Vargas glanced to the Cheshire owl, utterly puzzled by its question, for a moment. Mess? he thought, six eyes darting over its feathers. It thinks that it's a mess? He hesitated, trying to formulate an answer for this, before it clicked. Those eyes widened.

"Ahh! Messenger!" he exclaimed, his realization perhaps a bit too loud. "Yes. It is a word--and a title. It means that you will be trained as a Messenger! To carry messages, to travel through the caves. I will teach you to stay hidden and quiet, and to observe unseen, and to find anyone that I need you too. Do you understand any of that?" he added, amused.

It was young, but smart; he was sure it'd pick it up quickly enough. He'd share in teaching it the basics--Overseer Cain, though, would have the bulk of the work to do.

Vargas came to a halt nearer the Black Spire. "The Masters," he replied, still easygoing in his tone, "are the leaders of these caves. We hold great power, and we enforce the will of our Creator." Admiring gaze settled on the shifting Oilstone above and before them.

"The Creator is our ultimate master, in turn. There is stagnant Order in the universe; there is Chaos, that drives change! He is the Chaos that ensures that things always shift, adapt, and learn; that things change and do not freeze into meaningless ice." Advanced concepts, perhaps, for a two-minute-old child but Vargas was rather lost in his admiring, upward-directed speech.

He looked to Cheshire, then. "For now, we will find you food, and a place to rest, yes? And begin your training when you are ready."

As if it would be so easy. Vargas laughed, shortly, but it was genuine amusement nonetheless. "Oh, no, none of that. Come; we'll call this your first, short lesson." Undoubtedly his words were still too complex but he spoke them anyway, making back for the wall that framed the Aperture. A few long strides and they were there, where he knew there'd at least be a handful of rats beneath the rocks. "Do you hear anything-?" he asked, and peered to it--cupped a clawed hand alongside his own head, to demonstrate, falling silent.

Their scratching and scurrying might be audible to a particularly keen ear, in the quiet--and Cheshire's ear should be as keen as the best of them.

He wondered--if they heard the sounds, what would they then do? Wait for instruction? Allow instinct to take over? Remain youthfully oblivious? It would be interesting to see.

Vargas watched the owl chick plummet, and stared for a moment at where it had fallen. It didn't seem all that perturbed, though; merely insistent that it was hungry, quickly forgetting its head-first crash into the rock.

He grunted. "Watch closely," he suggested. The rats were more than likely well-hidden, but Vargas had very long arms, which he now used (after striding to the dark crags of rock) to thrust into the darkness, snatching wildly for a rat. Clawed thumbs searched for a relatively small one; fingers bounced off warm bodies struggling to get away, and he wondered if they'd bite him.

It felt as though a few tried; something sharp scraped his limb, in any case, teeth or claws he didn't know. But after a moment he grabbed, and jerked at a tiny limb in turn; he swept it out from beneath the rock, gave it a light hit to be sure it wouldn't scamper off, and dropped it before Cheshire.

"There," he told the owlette, lifting his limb to eye the little scratches before dismissing them as superficial. "Kill that, and there's your food, hm?"

Vargas watched with his own sharp focus, ready to take in the way Cheshire moved and acted--but it was so quick that he hardly had time. The magenta hybrid shot forward and that was it: snagged in jagged teeth, the rat was quickly killed. A small one, a suitable meal, and Vargas pointed this out: "Good!" (and his tone was full of praise); "Now, you have your meal! Eat," he encouraged, offering the arm back out.

So far, so good; this one showed promise, and strong hints that it would successfully fulfill (or even exceed, if he were lucky) the purpose for which it had been formed.

Now, to find Desert Rose Thirty-Five; and hand over Cheshire for its training.