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After he apologized, Baron Wyldebane dabbed a few drops of liquid from the small vial onto his palm and started rubbing it all over his arms, neck, and clothes.

It took a few seconds before what he apologized for hit us. A wave of pungent musk hit us and made my nose hair curl. We all recoiled back from the smell.

“Good Gods! What is that?” Dad asked while pinching his nose shut.

Seemingly unaffected and unfazed by the smell, Baron Wyldebane replied, “Concentrated adult hippogriff musk. Give it a minute or two for the smell to mellow out as it dries. Like with most beasts, smell is an important part of how they interpret the world around them. While my appearance is not going to fool a hippogriff chick, I would smell like an adult of their species and hopefully confuse them long enough for me to show them that I am not a threat to them.”

After waving his arms around to speed up the drying of the musk he applied to himself, he turned to the knight in charge of watching the chicks. “Prepare to open the door and quickly close it after I am in.”

As the knight nodded in acknowledgement, Baron Wyldebane cleared his throat and started doing voice warm-ups that singers do. When he was done with the warm-up, he walked close to the stable door and started letting out four rapid chirps, waited a few seconds and repeated the rapid chirping.

On his tenth or so rapid chirp, there was a reply from inside the stable. A single chirp that sounded almost curious to me. Hearing the return chirp, Baron Wyldebane did not wait and replied with the rapid chirp, which got a few more chirps in reply.

This caused a cycle of Baron Wyldebane and the chicks chirping at each other. At the height of the chirping and even the sound of scratching on the door, Baron Wyldebane signaled the knight to be ready with the door while his other hand went into a baggy pants pocket and pulled out a handful of salted meat strips.

At Baron Wyldebane’s signal, the knight opened the door just enough for the Daron to slip inside and closed the door behind him.

For the next half an hour, Baron Wyldebane performed different series of chirps, screeches, and squaks. As for the hippogriff chicks, the moment Baron Wyldebane went inside the stable, their chirps went from frantic in a scared way, to confused, then to the sound they make when demanding food, and finally the calm idling chirps they make at each other when they are calm.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Another ten minutes later, Baron Wyldebane comes out of the stable covered in minor scratches and down feathers.

“How did it go?” I asked.

Baron Wyldebane shrugged and said, “They are still confused, but they accepted that at the very least, I mean them no harm and act like a hippogriff even if I do not look like one. I gave them the signs that I am going out “hunting” and they should expect me back in an hour or so.”

He then turned to the knight and asked, “As for the chicks, what are they being fed?”

“Whatever cheap cuts we can get from the local butchers in large quantities… did we do something wrong, Baron Wyldebane?” the knight asked nervously.

Baron Wyldebane shook his head, “No, that is fine. The only extra thing they need in their diet is the bones that come with the cuts of meat. From the shit they left behind, they lack roughage in their diet which is easly solved by letting them eat the bones along with the meat.”

Dad nodded and said, “Noted. Well, Baron Wyldebane, we will leave you to your craft. If you need anything, do let any of my house staff know.”

***

By the second day of Baron Wyldebane interacting with the hippogriff chicks, he managed to coax them to cautiously come out of the stable, all the while, they crowded around his legs and cutely looked back and forth between him and the door they had just come from.

By that afternoon, he got them playing and pouncing on him and each other.

That night, after putting the hippogriff chicks to sleep. Baron Wyldebane gathered us for supper and made a rather unusual request. “I am going to need all of your unwashed laundry.” he said to us like it was the most natural thing in the world.

After a few seconds of silence, Dad said, “Baron Wyldebane, I hesitate to ask, but why do you need our unwashed laundry?”

Hearing Dad’s question, Baron Wyldebane gave us a questioning look, and a second later, his eyes went wide with the look of his mind catching up to his words. “I deeply apologize,” he said as he bowed from his seat. “I have not been away from my family estate and social circle for quite some time. Without context and foreknowledge of my house’s taming method, I may sound weird to outsiders. What I really need is something that carries all of your scents. I plan to slowly introduce your scents to the chicks and associate your smells with positive reinforcement before reintroducing all of you to the chicks.”

Oh, thank god! For a moment, I thought we were going to need to find another beast tamer. We laughed off the misunderstanding as we continued with supper in awkward silence.

***

A week later, my parents and I were in front of the stable housing the hippogriff chicks. Baron Wyldebane came out of the stable and closed the door behind him. “Ok, who is going first?” he asked.

I immediately raised my hand, “Me!”

He looked at my parents, and they nodded, “Alright, Lord and Lady Ironcrest, please hide out of sight. The chicks will take some time to recognize his smell and get used to Luke, and once they do, I will bring you out one by one to introduce you to the chicks.”