Lexicon:Modern/Wysk

Wysk
Stage	Modern CLT
Pronunciation	/ˈwɪsk/
Part of speech	Noun
Etymology	from Middle wiskē, from Proto wisk
Related words	Vennek, Baechri, Draech

Wysk — the herding beast. Small, upright, and never quiet.

Notes

Stands on its hind legs to see over the grass and does so constantly. It works flocks in troops of eight or ten, moving Baechri by cutting off the directions it does not want them to take rather than by driving them, and it never touches an animal to do it. One of the troop is always up and watching while the others work. This is not trained into them and cannot be trained out. The watcher changes without any signal anyone has been able to identify, and it is the reason a Wysk troop is worth more to a herder on open moorland than the flock it is minding: the Baechri are safe from wandering, and the herder learns about a Draech from the Wysk rather than from the Draech. The alarm call is unmistakable and the whole troop takes it up at once. Every herder in the north knows the sound and so does every Vennek, though what each does about it differs. A Vennek closes on a Svaekoil and turns a Skadh. Against a Grimvach pack it raises the cost and no more, and against a Draech it can do nothing useful at all — there the call is for the herder, and the answer is to get the flock moving toward the wall. Household Wysk are kept everywhere, and are busy, inquisitive, and entirely unable to stop talking. They stand on anything that will hold them, investigate anything that moves, and greet a returning household with a noise that carries into the street. Native to Teraell, domesticated after the fall.

Small bony ridges run along the forearms and the back of the neck. They are of no use to a Wysk that is doing its job properly and every use to one that is not.