2024-07-15 - [6.1] Domestication

The world shakes less, each change outside the shell isn’t seen as a portent of doom come to take them all, and Courth relaxes. This is a mistake in the bowl, where things can change at a moment’s notice.

At first the minds simply…feel strange. Stranger than the people, dragons, or things that spoke to them in the quake. Courth brushes past them as a matter of course, taking in the pattern of their thoughts and comparing it to what he knows and then dismissing them. Too much sense data, not enough understanding. He had no need for smells and paw pads and silly thoughts of food. It’s barely interesting.

Then they charge. It’s like emotional whiplash, how quickly the things go from sniff-see-walk-calm to run-run-run-new-new-smell. Court hates it. Hates it.

’No! Don’t forgive her! Messy, horrible things!’

There isn’t any logic to it, this irrational hatred of the strange fluffy-scratchy-loud creatures. They aren’t heavy enough to do any damage – barely heavy enough to even more the eggs on the sands, despite Courth’s shrieks as one of the foul things stands up and leans – actually leans – on the shell. He just…Hates them. Hates that Shayled has made the choice for them all that they’re allowed to play and sniff and cavort around the eggs.

Hates that he has no control over his environment out here.

’Get them out! Out*! Stop ignoring us!’*

Gwillanth doesn’t hear him, and eventually he shouts himself into a tired, angry sleep among the puppies.