I don't want to kill the dinosaurs. I want to satisfy the fondest wishes of five-year-old Odette who delighted in making her toy Triceratops gore her sister's toy T-Rex when she made him bite her.

Those two don't even live in the same habitat.

Our toys lived in the same habitat, which was our house.

Hey, environmental accuracy in dinosaur games is very important. Did I never tell you about the time I brought a velociraptor home as a pet?

You never told me anything about dinosaurs before now. Tell me more.

I started riding with Orome when I was way underage, maybe twenty? I was desperately unhappy - wasn't good at anything - and my father knew it but was helpless because he couldn't engineer me a talent and even inventing me an alphabet only got me so far. And Orome offered to take me out, and I was good at it. I was good at terrain, I was good at recognizing plants, I was stellar at tracking and gifted for my size with a bow, though I was by far the worst of his riders, and I was deliriously happy and so were my parents once they found out. And we went down south to hunt dinosaurs and I found and befriended a velociraptor. I named her Ambale. I thought she was delightful. I brought her home and my parents were not delighted. They explained to me that she might eat my baby brother, which I thought was an acceptable risk, and that she might be lonely, which I agreed was no good. So we took a family trip down south to release her to be with her friends. 

When Orome got me Huan I think my parents were profoundly relieved. Merely a Maia, you know, that's easy to adapt to as a household pet.

She props herself on one elbow and beams down at him adoringly. That's amazing. I can't even imagine--a pet velociraptor.

Only for a week! My parents were right, but I still feel badly about it. She might not have reintegrated well with the other velociraptors.

I'm glad you've got Huan, anyway.

Without him I think I'd have coped very badly with the war. 

I'm very, very, very glad that didn't happen.

Me too.  It's been a long four hundred fifty years. Hasn't brought out the best in any of us. It's - good - that we were still whole enough we could treat you decently. 

Can't help that everyone else seems to hate you.

Doesn't. It's easy to - be peoples' expectations of you, I think. Or at least towards them. And every time I talk with some self-righteous Doriath border guard who keeps letting civilians die at their door, and they call me a Kinslayer -

Hugs. All of the hugs. They're idiots. Maybe not in general but about this thing. And hypocrites. Massive hypocrites. As though causing people to die is somehow more okay because you're the anvil instead of the hammer.

I love you so much.

I love you too. I can totally see why you'd like animals better than people, though, animals don't hold moronic grudges or perpetuate family drama or--or do politics.

They don't. And, you know, they feel things as intensely as us - different things, but things, I'm not sure being a person is at all the thing that makes you matter, and once I learned to speak with them I was never lonely.

It's so amazing that you can do that.

I'd teach you if I could. My father tried learning but couldn't, and that probably means it's impossible. Unless you want to do your kind of magic the way you copied osanwe, maybe? But if that's risky it is not worth the risk.

I might do that. I might not. I'll probably want to look at you doing it, first, see what I can find out without doing anything to my brain.

Sure thing. I don't know if there are animals here other than Huan, though, and I might be doing something different with Huan.

Plausible. Little me could talk to him with her not-osanwe telepathy.

Well, she's just reading thoughts, right, and he has thoughts. Little you's a bit scary, I know a lot of people who'd freak out at an involuntary telepath. Nelyo would. There's stuff in his head a six year old shouldn't see.

In no universe is it a good idea to let her anywhere near your brother, no.