Gil care­fully uncorks the flask—and quickly turns his face away from the unc­tu­ous scent that emanates.

The lamashu seems to notice the smell too. It grum­bles in its sleep and shifts its paw slightly. Gil freezes.

He waits a full minute before inch­ing closer to the beast. Its head is as big as his whole torso. One of its front legs extends fully in front of his face. In order to pour close enough to the lamashu’s col­lar, he’s going to have to step over that leg.

For a few moments, he stands on one foot, try­ing to fig­ure out where and how to place his other foot, which is cur­rently dan­g­ing in front of the beast’s whiskers. His leg mus­cles start to tire. His whole body starts to shake.

He steps back, away from the lamashu, and turns to Kiddu—defeated. She’s star­ing at him with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

He gladly obliges, and then she strides over to the beast, steps over its arm, and some­what indel­i­cately tilts liq­uid from the flask onto the base of the lamashu’s chain.

The pearl­stone links bub­ble and fizz where the tinc­ture hits. Then they melt away, leav­ing an acrid, burn­ing stench. The jagged end of the sev­ered chain clat­ters into the dust. The beast’s whiskers quiver as Kiddu steps away—but it doesn’t wake up.

She sticks her tongue out at him as they walk away from the slum­ber­ing beast. Gil turns back to look at the lamashu one more time, before he flees into the night and it flies away to free­dom—

Kiddu shrugs.

Gil sighs. For some rea­son, he had assumed Kiddu—or at least some­one at Bes­tial Liberation—had come up with a com­pre­hen­sive plan for free­ing the crea­tures.

She starts walk­ing over to the beast. Gil grabs her upper arm with both of his hands and jerks her back­wards so force­fully that she almost knocks both of them over.

Kiddu grins up at him again with her crooked teeth. Gil doesn’t know what exactly it is about her when she smiles, since her teeth are not attrac­tive in the slight­est, but he always has trou­ble stay­ing annoyed at her when she does it.

From her pocket, Kiddu pulls a small pouch with a thick string stick­ing out from the top. She grins.

Kiddu looks down and fum­bles deep down in her pocket. She pulls out a small stone con­trap­tion with a tiny ridged wheel on top. She holds it up to her ear and shakes, then nods excit­edly.