, but Shiika had arrived personally when word of his visit reached her in her palace.  The guards who were shadowing the resolute Were-cat bowed and melted away when the Empress of Yar Arak, resplendent in a glowing gold robe and her crown, today gracing the public with her alluringly beautiful human appearance (everyone in the entire Empire knew she was a Demon, but they rightly didn't care, for she was running the Empire better than any human Emperor had for almost two hundred years), her long hair done in loosely tumbled curls that billowed out over her shoulders and down her shapely back.
	He never looked up when he caught her foul, inhuman scent, a scent that, over the years and with repeated exposure, he had built up something of a resistance to it.  "What do you want, Shiika?" he asked without looking back at her, taking down another book that had Duthak writing on its spine in the Nonhuman Studies section of the vast library, then turning and seating himself at the table which was between them.
	"I think that's what I'm supposed to ask you," she asked with a winsome chuckle, coming up to the table and sitting on the edge of it, facing him.  He glanced up at her and saw her as he remembered first seeing her, as a breathtakingly lovely woman with red hair.  He knew that she didn't look that way to everyone; one of the aspects of her power as a Succubus was that she always appeared as whatever the onlooker considered to be most attractive.  Tarrin considered red hair to be the most lovely shade of hair on a woman, and so she appeared to his eyes to have red hair.  "Do you mind telling me what was so important that you had to waylay my librarians?"
	"They got in my way."
	She laughed.  "That's no reason to hang them off the ceiling," she said, pointing.  Tarrin glanced up, and saw the thin Arakite woman up there, having lost the battle to keep her robe up because all the blood ran to her head.  She'd been so adamant about keeping her robe down--or up, given her attitude towards the ground--because she hadn't had anything on underneath it.
	"Sorry," he said, absently weaving a spell of Earth.  The rock let go of her feet abruptly, and she screamed quite loudly as she dropped towards the floor.  She was caught by a weave of Air just before she hit the polished granite, and fainted dead away before realizing she was safely down and unharmed.
	"You know, all you had to do was ask to be allowed in," she said, putting a hand on the table and leaning on it.
	"Since when do I ask for anything, Shiika?" he told her, ignoring her and her horrific scent as he turned the page of the book holding Dwarven writing before him, as it had been copied from a wall in a ruin found in the mountains of eastern Yar Arak.
	"That's certainly true enough," she said with a slight frown.  "What's got you so interested, anyway?" she asked, looking at the book.  "Dwarven?  By the pit, Tarrin, why didn't you say something?  I speak Dwarven.  I can teach it to you."
	He looked up at her.  "No thanks," he said bluntly.  "I know better than to accept any kind of assistance from a Demon, Shiika.  I know where that road leads."
	"Oh, come now, Tarrin," she said sharply.  "You know I wouldn't do that."
	He gave her a flat stare.
	She chuckled ruefully.  "Okay, okay, so maybe I would," she admitted.  "But I'd never get you, and we'd both have fun for me trying."
	He gave her another flat look, then snorted and looked at the book again.
	"Since I do have you here, Tarrin, you're going to do something," she said, quite sternly.
	"Says you," he countered without looking up.
	"I'm quite serious about it," she said with sudden heat, putting her finger under her chin and raising his head so he was looking at her.  "You owe me, Tarrin, and I always collect on my debts!"
	"What debt would that be?"
	"Saving your ass!" she said hotly.  "Those Legions that happen to still be in Suld didn't come from the gratefulness of my heart!  I sent them there for my own reasons, I'll grant you that, but a Succubus never does anything for free!  Now then, since I can't seem to get satisfaction out of that miserable little stone wall of a sister of yours, I guess I'll have to take payment from you!"
	Tarrin was about to say something, but the Goddess interrupted in the recesses of him mind, very deeply, probably to keep the telepathic Demon from sensing her communication.  Drop it, she warned.  I know what she wants, and it's not an unreasonable request.  Give in.
	But--
	That was not a request! she snapped at him.  We're going to have a little talk about this impertinence of yours, kitten.  I gave you an order, now carry it out!
	Feeling quite abashed and contrite, his ears drooped a little before he caught himself and looked up at the suddenly hot-eyed Demoness.  "What were you trying to get out of Jenna?" he asked.
	"Someone, I don't care who, is going to fix my Palace!" she screamed at him.
