>>5291575>>5291612>>5291626>>5291636>>5291665>>5291683>>5291689>>5291694>>5291696>>5291699>>5291701>>5291704>>5291719“Well… Perhaps I can remain here with my force for a short while longer,” you say.
You are already a week and a day into your expedition, and still have several days’ journey to reach the kobolds… But these elves have restocked your provisions, and what can one more day, or maybe two, hurt? Besides, those bloodwine eyes move you, and to see them shine with delight at you’re your answer fills you with warmth.
The next day is spent primarily in conversation with Jazkarmel. You dismiss the Translator to attend to other matters after a time—your command of the language has improved, and the elven leader has an un-Reptilian patience with your foibles. Besides, the atmosphere is more intimate. Things never blossom into anything untoward (much as your mind might drift), but she once she grows comfortable enough to dismiss her own guard, she sits close to you. She takes your comparatively-massive hand in hers to guide it towards an object she points at as she explains the word for it, and you repeat it back. When you succeed, she smiles; when you fail, she laughs. Either way, you learn, and are pleased to learn.
“Tell me,” she asks, “did you stay here for the chance to learn more about my people and our language, or about me?”
You lean back slightly, considering your answer.
“Why not both?” you ask.
“Both is good,” she says with a subtle smile.
You spend the remainder of the next few hours speaking, as well as you can, about your mutual ambitions of power, of respect, of recognition and greatness for yourselves and for your people. She may be almost ten times you age, and a mammal, and a female, but you feel a kinship with this elf. You think it is mutual.
>+1 Diplomacy 