Maybe so, but whenever Pincer-Tip comes along, he’s usually the one chattering-with all leg-mouths at once-about sea serpents, or lost Buyur treasure, or other things he swears he’s seen … or else he heard of somebody who knows someone else who might’ve seen something, just over the horizon. When we get into trouble, it’s often on account of something he thought up inside that hard dome where he keeps his brain. Sometimes I wish I had an imagination a dozenth as vivid as his.
I should include Ur-ronn in the list, since she comes along sometimes. Ur-ronn’s almost as much of a book maniac as Huck and me. Still, she’s urrish, and there’s a limit to how much of a humicker any urs can be, before planting four feet and saying whoa.
They don’t take to nicknames, for instance.
Once, when we were reading a mess of old Greek myths, Huck tried calling Ur-ronn “Centaur.” I guess you could say an urs sort of looks like one of those fabled creatures — if you’d just been conked on the head by a brick and can’t see or think too well from the pain. But Ur-ronn disliked the comparison and showed it by swinging her long neck like a whip, nearly taking off one of Huck’s eyestalks with a snap of her three-way mouth.
Huck only said “Centaur” just that once.
Ur-ronn is a niece of Uriel, who runs a forge next to fiery lava pools, high up on Mount Guenn. She won a scholarship to ’prentice as a smith instead of staying with the herds and caravans on the grassy plain. Too bad her aunt keeps Ur-ronn busy most of the time and won’t ever let her go off in the boat with us, on account of urs can’t swim.