Two years later:

In a cave, a kobold, which is to say a small furry person with a stubby tapering tail and a doglike head with floppy ears. This particular one is alone, which is unusual for kobolds, and lying on her back peering through a portal embedded in a piece of twine, which is beyond merely unusual - she's one of only two people in her world to know portal-making and teleportation magic, and the only one to know it well enough to do it casually.

The other local tribes' mages aren't pleased with that small number, of course, and one of them was irritated enough at her refusal to teach it to attack her, which accounts for both the solitude and the viewing portal. After a while, she sighs, gives up on watching her chief try to convince the other mage's chief to keep them out of her tribe's campsite, and decides to look at something else for a while.

The way her magic works, every location has a kind of pattern, used when casting a spell to specify where the target is teleported to, or where the portal lets out; if she wants to cast a spell that teleports to a specific spot, she has to go to that spot first, and observe its pattern. But only part of the pattern is determined by the spot's place; other parts specify the physical attributes of the place - material content is the most interesting one, allowing her to teleport into an area without worrying about someone or something blocking the other end, but also temperature, light level, even the humidity of air or the saltiness or muddiness of water, and dozens more, specifying obvious or obscure or incomprehensible traits.

And then there's the interesting bit: a section of the pattern that holds the same, no matter where she goes or what she looks at. It obviously can change, like any other part of the pattern - she can put whatever she likes into that section of her spell, when she casts - but she has no way of knowing what that will do until she tries it.

She's been saving the experiment for a rainy day - sometime when she needs the distraction. Because it is, in fact, a very good distraction - after all, if she's right, she's going to be the first person from her world to see an entirely new one.

A few hours later, and the kobold has learned a number of new things.

Tweaking the stable bit of her magic's pattern does give her new worlds, for starters. On top of that, if she sets this thing, it lets her specify proximity to people; if she tweaks that thing it changes how high off the ground her portal is on the other side; if she tweaks this other thing, it specifies some quality of light that works as a proxy for outdoorness in this interesting world she's found.

Also, the world she's found is really interesting. There are so many people; this would be really kind of terrifying if it wasn't for the fact that her portals are entirely one-way and imperceptible from the other side. As is, it's fascinating; she opens a portal over the highest concentration of them and just watches, taking in all the different styles of clothing and hair and adornment, all the different things they're carrying or wearing or hauling, the strange - magical? - things that they do, even a little bit of the language, "excuse me" and "can you" and "come on" and "get a picture!"

Eventually, it starts to get dark in the kobold's cave, as the sun goes down over the clearing she's using as a skylight, and the harsh light from the other world starts to hurt her eyes. She closes down the portal over the crowd and waits for her eyes to adjust to the dimness before she opens a new one, looking for at least one person to watch, but in comfortably dim light.

The new portal shows a person, as intended - a young adult, plainly dressed and thin to the point of malnourishment, listening alertly to their surroundings while they eat from a shiny bag of some unfamiliar sort of food.

Which is worrying. Not that the kobold is surprised to see someone in this condition exactly - famines happen, her own tribe lived through one not so many years ago, but this world doesn't seem to be having a famine; plenty of the people there are obviously well-fed, and while it's not clear where they get their food from, it's common enough to see them eating. Something else must be wrong, for this one.

Well, she can certainly try the obvious solution, anyway. A quick jaunt back to her tribe - and her chief's disgruntled slouching suggests that she should keep it quick, even if she wasn't busy - gets her a trio of baked potatoes and a handfull of rabbit kebabs, a reasonable meal for two.

Denice finishes her chips, tucks the bag away to dispose of later, and lays back on the grass, tapping into her power to learn about her new temporary home. In contact with the ground like this, it's like she has a living map of everything within a handful of miles - in most areas, the sounds of people and vehicles moving around give her enough echolocation-based information to envision every building, every room, even the rooms' contents, if she pays enough attention.

Her goal, at the moment, is to find grocery stores with dumpsters that are full and secluded. She identifies a few, decides what route she's going to use to check on them, and then spends a few more moments getting a feel for how the city changes as it moves into evening before standing up and stepping out from behind the bush that was shielding her from the view of anyone who happened to use this bike path.

