Kier, clinging onto young Tamtam (oc) - 2025
Kier is a domesticated working animal by kyhuines. Most of their domesticated animals are either herding cattle or flying critters. Kier is part of the flying one. Their olfactory receptors, tahofahs, are densely compacted and strictly used for sensing smell, and like most terrestrial animals, they use them to detect nefarious gases in the air.
Used for hunting small animal, ranging around rat sized prey to fox sized, it can also be deployed to reduce pest infestation in crop fields, its tactic being to stand immobile and just catch passing critters with its jaws, or fly above and hover around for any moving pest in the field.
Kiers have been used in armed conflicts for millennia in order to kill messengers nikars (messenger pigeon, basically), and in some cases even messenger Mierthris. Some breeds are slightly bigger, if not larger than their wild counterpart. Said wild counterpart is distinguished by being named Kier'kh and usually range in the south of the cresent, the native range of mierthri, and where most of their population still reside in mordern day. It is to say that the southern khawir kyhuines domesticated a species that preys on various small animals, which includes mierthri people, although they weren't aware of the latter.
Trading animals between the two species isn't very common, nor is it something mierthris are usually interested in; this goes for maanul's cattle too. Since every animal the other species have is usually massive next to them, it's most of the time not practical. But kier is one of the few who can be useful to them, as a guard for the youth who would repel predators. However, most groups are quite apprehensive about having a domesticated version of a predator they are familiar with being so close to them. Them being small, and moving around in front of the kier, may make a kier show aggressive behavior if the hunting breed wasn't properly trained and desensitized to mierthris. And while incidents are rare, they spread around fast and are thought to be happening all the time.
