CHARACTERS..

1. Aranian Royalist.

Kaela

Kaela laid a red mourning flower on the mound of fresh soil, and lingered there a moment. Too proud to cry, he channeled his grief into wrath toward the infant, which he refused to bring in from the cold or even to touch until he had buried his wife. It lay screaming, naked and bloody, on the hard ground where it had been born in the frosty wind. Kaela did not know how long it had been since birth-since death- but the Sun was nearing its zenith and still the infant survived. The same unjust gods that let his Raya be taken from him meant this tiny murderer to live.
Akelan

" I am different but I’m human-." A plaintive tone began creeping in as he felt himself being cut off from someone he loved very much.
" You are the new race. You will have children, and your race will eclipse ours till there is only yours left. You are the herald of the Fourth Epoch."
"But you knew that. You have known that. It has been known for Beth-enea, for many Star-Years .It has been known-and planned and worked for-and now here I am, and you’re frightened because I slipped a thought in your mind." Innocence and a child’s dependence begged for his father, but the power and strangeness of something new kept him at an inaccessible distance- even in his arms.
"Is my race so alien that you can’t understand me anymore, can’t you understand fear of difference?" His blue-gray eyes were grave.
"I understand it," said Akelan, the boy’s face somber. "it is a very sad thing."
Ven Brekk

"Does the crown matter so much to you?" the young Trieath Akelan spoke in his high clear voice. A Trieath could not wear the crown- the law keeper must be of the old race. The new race would have new laws.
"The law-keeper must be above all others- it is according to the Law. The crown is due me as I am the most powerful Bay--"
"My father is" Akelan corrected.
"Your father"-he glanced at Eemon quickly then back-"abdicated at your birth," Ven said. "I was next, yet I was passed over as any common-as-air lowlander—" he cut himself short, hearing himself grow abusive of those he wanted to rule. His waterbuck skin slid from his shoulders,. His dark skin shone with sweat, even though the cold wind blew.
"Your line is dead. You had twins." Akelan said as gently as the words allowed.
"Everyone knows that." Ven said sardonically.
"But you don’t seem to understand,." Said Akelan.
"I do not understand how the crown was given to a thirty-second generation while a thirty-third lived. Am I nothing? Is a generation nothing? Is the law nothing?"
"It was given to the living line- thirty-second, thirty-third, the difference is not so great." That was a lie—meant to remind Ven that thirty-third was crisis generation.

Teal

"I am a thirty-third generation Bay.!" Ven blurted out in protest. The only thing he could say.
"So is Teal."
Eemon looked at him sharply, as Ven did, there was no-one named Teal. There was no other thirty-third generation Bay.
"Who is Teal?"
"I reached out to Kaela’s home, to Skye, and heard his name. His name is Teal. I cannot hear his thoughts, he has not been in the world long enough to have a worded thought. But I can hear him. He is crying."
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A Bay son was powerful yet delicate. He needed his father. But Teal was rejected. It made him a weak link and the harsh law of the wilderness weeded out weak links. He had felt the touch of destruction on the day of his birth Reill, Red Madness. The Reill was the price the Royalist paid for directing evolution. It did not strike often—only when as Bay was cut off from his father. It only happened once a millennium, but every Royalist knew what it was, since at the time of trial, a test of maturity, the Fire Flower that induced a Reill-like crisis was one of the trials to be endured. The veins of the arms and neck turned scarlet and it was pain- pain to drive one to madness were the trial not so short.. Actual Reill killed. It crept over Teal , trying to destroy him before this abnormality, this weak link, this rejected Bay, continued the line. Teal fought it. He would live and his father would love him. He would call him son of Kaela

Lia

She might have run had she seen him, for though it was an honor to marry a Highlander, it also meant leaving home....
For the resemblance, they might have been brother and sister instead of husband and wife. Tiny, fragile, doe-eyed, dark-haired, she was named Lia. Teal and his child-bride were given part of the house and they played at man and wife...
Laughter on Skye was almost a forgotten sound, but it came rippling back. Lia gathered up all the popweeds she could find and had a popweed battle with her husband.
She baffled her mate, who was totally in awe of her; she growled when he wanted to make love; she cried for no reason while insisting she was happy.