Having returned to live in the guest wing of Tannoran’s stuffy old manor, Erin settled into a new routine over the next couple of days. Up at the equivalent of five-thirty, wash, dress, a quick breakfast, grab her messenger bag, and out to the stable to grab a horse and zip off to the Aerie with plenty of time to spare to feed and play with Fee before work.
That day, she and gray Phoebe joined Leslyn and Valiant in the kitchen instead of stopping at the canteen for some pre-cut hoofer chunks. Her uncle had gotten pretty deft at slicing his own in the days he’d spent making goat smoothies for his tiny keet.
“Smoothie” was pretty accurate: When the two began giving the keets their morning feeding, Erin was both happy and horrified to see that even though he still hadn’t been strong enough to move much, Valiant had progressed from liquid-only to a nasty gore of ground and liquefied meat with the consistency of a chunky yogurt, which he ate by himself with scoops of his beak and seagull-like bobs of his head to get it down his throat.
After that first sight, the girl grimly focused on Phoebe, whose dietary needs were much less stomach-turning. With gloves satisfactorily applied, she plucked up a chunk of meat the size of a strawberry and held it over Fee’s head. With a mighty peep, the gray baby lunged, hopping clear off the ground and snapping her beak, but Erin didn’t let her have the meat. Instead, she put her other hand against Fee’s chest, gently holding her down.
“You have to be polite, remember?” She offered the chunk again, slowly lowering it toward Fee’s gaping maw.
This time, the keet trembled with anticipation as the meat came closer, but managed to remain grounded. When it was close enough, she hooked the meat on the razor-tip of her beak with a stab so fast that, if Erin had blinked, she would’ve missed it.
“She’s learning fast,” Leslyn said admiringly as Fee threw back her head and gulped the meat down.
“Right?” Erin was pleased as punch, rewarding her baby with a quick ruffling of both fluffy cheeks.
Valiant, who’d been watching the exchange with wide ice-blue eyes, looked at Leslyn and chirped. Leslyn cupped the keet’s face and scritched his cheeks, assuming he wanted the same as Erin had given Phoebe, but the little yellow griffin shook his head and pulled away, letting out a shrill squawk.
The two humans looked at each other and shrugged. Leslyn picked up the bowls with the remains of Phoebe’s and Valiant’s breakfasts and rose to wash them.
As soon as his back was turned, Valiant planted his fuzzy wings on the ground and, with an arduous trembling, pushed himself up onto his hind paws. The keet wobbled dangerously, catching himself with one wing, then the other, stretching his neck toward his bondmate.
“Desmond!” Erin snapped, too engrossed to notice or care which name she’d used.
Leslyn turned, the dull look on his face disappearing in a wash of surprise when he saw his baby struggling to stay upright. He knelt and put the bowls to the side, holding out his hands to Valiant. “Come to me, Val. You can do it.”
Erin pressed a hand to her mouth, a grin splitting her face. The boy’s eyes were absolutely glowing with delight over the little animal. There was the Desmond she knew.
Valiant continued to reach for Leslyn, but didn’t attempt to move again for few disappointing moments. When the boy didn’t go to him after a time, the griffin finally slid one wing forward, then followed it with a hind paw. It was a slow process, but after managing the movements a few times on either side, the baby seemed to grow in confidence, though not speed.
By the time he neared Leslyn’s outstretched arms, Valiant had pulled himself upright and was taking shaky steps, tail and wings dragging against the floor as balance aids. The boy opened and closed his hands a few times, beckoning the griffin to cross those last few inches, which Valiant did—
—and plunked his beak right into the bowl of Phoebe’s meat chunks. He came up with a piece pinched in his beak, barely able to open wide enough to get it in there in the first place. Erin couldn’t help but laugh at the startled look on the boy’s face.
With a hasty swipe, Leslyn snatched the meat from the keet before he could try to swallow and choke himself. Those chunks were absolutely massive for a keet his size. Even so, Valiant screeched at Leslyn just as indignantly as his mother ever had, his fuzz puffing out in an unfortunately very cute parody of one of Wrath’s usual displays of aggression.
“Hold that thought,” Leslyn said, and quickly went to the counter to cut a few chunks into smaller pieces. He put on his own gloves and knelt by Valiant again, holding a scrap of meat out for the baby.
To Erin’s surprise, Valiant didn’t immediately go for the food. Instead, he stared at the boy with a particularly sour, half-lidded look.
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“Oh, come on,” Leslyn snipped. “Should I have let you choke?”
Valiant squawked again and turned his head, stubbornly refusing the meat when Leslyn brought it closer.
“You really are your mother’s son,” he muttered. “Fine, do it yourself.” He put the scrap back in the bowl, and the bowl on the floor in front of Valiant.
The yellow keet’s ears pricked forward and he plunged face-first into the bowl. An enthusiastic gluck, gluck, gluck was heard as Erin and Leslyn grinningly watched the tiny keet gulp back as much meat as he could, as quickly as possible.
A sudden burst of light filled the room, sending Valiant onto his back with wings and legs flailing, Phoebe scurrying to hide under a counter, and Leslyn to his feet with a startled yelp.
