bringing him treats, sparing him comfort in the cold or at least from sharp words; whenever he had a wish for anything she made him first exercise and demonstrate some verse with salamanders. Several times after that first, he was tempted to flee the whole business altogether, but it was hard for a passerine to get work in Quartzal that did not involve either solid muscle or trade, the former of which he lacked, frustratingly, because he could see for himself that other passerine were already earning their own wages as ferriers through the air of Quartzal, while he was forced to cling to the tailfeathers of his mother, and the abominable trade which was the only one she would teach him.

He occasionally spotted his siblings and they would nod at each other politely. He was not particularly close to any of them except for one sister, to whom he occasionally still paused to give longer conversation. She was an apprentice to a feathermender.

Chimbeeriun perched on a nearby branch and called out. "Chureiya, Chureiya," he chirped, and soon enough his sister emerged. Like him, she was rather short, but she made up in dexterity what she lost in general strength. The delicacy and attention with which she created the hair-thin needles and filaments for replacement feathers was something that Chimbeeriun could not imitate.

"Chimbeeriun," she chirped back to him in surprise, and then delight. She approached the open side of the mendary, setting down box filled with coils of bent wire. They exchanged several notes of playful greeting, and then her face firmed.

"You may not call me Chureiya anymore," she announced, and Chimbeeriun's nape fluffed widely.

"What! Who are you now, then?" he asked, amazed, and her head bent down several times, preening back her own fluffed nape, so she looked sleek and mature as she declared, "My name is Kuhyo'ur. I am a mender of passerine feathers and bone. Not an especially good one, yet," she said, "but not nearly as bad as I was when I started."

Chimbeeriun flushed with some magnitude of jealousy. He didn't know about his other siblings yet — but somehow he had felt that his sister would keep the name that their mother had given them for a while yet.

"My teacher acknowledged me," Kuhyo'ur said, drawing herself up, "and introduces me as such to all those who enter in."

"I am glad for you," Chimbeeriun said, as earnestly as possible, and tried it in his mouth, "Kuhyo'ur," and she beamed at him.

"How are your trade studies with Skaffwory?"

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