Obviously, the first thing on the docket was the carmine-clawed catwoman here, caterwauling around and acting like she had just lost her best cat friend.
Mira sat back against the blue cushion and began to watch the show.
The High Wizard Griswold Toblerone rapped the floor with his scepter. "If you would please refrain from speaking in your regional dialect, Jana, we would appreciate it greatly. Not all speak the language of Panthera."
The catwoman named Jana hissed. "We are a free and proud people of an ancient race. Why should we be restricted to the savannahs of Amber, but not allowed into Amber herself?"
The High Wizard Griswold Toblerone harrumphed. "Each succession of your Queen Mollies have signed peace agreements with the King of Amber for many many generations. In exchange for free-range land in the savannahs, your people have agreed to leave the people of Amber in peace. Why are you challenging this now?"
"We do not go into the cities of Amber, but the people of Amber wander freely through our savannah!" She pointed a red claw at the High Wizard Griswold Toblerone. "We are pantheras---therefore, we are obligate carnivores. We only eat fresh meat that we hunt from the savannahs. You people can survive on plants and grasses if there is no meat available. Why are you invading our land to hunt and trap our food sources?"
A high ranking official stepped out to the center aisle. He wore the Advisor's black robes with an orange Amber insignia on his lapel. His shoulder-length blue hair was so dark, it almost looked black. It contrasted greatly with his pale, frosty blue eyes.
"If I may, Your Royal Highness." He bowed in the general direction where Mira sat. "My name is Orville Torrence. I am the High Adviser to King Dominic Vetica of Amber." He paused, as if for effect. "I am here to speak for Amber."
"Then speak." The High Wizard Griswold Toblerone said with little patience.
Orville Torrence fixed his icy gaze at the High Wizard Griswold Toblerone. "As you are aware, Amber is semi-isolated from the rest of Ashrya."
He pulled out a map and unfurled it with one flick of his practiced hand. "Our city is located in such a way as to be almost isolated on the peninsula of Ashrya. We are abutted up against the southern end of Marble Mountains, and to the west of us is the Amber Savannah."
Mira nodded. She knew the map well, having committed it to memory when Zander gifted it to her.
He cleared his throat. "Aside from seafood, which we can and do find for ourselves, we only have a certain amount of fertile land to grow food and keep our grazing animals."
Jana sneered. "That is true for us as well. We would also be considered...trapped...between you people from Amber and the Marble Mountains."
He turned back to the catwoman "But your numbers are very small compared to our population, yet you hold five times the land size of Amber City."
Jana growled under her breath. "It takes more land space to hunt in the wild. The animals we hunt need space to live."
"We also need space to live." He retorted heatedly. "We are so densely populated that we are bursting from our seams. During a good year, we have enough resources, but when the weather is bad, like it has been for weeks now, our people can't get enough food."
"Then control your sexual activities!" Jana waved her hand wildly. "You are doing to us, what the people of Tourmaline are doing to the bogwargs and what the chiros are being subjected to by Peridot. We pantheras stay within our savannahs per the agreement made to all chimera in eras long past. The bogwargs stay in their bog, the merfolk stay in their ocean, and the chiros stay in their caverns."
"Nobody has a problem with you pantheras staying in your savanna. We are having a problem with the fact that you are killing people who are walking through the savannah. This is the same problem that we are having with the bogwargs killing the people wandering through their bog." His eyes fixed on Jana and nostrils flared with barely constrained hatred.
"Do we ever wander through your city, blue man? No. Why? Because you have enacted rules that ban any chimera from entering your cities unless they have approval papers to come and go. If we wander through your cities, we would be lynch mobbed."
He turned back to Mira. "Your Royal Highness, we sometimes have to pass through their grazing lands to get to other parts of Ashrya. What need would they have to wander through our cities?"
"Sometimes, there is a need to go into the cities." Jana's voice held a quiet desperation. "The cities have things that we need to survive---things that we cannot source for ourselves like medicines and tools. If we are not allowed to go into the city even for legitimate concerns, then they are not allowed to go into our areas, especially if they wander into our areas to poach on our food sources. If they take that chance, they risk their lives through their choices."
"In the same manner you killed two children a week ago? They had no weapons, no hunting or trapping tools, they were merely walking through, and yet, you killed them!" Electricity zapped between Orville Torrence's fingers.
This Ashryan was no mere representative. He was also a wizard!
This show of force did not scare the catwoman. She bared her fangs.
