"Not everybody dies of being a hundred. Do you at least have it written down?"

"Of course, and my hertasi know where. I am not that disorganized." He's giving her a piercing look.

"That's good. Nobody makes sure humans would be good parents before they have babies! Especially not any one single person! I guess maybe it would make sense to offer parenting classes or something but I don't even know that Skan's parents are especially good, they're gone all the time and have never wanted to meet me even though we've been friends for a really long time."

"Oh. Really?" Urtho doesn't seem sure how to respond to this.

"Maybe they're great when they're home and just work a lot! But - I should ask the gryphons how they feel about this, have you asked them how they feel about this -" Scribble scribble, on her to-do page instead of the one she's using to note the conversation as it goes by.

Judging by Urtho's expression, he kind of wants to object to this but isn't sure how.

"Have you not even asked them? They don't say, when they're asking if they can have babies?"

"...No, they have not brought it up that I recall."

"Well, somebody should ask them." She finishes her to-do entry and flips back to her conversation notes.

"Do you have any other questions?" Urtho maybe sounds very slightly annoyed.

"I also wanted to know if you have a guess how long they'll be able to live."

"The average gryphon lifespan, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"I had aimed for about the same length as a human lifespan, but - well, it has not yet been long enough to see for sure."

"You could aim that? Why didn't you aim for more than that? Hertasi live longer."

"Hertasi are smaller than humans and have slower metabolisms, it would have been much easier - if not the default - to give them long lives. I needed to work quite hard to attempt to give gryphons a comparable lifespan, they are larger and both of their source species have shorter lifespans and higher metabolisms."

"Oh, that's interesting." Write write. "That's all my prepared questions." So if he wants rid of her after she had the impertinence to wonder why he had TWO HUNDRED CHILDREN and then got precious about which of them were good enough to reproduce he can dismiss her now.

Urtho is quiet for a few beats, sipping from his water glass, but he doesn't seem angry. Curious, mostly.

"Azabel, you seem to have - some opinions on this subject. And, well, not the predictable ones. I find myself wondering both what truly brought you here, today, and - what you are thinking now."

"...I got the list of topics we'll be covering in ethics class and one of them was about creating species and then I heard that you hadn't published your notes, so I came to ask so I'd know more specifics for when we have that topic in class. - oh, and I also want to know how you made them, did you make, like, eggs, or did they have surrogate parents who were animals, or did they just appear as babies somehow -"

"They had surrogate parents! Lions, in this case, I decided that gryphons ought give birth to live young. And, no, I have not published my notes, since the working is not yet complete."

"Why'd you decide they should do live young instead of eggs?"

"It is much easier to give enough gestational time for the brain to develop toward what a sentient species requires, if there is a womb. Eggs are possible - hertasi lay eggs - but it is much harder."

"It seems like maybe a very defective baby would just not hatch if there were eggs and that would be less sad for their parents."

"Oh. Hmm. I suppose that could be a consideration - clever girl!" Urtho smiles at her. "Not what I did with the gryphons, but - in general that could be a good point."

"Of course that would only have been a consideration if you knew it was going to happen that way, I don't know if it's usual with new species."