	"Fix?  What's wrong with it?"
	"You are!" she shouted even louder, throwing a finger in his face.  "When you borrowed a certain object from me, Were-cat, you made my entire Palace magic-dead!  I'm sick and tired of not being able to use magic in my own house, so you're going to fix it, and you're going to fix it now!"
	She was actually panting.  Obviously, this was something quite serious to her, serious enough to get majorly worked up.  "Oh?  and just what, may I ask, will I get out of it?"
	She gave him a surprised look, and seemed to be completely at a loss for words.  Her mouth worked a few times with no sound coming from it, then she finally managed to find her voice.  "How dare you demand anything in return for fixing what you broke, and after you're already so far in debt to me!" she screamed emotionally.  For some odd reason, he was enjoying seeing the always-cool Shiika suddenly get all bent out of shape.  He'd never seen her mad before, and he found it to be strangely funny.
	Tarrin put his elbow on the table and put his chin in his palm, looking over at her.  "Do tell," he said mildly, his tail slashing behind him, betraying his mirth.  "Explain to me why I'm so indebted to you, and maybe we'll talk about it."
	She glared at him, then suddenly exploded into laughter.  "You're playing with me!" she realized, putting a delicate hand to her upper chest as she laughed.  "So you'll do it?  You'll fix it?"
	"Agree that it wipes the slate clean, and it's a deal," he countered.
	"Here now, it's not worth that," she suddenly flared.  "Your sister is in quite deeply to me."
	"It's entirely up to you, Shiika," he told her, "but I'm not budging.  Call it even-up, or continue to go outside to practice your magic."
	"Don't bargain with me, Tarrin," she said in a dangerously eager voice.  "You won't like what you get out of it."
	She's too right there, kitten.  Just say you'll do it, and do not say it like it's the completion of some kind of bargain.  Tell you you'll do what she asked as a favor, no more, no less.  You don't know what you're about to get into if you try to bargain with her.  That's how she works, and I worked too hard on you to lose you to her.
	Tarrin didn't reply, only gave Shiika a steady look and nodded.  "As a favor to you, I'll do what you ask," he said quickly and carefully.
	She gave him a sudden look, then frowned.  "I know you're around here somewhere, Niami!" she called towards the ceiling, smacking her palms on the table .  "He wouldn't have got out of that so neatly if you hadn't have had a hand in there somewhere!"
	I do so love it when she gets mad, the Goddess said with ultimate satisfaction.
	"I heard that!" Shiika shouted in an ugly tone.
	The Goddess' silvery laughter retreated from his mind as she withdrew from him, and Shiika gave Tarrin a dangerous look when she saw his narrow-eyed amusement.  "I hate it when she cheats!" she complained.  "She does that with Jenna all the time!"
	"She's just keeping us safe from you, Shiika," Tarrin told her.
	"You'd have more fun with me than with her, that's for sure," she told him, regaining her composure and standing up.
	"That's a matter of opinion," he answered.  "Let's go get this overwith.  I have things to do."
	Fixing the Palace was actually alot easier than he thought it might be, when he first surveyed the problem.  Tarrin had pulled the strands away from the Palace, and had never set them right.  He remembered doing that, doing it to rob the glabrezu of its magical powers, which levelled the battlefield between them.  It seemed a bit challenging at first, because of the number of strands he'd have to move around to get them all where they were supposed to be, but his powers as a sui'kun were more than up to the task.  It only took a couple of moments, as he quickly and expertly put every strand back where it belonged, being able to sense how they were orginally arrayed though some kind of innate understanding, probably tied up with his power.
	"There," he said absently, motioning towards the vast Palace.  "Can I go now?"
	"Yes!" she said happily, clapping her hands.  "In fact, I'll tell the librarians you're to be allowed access to the library!  Thank you!" she said with a great deal of actual sincerity as she rushed towards her monstrous home, laughing like a little girl chasing a puppy.
	Tarrin watched her go, her guards chasing after her in confusion, and blew out his breath.  Demons were weird.