And then she stops. Freezes, in fact. Someone - something? - has appeared, just where she was lying a few moments ago. It's not human - humans aren't furry, aren't shaped like that - but it's standing on two feet, wearing clothing, carrying something in its hands.

Not human, not an animal.

And with some kind of power, teleportation or something. There's no possible way it could have gotten this close without her knowing, otherwise.

Maybe she can just walk away? Without her power, she wouldn't know it was there; maybe this is just bad luck, maybe she was just in the wrong place, maybe it has nothing to do with her at all.

She makes it about three steps before the creature calls out, with an accent so thick she can barely understand the words, "wait up!"

She stops. She turns.

The creature is several feet away - out of immediate attack range, though if it can teleport that might not mean much. It's not threatening her at all right now, though; in fact, it's not even looking at her, it's taking something out of the basket it's carrying.

A potato. Baked, from the smell.

The creature looks up at her, makes a thoughtful face, and then carefully sets the basket down. It gives her another look - assessing, more than anything, this time - and gestures from her to the basket and back before retreating another few feet down the path, where it sits and starts eating its potato, glancing up only occasionally.

It wants her to look in the basket, it seems like. That... could be a trap. Maybe. It would be a little unusual to keep a potato in a trap, though.

She shuffles her feet, paying attention to how the sound changes in the air - she can hear that there are more things in the basket. It could be more food; it's probably not electronics or anything metal, and nothing with a very complicated shape.

She'll try it.

A few minutes later, she's sitting on the grass by the path, still out of arm's reach of the little creature but not much farther away than that, making short work of some mystery meat on a stick and trying to decide what to do next.

The kobold finishes her potato, and tries to look unthreatening while her companion works their way through the rest of the food. By the time they're done, they've relaxed a little, and seem to be trying to work out how to ask something.

...and having trouble doing so, apparently. That's fine, she can take the initiative. A length of twine, a portal spell, and show them what to do with it: here, look through this at the sunset. That sure is a portal to a different place, huh?

They look through it, and go very still, afraid. After several seconds, haltingly, they produce a sentence she doesn't understand, and then "what do you want?"

She shrugs, looks pointedly at the basket and concernedly at the person; looks back to the basket and then pats her belly: Look how well fed I am. I have plenty of food and you clearly need some. I want to help.

This just gets her a baleful, blank-faced stare - there's probably a story behind that, maybe she can work it out later. For now, she shrugs - sure, that's fine - and carefully retrieves the basket. She waits a minute for them to relax again - even with her caution to move slowly, keep her hands in view, and not make any sudden moves, they've lapsed back into fear - and then gestures through an explanation: the sun, moving along its path, gets back to sunset - she teleports the basket to the ground behind the bush, points, and then goes to get it. Points again from the sunset to the basket to the bush, just to make sure the connection is obvious. Makes a querying face: okay? got it?

Incredulity suggests yes; the undertone of hostility, she'll have to watch. For now, she'll leave them to go about their evening.

The following evening, well after nightfall, she returns to the bush to find two ears of roasted corn on the cob and half a turkey drumstick, long cold but still tasty. She stays only long enough to take the food, and doesn't return the basket.

The next night, there's more potatoes, and ...beef? something like beef, anyway, on a stick, with some weird green vegetable in between. It's tasty. She stops by the bush again before dawn, to drop off the baskets.

The third night she is totally not hanging around waiting for a warm meal to appear, she just happens to be in the area, honest. Her dinner is a sort of sweet-and-savory stew, served in a hollowed out cantaloupe, with roasted berries and corn on the side.

Fish, flavored with peaches and raspberries, with grilled fruit on the side.

Potatoes, baked again, but hollowed out and filled with a mixture of red meat and peppery greens.

An unidentified round, green vegetable, hollowed out and stuffed with a lightly spiced mixture of corn, chopped potatoes, and green beans, with hard boiled eggs on the side.

She's definitely starting to get her strength back, eating like this - the easy meal means more energy for scrounging through the rest of the evening, less energy spent in worried pacing.

