Ranara and her little daughter Azabel move to Urtho's Tower when the latter can say six words ("up", "mama", "milk", "no", "now", and "please") and hasn't started to walk yet. Ranara sets up to teach little children to read, ones who don't have evident Gifts yet - Ranara herself has Mindspeech, is all, with about a classroom's worth of range. Azabel sits in on classes, worn on her mother's back or later plopped in a corner with toys or, when she's only four, plopped in a corner with a book, younger than the other kids in the class. When Azabel has in fact sat through her mother's curriculum she is turned somewhat loose, to walk very carefully up and down and around the Tower, exploring.
"So probably more history but maybe I can have some bits on the technical stuff."
"Yes, that seems right. We can try to find a level of it that is interesting and not repetitive, and perhaps put somewhat more in the footnotes? ...I do not especially want this to be a detailed instruction manual on how anyone can make a species, to be honest, I think it - goes better, when doing this requires substantial proactiveness from someone."
"I - hmm. I think it correlates with having put a great deal of thought into a matter, and being highly invested in it?"
"I guess that's true, if you could make a species in a weekend that would probably be worse than needing to stick with it for years."
"I think it would be more likely to end up very messy, in any case. As always, I am not sure any of us can predict how our choices will end up affecting world generations from now."
Aza nods. Presumably he doesn't mean in very broad terms like "the world will have gryphons in it".
"Is that all for now, then? I - think I am probably overdue for my next engagement."
"All right! Thank you for bringing this to me!" Urtho pats her shoulder again, with an absently-fond expression, and then rushes out.
Aza makes sure his hertasi know where to send the notes to her and departs as well.
:That's so neat!: Pause. :...Urtho confuses me. As a person. Do you understand what makes him upset or not about something?:
:...what things have you seen him really upset about, as opposed to like... kind of irritated for a minute?:
:...I dunno that I have seen him actually upset or mad. I just - keep expecting him to be. I think when I try to predict what he's thinking from what he says:
:There've been a few places where he could've been mad but he didn't actually get mad. He seems pretty mellow honestly. It might be an inattentiveness-supported mellow but still: Also she can profit from his flaws by writing his book for him, thereby causing there to be a book people will want to read that she wrote such that she can build on that basically guaranteed success.
:Huh. Is he just...not scared at ALL about people trying to hurt him? So he feels like it's - safe - to be that inattentive to everything?:
:I guess? I mean, maybe he would have been more alarmed if I'd decided I needed to organize a gryphon strike and hold loud protests but it turned out he wasn't actually that far out of line:
:The way the gryphons described it made it sound like he was making medical decisions for baby ones instead of their parents but when I checked the handbook it turned out that they have the same policy about humans, and the only difference is humans aren't always at Healers' in the first place and gryphons are since so many of their babies are going to need some help to start out. Also some of them have in fact flown off to do their own thing already, it could just stand to be clearer to all concerned that this is allowed. I still think he should cut it out with breeding them but they didn't seem super urgent about it, though I'll talk to more of them over the course of the book and find out exactly how hard I want to push on that, if he doesn't back off on his own. Plus I might wind up with his actual notes on the spell since the hertasi are going to be ferrying me gryphon-related materials and then I won't have to hide in the eyrie to be able to alternately source the spell for them:
:Huh. That's... I don't know if it should be surprising, but I guess I'd've expected he'd - need more persuading to change his mind on how he's done things for years and years?:
:I think he's mostly a little careless, not, like, philosophically in favor of being mean to gryphons. And it's only a little, he did most things right, the person who made hertasi was less nice:
:They had... drafts. Nonpeople drafts, which was smart, but also people ones, maybe to test for personality. And sterilized them when they weren't how they wanted them and the book doesn't say where they went: