glowfic | One Curious Kobold

Makes sense. Kiri doesn't keep a lot of really simple books around on purpose, but she had some, previous generations of Ardelay children having accumulated them in the house and then not seen a reason to bring them along when they grew up and moved out.

The next town has some farms and some wilderness and some more farms between it and Chialto. The road is decent-quality the whole way except for a recently washed-out bit that gives them a jostling as they go over the best-hastily-repaired part. The trip takes eight hours; they pass road-branches to other, nearer towns, but it's the bigger, closely built settlements that really need the fire protection lest an entire market district go up in flames.

And here's the edge of town! Kiri tells Aleko to take them to the library; they wind through the streets. Humans buying things. Humans arguing. Human playing a musical instrument. Humans eating fried dough. Human getting fed up with their screaming children and smacking the eldest of the lot. Humans drawing well-water. Human chalking the day's prices on a slate sign. Human sitting on a roof painting the scene.

The screaming children get the kobold's attention immediately. She peeks out of the carriage, and then in quick succession she yelps, disappears, and is replaced by a very startled human child.

Kiri shrieks - too much too much so much everything, and it's inside her own head, not down to her own attentional pursuit of warmth, loud bright dizzy hot, she hasn't felt hot in nearly a decade -

It clears, there is a strange child in her range, Kiri stumbles out of the carriage while it's still moving - "'KO, STOP -"

Aleko halts the horses, bewildered.

The lady who hit her kid has picked up her littlest one and is now screaming louder than they ever did at the suddenly appearing kobold.

The kobold only distantly notices this. She's trying to put herself between the lady and the remaining kids - maybe not trying very hard, if the kids in question aren't cooperating - and looking like she'd very much like to get the little one away from her.

The other kids are hiding behind their mom, varying between "crying in fear" and "shoving the kobold away from them".

Kiri picks herself up off the ground. "Ko, can you get the kid ou-" The kid is already getting himself out. "There you go - stand back stand back -" Aleko runs interference. The kid rejoins his family.

"I am," Kiri tells this family, dusting herself off, "so sorry about that. Everybody, the show's over, I'll leave a statement with the Ardelay library later if you want an explanation, go back to whatever you were doing -" This is only moderately effective at clearing bystanders. She turns to the kobold. "That was such a bad idea." Then, more for the family and bystanders' benefit than the kobold's, "They were so surprised and afraid! You can't just move people unexpectedly like that, especially since they can't read your facial expressions and probably think you want to hurt them or something. There are other ways to practice."

The kobold glances toward Kiri when she begins speaking, and takes the one step necessary to bring her into mind-reading range, but doesn't otherwise take her eyes off the woman with the kids.

It is completely unsurprising to the kobold that people think there might be violence here: she is entirely willing to do violence, if that's what it will take stop that from happening again.

No, what she's surprised at is that Kiri seems to be okay with someone hitting a kid.

"You moved the kid into my range," Kiri says. "And you scared him. He is scared of you. We can talk about the rest of it later. Right now those kids are scared of you. They don't know who or what you are, they don't know what you're trying to do, and explaining now, after what you did, would make it worse. We can talk somewhere else later."

Actually, the second-littlest has stopped sniffling and looks kind of intrigued now, but not intrigued enough to stop hiding behind her mom. The others are still scared of the kobold.

The kobold relaxes, just slightly - mostly meaning that she stops looking like she's going to lunge forward at the first opportunity to grab the little one away from the woman - and thinks.

She doesn't have a lot of experience with abuse and its effects, and what she does have is almost all from her own perspective - she has to keep flinching away from thinking about details, or dragging herself back to thinking about the current situation when she doesn't manage to flinch away quite quick enough to avoid getting distracted by her own history.

Some tigerfolk are really awful.

The kids hiding behind their mom isn't actually proof that nothing's wrong there. Neither is them being afraid of the kobold. The kobold is exquisitely clear on both of those points, having done the equivalent of both of those things herself. The second-littlest one's response suggests that she's right about the older ones being traumatized rather than actually comfortable there. And all these other humans around and none of them reacted? The kids haven't quietly gone and found other parents, or other tribes? This lady has had how many eggs past the first one, and been allowed to hatch them herself? Kiri, you have bigger problems here than things catching on fire sometimes, or not being able to move food around as quickly as you'd like.

...these aren't kobold kids, though. She can't bring them home. Finding one of the more progressive tigerfolk tribes to take them might be a step up, or it might not, and anyway she doesn't actually know where any of those are right now. (She could put the kids in a cave somewhere and bring them food while she looked. She could do that. But it's not a very good idea; going from bad to worse like that would hurt them even if better came afterward, and she doesn't know enough about how even really good tigerfolk would handle the situation to be sure that it would be better.) She is probably limited to local resources in solving this problem, whatever those are. Or whatever they aren't, most likely, but she should at least find out first.

If they leave, will Kiri be able to find these humans again later?

Kiri sighs. "I'm so sorry about all this," she repeats to the lady. "If you'll give me your name I can send you some books for the kids as an apology."

The lady gives her name. Kiri writes it down. Will that satisfy the kobold?

It will do. The kobold stands, stiffly, steps back out of Kiri's range, and disappears back to the carriage.

Kiri gets back in the carriage too. There's a few too many people on the road for them to drive on. Now it is very cold there; not enough to hurt anybody, but enough to make them not want to stand there in their current outfits. They get out of the way. Aleko drives.