She's not quite back to the condition she'd like to be in, yet, but she's getting there; perhaps it's time to start planning for what she's going to do when she's back in shape.

Things are going pretty well, for the kobold. The situation with the other mages is still a bit tense, but her tribe has made it clear enough that she's not to be bothered that she can spend time there, so long as she doesn't seem too idle. She's been able to spend time with the other Speakers, at least, which is the most important thing - not just for keeping her language skills from getting too rusty, but also for keeping the group's memories of the tribes' history and knowledge fresh, and for maintaining her relationships with them so they can work together effectively as Speakers for their respective tribes. Aside from that she's not spending much time with the group - she spends a couple hours a day hiding and searching for trinkets, of course, but she's never been very athletic, and watching a dance or a race is just asking for another confrontation, and she's had all winter to work on handcrafts, and she does have another project to work on.

The other project is coming along swimmingly, though. She's perfectly content to spend hours a day watching the strange furless people of the other world, piecing together their language and culture and magical capabilities. (It's odd that their magic doesn't show up to her magic-vision, but it clearly is magic, regardless. At some point she'll have to find a safe way to test whether her anti-magic spell is effective against it.)

And then there's the other part of her project, the half-starved individual she's been bringing dinners to. The fierce one, she thinks of them as, as the days pass and they show little sign of relaxing and no sign of wanting any further contact, or to give anything but stoic appreciation for the promised meals. Fierce like I was, when I was young and hurt and trying to find my way.

Perhaps ten nights after the kobold's meeting with the fierce one, something different happens.

She's got her evening schedule worked out, by this point - watch the big crowd until it starts getting dark, then teleport back to her tribe's cookfires to pick up the evening's meals. Then back to her cave, activate the portal to the bush - she's made a permanent one, by now, in one of the cave walls - and drop off the basket. Wait for her - well, not actually protégé, no matter how protective she feels of them. But wait for the basket to be retrieved, and then...

Eat her own dinner, usually.

Tonight, they don't take the basket and hurry off. They don't even open it. They plop to the ground, curl their arms around their knees, and sit, glaring at it.

Something's wrong.

Without knowing what, she's not sure what she should be doing, so she waits.

It takes a few minutes. Eventually, they reach for the basket, move it beside them, take a kebab from the top without looking, and start to eat it, just going through the motions, staring off into space.

She waits another moment, and then slips quietly through the portal and sits just on the other side - though not quietly enough, apparently, as they twitch just slightly as she does so.

After a few moments, they start crying.

She stands up and moves next to them, making a soft sound as she does so - they aren't looking at her, she doesn't want to startle them - and when they don't flinch, she sits, leaning very gently on them, not surprised when they lean less than gently back.

Some minutes later, when she's maneuvered her way by stages into their lap, and they've squeezed her and cried on her and, slowly, calmed down, and she's had a chance to watch their body language - this isn't just about whatever made them so fierce, something happened - she asks, "show me?"

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"...show me?", she repeats, and reflexively starts thinking through what that would involve - there's nothing to see there, any more, even if she were ready to break in yet, but... she did listen, all the way through. She knows where the body is. They could go there, maybe... they'd have to walk, it's not close but doing something so attention-getting as taking the creature on a bus is unthinkable. And then break into the place... she has a rough idea of its security, and it's nothing she can't handle so long as they don't have an unexpected guard - she can check, when they're closer - and... then...

A sob surprises her, and she realizes she's crying again, folded in on herself, so tense she can't imagine moving. But before the thoughts she's been fighting back all day can start up again - it's my fault, I should have been faster, I should have saved him, how can I even call myself a hero - the little creature coos at her, and it's so alien, for a sound like that to be directed at her, that she doesn't even know what to think.

It's almost like it thinks I'm a real person. The thought surfaces, unbidden, a little while later. I wonder how long until it decides I'm not. I wonder if it'll still feed me when that happens.

Maybe it should stop feeding me, if I'm such a failure.

