A year later Kreet had settled into her life with the old monk rather well. Visitors were few, and when she was able to greet them in the Common tongue, they usually had no problem with her. For his part, Ka’Plo was enjoying every day with her. In his time teaching Kreet how to speak in the Common tongue, he was constantly learning more about her life. Yet every day her memories became fuzzier, so his copious notes were dwindling. He began to work on his Kobold Compilation in earnest, knowing that he would be very lucky indeed if he were able to complete the massive multi-volume set before his life was over.

For the most, part his visitors were either members of his sect, sent to check up on him, or the local farmer who delivered their groceries. Technically, the shack belonged to the farmer, but he and his family had known Ka’Plo for years and seemed sincerely happy to help the old man. They had a daughter who came over frequently to play with Kreet, and the kobold learned a lot about human socialization from the time she spent playing with the girl. Of course, initially, the family was none too keen on the relationship, but as time passed they even accepted Kreet into their own home on occasions for sleepovers.

When she did so, Kreet made sure to be on her best behavior at all times. She dressed appropriately, made sure to keep her body covered at all times, and ate with as much dignity as a kobold could muster sitting at a table. Fortunately, the farmer’s family were a friendly lot and she didn’t suffer from the stigma of being a kobold in a human world when at home or at the farmer’s house. Her infrequent trips into town, however, were a different matter altogether. Eventually she refused to go at all unless Ka’Plo really insisted, and those were generally trips to the shop where she was able to help the old man choose items that she would need for mending things around the shack.

While her recollection of her family might be fading, the pain of their loss was ever sharp in her memory. Whenever she would see an Adventurer in town or wandering the paths beyond the wood around her cabin, her eyes would take on a red hue, and she would not speak until he or she was out of sight.

“They’re not all bad, Kreet. They’re just out in the world, trying to make a way for themselves like everyone else you know,” Ka’Plo said at the dinner table one summer evening while he picked his teeth over yet another delicious meal Kreet had made. She had, in fact, become quite a good cook.

“They make their way in the world by killing others. I wish they would all just die,” she said spitefully glancing towards the window where she had seen a small band on the road a mile or so in the distance earlier.

“That is not the way of Pelor that you were taught Kreet,” he said to her with disapproval.

“No sir. I am sorry for my transgression,” she responded as if by rote. Though she saw the wisdom in the moral teachings that Ka’Plo had taught her, she also recognized that she was not truly a child of the light. A kobold is a child of the dark and the underworld, and she always felt like somewhere, somehow, she was betraying her kind. Not that she wanted to worship Nerull by any means, she loved the old man and sincerely loved his religion. But old associations are hard to break. Her clan had not worshiped Nerull either, of course. They hadn’t known what worship even meant.

That evening, Kreet and Ka’Plo sat on the small porch as the evening dimmed. She removed the odd mechanism she had designed for her eyes now that the sun had set and she could see normally again.

“Ka’Plo,” she started, taking up her knitting again. “Do you think I will ever meet another kobold?”

“That’s hard to say, Kreet. Your kind are rare around here, and they don’t live above ground. Most that are caught are put to work as slaves in the mines. Do you miss them?”

Kreet sighed, mimicking human expression. “I… I don’t know anymore. I’ve been around Big People too long. But, someday, I’ll mature. I would like to survive to raise my own clutch.”

“My! Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself young one? By my understanding you’ve a good number of years yet before you’ve reached the egg-laying age!”

“I know,” she said, turning back to her work. Minutes later, she resumed the conversation. Long stretches of silence were common between them, and she liked this time with him. “But I can’t lay eggs without a mate, you know. I’m not a chicken.”

The old man stood up and held his hands out to her. She set aside her needlework and happily accepted this embrace. Even though the farmer’s family and the other monks were friendly enough towards her, she couldn’t help but notice that they never touched her if they could avoid it. Only the old man treated her as a true equal, and she had loved him for that.

“No, you’re no chicken, Kreet. I’m not feeling well though. I’m going to go to bed early today. Would you mind cleaning up for me?”

“Certainly sir,” she said, and she watched him open the rickety door for the last time. In the morning he was dead, and Kreet was alone again.

The morning was bright to her eyes, but not intolerable. Ka’Plo said the sun was behind the clouds, and so she was spared the blinding, direct sunlight. Still, she asked him for a bit of thin cloth that she happily took and fashioned a sort of blindfold that she wore the rest of the day, – that still allowed her to see without hurting her eyes.

