"I'm pretty good! How are you?"

"Oh, very busy as always, but not bad. I did some thinking about what you said to me, and, well, made some announcements to my gryphons that I do not think were very surprising to them, but were in fact overdue. And - I think you are right, that there is not a good reason to delay writing up a treatise, aside from it being quite a lot of work." 

"I think probably it's also important to be clear to everyone else that you don't own the gryphons. So people don't think this is a good way to get slaves, or people who can't complain to the guard about anything. Also so people don't think you might be the sort of person who'd do that. I was pretty sure that you didn't think you owned them after I asked a lot of questions but it did take a bunch to be clear."

"I would not have thought that other people would be confused on this? It is not as though I have ever claimed to own them." 

"It doesn't exactly look like you do, but it doesn't look like you don't - like, if you had a human child the usual way, that's fairly common, people know what that's like and when they'll be legally independent from their parents and what your rights over them are in the meanwhile. It wouldn't look like you owned them because it would look like a specific other thing instead. If you make two hundred gryphon children I don't imagine you necessarily automatically own them unless you explicitly set them free, but if I haven't thought about it particularly and then I learn that you're deciding who they can have kids with and when, and hear that you're making medical decisions for those kids - I have since read the Healers' handbooks and no longer especially think you're doing that but when I first heard it sounded that way - and you're providing them all room and board and they'd have a hard time earning enough money to feed themselves on their own because of the diet you gave them... it starts to look kind of concerning."

"...I think that will be less true once people are more familiar with gryphons and their full capabilities," Urtho says. "Er, the part about having trouble earning enough to feed themselves. I think in twenty years, once more of them are trained and out in the world, the Crown will be eager to hire them for many purposes. ...Also I think you might underestimate how hard it would have been to make them not carnivores, given the source species, I am not actually sure it could be done at all and it would very likely have given them more health troubles had I attempted it." 

"Well, yes, I don't know how you'd make an eagle-cat combination omnivorous, but you could have made, uh, parrot-deer or something, I don't know."

"Hmm." 

Urtho is quiet, opens his mouth, closes it again, seems to consider and reject several possible responses. 

"What are all those notes about this time?" he asks eventually. 

"I took notes on the hertasi books for ideas about how to structure a gryphon book. If you want me to help."

"Yes! It will be a long term project, but that only makes it a better idea to get started now. What did you think about the hertasi books?" 

"They left out some things I would have liked to read about - he did a few versions before he got the kind of hertasi we have now and there was barely enough about those I could be sure he didn't outright kill them, let alone find out what he didn't like about them or how they felt about the whole process - but they were pretty usefully structured, and I think gryphons didn't have versions so if we copy the outline we won't be leaving out important gryphon facts. There was also a first generation hertasi memoir, I might do one of those since gryphons have a hard time writing and would want help but probably don't need your help with that."

"Oh, you read that!" Urtho lights up. "I spoke to the author of it, you know, twenty years ago or so..." He frowns. "Maybe thirty, it gets so hard to keep track once you are my age. He was delightful. He might even still be alive, you know, hertasi have longer lifespans than humans." 

"Ooh! Do you know where he might be?"

"Hmm, let me think. He'd settled out in Ketaran when I saw him - that's just outside Ka'venusho, cute little town on the river - but it's been a while. I am sure someone among the hertasi here would know if he is still alive, and if so where he lives." 

She can put this down in her to-dos. She has his name from the book, naturally.

Urtho waits for her to finish. "So - where do we want to start on this book project, and how do you want to divide it up? I - confess I will have difficulty freeing up time to work on it aside from the occasional meeting like this, but I can give you a section of my notes to read through and then get your suggestions later?" 

"Sure! I can work from your notes and talking to gryphons and the hertasi who brought them up, and send you letters with questions occasionally and we can meet whenever it's convenient for you to look over how it's coming along."

"Of course! I really am grateful you are so enthusiastic about this project, Azabel." 

"It's an exciting project! I've never published a book before."

"Hardly anyone has at your age! I am sure in time you will write others, though." 

"Probably! How much of a volume of notes are we talking about here?"

Urtho looks a bit sheepish. "...You know, I am not sure, I never organized them all in one place before. Probably much of it is very repetitive and can be skimmed over, though." 

"Okay... well, are they in chronological order or something?"

"...I might be able to ask the hertasi to help organize them." 

"I bet they would be happy to help," Aza says diplomatically.