It takes a while for her to stop crying. The little creature stays calm the entire time - genuinely calm, she can hear it in its heartbeat, in its breathing, smooth and even and steady. Not unworried - it tries to calm her, with sounds and touch, strangely - disorientingly - hesitant, as if being careful of her mattered - but calm, as if this was a bearable thing.

Eventually, her body listens, echoes, and then it is bearable, though it still aches like a wound in her chest.

The little creature waits another few moments, while Denice's - Rescue's - breathing continues to slow, and then slides off her lap. A pat on her knee - still gentle, not demanding, and she's still confused by that, almost startled, every time - and a gesture tell her that the creature wants her to get up now, so she does.

"Let's go?" It's already moving to get the basket, but looks back to her as it picks it up, and its body language stutters as it sees her reaction. "Not show me," it clarifies, "just go."

"Want... want, want want, want," she winces, and bites down on the word, balling her hands at her sides for a moment before trying again. "Want to. Want to show."

The little creature gives her a long, inscrutable look, but then nods. The basket disappears from its grasp, and it takes her hand.

Mouseover here for spoilery content warnings.

And so they walk. It would have been a considerable hike even if they'd taken a direct route, the kobold thinks, but instead they take a path that curves and zig-zags to let them avoid other people - she can hear them, sometimes, nearby - or stay in the shadows when they do have to pass within view of them. A few times, they end up outright hiding, waiting for a safe path, and the kobold takes these opportunities to examine the buildings - if structures as large as some of these even belong in the same category as the lean-tos and yurts that she's familiar with - up close, trying to make sense of what appears to be oddly grooved, rough, soft stone, or substances even stranger than that. Eventually, they cross a wide expanse of flat black stone to a low building, her companion spends a minute doing something to one of the doors, and they go in.

It's dark inside, but that doesn't really hamper either of them, and they go through a room and a hall and another room, pause at another door, and then, between working on the door and opening it, the singleminded focus that's been driving the kobold's companion for the last hour seems to dissipate, just for a moment, but they take a breath and push the door open.

The room on the other side is different from the parts of the building the kobold has seen so far; the near and far walls are the same rutted, painted stone, and the floor is the same shiny, vaguely-slick substance, but it's cold, and the two other walls are solid metal, glinting in the dim light from a handful of tiny magical sources, with a row of large squares cut into each one. While she's taking this in, more light sources appear overhead, and her companion goes to one of the metal squares, pulls on what is presumably a latch set into it, and pulls it from the wall, revealing a shelf with a bundle of white fabric on it.

Or...

The kobold moves closer, to get a better look...

Oh.

Well then.

A glance at her companion shows that they're calm enough, for the moment, so she examines the body. It's in good shape, is her first impression - no sign of disease or starvation, no signs of injury or violence obvious enough to be visible through the cloth. Another check-in - they're pointedly not looking, now - and she goes ahead and pulls the sheet down a bit, to reveal the torso. She almost takes a minute just to get a closer look at the bruises on it - she's never seen one on bare skin before - but, no, she needs to get this done with as quickly as possible; she climbs up onto the shelf to get a better view.

No bites; no bruising on the arms, except near the wrists; one of the hands sits at an odd angle, but the wrist isn't broken, the joint is just loose.

The chest, though, is a mass of bruises.

The kobold has some medical background; her parent was her tribe's doctor, before they retired a few years ago, and she was their assistant. She's helped with medical care for roughhousing that's gone too far; she has a pretty good idea of what a fight looks like, and what kind of force gets what kind of result, and what people can stand.

So she has a pretty good idea of what she's looking at, here.

This child was murdered; held down and crushed for minutes at least by someone much larger, or, more likely, a group, with little to no warning or opportunity to fight back.

She'll go cry on someone about it later. For now, she takes a deep breath, covers the body back up, climbs back down to the floor. "Okay," her voice catches a little. "Go, talk? Do something?"

Back in the office, the little creature climbs up to sit crosslegged on one of the desks; Denice takes the chair, sitting with one foot hooked under the wheels and the other knee hugged to her chest. The creature sits quietly for a few minutes - gathering its thoughts or waiting for her to speak or something else, she can't tell - but eventually asks, "tell me?"