“You’re very good with those hands of yours, Kreet!”

“Do you think so? I’m not as good as my mother was, but she did show me how to do things. I could fix your covering if you want me to,” she said as they packed up and began to resume their journey.

“When we get home,” he said, “that would be wonderful! I am a poor man, Kreet. You should know that. But I have a modest cabin in some woods not too far away. We should get there by noon.”

They started walking down the road, but Kreet began to find it hard to keep up with Ka’Plo’s stride. When he asked her if she would like to ride on his shoulders, she practically beamed with joy.

“Kreet, you should tell me when something’s bothering you! I’ve tired you out trying to keep up with me, haven’t I?”

“No!” she shouted, trying to climb up his legs, belying her protests. “I’m not tired! I can keep up with you fine!” she said, her muscles protesting. “But if you want me to ride on your shoulders, I will not mind.”

“Here,” he said, squatting down so she could climb up. “Hop aboard, Kreet.”

They passed a few travelers on the way, and Kreet was deathly afraid they would see her and kill her – but in fact they just gave her an odd look and continued on.

“Kreet, you should learn some of our words, don’t you think? Can you say this?” “See if you can say ‘hello’”

It took some repetition, but before long she was greeting the other travelers with a hearty “Hello, Sir, or Hellow, Ma’am!”.  However, Ka’Plo had to explain the difference between “Sir” and “Ma’am” a few times.

“Don’t be silly, Ka’Plo. Of course I know the difference between male and female. But it’s easier to tell in a clan. You know everybody. You Big People are so wrapped up in clothes there’s no way to tell!”

“Well, usually our women have longer hair, though that’s not always true either. Only the men have beards too, so that’s another way to tell.”

“The elves don’t have beards,” Kreet stated, rather proud of her knowledge she’d learned at her father’s knee.

“That is true. Also, when they talk, women’s voices are higher pitched. Breasts are another difference.”

“What are breasts?”

Ka’Plo laughed. He’d finally explained laughter to her some time earlier. Then he held his hands under his chest. “These things. Women have them. Men don’t.”

Kreet scratched her head, but accepted it. When the next travelers passed, she spotted them.

“The one on the left is a woman, isn’t she? She has breasts!”

“Yes, that’s a woman alright.”

Kreet looked down at herself. “I don’t have breasts.”

Ka’Plo sighed. “No Kreet. Kobolds don’t have breasts. They’re for ‘nursing’, and your kind doesn’t ‘nurse’.”

“Nursing?” Kreet said the unfamiliar word, and Ka’Plo explained as best he could in a language that had few words for the subject.

Finally, they turned off the road, onto a small path and into some woods where Ka’Plo’s cabin stood decrepit but serviceable.

“I wish I had breasts,” Kreet said, climbing down from Ka’Plo’s shoulders.

“Kreet, even if your kind had them, you would be too young anyway. And there’s no good in wishing for something you can’t have. Now, let me show you around.”

Kreet understood the wisdom of his words. She would never be Big. She would always have a tail. She would always have a snout. Her scales would never be skin. She would never have a beard. She would never have breasts. She would never have a clan. She would never fit in.

———————–

Ka’Plo didn’t fully understand why Kreet looked so sad when he showed her the little cabin, but he knew she’d been through a lot. After she’d been introduced to the cat and the little outhouse behind the one-room shack, he left her alone in a corner to cry a little while he busied himself getting some food together for them. 

He looked at her occasionally while he cooked. Most people would see a little monster at best – all fangs, claws, scales and tail. But he had spent years studying her kind. He’d even adopted another many years ago, though that hadn’t ended up well; for him or the ‘bold. And now he’d killed the last of the kobolds in the caverns too. True, he hadn’t literally killed them, but he might as well have. In his studies he had become a local expert and had mapped most of the major passages of the caverns here, primarily looking for kobolds. They were elusive enough creatures, but every time some group of Adventurers would go into the caverns and run across a clan he would learn more about them by careful examination of the carcasses left behind.

Yet he was poor. No matter his expertise in the little dragonlings, there simply was no wealth to be had in being a kobold scholar. This last band had needed a guide, he had needed their coin, so he had agreed – and now regretted that decision with every fiber of his being. There had been only one kobold clan left in the caverns. He could not have imagined that this group would actually find them! But find them they had, and they had done what everyone before them had done. Mass slaughter. They had cut the angry little lizards down without hesitation. They had to have some reason for all that armor and weaponry of course, and slaying kobolds had become that reason far too quickly.