	Having legal access to the Imperial Library helped him along quite a bit, at least after the librarians all lost their fear of him.  That took a few days.  But once they were willing to help him, they proved to be indispensible, finding the books he needed and arraying them before him.  He had asked for books holding the old Duthak language, and they had responded quite admirably, even going into their precious stores of truly ancient books and bringing him actual Dwarven books, all of them at least five thousand years old, written in Duthak.  They were very brittle and fragile, and the librarians apologized endlessly when they explained that he simply couldn't take them out of the library, that they were just too delicate to be carried around or banged about.  Usually he completely ignored it when people told him he couldn't do something, but one look at those books told him that in this case, they were more than right.  He wouldn't destroy those books, not when he needed what they held...and taking them out of the library would destroy them.  He thought they were going to kiss him whem he Conjured a few empty books and then used Sorcery to transcribe the entirety of one book into the new book.  It was the spell that Keritanima had invented, that copied the entirety of a book into a new book with such perfect precision that even the ink blots and stains were transcribed, creating a totally faithful reproduction.  He got mobbed by the librarians as they asked him to do that for some of their most ancient tomes, books so old that they feared to even move them, because they were all deathly afraid they would disintegrate and that what they held would be forever lost to posterity.  He could see the sincerity in their eyes when they begged for his help, but he simply didn't have time to do that for them, and it took him a while to explain that.  But he did promise to see if there wasn't something he could do.  After all, they had all been quite helpful to him, even though they didn't have to be, and he felt that a little reciprocation would only be fair.
	Tarrin's solution was a simple one.  The next day, when he arrived at the library at around noon, he had someone else with him.  It was Sevren, one of the few katzh-dashi from the Tower that Tarrin both liked and trusted, and the spectacled Sorcerer had already been briefed as to what Tarrin wanted him to do.  Sevren was more than happy to oblige, and he went with the librarians down into the basement, looking as if they would carry him if he asked it of them, as Tarrin returned to copy more books of Duthak for his personal use.  Tarrin had trained Sevren in the use of the spell, and he proved to be quite adept at it, being capable of casting it many, many times over the day without it exhausting him.
	For seven days, Sevren came with Tarrin every day when he visited the library, and he dutifully copied the library's most ancient tomes into new books for them while Tarrin gleaned what he wanted from the library.  They had to furnish blank books, often having to search quite a bit to find one large enough or big enough to accommodate the copying--the reproductions were totally faithful, even down to the length and width of the writing on the pages, so they had to have books with both enough pages and pages wide and long enough to accept the reproduction.  Sevren struck up a few close friendships with the librarians, the librarians acted as if they worshipped the ground he and Tarrin walked upon, and Tarrin got exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it, and how much of it he wanted every time he visited the library after that.
	Tarrin's burgeoning library quickly overflowed his study, leaving him with something of a dilemma.  He needed all his books, yet he had nowhere to put them, not without knocking out walls to increase the size of his study.  The Goddess engineered a solution, offering to build him a truly vast study and library under the basement, where he would have almost unlimited room to expand.  He agreed immediately, and the next morning, a new staircase was sitting inside the large closet in his room, that led down under the cellar and into a cavernous chamber lined with dark stone blocks, that was perfectly dry, cool, and illuminated with glowglobes that hovered near the twenty span-high ceiling.  There were several tables near stack after stack of bookshelves, both lining the walls and standing free in orderly rows behind the open floorspace.  A large basalt desk stood beyond the tables, with a bookshelf behind it giving it the sense of sitting at the back of a room, tables and a desk that were all created to suit someone of his size.  The oversized furniture and empty bookshelves--enough for ten thousand books--definitely gave the place the feeling that it was his space, his library, for the chairs were so large that most humans wouldn't be able to sit in it with both their legs dangling and their backs resting against the back of the chair.
	Most of his family and friends never seemed to notice how uncomfortable Tarrin was sitting on small furniture, mainly because he was so flexible and so sleek, capable of scrunching himself up enough to sit down on a human-sized chair, and not so bulky that he took up much more room than a human did.  He was able to sit in human-sized furniture, but it was never easy, and it never failed to seriously kink his tail.  These chairs and tables were sized for him, as was the bed and a chair in his room and the chair and table in his study.
	Almost immediately, Tarrin fell in love with the place.  It was perfect.
	Keritanima seemed quite impressed with it when she visited--in person--later that morning.  She nosed around critically, then nodded.  "Nice," she said.  "But the chairs are too big."
	"Too big for you," he pointed out.
	"Alright, too big for me, but you could use a few more for those of us of a normal size," she winked.
