"Yes, but it's not urgent at all."

"I see. He's in his Work Room right now - do you want me to tell you when I expect him to be less busy?"

"Yes please!"

"Wait here, Miss Azabel!" The hertasi bustles off, and comes back a few minutes later to tell her that Master Urtho has a committee meeting this afternoon but he should be in his office and not especially busy tomorrow morning.

(Unfortunately Azabel has weather-magic class scheduled for the morning tomorrow.)

"Could I maybe have lunch with him?"

"He doesn't have anything on his calendar for that, but - is there anything I could note down about why you want to?"

"We're going to talk about making species in class, and he hasn't published his notes about gryphons!"

"So you want to ask him yourself! How proactive! And I think he will find it quite flattering, so I can mark that in on his calendar."

"Thank you! What time will he take lunch tomorrow?"

The hertasi gives her a time. It'll fit in around her classes fine.

Then the next day, tired and hungry after weather magic, she goes up to Urtho's.

Urtho is in the process of being nudged over by a polite but insistent hertasi from his desk to the conference room next door, where lunch appears to be laid out for both of them. He looks absentmindedly confused about this, but his expression clears when he sees her, and he smiles. "Azabel! You asked to eat with me today, I heard, how delightful."

"Yeah! I want to ask you about making gryphons." Also she wants to eat her entire lunch in five seconds flat. She should start bringing snacks to class. Omnomnom.

"Worked hard this morning, did you." Urtho seems amused about this. He eats his own food and waits for her mouth not to be full. "So. What sort of questions about gryphons did you have? It's rather a broad topic."

"How'd you decide to make them?"

"Well, no one had ever made an intelligent race of flying beings before, and I suppose I wanted to see if it was possible. Also they are very beautiful, are they not?" He sounds so proud.

"They are, they're really cool! Was making them both intelligent and flying a special technical challenge for some reason?"

"Well, intelligent creatures have large brains, right? Which are heavy. Gryphons would actually be much too heavy to fly without magic; they are based on eagles and also several different species of great cats, but I worked in substantial natural magic as well."

"They're really strong! My gryphon friend can carry me, even."

“Oh, are you friends with one of my gryphons?” Urtho chuckles and looks even more pleased. “What is their name? I make a habit of meeting all the new ones.”

"Skandranon. The hertasi introduced us when we were little."

“Awwww, how sweet. He is certainly very talented! I make sure to go watch the aerial competitions every so often and I think I recall he is a rising star, there.”

"Yeah, he's one of the best! How many gryphons are there, I know it's a lot but many of them are away from the Tower a lot..."

"- Hmm, let me think. Two hundred and...something...adults. More children than that but -" he looks a little embarrassed, "but I am still perfecting their species and the children sometimes have fatal medical problems. I am hoping to eventually have enough of them for a healthy breeding population."

"Oh dear. Are all the adults first-generation?"