's totally a thing that can happen.

Nod, smile. Good enough.

Pleased grin.

She pushes the pile of enspelled twine loops over to him, peering demonstratively through one first - does he see anything interesting in the collection so far?

He begins looking through them one by one, contemplating their various apparent properties.

A tentative voice calls out from the mouth of the cave.

That's alarming. The kobold is alarmed.

She moves next to the Endarkened, close enough to touch him in case she needs to teleport them away.

The Endarkened is not alarmed; he's curious.

He gets even more curious as the voice says more things.

("Um, hello. My name is Tenathayan. If there's anyone in there, I'm supposed to ask you to please not... leave... the world. And - oh - I'm supposed to tell you that all of the Endarkened died, and so did nearly all of the dragons. But I suppose if there is no one in there then I am standing here yelling into this cave for nothing. I'm sorry.")

The Endarkened not being alarmed is slightly reassuring, but only slightly; the kobold stays alert and waits to see how he's going to respond to this.

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