	"Fine.  I'll make them booster seats, so you can see the top of the table."
	She flared slightly, then laughed.  "I could see the top of the table in a normal chair.  It would just be at my chest," she corrected him.
	"Then grow some."
	She stuck her tongue out at him.
	"How's Rallix?" he asked, ignoring her childish response.
	"He's fine," she said brightly.  "He had to do a little stomping on a few noble houses yesterday, but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle."
	"I thought he left the stomping to you."
	"Usually he does, but I was busy with another round of trade negotiations with that woman," she said, bristling.
	That woman was Shiika.  "I saw her last ride," he mentioned.
	"She told me.  What were you doing in Dala Yar Arak?"
	"I needed some books, because I hit a dead end at the library in the Tower," he told her.  "I need to bring them down here," he said absently.  A rather high-energy Summoning later, his books were occupying the shelves nearest his desk, and his Dwarven art and artifacts were laid out neatly on tables and in the larger bookshelves that would hold them.
	"You stole books from the Imperial Library?" she asked in sudden surprise, then she laughed delightedly.
	"I copied them," he corrected.
	"Still studying Duthak?" she asked, walking over and picking up one of the books.  "Nevermind, see you are," she added.  "How's it going?"
	"Slowly," he answered.  "I've had to do most of the work to decipher the language myself.  It's taken alot more studying than I expected."
	"It can't be that hard a writing system."
	"I finished Duthak last month.  I'm working on Dwarven now, not just Duthak."
	"Oh, now that I can understand," she nodded.  "I wonder how it got the name Duthak."
	"Because that's what the Dwarves called themselves.  The Duthakar, or Duthak in the singular.  What we call Duthak simply meant Dwarven in their language."
	"They didn't call themselves Dwarves?" Keritanima asked in surprise.
	"What's the Wikuni word for Wikuni?" he asked pointedly.  "Does it sound like Wikuni?"
	She gave him a look, then laughed.  "Alright, you got me there.  So what they called themselves isn't the same as what others called them."
	"It's just a translation," he shrugged, sitting behind the desk, running a paw along its top and feeling its cool, silky smooth perfection.  "I like this desk," he announced in a purring voice.
	"Black is certainly your color," she grinned toothily.  "Oh, Allia told me that Jenna told her she'd have her Teleport device tomorrow.  Expect her to visit sometime tomorrow."
	"She's going to kill you for ruining the surprise," he told her with a slight smile.
	"So what can she do about it?"
	"I think tomorrow, she'll be more than capable of doing something about it," he said pointedly.
	Keritanima glanced at him, then she frowned.  "Uh oh," she said uncertainly.  "I think I just messed up."
	"I think so."
	"Uh, Tarrin?  Brother?  Could you please pretend to be surprised if Allia shows up here tomorrow?" she asked in her most pleading, cajoling voice.
	"If you make it worth my while," he replied with narrow-eyed amusement, looking at her.
	She stepped up to his desk, leaned way over it, then smacked him on the shoulder.
	As promised, Allia did show up at his doorstep the next afternoon, with Allyn and Kedaira in tow.  Jasana immediately commandeered the inu to play with her, and Tarrin had a nice long visit with his sister and Allyn, at least after she dragged the truth of why he wasn't surprised to see her out of him.  The device that Jenna had finally managed to create was a simple metal circlet that she wore on her head, over her eyes, that was set so that it could Teleport itself to the Tower, to Tarrin's house, to Keritanima's palace, or back to where it had originated from when Allia wanted to go home.  It was also programmed to be able to Teleport to Mala Myrr.  That way, she could always Teleport back to a set point in the desert if she didn't want to Teleport back to the place from which she came.  Jenna had designed that into it to give Allia the option of using the device as a last-ditch escape from a lethal situation, and wouldn't force her to Teleport back to that same place, where a danger may still pose a threat, if she wanted to return to the desert.
	Allia too was impressed by both his home and his library, and she left the next day after a visit that made both of them feel as if it were old times again.  They weren't separated by distance anymore, and were truly only a touch away again.

