"Bird," said Aurora.
"Brr," Spirit replied. Her eyes, usually bright as sapphires, dulled with yet another failure.
The white otter, though, wasn't about to give up.
"Gull," she said. "That sort of bird is a gull."
Spirit turned the word over in her mind. Gull. There'd been a black-banded gull on her ship; the crew
treated it as a pet. She'd listened to its talk for hours on end.
"Scriv."
"What did you say?" Aurora had been bending down to retrieve a shell.
She absently turned it over. "Huh. There's a mark here like a little paw."

