Gullys
| Classification | Cat-bird hybrid |
|---|---|
| Habitat | Across Eslura, at the gully posts and in private homes |
| Size | Fist-sized to hand-sized |
| Notable traits | Flight, speed, scent-tracking, appetite |
| Notable individuals | Mawris, Nepsa |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Gullys are the small cat-bird hybrids that carry Eslura's mail. They are fluffy but bad-tempered.[1] Half feathers and half fur, the hand-sized bird-cats are known across Eslura for their quick transport of messages.[2]
Appearance
A gully is fist-sized to hand-sized, small enough to perch on a shoulder and small enough that a keeper can walk about with an armful of them.[3][4][2] It has a beak, feathers and fur together, whiskers, claws it can carry a letter in, and a long bushy tail that sways behind it and flails in flight.[3][4][2] The hair along a gully's back rises in tiny spikes when it is angry.[3]
Colouring varies. Mawris is blue-feathered, and the gully Pemadee once brought home to Tide Tale Alley Books was grey and white furred.[2][5]
The noises they make sit "halfway between a squawk and a meow".[3] They also chirp, caw, hiss, squeal and purr, and they preen their feathers like birds.[3][4][6]
Diet and flight
Gullys are driven by food. Bea watched a room of them swoop on a keeper's cap to nibble at it, then snatch tossed muffins out of the air and fight over the crumbs until nothing was left.[3]
Their diet consists heavily of dringrys, a serum extracted from fish guts. It is fed to gullys before flight, and they rely on it for overnight flights because it makes them lighter. Any other stomach rejects it immediately, which is why Lumikki's Guard used a vial of it to make her vomit up poison.[7]
The gully posts
Letters move across Eslura by gully, and towns keep posts for the purpose. Haberpaw has one, and Alpin Loomin made the town a stop on his journey specifically to send word from it.[8][3]
How they find a recipient is not fully explained. Piercio puts it down to scent, and Alpin, watching one arrive at Morgaedion with a letter for Barnaby Britto, says "It always amazes me how these things manage to find people all over Eslura".[6] That gully cawed down the corridor, sniffed its beak at each member of the group in turn, perched in front of Barnaby, dropped a blue embossed letter at his feet and pawed it until it rolled to his toes.[6]
The service reaches into the government of Eslura. Millennium Loftwind asked Ferhant whether any gullys had come from the Sacred Guard in Zybersia when the dragons of Galecrest lost their fire, and none had. She then refused to send her own warning to the other Sacred Rulers that way, judging the news too dangerous to be intercepted.[9] Lumikki, at the other end of the same system, used to wait by her window for a passing gully that might be carrying a letter from Alpin.[7]
The post at Haberpaw
The post at Haberpaw is run out of the crooked hilltop house of Bowmidge Talorn, who calls the birds his babies and keeps hundreds of them. Wooden posts jut from the side of the house for them to perch on, the rafters inside are lined with them, and a side room off the main living space serves as a mailroom, its far wall covered in box-shaped holes stuffed with rolled-up parchment.[3] One of them, Nepsa, hissed at Barnaby's toad Mauz and had to be embraced and apologised for.[3]
The flock defended the house when Demise came for it. As his claws smoked and his shadow wolves closed in, Bowmidge whistled, the mailroom door flew open and the gullys went straight at Demise's face. His claws stopped smoking, he covered his eyes, and the wolves went out like smoke in the wind.[3]
Known gullys
- Mawris belongs to Aero Ellisvat and keeps a perch beside his chair in Varaar. She lets herself in down the chimney, sheds blue feathers, lands on his head at inconvenient moments and purrs when he pats her. Aero says "she's about the best gully I could have asked for" and that she delivers letters faster than any he has seen.[4][2]
- Nepsa is one of Bowmidge Talorn's flock at Haberpaw.[3]
- An unnamed grey and white gully was brought home to Tide Tale Alley Books by Pemadee and was a favourite of Barnaby's. Egras the dragon is named after her, because Barnaby thought she had the same aloofness.[5]
A sleeping gully was also part of the household of Vendalis, the troll on the slopes of Alakyer.[10]
Behind the scenes
The bestiary appendix at the back of both novels heads the entry THE GULLYS and annotates the illustration "will work for food". Book 2 reprints Book 1's page unchanged.[1] The books spell the plural gullys.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Book 1, "The Many Creatures of Eslura".
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Collection, "The Heart of the Kella".
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 Book 1, Ch. 15.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Book 1, Ch. 16.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Book 2, Ch. 18.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Book 2, Ch. 27.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Book 1, Ch. 7.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 13.
- ↑ Book 1, Ch. 5.
- ↑ Book 2, Ch. 6.