	Time to a Were-cat was a misty thing, but as the days marched, Tarrin realized he was working under a schedule.  The birth of Camara Tal's child was growing ever closer, and in the visits Tarrin had with Jenna and Keritanima, he was aware that a schedule of departure had been drawn up.  They would have to Teleport to Abrodar, the mystical, famed capital of Sharadar, and travel from there to Amazar.  Alexis Firehair assured them that they could reach Amazar within five days of arriving in Abrodar, if they used Sorcery to do so.  By horse and ship, it was a trip of at least a month.  That five day travel window, coupled to Camara Tal's own prediction of the day she would give birth, only gave Tarrin about fifteen days to complete his Duthak project.
	As if Jesmind wasn't annoyed enough with his constant pattering in what she now called his dungeon, his determination to finish before the trip to Amazar sidetracked him made him decidedly missing from the house above for several days.  The only daylight he saw was his walk from the Imperial Palace to the Imperial Library on days when he visited to get more books to study, and visits with Mist and Eron when she allowed him to come over.  Anyone that wanted to see him had to go down into his library, and they found him to be a short, almost churlish host, impatient to get them on their way and get back to business.  When not actively studying, he was distracted, even when playing with his children or eating meals or spending quality time with his mate, and often dreamed of sitting in his library decyphering Duthak, which made his actual work there seem creepily like his dreams had run over into reality, giving it a bizarre feel when he stopped to think about it.
	Even Triana got that treatment when she finally showed up from whatever it was that she'd been doing.  He greeted her shortly, didn't listen to her when she was talking, since he was trying to translate a passage out of one of the books the Dwarves wrote that he copied from the Imperial Library, and only vaguely responded whenever he heard her speak his name.  He forgot the fact that Triana did not like to be ignored.
	"Cub, you're about two seconds from getting thrashed," she said in an ugly tone, swatting the book in his paws down onto the desk firmly.
	"I'm sorry, mother, but I don't have much more time before we go to Amazar, and I really want to finish this.  After all, you said you were going to train me after we got back, and I don't want any open projects distracting me from your teaching."
	"What are you studying, anyway?" she asked, picking up one of the books.  "What is this?"
	"Duthak, Dwarven writing," he answered.  "I'm learning Dwarven."
	"Is that all?  Cub, I can teach this to you in about three seconds," she told him absently.  "All I need is a book or piece of parchment penned by a Dwarf."
	"Then you can't do it," he told her.  "All this is just copies.  I don't have anything like that."
	"Phaugh," she snorted, pointing to one of the stone tablets he had that had Duthak engraved upon it.  "That's by a Dwarven hand."
	"Well, despite that, given that I've put so much into this already, I'd kind of like to finish it myself," he said in a frosty tone.  "You weren't around when I started, so now you have to let me finish.  Where were you, anyway?" he asked.
	"Business," she answered.  "That, and staying out of here for a while.  I figured that someone would have figured things out by now, and been a little testy."
	"Figured what out?"
	She gave him an incredulous look.  "You mean you don't know?" she asked in surprise.
	"Know what?"
	She looked unhappy.  "Cub, I'm disappointed in you," she told him.  "Didn't you have the least interest in just who defeated Jula's attempts to stop Jesmind and Mist from fighting?"
	"We figured it was one of them, finally showing some Druidic talent," he shrugged.  "You yourself said that Jesmind has potential, she just never uses it."
	"Not that much," she said in a slightly dangerous tone.
	It didn't take him but a second to gather her meaning.  "You did it?"
	"Of course I did," she said with a sweep of her paw.  "It wasn't healthy for Jesmind and Mist to be crammed in here together, so I made sure nature ran its course.  It also makes sure that when you finally chase out the females, you're not sick of all three of them.  You'll get tired of Kimmie and Jula just as much as Jesmind, even though neither is your mate.  Just their proximity will be enough to make you want distance from them, just like Mist."
	"Well then, know I know where to send the bill," he said frostily.
	"What bill?"
	"The bill for all our work cleaning up the house!" he shouted.  "Really, mother, couldn't you have made them do that outside?"
	"You got it cleaned up, didn't you?" she countered.  "Think of it as healthy work that kept you out of trouble.  The trees know, you get into enough any time you don't have busy work occupying idle paws."
	"You're unbelievable!" he accused.  "And this from the woman who said she never interferes in our lives when it suits her!"
	"I didn't suit me to watch Jesmind and Mist tear each other up, cub," she answered in a brutal tone.  "It was something that had to be done.  No more, no less."  He gave her a slightly hostile stare, but she brushed him off as if his disapproval was nothing more than dust in the wind.  "I see we'll have to work on your observation, cub.  You should have figured out it was me two months ago."
