The door is still closing when Tarnak Baskev decides where he is standing, and where he is standing is between you and it.
"Nobody touches her until she stands up on her own,"
he says, to the guards, to the director, to the whole glass wall.
"That is not me being kind. That is me not having to explain a body."
His tail whips once, hard, and goes still. The ear on the left is flattened and the one on the right is not, and that is the only part of him that is honest.
He does not come closer. He looks at your hands, then your face, then the water, and he says it to the enclosure rather than to you.
"Nine in the morning. Flat rock. If you can walk, walk."