Twelve palaces, read for an animal
Relationships (Pet)
- Palaces
- 5 of twelve
- Covers
- Keeper, Housemates and Kin
- Read at
- Bond Level 3
- Human version
- relationships
The Relationships (Pet) are the five palaces an animal's relationships are read in, four of which it had no say in choosing. They are the same 5 cells of the same cast chart a person's relationships palaces are read from, named for the life an animal is actually living.
The 5 under Relationships
Keeper & Care
a dependency that never matures — the one relationship an animal never grows out of
Every human version of this bond eventually turns over: the child grows, the parent ages, and the person who was answerable becomes the person answered to.
Pack & Companions
social literacy with nothing to gain from it — the only relationships an animal picks itself
People assess a network by what it is worth — who it opens doors to, what it is good for.
Litter & Legacy
most animals leave no young and no work — what they leave is inside somebody else
Ask what a person leaves behind and the answers are theirs: children, work, students, something with their name still on it.
Affection
the one-sided bond an animal builds with somebody who leaves every day and never explains why
Two people in a partnership both leave and both come back, and each can say when.
Housemates & Kin
housemates an animal did not agree to, where bowls and doorways decide more than temperament
A person's equals become chosen eventually — the ones that do not suit get left behind, and the house they share can be moved out of.
What the board will and will not say about an animal's bonds
Five palaces here, but an animal only ever stands in two of them. The board gives a person five directions to be declared in — parent, sibling, partner, heir, colleague — and an animal exactly two: it is read as a companion through Litter & Legacy, and its keeper is read through Keeper & Care. Those are the two ends of one bond, and the other three palaces on this hub are read on one chart at a time.
The second rule is about the answer itself. Any pairing involving an animal is scored qualitatively and never as a number, and the deepest layer of the engine — the one that reads two inner selves against each other — is refused outright for an animal rather than estimated. A pairing between two people returns a figure; a pairing with your companion returns a description, and that is a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature.
A pairing that involves an animal returns a word rather than a percentage. The board's deepest layer reads two inner selves against each other and an animal cannot hold one, so the result is described rather than scored — what is read here is the keeper's birth year against the species, and the breed decides everything about living with it day to day. An animal does get a chart of its own once its birth hour is known, one rung further up.
The other two groups
Inner & Outer Persona (Pet)
2 palaces
The Animal, Home and Outside.
Foundations (Pet)
5 palaces
Territory, Drive, Body, Home.
All twelve, with the rename table beside them, are on the pet palaces index.
Frequently asked
- What are the Relationships (Pet)?
- They are the five palaces an animal's relationships are read in, four of which it had no say in choosing — Keeper & Care, Pack & Companions, Litter & Legacy, Affection, Housemates & Kin. The grouping is not invented for animals: it is the same three-way split the twelve palaces are always read under, with the names put into the register an animal lives in.
- Why are there 5 palaces under Relationships and not four each?
- Because the three groups are uneven by construction. Two of the twelve describe the animal itself, and the remaining ten split evenly between its relationships and the practical shape of its life. Dividing them into three fours would have meant moving a palace somewhere it does not belong for the sake of a tidy number.
- When does a pet reach the Relationships (Pet)?
- At Bond Level 3, which is one rung later than a person reaches the same palaces. An animal's first two rungs are spent on species and breed, and then on birth year and gender — so the hour that actually casts a chart is the last thing it gets rather than the first. These twelve are also the last free reading a pet produces: there is no Soul rung for an animal.
- Where is the human version of the Relationships (Pet)?
- At the relationships lens under the twelve palaces, which reads the same group for a person — careers, marriages, property and money, none of which an animal has. Both pages link each other. If you keep charts for yourself and for an animal, reading the pair is the fastest way to see what the rename is actually doing.
Seat your animal on the board with its hour, day and month of birth, and all twelve palaces are cast from its own chart rather than looked up.
Open the Bonding Map