One Curious Kobold

[lurkingkobold]

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.

Comments

[lurkingkobold]

Grin, nod.

Hmm. More safety words, while she's thinking about that - "Wait, walk, run, sneak, hide, stay, quiet, listen, watch, come, path, trap, safe, trust, believe, tribemate, friend, enemy."

[calescent]

All of which Kiri translates.

Aleko or Jayce is going to come get her for dinner eventually and she shouldn't surprise them.

"...Kiri go," she points up, "Kiri come here, friend come here? Kobold wait, trust friend? No danger."

[lurkingkobold]

She's a little wary of this idea, but after a bit of consideration, she nods.

[calescent]

So Kiri goes up.

[liakoura]

And she comes down with company. He doesn't seem to mind being in her range at all. "Whoa," he says when he sees the kobold.

[lurkingkobold]

Yup, that's another human all right. She nods a greeting.

[calescent]

"Aleko," Kiri says, pointing at her brother. "...No, I don't think she has a name, or it hasn't occurred to her, but there's only one kobold around so 'the kobold' works at least for now. ...I'm not positive she's a girl but that's my impression, she hasn't been dwelling extensively on her gender."

Apparently Aleko doesn't talk too much when he can just let Kiri read his mind.

[lurkingkobold]

"Aleko," another nod.

She seems otherwise content to wait for the humans to finish their conversation.

[calescent]

"Yes, she does magic. We're working on it. Plan to haul us to Chialto and other cities with network libraries in them soon-ish with a very secret passenger. ...Gooood question. Uh, kobold: kobold food?"

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold steps into mind-reading range again.

Kobolds are pretty omnivorous; there's not a lot they don't eat. Her usual diet includes all the same general categories as a human's, plus bugs - her world has giant ones - and bones, and seems to be very light on processed food; it's not clear whether she's familiar with bread or not, for example.

Also, she can retrieve food via portal - she wouldn't want to go too long without at least being able to cook what she can get that way, but she wouldn't consider it any particular inconvenience to go a few days without even that.

[calescent]

"Okay, she'll eat baaasically whatever, maybe go light on anything that has gotten as processed as 'flour' in its history. And she can go home for groceries if she wants. I think the portal magic is basically free, she acts like it is. Exactly when we go will depend on the rest of this conversation, the vocabulary we've established can do a lot and she steps in range sometimes but it's still pretty hard to get anything complicated expressed precisely. But soon, possibly first thing tomorrow. Yes, thanks."

Sibling hug! And then Aleko leaves Kiri and the kobold alone.

[lurkingkobold]

That went well! The kobold is a bit less nervous with Aleko gone, but seems to be generally okay with him.

[calescent]

"Sleep, sun, go Chialto? Want?"

[lurkingkobold]

Sure, that sounds reasonable. She can stay for a few days.

...hm. Where does Kiri want her to go while they sleep? She can go - well, not home, she's clear on that, but back to her world anyway - but from her perspective that seems like a bit of an unnecessary risk, plus making it harder to coordinate leaving in the morning. On the other hand, she is a strange mage, and it would be entirely reasonable of them to not want to risk getting hexed, so she'll leave if they want her to.

[calescent]

"Stay," advises Kiri. "Come - quiet." And then she motions for the kobold to follow her up and out of the library.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold follows, quiet and alert.

[calescent]

They manage not to run into anyone.

This is a pretty large building. They go up stairs and down a hall and up some more stairs and Kiri shows the kobold a room. "Stay? Kiri go carry food here?"

[lurkingkobold]

Nod.

[calescent]

Kiri closes the door and goes.

She's back with a plate of miscellaneous food options for the kobold and one for herself.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold samples everything, and likes most of it, especially the things with more of a mix of flavors. She ends up eating about half of the offered food, and is both satisfied and appreciative.

[calescent]

Kiri eats in this room too and then takes the plates away and comes back. "Sleep now, no now?" she inquires.

[lurkingkobold]

She considers: It doesn't feel like night-time yet, to her, but she can probably at least nap; she does want to be fresh for the trip in the morning. She can certainly stay up a while longer if there's more planning to do, though.

[calescent]

Well, there's more things they could talk about, even if the plan for tomorrow's pretty straightforward. "Mage do move. Mage do...?" Anything else? Turning Kiri into a nationwide fire-suppression system isn't nothing but she'd be a little surprised if that were the only trick.

[lurkingkobold]

Teleportation is the only thing she can do right now; she's new to being a mage, and teleportation is a new kind of magic, so she's been too busy figuring out interesting things to do with it to learn other sorts of effects yet. There are plenty of things it's useful for, though - gathering without having to worry about carrying things home, especially heavy things like water, exploring without worrying about getting lost or trapped or running out of supplies, pit traps for hunting with that deposit their catch all in one convenient place, of course all sorts of safety spells, and so on. Her favorite one is the mini-portals, like the one she used earlier to get the dried berries; being able to access her tribe's stores from wherever she is is pretty excellent.

[calescent]

Kiri giggles. These are pretty clever applications given the starting context the kobold has to work with. Hmmm...

"Move big things?"