"Where to start," sighs Kiri. "First of all, now everybody who was there has seen you, so that's a little more complicated than I was expecting, and also I think I'm a mage now."

The kobold was already glowering; this doesn't improve her mood.

Being seen was entirely acceptable, in her opinion, to stop an assault.

Kiri being a mage is unfortunate, but so long as they don't try to cast anything it won't hurt them.

That was clearly not just a fluke, so she doesn't expect a good answer to this question, but how is child abuse dealt with here?

"This is - very complicated. Will you let me explain even if I say things that sound like it is time for explanations to stop and running around taking people's children to start?"

It would take something very alarming indeed for that to be the best option, given the kobold doesn't have anyplace to put abused human children.

"Okay, that'll have to do. So. First of all, humans don't lay eggs." ("Egg" has been covered as part of a breakfast vocabulary lesson, but still.) "There is no way to just take someone's egg; it's a baby or it's literally inside someone, nothing in between. Secondly, humans live in large groups, but these groups are not like tribes. Most people in a town don't know each other. The group that is most like a tribe is a family. Usually that's two people who want to have children together, and those children." How's this settling so far?

It is more questionable to take an imprinted hatchling from their parent than to take an egg - particularly in the sense that the hatchling is a person and really ought to have some input into that decision, but won't be meaningfully able to for a few years - but still better than leaving them with someone who will hit them.

The other people in the town not being the kids' tribemates is no excuse whatsoever; the kobold isn't their tribemate, either.

"I'm getting to that. It's also relevant that humans are mammals - like, um, rabbits, probably tigerpeople - so it's hard to feed a baby unless you are personally that exact baby's mother. Because you'd have to find someone else who was giving milk right then." Sigh. "So, humans don't live in tribes. We live next to people we don't know. Total strangers. I know you are also a total stranger, but the thing about living like that is we need a lot of rules to make sure we can all live together. Rules against child abuse are some of those - but there are rules about how to enforce the rules."

Kobolds also give milk, and they live in much smaller groups and still do okay when someone turns out not to have any for their hatchling. Everyone knowing everyone else might help - maybe wet nursing isn't nearly so obvious of a concept if you don't have tribemates to think about - but this still seems to her like a problem that wouldn't be very hard to solve if it was something the humans considered important.

'Rule' is a new word - also 'enforce', and also 'abuse' but she's got that one figured out - but if her guess is even remotely in the right area (which it is)... what, is there a rule against standing up for someone? How does that even work, are all of these humans too traumatized to stand for what they want?

...she should see if she's in the right area, before she goes to far along that particular line of thought. But - shudder - something is definitely wrong, even if it's not exactly that. All those people, and none of them did anything. Kiri didn't even look. She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her nose in her hands.

"There are people who give milk for other people's children, but it's considered kind of personal and most people don't want to do it, and there might be something else going on because it's not as easy as you're thinking of it as being. But anyway. You have 'rule' about right, and 'enforce', and - it wouldn't be against any rules for you to tell someone that you don't think they should hit their children. To say it in words. But it is very, very against the rules for you to jump to taking the children away in that situation. There are people whose specialized job it is to know the rules and find out what's happening and put dangerous people somewhere they can't hurt anyone and you are not one of those people. I'm not one of those people. I could do some of it, but only because a lot of people know who I am and like me - if they don't like how I do it, I can't do it any more, I would be breaking rules and no one would let me."

Edited 2015-10-21 20:38 (UTC)

...okay, yes those particular kids clearly need someone to work with them on 'that is awful and you don't actually have to put up with it', and that's going to require getting them into a situation where that's, y'know, true, for long enough for them to work out that they can believe it. But in a sensible society? That doesn't even happen, because as soon as a parent starts being a pain to live with a kid can just leave, no specialized jobs necessary.

(Also, the bit where the kid she moved was able to go right back to their family? Not an accident. Removing someone from imminent danger of assault is a different thing from abducting them.)

Edited 2015-10-21 20:52 (UTC)

"I agree with you that the kids need to be able to leave whenever they want. But there are many, many people. Some people run places for kids who leave their families to go, but they're usually full and don't have enough people working there and sometimes the kids don't get along with each other. I give money to a shelter in Chialto every year, but there are so many. And there are worse parents than that one - and that is who the shelters have to be for because there is not enough room."

Well.

(Breathe, kobold.)

Well.

What do they need, exactly? Just space? That's an easy fix. People to work there might be a harder one. Food, other supplies, she can probably help with. Moving kids from one place to another so they can find situations they'll do okay in, definitely. She might not be able to fix everything, even with magic, even with more magic than she has now - there are so many humans - but she will do what she can.

"If you want to help expand that shelter so it can have five cave sections to separate fighting kids or something I will be all for it. There is a lot to do. There is no end to things to do. That is why it is so important to concentrate on the things that are most important and the things that will leave you able to do even more things. That's why I want to move stuff around. I have a lot of money, but the more I have the more I can spend on things like shelters and feeding hungry people and moving people to places where they will get along better with the other people and making sure everyone can learn to read and have somewhere to go in the rain. It's a little important if people in this town can get stuff from Chialto more easily, but mostly it will mean I can do more other stuff."

This is a deeply weird bit of cause and effect, but Kiri seems very sure it will work, and the kobold is willing to take their word for it.

She uncurls slightly, tense and hesitant, then thinks better of it and just teleports across the carriage to snuggle up beside the human.

Pet pet.

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