[ He thinks Brandon is an acceptable amount of funny, but knows that he's not nearly so funny in 'public', but it's all fair game beneath the House. Haran couldn't hear them, and most likely Tavor wouldn't mention it to him. It wasn't as though he and his sweet baby cousin had regular meetings. Haran didn't need a guide to where they were going.
It used to be that the menagerie was carefully organized and indexed, like kept with like, when able. Some species hated their own kind with such a violence that it was occasionally better to keep them at opposite ends of the entire maze, even then the smell of the other beast encroaching on their territory could drive them to batter themselves to death upon the bars of their cages. Bronze or iron or steel, it depended upon what kind of metal they were most allergic to. Tavor's mother, Helah, had been a great beast master, able to tame any creature she cooed at, but as the collection grew around her (much to her delight) she couldn't possibly have loved them all at once. It had created quite a problem when she was dead.
The creatures smart enough to do so had simply left, those not so smart were trapped beneath the House, a second ecosystem that very quickly established a bloody food chain. Everyone has settled in now. Those who are staying are staying. Those who are dead are dead.
And then there's Petre.
He's in a simple steel cage, the kind a circus would use, the floor of it covered with hay. Tavor goes right up to it, unfraid. He clicks his claws against the metal bars. ]
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It used to be that the menagerie was carefully organized and indexed, like kept with like, when able. Some species hated their own kind with such a violence that it was occasionally better to keep them at opposite ends of the entire maze, even then the smell of the other beast encroaching on their territory could drive them to batter themselves to death upon the bars of their cages. Bronze or iron or steel, it depended upon what kind of metal they were most allergic to. Tavor's mother, Helah, had been a great beast master, able to tame any creature she cooed at, but as the collection grew around her (much to her delight) she couldn't possibly have loved them all at once. It had created quite a problem when she was dead.
The creatures smart enough to do so had simply left, those not so smart were trapped beneath the House, a second ecosystem that very quickly established a bloody food chain. Everyone has settled in now. Those who are staying are staying. Those who are dead are dead.
And then there's Petre.
He's in a simple steel cage, the kind a circus would use, the floor of it covered with hay. Tavor goes right up to it, unfraid. He clicks his claws against the metal bars. ]
Petre. You have a visitor.