Despite this slaughter, a miracle had happened. This one little kobold had survived. She would be his life, he swore. He would do anything he could to keep her alive. When he had slightly ‘revised’ the Adventurer’s map after the slaughter, he slid it back into their pack with a glad heart. They would never emerge from the caverns again. It was inadequate retribution for what they’d done to Kreet’s family, but it would have to do.

Kreet slept for a long time. It had been a long since last she’d slept. She vaguely wondered why her mother hadn’t woken her by now, but the rocking of her bed was too soothing, so she remained sleeping.

But then the rocking stopped, and she opened her eyes., Then she remembered her circumstances, and began to cry quietly.

“Kreet? Are you awake?”

“I am awake, Ka’Plo. I am sad.”

“I know Kreet. I’m going to take the cover off your cage. It’s night now, and we’re outside.”

The darkness was lifted, but the light wasn’t too bright now. Kreet looked at the man she knew as Ka’Plo. He wore plain pale cloth that was wrapped with a similarly colored belt. He looked nothing like the other Adventurers she had seen.

“I have to pee,” she said to him.

“That may be a problem, Kreet. I’ll need to let you out of your cage. Will you run away if I let you out?”

Kreet looked around her. They were on a hill beside a large boulder. There were woods not far away, and a road ran by them in front of the woods. She considered if she should run away.

“No. I have nowhere to go. You haven’t hurt me yet. I’ll stay with you.”

“Okay, Kreet. I don’t want to keep you as a prisoner, nor as a pet. If you don’t want to stay with me, you don’t have to. But you will probably die if you leave me, Kreet. I don’t want you to die, and I don’t think you do either. So please, don’t run away.”

“I will run away if I want to, Ka’Plo. But I don’t want to now. I want to pee.”

He laughed at her again. “Okay Kreet. You go do your business and come back when you’re done. I’m tired though, and need to sleep soon.”

The door of the cage lifted and she looked around, then up at Ka’Plo. She noticed then that he had white hair, both in his beard and on his head. “You’re old,” she said, then looked around for an appropriate place.

“Yes, Kreet. I’m old. Does that bother you?”

Kreet found a suitable place nearby and relieved herself. “Yes. You are easy to kill. If someone wants to kill Kreet, you won’t stop them.”

“Fair enough,” he said, turning away. “But I will try not to let that happen. Also, you really shouldn’t pee in front of other people, Kreet.”

“No,” she agreed. “It is a vulnerable position. But you are my friend, right? You won’t kill me, so it’s okay.”

“I suppose so,” Ka’Plo said as she finished and stepped back into the cage.

“Kreet, you don’t have to go back in the cage.”

“No? Where should I go?”

“I meant what I said before, Kreet. You can leave, if you want. I’m hoping you won’t want to leave, but you can. I can’t be guarding you day and night.”

“I don’t want to leave. But where should I go if not back in the cage?”

“Well, anywhere you want, really. Are you hungry?”

At this Kreet’s eyes lit up – quite literally – in the dark.

“Food! Do you have food? I am very hungry!”

“Sure,” said the man, pulling some things out of his pack. “Here, I’ve got a lot of jerky, and I picked some mushrooms and moss while you were sleeping. When we get back to my home tomorrow, I have much more.”

Kreet snatched up the food eagerly. She gobbled the moss instantly, though it wasn’t the sweet kind she liked best. The mushrooms, she picked through.

“You pick bad mushrooms, Ka’Plo; some of these would kill me. But it’s okay – I know the good kind from the bad kind.”

“I’m sorry, Kreet. I know kobolds, but I don’t know mushrooms, I’m afraid. Would it be okay if I light a fire? I’d like to make some soup.”

Kreet looked at the man’s eyes. “A small fire, right? I don’t like big fires.”

“A small fire, I promise,” he assured her, and set to work. Kreet nibbled some more mushroom and then crept up behind the man. She watched him work his flint until he managed to light some dry grass, then he stacked on some small sticks until they caught as well.

“You are a mage,” she said flatly.

The man coughed again, then said, “No Kreet. I’m no mage. I just know how to make fire. This kind of stone makes the sparks, see? Then I just make the sparks go into a little dry grass.”

“My father was a mage. He could make fire. Sometimes,” she said, watching the flickering flames as if entranced.

“Did he use stones like these?”

“No. He used a special stick. But it took longer. Big People do everything better.”

