Nupika
| Classification | Pergonzia |
|---|---|
| Habitat | Varaar and the Kella Desert |
| Size | Big enough to carry two riders at once |
| Notable traits | Mustard coloured, floppy ears, bleats, knows her own way home |
| First appearance | A Sacred Tale Collection |
Nupika is Tabitha Glowdish's pergonzia, the mount she keeps at Varaar and rides out to her camp in the Kella Desert in The Way Shadows Live.[1] Nupika is the only pergonzia the books name.[1]
Appearance
Nupika is mustard coloured, and the story describes her species as "the floppy-eared desert dwelling-kangaroo".[1] She runs on hooves that clomp, hard enough that Tab felt every stride in an injured foot for the length of a ride.[1] She bleats when she is put into a run and yawns when she is woken.[1]
She is tacked with reins and stirrups, and can carry a second person laid across her back in front of the rider.[1]
Temperament
Nupika eats first and considers everything else afterwards. Tab reckoned her unlikely to leave a grazing trough at all, and tied her up anyway every time: to a post beside the community grazing pen in Varaar, to the wooden trough at the desert camp, and to a post outside a bar, with a few coins pushed across the table there to buy the drinkers' attention.[1] At the camp she walked straight to her food while Tab was still lifting an unconscious woman off her back.[1]
She also knows the road. Tab would not have been surprised to learn that Nupika had memorised the cliff path out of the canyon by herself, on the strength of the trough of grain waiting at the other end.[1]
In The Way Shadows Live
Tab tied Nupika near the community grazing pen at the edge of the alleys before going down into the Hollowed Shadow, double-checking the rope because the animal was her way out of the city.[1]
When the night went wrong and Tab came out of the club carrying Fawn, she had a man drape Fawn over Nupika's back, pushed herself up behind her on a staff she had taken in the brawl, and rode out of the grazing pen with a shout. They went around the heart of Varaar, avoided the main square, and turned south up the dusty cliff path out of the canyon city, and Nupika bounded on for what felt to Tab like hours before the camp came up over a dune.[1]
Fawn walked away from the camp while Tab slept. Tab woke Nupika with a tap of the staff, put her good foot in the stirrup and nudged the yawning pergonzia along the single trail of footprints, down the cliff path and back into Varaar, where she tied her to a post in front of a bar and went on into the alleys on foot.[1] Nupika is not mentioned again, so whether she was still tied there when the Hollowed Shadow burned is not recorded.[1]
Behind the scenes
The cast list at the front of A Sacred Tale Collection gives the name as New-pee-kuh. That list is the only pronunciation the books offer for her, since neither novel's guide carries the name.[1]