After a few long seconds of trying to figure out how to explain, she gestures helplessly back toward the body.

The creature nods, slowly. "Did you see?"

She takes a moment to consider how to answer, and then shakes her head - no, she didn't see it happen...

The little creature levels a gaze at her, and this one she understands, and shrinks from - but instead of lashing out, it seems startled by her reaction, its pulse increasing a bit as its expression changes to one of worry and it sits back upright from where it had been leaning forward to scrutinize her. "All right, didn't see."

She relaxes slightly, resisting the urge to get up and pace. After a few seconds, she remembers to acknowledge the statement, with a nod.

"Not see..." she tenses again, but the creature continues, "other thing? Like see?"

She nods, relieved, and the creature takes a moment to think about its next question.

"Know who?"

She winces, thinking about it, and nods.

"Bad guys?" The question takes her a little off guard. They do bad things, sure, obviously, but does that mean that they themselves are bad? She hasn't really considered the question before, and it seems wrong to just jump to a conclusion... really, is that the kind of thing it's even possible to know about someone?

The little creature is giving her a look, again. "They friend?" it asks, and she shakes her head emphatically. "They mistake? Sorry?" the question is a little more pointed this time, and her head shake is more or less reflexive.

"They do that," it gestures to the other room. "Bad guys." Not a question, this time.

Yeah, all right; she nods, and the creature nods back. It takes a minute to think, giving her a chance to consider this new perspective - if they are bad guys, what does that mean? Should she be doing more than just removing their ability to hurt people; should she be interfering with them more generally, or more directly? Should she be putting herself more at risk, to stop them?

She hasn't come to any conclusions, just a vague sense that she doesn't want to be more aggressive with them, by the time the creature speaks again. "Bad guys do that again?"

She shrugs, and draws her other leg up onto the chair.

The little creature pats her knee. "We help? Make bad guys not do that again?"

She looks up, still mostly lost in the thought of losing more of her charges to violence, but surprised enough at the creatures offer to be drawn a little way out of her reverie. It's making a complicated face - tiredness, she recognizes as she studies it, and sadness make up most of it, but there's a flicker of anger, as well, and other elements she can't make sense of.

It does seem to be serious, though.

She's not sure what to do with that.

It's been a very long day, and there's a nasty headache building behind her eyes, all of a sudden. She shrugs, again, and rests her forehead on her knees, trying to gather the strength she needs to finish up here and get home.

The creature pats her shoulder - hearing it coming doesn't stop that from making the headache worse, and she can't help but tense up at the touch - and hops off of the desk to go do... something... to the wall. After a few seconds, the entire sound of the room changes, as if part of the wall had just been replaced with soundproofing foam. Disorienting.

She looks up, and there's a portal back to the bike path embedded into the wall. It takes her a few long seconds to work out why, but then she's up and moving - it's not a choice, it's just something that's happening now, she's just trying not to shamble too much.

Going through the portal is a whole new source of pain and disorientation, as her awareness of the area around the morgue is replaced all at once with the sounds of the area around the bike path. She's got a bolthole nearby - three blocks away, if she takes the most direct route - but she doesn't think she can make the trip; certainly can't make it safely or without risking being seen.

She curls up behind the bush. It's far from ideal, but even in this state she'll wake if anyone comes too close, she knows from experience.

A time later - perhaps seconds, perhaps minutes, perhaps hours; she can't tell, she isn't even sure whether she's been awake the entire time - the little creature appears again. It speaks very quietly: "you okay?"

She's still trying to work out how to make her body move, to respond, when the creature steps forward and touches her, and abruptly she's in an entirely new place. She rides out another wave of disorientation, but it's less painful here even with the abrupt change; it's so quiet, she's never been someplace this quiet, there isn't a single car or truck or television set or even a running refrigerator within ten miles of here, within her entire range, just - somehow - forest.

She's in the middle of trying to piece together how that could be, where she could be, when the little creature pulls a heavy blanket out of a portal and covers her with it, and her body relaxes involuntarily at the weight and comfort, and she falls asleep.

