Allia laughed, looking at Tarrin. "I guess that makes sense. I wouldn't like having a chat with a kajat, knowing it may decide to turn around and eat me."

Tarrin, however, was a little intrigued by the idea of it. He looked at the inu and drew himself up. She said all one had to do was speak in a commanding manner. Well, if it was one thing Tarrin had learned as his time as a Were-cat, it was how to be commanding. He looked the inu right in its sinister, amber reptillian eyes, his own implacable and steely. "Come here," he told it, pointing to the ground before him with a furred finger.

The animal seemed a bit torn. Tarrin could tell that his command had reached it, but just as Sarraya said, it seemed wary about obeying something that was obviously a predator.

"I'm not hunting you, you foolish cub," he chided it. "Come here."

Bolstered by that, the inu warily stepped towards him, its sleek head snapping back and forth between Allia and the Were-cat. It stepped up in front of Tarrin, craning its head almost straight up to look at him, its long, meaty tail out to give it balance.

"I've never seen a living one from so close before, at least in a relaxed state," Allia said in appreciation. "We respect the inu for its power and cunning, but they also have a certain grace and beauty about them."

"Only a Selani would think a big lizard was cute," Sarraya huffed.

Tarrin knelt by the inu and pushed it til it turned, presenting its wounded flank to him. It was a very nasty laceration, wide and deep, and it was starting to show signs of infection. From the size of the wound, Tarrin knew that it was caused by the claws of a kajat.

"A kajat did this," he noted.

"It probably killed the rest of its pack," Sarraya added. "Allia said that they do that."

" Kajat eat inu because it gives them a meal and also cuts down on competition," she nodded. "That, and inu are sometimes foolish. They'll continue to attack, even when they have no chance of winning. Only after the majority of the pack is killed will the survivors finally turn and run."

"I'd say that's exactly what happened here," Tarrin said. The inu probably wouldn't react too well to Sorcerer's healing, so he reached within, through the Cat, and touched the vast power of the All. His intent and image were simple and clear, something he had done many times before, and the All read his intent, saw his image, and responded as he desired. The wound on the animal's side began to heal unnaturally fast, before their very eyes, as Tarrin's prodding caused the animal's own healing ability to accelerate at an incredible rate, even as the All supplied the animal with the life energy it needed to undertake the task.

"Why heal it?" Allia asked. "A lone inu rarely survives long, and I don't think we want something like this as a pet."

"So it at least has a fighting chance," he replied as the wound completely closed, and the last traces of Tarrin's magic killed off the now internalized infection.

"You're getting too sentimental in your old age, brother," Allia teased. "Why were you playing with it, Sarraya?"

"I guess I just wanted to get a close look at a live one," she said. "The ones I've seen up close weren't very whole. Tarrin isn't very neat when he kills things. There were body parts laying everywhere," she said with a little shudder.

"Dead is dead," Tarrin said flatly as he patted the animal's flank, feeling the powerful muscle underneath those scales. Tarrin felt its warmth, and, curious, he sent probing weaves into the animal, weaves usually meant to find sickness or injury. These weaves instead inspected the internal workings of the animal, puzzling out its biology.

Tarrin whistled. "It's not a reptile," he said in appreciation.

"What do you mean?" Allia asked.

"It's not cold-blooded," he explained as he slid his paw along its flank. "It's warm-blooded. It's not a reptile. It's a close cousin of reptiles, but it's not one."

"Maybe it's in the same family as dragons," Sarraya said. "They're warm-blooded too, and it's very apparent that they're related to reptiles. You know, scales, big teeth, claws, bad attitudes, that kind of thing."

"We know that there are relatives of dragons," Allia mused. "Drakes are their relatives, and Dolanna told me that Wyverns are also related to them. I've never seen a Wyvern before, so I don't know about that."

"They're not something you want to see," he snorted, the memory of the fight he'd had with the Wyvern on the riverboat coming up to the front of his mind. "Strange." He stood up. "Alright, I'm done," he told it. "Go on."

It looked at him quizzically.

"You're on your own now, cub," he told it. "Just be careful out there, and don't try to take anything bigger than you are. You should be alright."

With a curious chain of short growls in its throat, the inu turned and started off towards the south.

"Now there's something you should have tried to tame, Allia," Sarraya said with a grin.

"It wouldn't be prudent," she shrugged. "You can't have tame inu and tame sukk and chisa around each other. They're natural enemies."

They continued on southwest at an easy pace, as Tarrin mused over what he'd learned. After looking back on things, he realized that the first time they'd come through the desert, Sarraya had never really had the chance to use that Druidic trick to help him. The fights he'd had with the local wildlife had been fast and furious, where Sarraya's presence would have only complicated an already complex situation. And the times when she would heve been very useful, like when the kajat attacked them down in the Great Canyon, she hadn't been there. That probably would have been the best time for her to calm an attacking predator, but she'd been off scouting.

It showed one of Sarraya's problems when she taught. She was a good teacher most of the time, but that was with things she thought he could use or learn. If she felt it wouldn't work for him or he couldn't use it, she not only wouldn't teach it to him, she also wouldn't even mention it. Tarrin understood the reasoning for it, because with Druidic magic, there was absolutely no room for error. By not even telling him about something, she was making sure that he wouldn't get curious about it and try to use something that either wouldn't work or was beyond his ability. But it still irked him a little bit.

Tarrin mused a little about that, realizing that he was his own warden in that regard. He was a curious one, always trying anything someone did that he saw. That curiosity was coupled to an admittedly strong power and a clever mind, and when Druidic magic was concerned, that could get him into a great deal of trouble. He was alot like Keritanima that way; when he saw someone do something he couldn't do, he just had to figure out how it was done. He couldn't help himself. At first, when he was just learning Druidic magic, he accepted Sarraya's warnings and commands without question, not trying some of the things she did. But he was more experienced now, more confident, and now she had to be careful. From the way they talked, Tarrin was probably as strong as Sarraya now, and that put anything she did in the realm of his possibility. He'd see her do something and try it, and that could get a little tricky, given he may not be capable of it. But, on the other hand, she'd also be willing to teach him, since he was more confident and more experienced.

They made camp early, as a small sandstorm roared over them an hour or so before sunset, taking refuge in a very narrow fissure of rock at the base of a broken rock spire. Tarrin had often wondered about the rock spires. They were everywhere in the desert, from the most barren sandswept sandfields to the most rugged badlands. Some were large, some were small, some tall, some short. But most of them were made of a dark stone that seemed oddly out of place with the sand colored rock most common in the desert. There were some sand-colored rock spires, but those had seemed most prevalent in the southeastern stretches of desert, and they'd shown alot more effects from the scouring wind than the darker ones had.