"Good grief, Des. Haven't you ever seen a camera flash before?" Erin lowered her tablet, which she'd been aiming at Valiant. "Not my fault the lighting in here is so terrible."
Whatever his spittle-ridden retort was, she didn't hear it, immediately absorbed in the notification that popped up on the tablet's screen: The Emerrane wiki has just been updated. When she expanded it with a drag of her index finger, she saw there were three copies of it, all from within the last week or so. The older two must've glitched out and showed up late with the newest notification.
On the main page of the wiki, the last three updates were Valiant, Phoebe and Kaleit. Rolling her eyes, Erin skipped right over Kaleit's name and tapped her keet's instead. She already knew all she needed to know about that bozo, thank you very much.
Phoebe's page was topped with the photo Erin had taken the day she returned to Tannoran's manor. It was fairly close up on the keet's face, her ears were perked, and her big orange eyes looked straight at the camera with bright interest. What a cutie, Erin thought, smiling as she scanned on down the page.
What she saw made her stand up, gripping either side of the tablet with both hands. "Oh my gosh, she's royal blue!"
"Erin, you're not making sense. Who is royal blue, and what is that thing?"
"Phoebe is!" she sang out, taking a step closer and shoving Leslyn playfully in the chest. She barely cared when he used the opportunity to yank the tablet out of her hand to examine it. Her baby was rrrrrroyal! Erin cackled with glee and bent to ruffle Fee's cheeks again.
"I don't understand. What is this? What does it say?"
Okay, now he was getting annoying. "Drop the act, Desmond. It was cute at first, but not anymore." Erin stood up and snatched the tablet back. "You know exactly what this is. You've yelled at me often enough for having it out at the table."
Desmond’s monolid eyes naturally had a sharp look to them, but goodness, he could harden them into pure knives and razors when he wanted to. “I don’t know who you think I am, Erin, but I’ve had about as much as I can take of these bizarre accusations—AND that name. My name is LESLYN.”
The girl stomped her foot, making both keets flinch. “Oh, STOP IT! Look, I’m sorry I ruined your life at home, but we’re stuck here now, just the two of us. Like it or not, you’re still my stupid uncle, and I’m your stupid niece.”
Bam! The short one had nothing to say to that, eyes gone wide and distant.
With a huff, Erin took advantage of the silence following her victory and squatted with her tablet to read more about Phoebe.
Sire: Unknown. Dam: Wrath. Phenotype: Average build. Royal blue base with points, collar, dipped-minor and double lacing. Fertility: 87%.
Those were her coat color and markings, and the fertility score… The score linked to a guide that Erin didn’t remember writing, which indicated that a score of eighty-five percent or more meant that a griffin could lay up to fifteen eggs per clutch. It also seemed to imply that griffins that fertile were only obtainable through special circumstances. Erin guessed that the way she got Phoebe fell well within that requirement.
With that in mind, she checked Valiant's profile.
Phenotype: Wind-egger build. Iridescent golden fawn base with points, tips, undercolor, overcolor, van, collar and lacing. Fertility: 1%
Oh. Huh.
"Well, he'll probably never be a dad, but his color's super rare."
She looked over to find Leslyn giving her a long, pained look. "Please say something that makes sense," he pleaded.
With another huff, Erin held up the tablet, its screen facing toward him. "Your griffin, Valiant. It says right here that he's going to be a shiny golden boy when he grows up."
Leslyn warily glanced at Valiant, then back at the tablet. "How does it know?"
"How am I supposed to know? All I did was take a picture of him, and it magically appeared on the wiki."
"Magic? That metal slab is cursed?"
"Of course it's not, but I'm gonna curse the heck out of you if you don't quit playing dumb." Several choice words were on the tip of Erin's tongue for just that purpose.
"Does it work on other griffins?"
"I would assume so. Want to find out?"
After a minute for Leslyn to wrap Valiant, the two took their keets out into the Aerie. Leslyn led Erin to Romo's apartment, and she dutifully snapped a photo of the red griffin.
"He's an average-sized red-brown with common markings. Parents are Rinya and Bolt."
"I see someone's been doing her research," Koben said, sweeping into the apartment with his usual energy.
The young pair whirled, Erin shoving the tablet behind her back.
"Looking to become a future breeding expert, then?" he inquired, stepping past them to pat his griffin on the neck.
Erin had gone blank. Leslyn surreptitiously reached over and flicked her arm, eliciting a delayed, "Uh, yeah. Maybe. Someday."
"I see. Best not get ahead of yourself, though," Koben said kindly as he faced her again. "You've still got basic training ahead of you. You may find you're better suited to action than bookkeeping."
The girl automatically scoffed but quickly tried to cover it up with, "We'll see, I guess."
Koben seemed about to say something else, but he was interrupted by the clang of bells from somewhere within the Aerie. Everyone tensed. Erin could hear several faint echoes of bells with different tones coming from other locations outside of the building.
"We might see sooner, rather than later," the prince said, his hazel eyes hardening. "It's about to become very unpleasant outside. Both of you, help me with Romo's saddle."