Denice wakes a few times in the night, each time taking long moments to make sense of where she is and remember how she came to be there, falls asleep again as soon as she has the barest framework of orientation. She's still asleep when the sun rises enough to shine onto her through the skylights, bright enough to make her head throb even with her eyes closed and her arm shielding her face; she's brought fully awake when her efforts to crawl out of the bright patch result in a patch of floor on the far side of the cavern changing for a moment to the strange soundproofing-material effect of one of the little creature's portals, and a stone that was resting on it disappearing.

By the time the creature appears, she's moved out of the light and arranged herself in a cross-legged sitting position, with her elbows resting on her knees for stability. Even so, she's been fighting the temptation to lie down again, rather than spend the energy on keeping herself upright. Better to look as normal as possible, though - at the creature's mercy like this, she needs to do her best not to provoke it. In the very best, most implausible case, maybe if she looks normal enough she can convince it to let her go; in the more likely case, where it's gotten in touch with the authorities about her, the more normal they think she is, the fewer restraints they're likely to use, and the better her chances of being able to escape.

The first thing the creature does, when it appears, is offer her a bowl of water. The second, while she's drinking, is to adjust the light, by touching particular spots - unmarked, as far as she can tell - on the cave wall; the portal showing the midday sun is replaced by a similar one with its light filtered through a thick canopy of leaves.

The third thing the creature does is open a portal back to the bike path.

The spot it touched to do so is even marked, with a dim white glow, when it takes its hand away.

...well.

...good?

...she really doesn't know what to do with this.

...maybe it's a trap? She almost wants it to be a trap. Not that she wants to be trapped, but at least then the world would make sense again.

The little creature has approached, while she's been gawping at the portal. "Want something to eat?"

"Want something to eat?" she asks again, after a few moments, trying to speak more clearly, and this time she gets a distracted nod, so she teleports to her tribe to pick up lunch.

It's crowded by the food stations, so she has time to worry while she works her way through to the day's offerings. Is this something serious? It mostly looks like a particularly bad headache, but it coming on that quickly, and still having effects this far into the next day, suggests that it might be more than that. Not that she can do much regardless; she's barely got enough training to help with this sort of thing in her own species, and there's no way of knowing whether the same remedies will be effective or even safe for a different one. But she can offer water, and food, and a safe place to recover; it's not as much as she'd like to do, but it's better than nothing, and they can go home if there's something more they need. It will have to be enough.

When she returns with the food - the potato hash looked particularly good today, and she brought some ham and baked eggs to go with it - she finds that her guest's demeanor has changed: Less confused; they've come to some kind of conclusion. More afraid: it's not a good one, whatever it is. They're pointedly not looking at the portal back to their world, too - worried they'll be made to leave before they're ready? worried, like some of her tribemates had been, that some danger will come through the portal from the other side, not realizing that that's impossible?

Well, there's one thing she can try: She goes to the portal and closes it, watching carefully.

No, no, that's immediately, clearly worse; more fear, bordering on panic, directed now at her rather than the portal. Back open it goes, and she steps away from the control patch. "Sorry?"

But, no; whatever the issue was, she's obviously crossed some important line; they're watching her warily now, as if expecting to be attacked at any moment.

She waits, for a few long seconds, to see if this will pass.

It doesn't.

She teleports away.

And now she's even more confused.

She'd figured out the trap in the portal, she thought. Two years away from the bad places have dulled her memories some, but eventually it came back to her: It was like the open gate out of the playground, at the first school she went to, or the open door to the playground, at Ponderosa. It looks like a valid path, an exit, but it's a lie; going through it will get someone chased, restrained, brought back; maybe sent away, if they do it often enough.

It took her long years to learn that rule, and longer to learn the other one: the only thing a door like that is actually good for is a warning - open, it's useless, but closed, it means something awful is about to happen.

And then the little creature closed the portal, and... didn't do anything? opened it up again? apologized? went away?

This doesn't make any sense.

Well, anyway, she's not going anywhere near that portal.

...maybe a little bit near it. Just to where the creature left the basket of food. That's probably safe, right?

