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

[calescent]

"I don't mind other speaking kobolds knowing that Welce exists. But again, if there's going to be more of you around, it gets inconvenient that you don't have names."

[lurkingkobold]

...the other Speakers should definitely not come here, that would be a disaster waiting to happen. She can arrange for Kiri to meet them in a neutral place in her world, if that turns out to be a thing everyone wants, but otherwise no.

She will think about the name thing, though, anyway.

[calescent]

"As you like. Even just you and the kid, if somebody says 'kobold' and you both think it means you... I mean, some humans just have the same name, that happens, so with only two it's not competely impossible, but it'd come up."

[lurkingkobold]

It's generally pretty obvious from body language who someone's trying to interact with even without words at all, in he kobold's experience. But yeah, there's definitely things they'd be handy for. Writing, for an obvious example.

Hmmmmm.

[calescent]

"Human names are usually just pretty sounds that used to mean something in old languages, but sometimes they directly mean things. Like, I know someone named Patience, after a blessing. Which didn't turn out to be one of her birth blessings."

[lurkingkobold]

Mmhmm.

Hmm.


For herself - Koso, from the animalperson word kosoen, which means something like 'non-central example' or 'a thing that is unusually like a different sort of thing'. Describes her well enough, and she does like the sound.

[calescent]

"Koso's a cute name."

[liakoura]

"Is this what it's like for random people who hear you talking to me all the time?"

[calescent]

"Sorry, Aleko. The kobold has named herself Koso, which is basically short for 'weird example', like an extraordinary blessing or that fellow at the fish place who swears he's coru and looks more torz than you and Patience put together? And she has agreed to have a name because otherwise it'll be confusing when there's a little tiny kobold around her a lot. We think the little tiny kobold might pick up Welchin just from being around it a lot."

[liakoura]

"Okay. What about the baby?"

[lurkingkobold]

Shrug. "Will choose for self. Or, if problem, choose then."

[calescent]

"How old do you think they'll have to be to pick something?"

[lurkingkobold]

Well, she hasn't seen a little kobold speak before, but in general they definitely have opinions on things by two or three years old, so around then? They might change their mind a couple times but that seems better than somebody picking for them.

[calescent]

"Humans are usually named as soon as we're born," Kiri says. "But if they're two or three when they pick something we can probably get by calling them 'the baby' for that long."

[lurkingkobold]

She makes a face at the bit about naming newborns, but offers "If problem - other language word for baby is 'imen'."

[calescent]

"That sounds kind of namelike."

[liakoura]

"Hey, Imen," says Aleko to the egg. "Can I pat the egg, is that okay?"

[lurkingkobold]

She nods. "Gentle - if noise, stop."

[liakoura]

Pat, pat.

[lurkingkobold]

...peep!

[liakoura]

That was a noise. No more pat.

[lurkingkobold]

The kobold giggles. "Hatch soon, some days."

[calescent]

"What is kobold imprinting like? Humans basically don't do that."

[lurkingkobold]

It's not really like anything, by itself. It's just that whoever is right there when a baby kobold hatches is their parent, according to them, and they'll be very upset if they can't be with that person regularly - usually they don't want to be away from them at all for the first season or so. And every once in a while an egg will hatch without someone right there, and that causes some problems if the hatchling imprints on something that's not a person.

[liakoura]

"I wonder if it's gonna be a girl or a boy. Imen sounds like could be either, that's convenient."