"We have had some of our own young kittens who were caught in your traps. Two of them died as a result and one is now permanently maimed." Jana's eyes turned a deadly shade of green.
"Being accidentally caught in a trap is very different from being hunted down as live prey. You surely must know that!" The Ashryan wizard's anger was now palpable. His fingers flexed, ready to shoot blue flames at the catwoman Jana.
"Dead is dead. There is no difference to the pain that each parent feels when their children have perished through the actions of others. You can't have it both ways, blue man." Jana jeered. "We are all part of the human race. We deserve equal treatment."
"You are chimera." He spat.
Jana turned to face him, her snarl turned vicious as she bared her canines.
"And you are prey." she hissed.
Somewhere on Mira's right side, the High Wizard Griswold Toblerone pounded his scepter into the floor. "Control yourselves, both of you, or you will be thrown out of the King's Court."
Fiery green eyes met frosty blue eyes as the catwoman and the Ashryan wizard faced each other. They were both breathing heavily and neither were backing down. They seemed to be ignoring the High Wizard Griswold Toblerone.
If they did not pause the court, there would be bloodshed.
Mira stood up from her chair. "I think this is a good time for a quick recess. Let's take thirty minutes, shall we? I need a drink of hot tea."
The High Wizard Griswold Toblerone raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I beg your pardon, Princess? We do not pause in the middle of the King's Court just to take a tea break."
She turned towards the wizard with a raised eyebrow. "Whose Court is this again? Did I mistakenly sit at the High Wizard's Court?"
"No, of course not, Your Royal Highness." He lowered his gaze, hiding his eyes.
For a moment, there was silence. Everyone was holding their breath.
Suddenly, a gong sounded.
The Court announcer's voice could be heard loud and clear, calling out the recess time of half an hour from the time of break.
As the various black-robed Advisors filed out of the Great Hall, Mira's head was spinning.
She quickly sorted out all the human races that she was aware of to exist in Ashrya.
Aside from the Ashryans and Dwarves, she knew that humans as such that existed on Ashrya were actually not a pure breed but rather a genetic recombinant between the Ashryans and the dwarves.
Since Ashryans and dwarves were both considered different species of humans, their recombinant progeny were not considered chimera even though their resulting spawn were sterile due to the differences in chromosomal recombination.
The chiros, the dolmians, the celadons, the merfolk, the bogwargs, and the pantheras were all considered chimeras for only one reason. They were a combination of one of the recognized species of human and a non-human animal.
The chiros were the first of the chimeras that Mira had seen. Quill, the batman who flew through the portal and into her world was a chiro. He was barely six inches tall, with leathery bat wings. He could speak but was not very forthcoming, and mostly kept to himself.
Dolmians were the mole people that Zander had told her about. She had never seen one but if given the chance, Mira knew she would love to meet one.
The celadons were the tall green people who she had sneaked a peek at during her ride through the noisy Jade marketplace. They were another chimera that Mira wanted a chance to get to know.
The merfolk were a group of chimera she had also only heard about. From what Zander had told her, they were the fish people who lived off the west coast. Whether they were half fish half human or merely had gills to be able to breathe underwater, she did not know.
And of course there were the bogwargs, those wolf people of Tourmaline Bog. Of all the chimera groups, Mira was most familiar with this one. They were Felix's people after all.
As for the pantheras, Mira had never even heard of them until today when she first met Jana. She briefly wondered if there were other human types that she had not yet heard of.
Her musing was interrupted by a courtier who approached her with a tray containing a ceramic pot of tea and a cup. "Your hot tea, Your Royal Highness."
"Thank you," she smiled. This earned her a strange confused look from the poor fellow.
Mira bit her tongue. She had been told that she wasn't supposed to thank the palace servants or courtiers, but a lifetime of training by her parents could not be broken.
The courtier poured some green tea into the cup and then bowed and made a hasty retreat.
Mira sighed and pretended to take a sip of the tea. She did not even want anything to drink at the moment.
The gown she wore was difficult enough to get in and out of. Heavens forbid if she had to take another commercial break in the middle of another exciting episode of King's Court to go to the bathroom.
That old cranky High Wizard Griswold Tobleron would have an apoplectic seizure.
In any case, she didn't know why he was so upset about taking a break just to cool things down a bit between catwoman and blue man. Although Mira knew her decision to do so was a good one, her hasty command to take that break must have broken some protocol that had been in place.
Oh well.
Didn't some famous person say "Rules were made to be broken"?