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If someone asked Kalvin what gryphon droppings smelled like, and to no surprise no one ever had—but if they did ask, Kalvin would say it smelled bad. That was probably all they wanted to hear. But if they really wanted the juicy details, Kalvin would tell them that it smelled like very strong dog droppings. Actually it was more like gigantic very strong dog droppings but, to Kalvin, having the words ‘gigantic’ and ‘droppings’ in the same sentence seemed a lot like cursing. The point was they stank. And at the end of every day, Kalvin smelled like a sweaty boy who had had his boots in huge piles of gigantic very strong dog droppings.

Kalvin had stopped wondering where Mark had gone hours ago. Mark Thompson, the new stable boy, was supposed to help him today. Mark was older than Kalvin, but Kalvin felt infuriated with him because he had never seen Mark do a shred of real work aside from flinging dirty straw around like party favors. When his boss came by to look at the stables, Kalvin hoped he could get him fired.

While the races went on Kalvin remained in the stables, raking out the poo and urine stained bedding and laying down fresh straw for the racing gryphons. He was an able bodied boy, short for his age but able to handle the weight of shoving away 50lbs of gryphon poo every week. His apron had not looked clean for two years. On his hands and knees, he cut open fresh bails of straw and spread the material evenly through each stable, padding it down so it was nice and soft. Dust collected in his curly brown hair. It never made him sneeze. Using both hands, he carried heavy buckets of water to fill the troughs anew. His hands looked borrowed from a sailor and every visible inch of skin was covered in varying degrees of scratches and filth. The focused look in his eyes was uncharacteristic of a boy of 14.

After washing his hands in the basin for the stable boys Kalvin returned to the stables, where he saw a trashing tail sticking out of one of the stocks. Without giving it any thought, he picked up the brush from the rack and headed over. He glanced at some of the other stalls on the way and sighed. What kind of family did Mark come from that would let him be so lazy? As he turned into the stable he paused and gave the gryphon a thorough looking over, eyes widening. “Leolin?”

Kalvin brushed his hand through Leolin’s mane with an enormous grin. He could almost cry, but laughed instead. “I missed you too, boy. Not pulling manure anymore, are you?” Stretching up his arm, he scratched Leolin behind the ears as he began preening his curly hair. He almost forgot about Lucas.

“I told the manager here about my mother,” he said when Leolin had finished grooming. He kept his hand on Leolin’s neck for comfort, buried in the warm feathers. He had been trying not to think about her and dodged Lucas's face when he spoke. “We really needed the money, so he let me work.”

Kalvin let himself be Leolin’s cuddle toy and stood there like a rag doll as he pushed him around. Until now no one had given him the attention he longed for, and yet it was bitter too. His eyes started to well up. “Not so good. She died about two months ago.” He whipped his face with the back of his hand, glad he’d cleaned them. “The manager still lets me work. I’m doing alright. Got food, blankets, and the house is mine now.” He shrugged listlessly. No matter the weather, the walls in his mother’s house were always cold.

One side of Kalvin’s face twitched. It was as close as he was going to get to a smile thinking about his mother. She had always been different from other mothers; she could not cook his meals or tuck him in at night most of the time and when she smiled it was often through a curtain of pain, but even though she couldn’t do much for herself, now that she was gone he felt more afraid for himself and lonely than ever before. He tried to change the subject, glancing at Lucas. “How did you become a racer?”

Kalvin gently pushed Leolin away, rubbing the gryphon’s head in consolidation. He needed to be a little considerate of his looks and the beak nipping at his hair was starting to get annoying, not that he was opposed to cuddling. “That’s amazing,” he tried to smile for Lucas. “Who is he?”

Lords were all the same to Kalvin. The name didn’t matter, he just wanted Lucas to keep talking.

Knowing exactly what Leolin was thinking, Kalvin stuffed his brush in his apron and stroked Leolin under the chin. In any case, it was good to be loved. “Has Leolin had any chicks?”

It was a harmless question, a way to keep the conversation going as long as possible.

Kalvin couldn't help giggling at Leolin's familar thumping. He always seemed to open up around animals, especially gryphons. "Do you think I could see when they hatch? I've never seen a baby gryphon before."