It takes her two tries to stand, and she nearly falls when she bends over to grab the basket. Nothing bad happens. She picks a reasonably smooth rock on the other side of the cave to lean against, sits, and eats.

There's nothing to do, afterward, but that's a problem she solved ages ago; even in a place as quiet as this, there's never a shortage of things to listen to with her power.

All she has to do is avoid thinking about things too much, and she'll be okay, for now.

After a while, something that sounds like a basket full of water - and yes, that makes no sense; she'll go figure out how that works when she's not expecting the little creature to show up any moment - appears, followed a few minutes later by a basket full of pouches of things - nuts and dried fruit, she thinks - and then, after a longer wait, a pile of cloth, and the little creature standing next to it.

She watches, as it retrieves the bowl from earlier and fills it with water to bring to her.

"You okay?"

She shrugs, noncommittally.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" It comes out sounding like a phrase someone memorized from a book.

She peers at the creature - that's often a trick question, too; if it wants a particular answer she should try to give it - but it's just looking at her, so she shrugs again.

It doesn't seem to like that answer very much - its heart rate picks up a little, and it reaches up to tug on one of its ears - but it just nods. "Okay. You stay here, if you want."

...as opposed to what? No, she probably doesn't want to know the answer to that. She tries to look grateful; from the look the creature gives her in response, she's probably failing miserably.

It pauses for a long few seconds, then lowers itself to the ground to sit by her.

"Talking hard?"

She waits, partly to make sure she isn't going to panic, partly to see if the creature actually wants an answer, before nodding.

It's staring at her. She looks away. It continues anyway, putting a hand on her knee as it speaks: "Is there anything I can do to help?"

And, there it is. Everyone wants her talking; nobody will leave her alone if she can't, or doesn't. Never mind that it's hard, that even on her best days the words get stuck, or repeat, or that if she isn't excruciatingly careful, she says the wrong ones entirely, things that sound right, but aren't what she means at all. Never mind that as soon as she stopped pushing herself to try to speak, everything else got easier, everything hurt less, she stopped having days where it was all she could do to make herself eat a little food, started being able to take care of herself, reliably enough to make it years on her own and even help others. That doesn't matter, only talking matters.

...she hadn't realized she was quite that angry about that. She pushes it down, away - being angry isn't safe, not here, not like this - before looking back at the creature.

It's staring at her, again or still, and for a moment her anger flashes back up, and it looks away.

"It's okay," it says, quietly enough that she's not sure whether she's meant to be able to hear it. "It's okay." Louder, this time. It's still not looking at her, and that's weird, but she likes it. "I want you okay. I want help you. I don't know how help you."

She peers at the little creature, for a long moment, and then stands, steadier on her feet than she was earlier.

She doesn't look back as she crosses the cave to approach the portal, just listens. The little creature doesn't move, aside from watching her go.

When she gets to the portal, then she turns and looks at the creature. It's still not meeting her eyes, but it's watching her - curiously, she thinks.

The portal is right there, and it's not objecting.

She sticks an arm through - which is so weird, she hadn't noticed that she heard through her skin before, but she does, she can hear the things around the bike path when she does that - and it still doesn't object, unless quirking an eyebrow and making a confused noise count.

She pulls her arm back in. She doesn't want to leave, right now, actually. She wants to figure out what the hell is going on here.

Progress!

Awful, heart-wrenching progress.

She's getting an idea of why this one is so fierce, though.

For right now, the thing to do is wait for them to relax a little and get their bearings again. It takes a minute, but eventually they sit; they look up, still angry, when she approaches, but when she starts moving again after hesitating in response, it doesn't get any particular reaction, so she goes and sits a little ways away, on the far side of them from the portal.

She thinks, for a few seconds, about how to word this with her limited vocabulary. "You think I hold you?"

This gets a glare that lasts long enough in coming that she starts to worry she's made another mistake, but eventually they nod, deflating just a little.

"Bad guys hold?"

They're less ambivalent about the term 'bad guys' this time, but it's still a touchy subject: She gets a nod, almost immediately, and they draw a knee up to their chest to lean on.

"I help," she asserts, and waits just long enough to be sure she's been heard before teleporting away again.

