The roost smelled like hay and hot metal and the particular damp-feather reek of an animal that bathed in whatever weather happened to be passing.
Mei Lin was in no hurry. She had come up for the view and stayed for the dwarf. Grundig Ironbeard, gryphon-master, sixty-odd summers on the beam of his shoulders, a beard braided once three years ago and left to its own devices ever since. Grumpy on the outside. Grumpy two inches in. Three inches down, she suspected, he was secretly delighted by most things and would die before admitting it.
The roost was busy. A human couple argued near the rail with a wicker basket about whether you were allowed to bring cheese on a gryphon. A stable-hand with straw in his hair mucked out the nearest stall. A night elf hunter inspected the saddle straps of a slate-grey gryphon with the attention of a woman who had once had a saddle fail on her and was not seeing the same day twice. Two merchants waited for the incoming flight from Ironforge.
Mei Lin leaned on the rail beside Grundig and asked him, politely, which of the gryphons he liked least.
He snorted. "That one." Pointed at a russet bird half-asleep in the third stall. "She bites."
"Gryphons usually bite something, no?"
"Aye, but she bites me."
Mei Lin laughed. Grundig did not, but the corner of his moustache moved. She counted it.
After a long moment, he squinted sideways at her.
"Bet you five copper you can't startle that one." He jerked his chin at a sandstone gryphon dozing in the second stall. "She's slept through the bombing of this city twice."
Mei Lin set five copper on the railing.
She did not call lightning. The roost had too much hay for lightning, and also too many gryphons, and Grundig would have a stroke. She crouched at the edge of the stall. Made herself small. Softened her breathing. She had watched the feral cats in Pandaria hunt through tall grass and learned the shape of the silence they made. Then, when the sandstone gryphon was mid-blink, Mei Lin flared her ears and let out one sharp, precise hiss.
The gryphon flinched.
She also sneezed.
Gryphons, Mei Lin learned in that instant, sneeze fire.
A tidy little jet of orange caught the nearest hay bale, which caught the next hay bale, which caught the straw in a bucket, which caught the corner of a feed sack, which caught a broom, which caught the stable-hand's pant leg, briefly. Six small fires. The stable-hand yelped. The night elf hunter was already moving with a water bucket. The human couple abandoned the cheese argument and grabbed saddle blankets. Mei Lin called a small grateful flicker of water onto the broom before it could do anything ambitious, and between six pairs of hands the whole thing was smothered inside a minute.
No gryphon harmed. One scorched bootlace. One very awake sandstone gryphon regarding Mei Lin with deep and personal suspicion.
Grundig paid the five copper.
Then he banned her from the roost for a week.
"Come back next Highday," he said, pocketing his pipe. "Not before."
On her way out Mei Lin set five silver on the hay-master's bench beside the burnt bale. Fair is fair. The bale had done nothing to deserve today. She tipped her hat at Grundig over her shoulder. He pretended he had not seen.
The corner of his moustache moved.
She counted that one too.
— Mist