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“So, they can’t go out. I can’t either most of the time and you are perfectly pleased to have me around,” she insisted stubbornly. “I bet being a companion could be rewarding if trained to do that. A lot of dogs are trained to guard property and family members on Earth in addition to breeds that are workers.”
He sighed. “And you will do this with every runt abandoned?”
Okay, he had a point that it would make for a lot of grifalc underfoot. Especially if they had certain needs that she would have to be careful to meet.
“Well, I could find homes for them. I bet Diane would want one too. She is always going on about dogs and how much she hates it that dog and cat breeds have not yet been modified for Ganymede. The one breed of dog that has been is in trial stages and is only available by farming license since the herding droids tend to break down too much here. She would take a grifalc, and I’m sure many others would too.”
“And when it gets nearly as long as they are tall?” he queried, his brow raising.
Jill shrugged. “So it’s a Great Dane with wings and terror beak. They get a warning.” Her eyes lit up. “Training! You breed and train grifalc. You said that’s the family business. So we do companion and me classes for grifalc rehoming.”
A doubtful look crossed his face. “I don’t know, Jill.”
She waved a hand through the air. “Just let’s try this on a trial basis and see. If we are successful, wouldn’t it be so much better than just letting ‘nature take its course?’ And I’ll be entirely responsible for Duke here.”
He gave her an incredulous look but slowly handed the pup over. “Duke?”
She immediately tucked the tiny body into her coat and grinned down at the pup as he blinked up at her in confusion. “He looks like nobility to me! And I’m sure you’re wrong about Brydis. He will love him!”
As it turned out, he was not wrong about Brydis, but the other male gave in a lot more gracefully and much quicker than Agor did. The male seemed occupied a lot more than he indicated with his attempts to open communication with the High Rookery, though all he said about it was that they were instructed to remain within the rookery and await further instructions. So perhaps it was about the pup. His twin was difficult to read at times, even for him. It was possible that it could just be the pup, anyway. As no one had tried to actually rear a grifalc runt as a pet in their memory, they were treating the situation as a bizarre experiment and with some trepidation. The condition that she was given was an unpleasant one, but one she agreed to promptly just for the chance of saving Duke’s life. If the grifalc turned on her at all or grew crazed as it matured stuck within the confines of the rookery, then she had no choice but to allow them to terminate him. She knew they didn’t like the idea of killing grifalcs any more than she did, she was determined to make it a success, especially in light of the favorable response of the higher ups in the High Rookery to their observations and thoughts regarding coming together and sharing resources with the human farmers of Ganymede.
Things were starting to look up!
Chapter27
Agor grinned cheerfully as he perched lazily in the kennel, thoroughly ignoring Brydis’s disapproving glower. Just in front of them, Jill carefully picked her way among the soiled straw bedding, her nose wrinkling with disgust. It had been only a handful of days since bringing her to their rookery and he never got tired of how expressive she was.
“You don’t have to do this, talia,” Brydis called out to her with a final perturbed look sent in his direction, but she waved him off with a wry smile.
“I need to do something, and you did say that this is important, right?”
Agor nodded. “The clean bedding is necessary for keeping the pups healthy. The adults don’t have as strict requirements necessarily.”
She glanced over at him curiously. “Necessarily? That implies that they still do.”
He nodded gamely. “Of course. A well-maintained kennel makes a grifalc comfortable enough to roost and groom themselves appropriately. And it plays into a very delicate social structure between the grifalcs.” He tipped his head toward the tiny bit of fluff that was all that consisted of her runt grifalc, Duke, who was currently rapidly running his head along the straw. “See what he’s doing there? He is loosening molted feathers. Adults do this too. Grooming socially together reinforces denning together within the kennel so long as it is kept up, and in turn that leads to more pups.”
Jills lips twitched. “I see. So what I do here is not only for their health but also to set the mood more or less. Do I need to sprinkle flowers over the bedding too?”
His grin returned at her obvious teasing tone.
“I think you can skip that, although, if this is a human tradition, I will never turn away flowers in my bedding,” he observed. “I can think of a particularly lovely one that I would enjoy seeing offered on my cushions soon enough.”
Brydis groaned at his flirting, but Jill laughed as he knew she would. Although she was their mate in every recognizable way among their species, Agor was determined to win the most precious thing yet… her heart. A taliazon growing into a bond of love was something treasured, and he truly didn’t wish for anything less for any of them. He already adored her but was reluctant to speak words of love when she was still becoming accustomed to the closeness that the taliazon bond brought. He could only wait and hope that her love would grow in turn.
Giving him an amused look, she set her hands on her hips and peered around curiously. The arrangement of the kennels was a simple one with an open central space where the grifalc were fed. Three of the four walls were deeply pitted with rounded openings going up the length of the wall. Those above ground levels all possessed a lower overhang to which grifalc claws could grab and climb into the burrows connected to them. She wouldn’t be able to see those, but with the speculative way she regarded them, he knew that she had a guess as to what they were.
“This is so weird… like being in a bizarre not-quite beehive.” She shook her head. “Okay, enough fooling around. How about showing me what needs to be done?”
Although neither he nor Brydis made any demands of her and would have been content to allow her to do whatever her heart desired, it secretly delighted Agor that she was invested in learning how to help with running the rookery. It was for this reason that he was grinning broadly as he dropped from the slightly raised seat carved from the rock and fanned his wings in a display of pleasure as he joined her by her side.
Grifalcs, curious as to all the activity, slipped inside, their eyes following them as Agor demonstrated the tasks that had to be done, verbally walking her through each one as they performed them together side by side. Although Brydis didn’t return to the rookery as they worked, his twin was quick to give praise to their mate and was a ready extra hand whenever Jill required a little extra help in mimicking the tasks. And sometimes he simply played wrangler as the curious creatures came close to nearly tripping them several times as they pushed in close when Jill proved herself quick to distribute pats. Brydis shoved their heads away with soft scolds until several females finally withdrew and sailed up to the burrows with grumbles of disgust at him that had their mate laughing in response.
It got to the point where she began giving out scritches and hugs to the grifalc in direct subversions of Brydis’s attempts to redirect their attention just because she couldn’t stand how dejected they appeared as they slinked away. And that was when Agor began laughing uncontrollably with every apologetic look she gave his twin as she delivered more love to the needy beasts.
Agor never enjoyed cleaning the kennels so much. Their mate was truly a delight, and her enthusiasm and fascination with the grifalcs was refreshing. Few females among his kind ever bothered to step into the kennels, preferring pursuits of their studies over the labor of tending to the animals and the stench that a kennel could accumulate. Not Jill, though. She dove right in, eager to help and pleased to be in the company of the beasts, even finding time to shower extra affection on Duke’s dam before they left.
Bit by bit, Jill was claiming his heart with her humor and graceful acceptance of everything new to her. As much as they tried to adapt their lives to be friendly and open to the needs of a human mate, she was showing an unanticipated desire and willingness to find her place within a Geminidae rookery and living among his people. There were things that she brought in as well, melding with their lives so seamlessly that they only added to their avrhastal rather than being markedly different.
