Shrug. "I don't really know them." 

"Can you introduce me?"

"Sure, I can do that! I'll assk my parentss to introduce me to them firsst, I don't actually really know them, I just heard about it." 

"Thank you!"

Skan gets back to her later that day. "Their namess are Lythar and Eshata. They can talk to you tonight if you sstill want to?" 

"Yes please!"

Skan offers her a flying ride over to the gryphon eyrie again after supper. 

Lythar and Eshata are expecting her. It's still not that easy to tell gryphons apart when she hasn't interacted with that many adults, but Eshata has a reddish sheen to her fur which is quite recognizable. 

Skan introduces them. "And thiss is my friend Azabel!" he says proudly. 

"Hi, it's nice to meet you! I'm trying to talk to lots of gryphons with - a wide variety of experiences, for the book - and Skan mentioned you'd gotten put off when you asked about having kids?"

"- Oh, right, yess." Lythar glances at his wife. "He ssaid our baby might be born very ssick, becausse of - I didn't quite follow, did you, dear?" 

     "Becausse of what liness we come from, he ssaid." 

"Right, that." Wing-shrug. "He ssaid that a year ago he'd have told uss no, but - that thingss are different now." A questioning look at Azabel. 

Azabel thought to bring all the notes she's working from on the original gryphon relatedness situation and looks up their names. "Did he say what was different?"

"That we are mature enough ass a sspeciess to - make ssome of our own decisionss," Lythar says. 

     "Whether we want to take the rissk," Eshata adds. "It iss not for certain that our baby would be ssick. And - if we were brave enough we could try more than once, I ssuppose." 

Azabel can find their names fairly easily in the records. They're somewhere between first and second cousins - first-generation gryphon relatedness is messy, due to all the crossmatching of the source stock and modifications in-womb - and also they're both identified as probable carriers of a particular gryphonic defect. They had minor birth defects which were fixed easily by the Healers, but now after further decades fo study, it seems likelier the trait that caused those is inherited and that a double dose of it in their child would be fatal in early childhood unless treated - and isn't something the Healers know especially how to treat. It's only speculative that they carry it at all, though, this isn't something the Healers can See closely enough to diagnose directly. 

"Did he explain what the risk was?"

Another glance at each other, this time sheepish. "Yess, but - we did not really follow," Lythar admits. "Neither of uss was ever much good in sschool." 

     "He ssaid to talk to the Healerss," Eshata adds. "That they could explain it better. I - haven't yet been brave enough." 

"Okay. You should probably understand it before you go ahead but I bet Healers are better at explaining this kind of thing than me."

"That makess ssense. Thank you." 

"I didn't really do anything but you're welcome?"

Eshata nuzzles her partner. "You helped me feel brave enough to talk to the Healerss like I sshould." 

"...oh! Well, I'm glad I could help then. I hope they can explain it."

"I hope sso too!" 

And Skan can fly her home again. 

"It's not that Urtho doesn't necessarily have reasons that make sense behind all his decisions," Aza remarks, "it's that nobody's checking up on him the way he's trying to check up on all of you guys."

"Who do you think sshould be checking up on him?" 

"Well, me," says Aza. "But I wouldn't have to if there were someone else already doing it, I'm just doing it because nobody responsible was on that."