Five minutes later, she teleports back, carrying a bag full of rings. She rummages through it until she finds one that fits her, then passes the rest of the bag to her fierce friend. It takes only a moment to enspell the ring, and then she gets their attention again:

Put the ring on, tap it once, tap a second time and hold... and, here she is, five or six feet away, on the same patch of sand they spent last night sleeping on.

Not too shabby, right? She walks back over, grinning.

"I do," she gestures out to the spot behind the bush. "Bad guys hold, you do," she gestures to the bag of rings, "go," the bush. "You okay."

They blink, wide-eyed, and then their entire attention is on the bag of rings.

...teleporter rings?
...
...teleporter rings.

She sits and pours the bag out onto the floor, listening carefully. Her fourth choice, based on which ones make the nicest sounds, is a fairly plain silvery band with three blue gems embedded in it, and fits her well enough when she tries it. She leaves it on, and looks through the rest of the pile - there must be close to two hundred of them, in all different styles, made of all different materials.

As miraculous of a windfall as this is for her, what she really wants is to share. Is that... is that possible? She looks from the pile to its owner, and is rewarded with a grin and a 'go ahead' gesture.

All right, logistics.

Ow. Okay, not logistics, headache.

Well, if she can't work out a long-term plan right now, she can probably at least come up with a plan for getting everyone who wants to go out of that institution she was scoping out two nights ago, if she's careful and doesn't push herself too much. She scoops the rings back into the bag, scoots over to the sand, and starts drawing a map in it with her finger, dropping a ring onto it for each bed as she goes.

That's... interesting.

Are they marking out places they want rings to teleport them to? That doesn't quite add up - two rings per place is strange, but they might have a friend she hasn't met or something. Wanting to teleport to so many places so close together is the stronger clue that that's not what's going on here, and the fact that they aren't actually looking at the rings to try to make sensible matches for which one would go where.

It's probably not that they think the rings are single-use and want to make sure they have enough of them to carry out this project. Not impossible, but in that case it would make more sense for them to just ask for as many rings as possible.

She's got a bad feeling about what might actually be going on, here, and when one of the rooms gets five rings, a contemplative look, and then a sixth, she's sure enough to try asking. She uses her power to draw up five small slabs of rock from the stone underlying the cave, puts a portal to the bush in the broad side of one, and sets it on one of the drawn walls making up a hallway.

After a startled pause, the fierce one shakes their head, and taps on one of the nearby rooms that doesn't have any rings on it and draws a path from there to the miniature portal, grimacing.

...yeah. Just to confirm: "Bad guys?", and then when this gets a nod, she offers a handful of pebbles, putting one in the indicated room to start with and repeating, "bad guys."

With the pebbles distributed, the situation looks... pretty easy, actually. There are five or six of them in each section with the rings, plus concentrations in three other areas, but they're not actually mixed in with the rings - there are very obvious places where she can put teleportation traps or portals to hedge them out, and she sets up more slabs to demonstrate this, to an approving reaction.

Good.

Next question.

She mimes all the rings in the modeled section - well, all but the ones in the room with six, which her companion stops her from taking and sets aside - going through the portal, and puts them in a pile - it's about twenty, for this section, and there's at least two others, possibly more if she interrupted before all the sections could be drawn. She indicates the pile: "Eat? Bed?"

A pained look and a shrug, and then a wince. She's getting the idea about what brings that on, she thinks, and while she'd like to see this plan carried out as soon as possible, pushing things and risking them being incapacitated in the middle of it is definitely not a good idea. "Wait. I think about. You, bed, think later."

This gets her glared at, but she holds her ground. "We" she gestures to the map, "you," she mimes falling over, "not help. Want you help. You bed, you okay, you help."

This is, apparently, acceptable, because while they make a face about it, they do go.

All right. Sixty people - a small tribe's worth - probably all traumatized, with who knows what in the way of skills and little to nothing in the way of resources, possibly wounded or otherwise in bad shape and not necessarily inclined to trust her or each other, that she's about to displace. How can she make it so this doesn't immediately fall apart into chaos?