“I doubt that, Kreet.”

Later on, when the soup was ready, the man offered her some.

“Be careful, it’s very hot. Just sip it, like this…”

Kreet took the perfectly shaped bowl carefully, marveling at it’s craftsmanship.

“OW!” Kreet cried, unable to duplicate the sipping that the Big Person had done.

“Oh, I’m sorry Kreet! Just wait till it cools down.”

“My tongue hurts,” the little kobold cried.

“Here, have some cool water,” he said, offering her a cup. “There, does that help?”

Kreet nodded. But a few minutes later she was fine and tried the soup again. The taste was very strange, but also very good. Finally, when she’d had enough, she sat back against the rock they had sheltered by.

“What are those? Are they stars?” she asked while Ka’Plo doused the fire.

“Oh yes, they are! Do you know about stars?”

“My brothers used to tell me about them. They’re beautiful sparklies!”

Ka’plo laid out his bedroll and crawled inside while Kreet watched.

“You will sleep in there?” she asked, curious.

“I will. It gets cold outside at night. I have an extra blanket if you need one.”

Kreet crawled under the bedroll with the man. “I don’t need one. You are warm enough.”

The man seemed startled, but then carefully put his arm around her. Soon he was sleeping. She was surprised how much his snoring sounded like her clan’s. She wasn’t sleepy herself, yet she was very warm and comfortable. She decided against killing Ka’Plo in his sleep after all. He was a good man, and, importantly, he wasn’t one of the murderous Adventurers that killed her clutch. Instead she wriggled all the way under the blanket with just her snout pointing out, and eventually, she went to sleep too.

She had a brief moment of panic when the man turned over in the middle of the night. She was afraid that he might crush her, but he shifted to make room for her, and she got her tail out from underneath him, finally managing to go back to sleep.

Another voice came down the passage, and – for a moment – she saw one of the other Adventurers, his armored plate gleaming in his own torchlight.  The Big Person holding her responded in that too-loud tongue of theirs, but with anger clearly in his voice. The other seemed to shrug, said something back in an offended tone, and returned the way he had come.

“Don’t worry little one. I’m not going to hurt you. I am returning to my home and I’m going to take you with me. I’m going to have to cover your cage though; the sunlight would hurt your eyes. But I’ll be right here.”

Kreet was too young to be anything but naive, and she had no experience with anything that could talk to her except other kobolds, and they had always been trustworthy. So she didn’t hesitate to talk back to the man.

“You can talk to Kreet?”

“Oh! So you can talk?” “Yes little one, I can talk to you.”

“You killed my clutch? All dead?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Your family is gone, so you might as well come with me, Kreet.”

“Why don’t you kill me?” she wondered sincerely as a cloth was placed over the cage and she was rocked back and forth as the man walked out of her caverns.

“Why should I kill you, little one? Would you kill me if you could?”

Kreet was puzzled. “Yes. But I can’t. I am trapped in here.”

“No, you can’t. But I don’t want to kill you, little one.”

“Why not? You killed my clutch.”

“That was not me. The other people I was with did that. I tried to stop them, but they have Gold Fever. I will not continue with them. I will go back to my home instead. Would you like to live with me? I would like to have someone to talk to.”

Once again Kreet didn’t understand. His words were clear enough, but his meaning was beyond her. “Would I like to live with you? Kreet doesn’t understand. Kreet would like to live with her clutch, but they are dead. Kreet wouldn’t like to live anywhere now.”

“Oh, I think you would. You might even enjoy it.”

“Will there be other kobolds?” she asked hopefully, knowing that she shouldn’t think such things. Hope was not a survival factor in her life, but she was too young to have it completely removed from her psyche.

“No, Kreet. Only me and a cat.”

Kreet felt her heart sink. “Then I wouldn’t like to live there,” she said simply.

Though the cloth over her cage was dark, she could still see the light getting brighter.  Then, soon, she was outside. The sounds were different. The smells were different. She’d heard of the outside before of course. But she’d never been there before.

“Are we outside?”

“Yes Kreet. Are you okay?” said the Big Person.

“My eyes hurt. It is too much light.”

“I know. I’m sorry Kreet. I’d let you go back into the caves, but there are no more kobolds there. I’ve been searching for your clan in there for a year or more. Yours was the last clan left. You’d starve or worse without them. Please accept my hospitality, Kreet. I would like to be your friend.”

“You are Big People. Big People can’t be friends to kobolds. I think you might be crazy.”

