Bumpi - XERES LIVE!

📋

Basic Information

Full Name

Bumpi

Nickname

"Auntie Bumpi"

Race (Grade)

Kobold (F)

Class

Caregiver

Height

2'10"

Birthday

Sunspeak 3, 1259

Age

Loading...

Birthsign

The Radiant Treant

🩸

Bloodline Ability

🔮 Unknown

This Bloodline ability has not yet been unveiled to you.

🪞

Physical Description

Bumpi in the Emberlight nursery, with a rabbit she sewed

Appearance

Bumpi is a small, round-cheeked kobold with warm peach scales that pale to cream along her throat, belly, and the undersides of her arms, and a long, curling tail ridged with soft spines. Her eyes are enormous and amber-brown, her ear frills are wide and pink-edged, and her two short horns usually have a few fresh daisies tucked in behind them, because the children she minds keep putting them there and she keeps letting them. She smiles with her whole face. She dresses for work that ends up on the floor: a moss-green dress, a cream linen blouse with the sleeves pushed up, and a long embroidered apron gone soft from washing, with a leather satchel and two or three cloth pouches on her belt holding whatever the day might need, which is usually a biscuit, a bandage, a spare sock, and a needle and thread.

Unique Characteristics

Bumpi remembers every bump. Show her a scar on any kobold from Burrowbough under the age of fifty and she will tell you the day you got it, what you fell off, and how loudly you cried, and she will be right. She counts heads without knowing she is doing it, in any room with children in it, all day long, and she can tell a hungry cry from a tired one, a sad one, or a sick one from the other end of a house. She sews a stuffed rabbit for every child she minds, out of whatever cloth is to hand, and no two are alike. Children who will not sleep for anyone else sleep for her, and nobody, including Bumpi, can explain why.

🧭

Personality & Temperament

Positive Traits

Can settle any crying child, usually inside a minute
Knows what a baby wants from the cry alone
Remembers every bump, scrape, and scar she ever kissed
Endlessly patient, and never once raises her voice
Warm to everyone, big folk and small alike

Challenging Traits

Counts heads constantly, and panics if one is missing
Mothers grown kobolds as if they were still four
Will not leave a sleeping child alone for a minute
Has not slept a whole night since Burrowbough fell
Takes over any nursery she walks into

Shh, shh, there. That's the hungry cry, not the sad one. Somebody fetch me something warm to drink, please, and nobody panic.

Show me. Oh, I remember this one. You were six, it was the rain barrel, and you cried so loudly the hens stopped laying for a week.

One, two, three, four... Everybody's here. Good. I'll count again in a minute.

Likes

A full nursery and then a quiet one, in that order
Lullabies older than Burrowbough itself
Sewing stuffed rabbits, one for every child
The weight of a sleeping baby on her shoulder
Being called Auntie, by anyone at all

Dislikes

Empty cradles
Doors left open after dark
Anyone who says a child is too small to understand
The smell of smoke on the wind at night
Being told to sit down and rest

📜

Background & History

The Cradle Burrow

Bumpi was born in Burrowbough, a kobold village deep in the Geldergreen, on Sunspeak 3, 1259. Burrowbough raised its young as a whole village, but the whole village still had roofs to mend, mushrooms to tend, and game to bring home, so in the daytime its little ones went to the cradle burrow, a long, warm room dug in among the roots of the old oak beside the meeting hall. From the age of eighteen, the cradle burrow was Bumpi's. For nearly thirty years she minded every kit born in the village: she fed them, sang to them, taught them to climb, settled their quarrels, and kissed every bump.

Every One of Them

There is hardly a Burrowbough kobold under fifty that Bumpi did not mind as a kit, and she remembers all of them. She remembers Gribblit falling into the stream below the meeting hall so often that his bumps alone could fill an evening, and Trubbo as the smallest kit of his year, and which of the bigger kits found that out first. The only survivor she never minded is Yezzi, who is older than she is, and she minds him anyway.

The Old Oak

On the night of Goldenleaf 26, 1307, the eve of Funzi's life-pairing feast, half the village was up late cooking and decorating, and the little ones were sleeping in the cradle burrow with Bumpi, as they always did before a feast. When Kobbin began beating on the meeting hall gutter, she had every one of them awake, wrapped, and at the foot of the old oak before most of the village had found its boots. Pexxi held the trunk while the kits were handed up branch by branch, Muffit passed muffins along the boughs, and Ibin ran the high branches telling every mother that her children were in the old oak. Bumpi counted heads all night. Every kit who went to sleep in the cradle burrow that night came down out of the old oak in the morning.

The Ones at Home

Not every child in Burrowbough was in the cradle burrow that night. Some were sleeping at home, and some of those are on the other side of Jozub's Roll, among them Dozzi and Rikki, Jaxxi's two, whom Bumpi had minded since the day each of them was born. She knows every child's name on that side of the Roll, and every night, before she sleeps, she says them over quietly, the way she used to count them in.

The Road to Haven

Bumpi walked out of the Geldergreen with the other survivors, carrying a kit on each hip for most of the way, and spent the weeks among the big-folk towns at the forest's edge keeping the survivors' children fed, warm, and too busy to be frightened. When word came that Haven treats kobolds as people, she came to Goodberry with most of Burrowbough in the first days of Harvestide 1307, and minded children there while their parents found work.

Through the Portal

On Harvestide 17, 1307, the day the portal to Silmarithil opened again, Bumpi was one of the first through it. Eight of her kits had already gone to Silmarithil, and one of them, Jaxxi, was not eating properly, which as far as Bumpi was concerned settled it. She joined Lucerion's household as caregiver to the Emberlight children, and by the end of her first day the nursery was running on her schedule, every child in it had a rabbit on the way, and the household's guard, Vorrek, had been asked very politely to wipe his boots.

🌿

Goals & Aspirations

Every Child Counted In

The Emberlight children are hers to mind now, and Bumpi means for every one of them to be fed, warm, safe, and asleep on time, and counted in every night. She does not intend to lose a single one, and she does not intend to discuss it.

A Cradle Burrow Again

Burrowbough's families are scattered between Goodberry, Silmarithil, and Rokoura, and sooner or later they will have kits again. Bumpi wants every one of those kits to have a cradle burrow of some kind, wherever it is born, and somebody in it who will remember its bumps.

Her Grown Kits

Her kits are grown now, and Bumpi minds them anyway. She would like Jaxxi to sleep under a roof and eat a hot meal, Muffit to go to bed at a sensible hour, and Gribblit, just once, to get through a week without falling off something. She is working on all three.

🌱

Development

🍃

Current Status & Relationships

Residence

Silmarithil

Role

Caregiver

Professional

From Burrowbough

ATTENTION!

Bumpi is an F-grade kobold caregiver with no fighting skill at all, and she has never needed any: on the night Burrowbough fell she got every child in her care up a tree with the dead at the bottom of it, and she will put herself between any danger and a child without stopping to think. If you have business with the Emberlight children, it goes through Bumpi first, and she will want to know when they will be back, what they will be eating, and whether you have washed your hands. She is also the best source in Haven on any Burrowbough survivor, because she minded nearly all of them as kits and remembers everything, so mind what you ask, because she will tell you. If a child in her care goes missing, even for a minute, she will not stop, sit down, or sleep until that child is found.