Rabintails
| Classification | Prey animal |
|---|---|
| Habitat | Not recorded; hunted in the Kella Desert |
| Size | Small enough to carry several slung over one shoulder |
| Notable traits | Long ears, horns, a long plumed tail, expert hiding |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Rabintails are small horned prey animals of Eslura, hard to find and worth the finding. The bestiary appendix says that "these little buggers know how to hide" and that only the most skilled of seekers will know where to look for one, advises anyone lucky enough to meet one face to face to grab it, and passes on the belief that a rabintail's tail brings luck to whoever carries it in a pocket.[1] Tabitha Glowdish hunts them in the Kella Desert and rates the meat highly: "Only a fool would waste that kind of meat".[2]
Appearance
No passage in the novels describes a living rabintail. The only ones they show are already dead, over a fire or over a shoulder, and everything known of the animal's shape comes from the appendix. Its illustration draws one crouched in tall grass: a plump hare with long upright ears, a dark eye, small forepaws and a long tail that sweeps out behind it in a plume. A pair of short horns curls down and forward beside the head, below the ears. The plate is annotated "hide and seek master".[1]
The horns are the one feature the prose confirms. Tab's way of saying that the Gangs of Varaar do not care who passes through their territory is that they do not give "a flying rabintail's horn".[3]
Hunting
Rabintails are food. Tab hunts them alone and carries them home over her shoulders, and came down a desert path outside the Avonbourn one evening with three of them slung over each shoulder, wanting to know whether the tavern would cook them.[4]
Camped in the dunes with a captive to feed, she took her kill off the back of her mount, spitted it over the fire and tore a charred piece off with her bare hands. Reagan Hideaway, who suspected poison, was told that it was rabintail and that only a fool would waste that kind of meat. She found it tough and chewy, and choked on a piece of it until her eyes watered.[2]
Where the animals live is not recorded. Every one that anybody is shown catching is caught in the Kella Desert, and the appendix gives them no habitat at all.[1][2][4]
The lucky tail
A rabintail's tail is said to bring luck to whoever carries it in a pocket. The appendix reports the belief without saying whose it is, and nobody in the novels is shown carrying a tail or repeating the saying.[1]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guides at the back of both novels list Rabintail under species and give it as Rah-bin-tail.[5][6] The bestiary appendix heads the entry RABINTAIL and annotates the illustration "hide and seek master". Book 2 reprints Book 1's page unchanged.[1]
The word doubles as the name of the meat and is used without an article in that sense, as in Tab's "It's rabintail".[2]