Numair was as good a travelling companion as he was a bad rider. Onua spent a lot of time wrestling with the lead ropes of the five ponies she'd bought, a pastime that usually put her in a foul mood, but Numair managed to keep her spirits up. He kept her entertained through long days, telling her jokes and stories and making conversation while bouncing awkwardly in the saddle. And though he was useless as a hunter, Onua soon discovered that he was excellent at preparing the meat she caught for their meals. She also found that the extent of his random, esoteric knowledge was far broader than she'd previously guessed, though despite her best efforts the source remained a mystery.
One portion of his vast stores of useless information was revealed to Onua when she returned from hunting one night. She found him brushing his horse and talking softly to the animal. Curious, she hung back to listen before announcing her presence.
"You're a chordate, did you know that?" He said softly. "And a mammal, and a perissodactyl, if you can believe it." He rubbed the brush down the mare's side, causing dust and loose hair to fall from her coat. "You're also and an equine. You're properly called Equus ferus caballus. Can you believe all those fancy names you've got?" The mare shook herself and snorted as though in agreement, and Numair laughed. "Me neither. Some scholar sat in his university thinking up all these nice names, when he could've just called you stinky." Onua couldn't contain a snort of laughter at that, and Numair looked up for the source of the noise. His eyes found her at the edge of the trees and he grinned.
"Glad to see you're making friends," Onua commented, coming over to rub the mare's nose.
"She puts up with me," he said, patting the horse's side.
"What were all those names you were calling her?" Onua asked curiously.
"It's the scientific classification of a horse," Numair told her. When Onua looked blank, he continued. "Scholars classify animals in groups based on certain characteristics, and all the groups have names."
"What's the point of that?"
He shrugged. "Scholars just like to organize everything, I suppose."
"So how do you know all those names?" She asked.
"School," he answered evasively. She'd grown used to that kind of avoidance during their time together and she'd learned to accept it, but this time her curiosity urged her onward.
"What kind of school makes you memorize the classification of a horse?"
"The kind that wants their students to know all kinds of useless things," he told her.
"Like what?"
"Like the classification of a horse."
Giving up on getting a straight answer, Onua went to the fire and began preparing their meal. She would get the truth out of him one day, she knew. It just wouldn't be today.