	"I didn't care, mother," he answered bluntly.  "I was too busy trying to put the house back together!"
	She drew herself up in her most regal manner, all but blazing her aura of power and control, then glared down at him like he was a disrespectful child.  "Don't shout at me, cub," she warned in an ugly tone.
	"That doesn't work on me anymore, mother," he told her flatly.  "I've had shouting matches with gods, so  I think I can handle you."
	She glared at him, then she actually laughed!  "My cub is growing teeth," she said in a loving, almost doting manner, leaning over the desk and putting her paw on his shoulder.  "Good!  You need some backbone if I'm going to train you in Druidic magic, and if you can work up the nerve to sass me, then you obviously have more than enough to deal with the All.  I think you're more than ready.  It's a pity I can't start now."
	She left not long after that, leaving Tarrin with only a mild curiosity about her behavior.  He understood why she'd allowed Jesmind and Mist to fight, now that he'd seen how happy Mist was at being in her own house.  But it was apparent that she had some other motivation, some kind of master plan.  He wondered what it was for all of about two minutes before his need to finish before leaving for Amazar overwhelmed his attention.
	Tarrin tripled his efforts, and found his efforts rewarded.  The day before they were to leave for Abrodar, he put down the last book, made a few final notes in his last reference book, and proclaimed silently to himself that he was fluent in Duthak.  He had unravelled its grammar, and had memorized every word which he had translated from his now large library of Dwarven writings.  He could take any book, open it, and read anything he found on any page, and what was more, completely understand it.  What was most important was that he now could understand the runes on the axe, and knew what that large, important-looking symbol was.  It was a holy symbol, the symbol of a god that had been called Duthan, the Dwarven god of mining, smithing, father of the Dwarven race, and the patriarch of the Dwarven pantheon.  They had had their own pantheon of nine gods, representing the earth, labor, fertility and family, darkness, greed, secrets, inspiration, and war.  They were all gone now, ceasing to exist as divine beings when the last Dwarf died, finding the end that eventually awaited all of the Younger Gods.
	The other runes on the axe confirmed several of his suspicions.  They were runes that named the axe, an ancient weapon--even by the standards of five thousand years ago--that had been passed down through the Duthular family for three thousand years.  It was named Stonecleaver, and it was the ancestral weapon of the kings of the largest group of Dwarves that had lived on Senndar.  It was a king's weapon, and that mound where Eron had found it were the remains of one Gulthenor Duthular, King of Mala Myrr and the Blackstone clan of Hill Dwarves.
	A royal weapon, now relegated to being the centerpiece of a curious Were-cat's collection of artifacts produced by an extinct race.
	In any event, Tarrin leaned back with a sigh and looked at a Tellurian pendulum clock he had had Jula get for him from Suld when she visited last ride, so he could at least tell time down in his library.  It wasn't even noon yet.  He still had virtually all day before he had to pack and get ready for the trip to Amazar in the morning.  It would probably take that much time to apologize to Jesmind for being so surly.
	Tarrin stared at the clock and sighed.  After going to Amazar, the next couple of years would be taken up by Triana and her lessons in Druidic magic.  His large library of Duthak writing--which he could now read--was going to have to wait until he had time for it again.
	It looked like his continued research on the Dwarves was going to have to be shelved for a little while.  But it would be there waiting for him when he had the time and opportunity to take it up once again.
 
Chapter 7

	The typical norm for a family about to embark on a journey would be chaos.  Parents would be running around in a vain attempt to lacate everything that was intended to be taken, while the children conveniently moved the very things the parents searched for, with the youthful idea that they were "helping."  The children would further complicate things by interrupting the parents during their searches for needed items with whining requests and petulant demands to take things that the child would both not need and not have room for in his or her pack.  The more useless the object, the more adamant the child would become about taking it along.  The family would adhere to the great ancient rules of preparation for a journey, and those were that the earlier they started preparing, the later they would manage to get going; the less they were taking, the harder it would be to find it all; and no matter how many times the packs and gear that were being taken were checked to ensure that everything was there, something important would manage to escape the packs and hide somewhere in the house, usually--and suspiciously--replaced with something totally trivial belonging to a child that had been told could not be taken with them.
