“Mm-hm,” Shortbeak intoned, whiling away the night listening to her sister go on and on about her endless fascination as they ate their bread, letting her sister’s boundless enthusiasm distract her thoughts from wondering where she was going to have to get tomorrow's dinner. Eventually she moved from whatever nonsense she was trying to explain to the more usual affair of talking about technical wizardry like steam engines and how they worked and the new machine created in the neighbouring kingdom of Altas that could apparently create fabric at many times the speed of griffons by claw – her usual favourite topics.