Leslyn stared at the yellow keet in his arms, not with love, not with joy, but with a cold, creeping dread. It was wrapped tightly in a towel with only its head uncovered, its unpleasantly oversized blue eyes moving slowly and aimlessly when they bothered to open at all. Something about it made him feel ill. He wished to cover the creature’s grotesque face and forget he ever saw it.
Without a word, Gunu had given him one of the cleansing towels to wrap it in, then, snapping a terse dismissal to the audience on their way out of Wrath’s apartment, he hastily ushered him to the Aerie’s kitchen, where they now stood.
The Aeriemaster quickly went to work, putting chunks of fresh raw meat into the grinder and cranking them through, then repeating the process several more times with the same ground-up meat. Next, it went into a cheesecloth, and the juices were squeezed out into a cup. He handed the cup to Leslyn, who understood its purpose immediately.
He sat on the floor, and, setting the wrapped keet in his lap and propped against his ribs, held its head so the beak pointed straight up in the air, slipped a finger into the corner of its mouth to pry it open, and carefully began to pour a small amount of the juice down its throat. Its swallow was reflexive, but after the liquid hit the keet’s belly, its eyes opened and it began looking around with drowsy, drunken movements of its head. The two manlings shared a sigh of relief as it found Leslyn’s face, then gave a faint peep.
“Give it as much as it asks for,” Gunu said.
Leslyn poured another trickle, with similar results. The keet managed to take in a little more, but then it began to cough and sneeze, spraying half of what it had just taken into its mouth. He looked to the Aeriemaster in panic, but Gunu bade him to stay calm.
When beckoned, the boy wiped some of the spray from his face, shifted the keet to the crook of his arm, and rose to join the Aeriemaster a few paces away. They unwrapped the unfortunate creature and lay it on the warm brick floor by the oven. Gunu then went to the water pump while Leslyn knelt and covered its body with several more towels.
Lulled by the comforting heat, the keet's gaze unfocused and it twitched as it fell into an uneasy sleep, eyes only halfway closed. That quiet moment was when everything finally became too much, and Leslyn came to tears.
“Why now?” He turned on the Aeriemaster, his voice harsh. “Why did you wait so long? Why didn’t you care for it from the moment it hatched? It could be too late to save it, now.”
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“I’ve tried it in the past, Leslyn.” Carrying a bowl of water toward him, Gunu’s mouth was a grim line. “Not only does it bond the creature to me, only to lose it in days or hours, but in almost twenty years as Aeriemaster, I’ve never seen a mother try to assign a keet born in so poor a condition. They know.”
At last, he recognized the ugly truth. “Yes, they certainly do.” It had come out as a growl.
“Leslyn?”
The boy made a fist and dug his knuckles into the floor, trying to dissipate the unexpected burst of anger. “This is revenge. It’s her way of punishing me for finding her nest and helping Koben to capture her.”
Patiently, Gunu knelt and attempted to seize Leslyn's hands, and after some half-hearted resistance, succeeded and dunked them in the bowl. "You're accusing Wrath of deliberately doing this with a purpose other than securing a guardian for her keet?"
He stared distantly at his hands as the Aeriemaster washed them in the same way he'd washed the others, even though his were completely unsoiled by Wrath’s gift. "It was written all over her face. She made a promise then and there on the ship that she'd get back at me, and she made good on it today."
Gunu put aside the bowl and towel to cross his arms and consider. "She does seem to be a bit more intelligent than the average griffin. It's like to be why she was able to survive on her own so long… and how she devised that escape plan when she wanted Arlis. We've handled the occasional mother's choice of a friend from the audience much the same way through recorded history, with no notes of an escape attempt."
"What normally happens when the mother can't find the person she wants?"
A wry smile creased the man's lips. "She settles for less. Once in a rare while, she leaves that keet unassigned. After three days, it goes to the current Aeriemaster if there are no more candidates on tap. The keets can live off of what strength they’ve taken from their egg for a surprisingly long time, but most can’t go without eating much longer than that."
"Oh? To the Aeriemaster? How many griffins do you have, then?"
"Bonded?" His smile had vanished. "Only Sythe. The rest of my charges are 'orphaned,' so to speak. A few of them trust me enough to sit astride while they stretch their wings in the open sky, but for most, I will merely care for them until their time comes to rejoin their riders."
“…How many?” he repeated, his voice small.
“I stopped counting after ten. There are many more now.”
“Was it the merlings?”
“More the dracats and wyverns, but yes, for a few of them.” When it was clear the boy was out of questions, he left the kitchen and returned a bit later with an armful of thick coverlets, which he placed beside Leslyn. “These should be comfortable enough. Get some sleep. I’ll send someone in the morning to monitor the keet while you join the others in the teaching room. Novice lessons begin at eighth.”
“Mhm.”
The Aeriemaster watched him for a few moments, a sympathetic look on his face. “Leslyn… regardless of her motives, and regardless of the outcome, Wrath gave you a great honor today. I hope you will come to see it that way.”
Leslyn had nothing to say.