The Big Person made a weird noise. Something like coughing. But then it talked again. “I think you are probably right, Kreet. Please, I would like you to call me by my name. Could you do that for me?”

Kreet shrugged in an oddly human way, though her captor couldn’t see her. “Sure! What is your name?”

The Big Person responded with an odd noise. Though Kreet couldn’t properly form the word, she did her best given her vocabulary to repeat the sound he had made.

“Ka’Plo?”

“Yes! That is very close! Call me Ka’Plo, Kreet. Maybe we will be friends, you and me?”

“Ka’Plo is crazy. But Kreet has no choice. I will be your friend if I can’t kill you.”

“Can you kill me?” Ka’Plo asked while cage swung to his walking rhythm.

Kreet laid down and wrapped her tail around one of the bars for support. “No. I can’t kill you. I’ll be your friend.”

Then she went to sleep.

They
found 5 gold pieces, and one of them said he had leveled up. That was the sum
total of what the Adventurers had managed to gain by slaughtering
Kreet’s entire family. As the youngest member of her clutch, she was
still hiding in the little cubby high above watching the torch bob
back down the passage deeper into the tunnels that were all she
knew of life. Of course, they had expected this would happen eventually.
The life of a kobold was notoriously short and even at her young age
she didn’t really hate the people that regularly came venturing down
into her home.

Usually her family just hid in one of the myriad
tunnels that branched off of the main paths. Before her own family was
wiped out she had seen four other clutches massacred and she’d learned
that was just the way of her kind – oh, they fought back. They always
fought back. She’d heard of other races that had no concept of
ownership, but kobolds were certainly not one of those races! When a Big Person, or more often, Big Persons found the home of a clan
of kobolds, the kobolds would attack without reservation until the last
one was dead. She knew that the top-dwellers considered them evil
because of that.

It was true there was no negotiating with a clan. There was only fight, kill or die. Later she would learn that
there were alternatives, but no one she had met in her short life
understood that. Now they were all dead, and the little box that had held
her family’s five gold pieces lay smashed into splinters, stained red
with the blood of her father. She wept silently, waiting for the torch
light to fade completely from view before she ventured out into the
little space that she had called home. She wasn’t worried about
visibility. She could see in pitch darkness due to the unique structure
of her eyes. But even the flicker from a distant torch would reveal more
than she really wanted to see of what remained of her family. Her
dark-vision would be blessedly monochromatic.

A sniffle escaped
her snout, unbidden. It wasn’t much. Just the quietest of sniffles. But
apparently it was enough. One of the Adventurers was still
nearby and heard it. He had been sitting silently just beyond her
line of sight in the darkness. He lit a torch and she tried to shrink back
again, eyes wide with fear. She knew enough about Adventurers to know
they never stopped investigating till their curiosity was sated. She was
doomed.

The problem with kobolds was not a lack of bravery nor a
lack of intelligence, really. No, the problem with kobolds was a lack of
size, strength and technology. Any average Big Person could kill an
entire clutch if equipped with even modest armor and a steel blade. It
didn’t help that the kobold would be pounding on his knees with her  fists or trying to scale his legs to attack more vital bits. Once a
kobold saw red, they would not relent until they were dead – which didn’t
take very long usually. On the rare occasions that a group of kobolds
actually gained enough technology to equip themselves with more than
small sticks and wear anything more substantial than thin cloth, they
could be formidable. But Kreet didn’t live in those
circumstances. She was just one of a clan of kobolds living in an
obscure network of caves in an even more obscure country above.

Security
through obscurity had worked fairly well until now. But she heard the
man below searching for her and she doubted she would see much security once she lost her obscurity. She was beginning to see
red – then a head came into view and she knew her time was up. She didn’t
hesitate. It was in her blood. She attacked.

But, instead of
spending her last seconds scratching at the hair of her fated doom, she
found herself instead inside a cage. She rattled the bars and screamed; but the
Big Person who held the cage just looked at her.

At first she was
happy to see he wasn’t wearing any metal. If she could get free of this
cage, she very likely would be able to actually scratch him enough to
make him bleed – and that would be a pretty significant victory,
especially for such a young kobold.

“Calm down, little one,” the
Big Person said in her language. This startled her. She had never heard a
Big Person speak in the kobold tongue before. She’d never even heard tales of
a Big Person that could talk properly. She looked at the huge head peering into her cage and cocked her head to one side.
The red left her vision.