Corr Syl the Warrior by Garry Rogers @garry

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One morning as Corr sat at his table listening to his mother’s instructions and conducting a set of simultaneous exercises, his father came in with a tall, short-legged, white-haired otter wearing a broad-brimmed hat. “Corr, meet Ori Calin, one of the district’s assistant librarians.”
Calin grinned, swept off his hat, and sat facing Corr. “Corr, your parents say your studies are going well. They asked me to come to meet you so you could show me what you’ve learned. Would you like to answer some questions?”
Corr nodded.
“Do you know what has one head, one foot, and four legs?”
Corr didn’t know what to say.
“A bed,” answered Calin, with a chuckle.
“How many letters in the Danog Alphabet?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Nope, sixteen,” said Calin, who laughed so hard that Corr grinned.
“Corr, this is what I want you to do . . . .”
For the next fifteen minutes, Corr recited a series of poems while he mentally calculated the intermediate chemical states for a metabolic series, composed a story based on a prompt given him by Calin, and prepared two proofs of the infinitude of prime numbers.
“Corr, that’s very good. Now, do you have any questions for me?”
Corr reached in the drawer on his side of the table. “Can you name something that’s in this drawer?”
“Not fair,” replied Calin, “I have no clues.”
“My hand,” said Corr, his whiskers twitching.
Calin gave a sharp whistle and laughed. “Corr, stop by the library and say hello if you’re ever in the District Center.”
On Corr's fifth birthday, his family followed custom and returned to their ancestral home. The day they left, Corr and Allon took a last walk together in the canyon and vowed to remain friends forever.
The boys exchanged letters, but when Corr turned seven, he began training with one of the district's warriors and wrote less often. Three years passed and Allon wrote that he had decided to follow his father and study engineering with a teacher in the district north of Wycliff. His teacher designed spacecraft and sometimes visited the two space stations orbiting Earth. Allon said he might get to go someday.
Corr found the idea intriguing, but had no time to pursue the topic. Strength, speed, endurance, genetics, sensing, anticipating, pain, fear, thirst, hunger, and technique, technique, technique. These filled Corr's days and nights.
Four years passed and Allon returned. Corr heard that Allon had some trouble and had not completed his training. Then, about the time Corr completed his training, he received the stunning news that Allon had committed a murder. Murder? Impossible.