This particular snippet is about one of the characters, more than about the setting, so it has less general interest. I’m sharing anyway.
Grainer was always too soft hearted. I told you he adopted this street rat in his last posting, when we camped in the Fallow Stables in the Lost District. Grainer let his stray bring in another stray; she had this stinky blanket wrapped around a Solusia bat pup the size of my fist. The locals put out poison that blinded the mice and other vermin so they starved to death. This bat pup ate poisoned vermin, it was dying.
I insisted she abandon the pup or go live somewhere else until it was all over. I was outvoted, but I put my foot down. If we could hear, see, or smell the thing it had to go.
It would start scratching on its wooden box and I would yell “Claws!” Imagine this slip of a girl scolding me on my language, insisting that her bat had wingnails (like fingernails), not claws. Whatever, right? So I would yell “Nails!” and she’d tend to it and shut the damn thing up.
Grainer called in a favor with the vet captain, who dosed the pup with medicine so it just lost one eye. Once it was clear the pup was going to live, I think Grainer’s brat gave it a flowery name too stupid to remember. Everybody called it Nails. If it’s still alive, it would be pretty big by now.
From Zyxa Fen’s unpublished notes on the Sepulcherian Fourth Company interviews