Both of them were too elderly to do much but remember the good old days when they were tenured lecturers at Shiz.

“Tenured,” insisted Mister Mikko, “until we were untenured.”

“Sacked,” said Professor Lenx. “Pass the saffron cream, will you, old darling?”

A joke of sorts. Saffron cream was a thing of the past for these two.

They housed the Lion equably enough, making certain he understood it was only temporary. Brrr tried to resist the urge to scoff at their fusty mannerisms. The way they insisted on offering him two-thirds of whatever they had in the larder was unctuous and superior. He ate it anyway.

“You’re looking for a home, but we have only the two sleeping chambers here,” observed Mister Mikko. “We’re gentlefolk of a certain generation, don’t you know, so we wouldn’t bed down in shared quarters like cattle.”

“Certainly not,” said Professor Lenx. “Never think of it. The very idea.”

“Too cozy. Not our style.”

“You assume I care.” Brrr managed to sound offended, obscurely.

“Well, a Lion on his own…” The way their voices trailed off. Suspicious, they meant. “At loose ends.”

“My end is anything but loose.”

They didn’t like that style of badinage. “And food is in short supply, of course. Had we gardens like the ones in College now, it might be another matter. The vegetables! Do you remember the vegetables, Mister Mikko? The sweet summer scallions, the tomatoes, the blue runner beans! And when the corn was ripe! Hallelujah season.”

“Indeed I do remember it well, my dear Professor. Though also I was partial to the formal walking gardens, the parterres, the flowering cherries, the borders of myccasandra and iris…”

“Shiz could do gardens well. Here, alas, if we get eight potatoes a season, we’re lucky.”

“The gardens of Crage Hall! I do remember. The year that the transplanted termite ivy from the Lesser Kells went wild! It took the staff five years to root it all up. They even needed to demolish an ancient Lurlinist shrine because the migrating root ball had lodged itself there.”

“Would that we had a problem with invasives now.”

“We do. We’re being invaded by dirt.”

They laughed. It was as if Brrr were no longer there. Their memories were stronger than the present moment. Brrr felt as if he were the new invasive.

“I have been to Shiz myself,” he ventured.

“Oh well, dear boy, many go to Shiz,” said Mister Mikko.

“And many leave it,” said Professor Lenx.

They looked at each other as if they were discussing the deepest philosophical principles. Then they laughed at the same instant. “Good riddance to bad rubbish!” Their simultaneity was cloying but kind of sweet.

Over dinner-a noxious potato porridge and sandwiches on stale bread-the subject returned to Shiz. Naturally. Brrr learned a good deal more about the Animal Adverse laws enacted during the Wizardic reign. Early on, when professional Animals could still quit their positions and freely cross the borders, Professor Lenx had fled too quickly to liquidate a sizable portfolio held by a Shiz fiduciary house. He assumed the funds had since been co-opted by the Wizard’s financial ministers, but he had no way of knowing.