"- What, for the first generation of babies to often not turn out right?"

"Yeah. Did your other species come out that way too?"

"Sometimes, but - this is a known phenomenon with all creation of new species, I believe it happened even moreso with the hertasi."

"Poor hertasi..."

Urtho seems unsure how to respond to that as well. He ends up just nodding solemnly.

There's a knock on the door. "Master Urtho?" a piping hertasi voice calls out. "You have a lesson in five minutes, are you coming...?"
 

"Oh, yes, of course!" Urtho pushes back his chair. "Thank you for joining me, Azabel - it was an excellent discussion, I apologize that I must rush out like this..."

"Have a good lesson, thank you for seeing me!" She gathers up her notes.

"You are welcome, though really I am the one who ought thank you," Urtho answers, absentmindedly, following the hertasi out.

Aza looks around for another one. There are always a bunch around this part of the tower, Urtho needs a lot of hertasing. "Excuse me?"

"Yes, miss?" This particular hertasi is maybe new or something, and doesn't recognize her.

"It just occurred to me that I've never seen a baby hertasi! Is that for a specific reason or can I?"

"Oh! The little ones are not ready to, well, to serve all of you with grace and cleverness, yet. But if you like babies in general then it is not against the rules to come visit our nursery. If you wanted to."

"I am not specifically very interested in babies most of the time but I would like to see the nursery. How do they learn how to do their jobs, do you have your own school?"

The hertasi considers this for a moment. "Well, all right, follow me. I suppose you could say we have a school of sorts - mostly the little ones do not need formal teaching, they are eager enough to ask us about our work..."

The hertasi ushers her down the hall, and then stops at what looks like a random section of stone wall, and then - unlocks and opens a door, somehow perfectly camouflaged with the wall. "This way!"

What a very hidden door, does it show up to mage-sight -

It does not! It's just a very very skillfully made stone door. If she knew exactly where to look and peered in close she would be able to see the crack around it, but even the handle is cleverly designed to be basically invisible until poked.

Cool.

Little hertasi where aaaare you?

The big hertasi takes her down a spiralling stone staircase, also very well-made; the steps are shallower than usual, hertasi have shorter legs than humans, but this incidentally makes it easier for Azabel too, and there's a railing.

And then they're in a surprisingly spacious stone room, though it seems to be designed on purpose to feel more like a cave, all curving organic-feeling contours.

There are little hertasi! A few litters of them, apparently. There's a sort of nest of blanket-bits on top of a mattress in one corner, with a little safety railing around it, and the babiest baby hertasi are flomping around in it. They're SO small and seem to be mostly head and eyes, their bodies still scrawny and uncoordinated and their scales almost colourless.

"Those ones hatched last week," the hertasi guiding her explains. "They do not talk yet but they are very sweet. The older ones are this way."

There's a play area. It has a toy kitchen in it and a toy - classroom? - and various other toy versions of places to be found in the real tower. A cluster of hertasi about half the size of the adults appear to be having a doll tea party.

- awwww, something about hertasi makes so much more sense now that she has the mental image of them growing up and moving on to ambulatory dolls. "Can I hold a baby one or is it like human babies where their heads flop if you don't do it right?"

"You can hold one! You do need to hold up their heads, and they can be wriggly, but it is not too hard, I will show you."

Shortly later Azabel has a newly-hatched baby hertasi trying to crawl up her chest and eat her hair.

The older children have announced that two of their dolls are in LOVE and getting MARRIED and there is eager discussion of doll wedding planning.

The baby hertasi has a soft-scaly texture, and she pets her, and tries to keep her hair out of the way. She supervises the wedding planning for a bit till the baby gets a big mouthful of hair and she has to go disentangle her back into the nest.

The baby makes upset chirping noises about this.

"Oh, she's hungry," coos the adult hertasi. "Aaaren't you, sweetie...? Here, I've got her, let's get you something better to eat than hair."

"What do the babies eat?"

"All sorts of things! The same food us adults eat, it just needs to be soft. They love fruit especially."

The hertasi fills a bowl with applesauce and the baby immediately attempts to shove her entire face into it.