They're... ON HOLIDAY?

Day 2 - Points: 5/9

99526 is staring at a heavily-built griffon wearing a white shirt and a hat associated with the ship's staff. Said griffon is operating some completely unknown machinery situated by the railing in the back of the cruise ship, enjoying the relative quiet and seemingly not particularly bothered by the changeling's presence.

There are two reasons why 99526 is here.

The first one is that it's never seen a griffon before, and the hive mind tooltip only said [Aggressive, to be avoided]. On the other hole, no one on the ship was to harm the changelings, supposedly, and despite the warning, the griffon didn't throw anything when he first saw 99526, nor did he yell at it to go away. Such a discrepancy needed to be rectified, and maybe reporting a misleading hive mind tooltip would earn it a point or two.

The second reason is the main one. Next to the griffon sits a heavy box with steam coming out of it from which 99526 can smell ringy chompers. Ringy chompers are always bad news - you see a ring on the water and if you don't react immediately you get chomped. Those monsters being anywhere on the ship could be the worst thing ever and would make curling unplayable.

"Hello, Mister griffon!" 99526 finally gathers the courage to speak out, "Why are you putting ringy chompers into a box?"

"Ring what?" he only looks back at the drone carefully circling the ice box, rotating the drum of a stationary winch, "Hey, leave that alone! That's for the Manehattan griffon ambassador."

99526 stops trying to peek over the edge of the ice box.

"Are those... dead?"

"Yeah. Pretty hard to grill them when they're still alive," replies the griffon, finally pulling out a small net containing several more ringy chompers.

"Phew," 99526 lets out a sigh of relief before trotting over to the griffon who empties the net on the floor and starts picking out some of the caught fish. Freshly caught fish, "AAAAH!" 99526 jumps backwards when the nearest ringy chomper flaps one final time before remaining lying limp on the floor, "Be careful or they'll eat you!"

The griffon raises an eyebrow, meaningfully slitting the throat of a fish with a talon and letting it bleed out before tossing it into the ice box.

"Did you need anything or are you just here to freak out over herrings?"

Gasping for air, heart beating, and shaking from adrenaline, 99526 glares at the small, now motionless, fish. A rather small fish, now that it thinks about it.

"Those... those are kinda... small. Does that mean... they don't eat... changelings? The ringy chompers I know about can bite a drone in half, or at least take a leg off easily."

With the icebox now full, the griffon seems to be done with its selection process. He grabs one of the remaining herrings and lobs it into the air. A seagull swoops down from a cloud of them hanging above the ship's rear, catching it before any other can.

"We eat them," is all the griffon says, "And so do they."

99526 carefully approaches a dead herring and slowly pokes it with the tip of its hoof. When it doesn't move anymore, the drone looks at the griffon who grabs a different one and throws it to the circling birds again.

"Can I do that too?" asks 99526.

"I don't know, can you?" the griffon shrugs. 99526 has no clue how to read an expression of someone with a beak, but the griffon's eyes look on the border of amusement.

99526 loads a fish into its leg hole and lobs it as hard as it can. The arc is significantly lower than the casual throw of the griffon, and 99526 rushes over to the railing to take a look at the fish falling back into the sea.