Ambala and Jouzhenkyn

Part 1.

Sazn was perched in the sun on the rocks. Though the River of Wind formed at high altitude, and so it was always hard to get back into it, she greatly liked to land on the Wolf's Fang. She wondered if Izar, the owl that led the first Theosang to her kingdoms, had found it at some time. Was it in the papers? She got the name of the island from a map her friend had copied after seeing once. Sazn didn't work in the Hollow Mountain or the Court Palace nor knew any owl that did, but she did know a snake.
Yes, this link, that she knew a snake who knew a snake in the brocade union, was one of her subtle prides.
Sazn had gone to Wolf's Fang today, though, not just to relax as she did. Since the Palace's weaknesses had been realized, there was a search ongoing to find a suitable replacement for the third high steward after his failure. His attempt to keep the palace effective through subtle quality control and science had still not been enough to prevent the defection of more than two dozen prisoner owls in the Ga'Hoolian conflict, the first in a thousand years. Realistically, the pages in close ranking to him would probably be judged and one would be selected to secede him. Nonetheless, his focus on effects like the fat content of different methods of yak butter on the owls' lethargy still had proven valuable to supplement the effectiveness of the Court Palace's mental prison until that year. From the result of his failure, at least there were more observations to be made than just "the system hasn't been failsafe" - that the Dragon Owls had an aversion to saltwater and that the Obscura section of the Theo Papers had a literal meaning.
Sazn had an idea, based off how fish went down in the gizzard, that perhaps fish had something in them similar to yak butter. She hoped that if she could find such a liquid, she could show it to the owls of the Court Palace and be recompensed for her discovery.
She noticed how some of the samples of fish she'd set out, though scavenged, left a glistening streak on the rock. Or was that merely the shine of water? She stared into the surrounding surf, trying to see through the moving surface. As a Grass Owl, she would in theory not need rely on seeing it, but the waves on the surface of the water changed the sound waves from fish under the water in a way she had not grown used to. She'd been catching fish on the shallow shore like a Fish Owl, but had been using yak butter to coat her feathers so they wouldn't get soaked in water. She tried to hover over the water farther out covered like this, watching for fish. Her facial disk is the color of sky reflected in ice, oddly matching the churning sea under her.
As she prepared for a spiral to swoop and grab a fish she heard, she began to hear the chittering of a narwhal!
Sazn realized she was hovering over the sea farther than she'd gone before. But more than that, the narwhal seemed to be talking like the moon bears did. It sounded not quite like owl, but something close. Even with its mammalian mouth, it was speaking a language related to Hoolian - but Sazn could not know that.
Next, Sazn realized she was going yeep.