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[lurkingkobold]

The kobold sits at Miles' kitchen table, working. A spool of twine she found someplace sits just at the edge of easy reach, with her knife beside it; she's taken several lengths of twine from it already, and added a variety of knots to them and sometimes tied them to each other, and laid them out carefully.

The twine is just twine, and the knots are just knots; there aren't any words encoded in them for an outsider to see. But they're still a useful memory aide; six months ago the kobold used a single knotted rope much like these to remember which medicinal plants she needed to look for in her foraging, with each knot representing a plant. Today, she's thinking about a post for the forum - an overview of the various kinds of people who post there, and some thoughts on how to recognize people as people, and how it is and isn't okay to treat people, and what kinds of help might be available if someone's world isn't meeting those standards.

It's a lot to think about; she fully expects to still be at it when Miles gets home.

Comments

[lurkingkobold]

Nod. "I haven't posted about it, yet, but I bet there are people from the forum who would help."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah." He smiles slightly.

[lurkingkobold]

Hug.

Next knot, two to go:

"I worked things out with Anda and Linsa, more or less. They told their chief about the forum, and I went with them to do that. I told them we might be able to help with their world - this was before I realized how much trouble the spiders' world was going to be - so they might be in touch about that. I did make sure they know that we've got other worlds to help, and they might need to wait sometimes."

[thisvorlunatic]

Friends like this are a blessing.

"From what I remember, their world sounds like it could use the help."

[lurkingkobold]

Nod.

"I didn't find out much more about that than what's on the forum, but, yeah, it seems like it. They just told their chief yesterday, though, and it seemed like he was going to need some time to get used to the idea of other worlds existing, so we've got a little time before they ask for anything, I expect."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles nods.

"Okay. What else?"

[lurkingkobold]

"Nicer news: Cordelia got me some cloaks to cast on, so we have invisibility cloaks now. They're pretty simple, but I expect they'll come in handy, or we can trade them. I've made about ten so far."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Fun," is Miles's comment on invisibility cloaks.

[lurkingkobold]

Grin.

"And last - you know that thread where Measure Twice was drawing pictures of people? They started talking, some, and their world doesn't seem too awful, but their situation is pretty bad; I'd like to invite them to move here. They want to know what the schools are like here and if their parents can come too."

[thisvorlunatic]

"The schools here are acceptable by most standards. It might take a bit of trickery to get them enrolled in one - they're human, right? - but I'm sure Mother can come up with something."

[lurkingkobold]

She nods. "I'm pretty sure they're human, yeah. It won't be a problem if they don't want to go to school, right?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"If they don't want to school there's no reason they have to. The law around here is that education has to be provided to everyone, not that they have to take it if they don't want it."

[lurkingkobold]

"Good." Miles may notice that she's rather emphatic about this, as if someone has recently and annoyingly disagreed with her on the topic.

Her rope is out of knots: "That's all I have notes on, there's other stuff that's happened on the forum that I don't know anything special about. I have been working on this," she gestures to the table.

[thisvorlunatic]

"And 'this' is...? Your notes format is interesting but not very readable."

[lurkingkobold]

"It's some ideas for a forum post about how to tell if someone is a person and what that means about how it's okay to treat them, I hope it will help us find some of these problems sooner. ...is there a better way for me to make notes? I still can't write."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Voice recordings?"

[lurkingkobold]

"Maybe. Part of how this helps is by letting me see everything at once, though."

[thisvorlunatic]

"You can dictate notes to a comconsole and have it turn them into text, it's not just the forum that does that kind of thing. Standard on almost any device with both input modes, in this world. Does that sound like more of an improvement?"

[lurkingkobold]

"That sounds like it might work," she grins. "Good thing I've still been working on learning English."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah, that'll be a help."