I thought it might amuse you (many of you do read the Foreigner books) to get a little window on the worldbuilding. You’ll notice, absent their own Chicxulub event, some things are different about the Earth of the atevi. No birds, for one thing.

A few things militate against birds. A: no dino foundation species. B. no dino foundation species. C. no dinos. They kinda went from the Permian straight on…

And would they have had a Permian? Well, if a world starts off with bacteria and fungi and on up to worms and such, there are some logical developments involving land. And legs are are pretty good adaptation to land. Yes, snails, but they don’t fare well away from water. It’s that slime they have to produce.

So—no PErmian extinction type event.

What the atevi Earth has is reptiles. Lizards. But not dinos, which are sorta-maybe this or that, with really interesting internal structures from which (ultimately) birds turbocharging respiratory system arrived. (see: bird respiratory systems). The Permian guys were more basic all around, and one of their adaptations to life among the basic was, yes, mammal-like reptiles.

So that suggested, yep, you don’t need a meteor.

What are the wi’itikin? Sort of like little pterosaurs…and there WERE little pterosaurs. They don’t do a from the ground takeoff. They like cliffs and rocks, will do fine with trees. They do lay eggs. They hatch. None of them are much above the size of a goose, and many the size of a chicken. They’re kind of endangered when Ilisidi took up the cause of ecology and species protection. They do not domesticate. For one thing, they’re not all that bright. None are vegetarian, though they will scarf up rotting flowers and some small fruits. They are more common on Ilisidi’s side of the mountains, but none exist in the frozen heights: they winter within their range, and grow torporous when the temperatures drop, tending to the lower altitudes for their wintering-over, which is brief. At any warm spell they are active again, as is their common prey, small lizards; but they will scavenge winterkill remains.