Ahira's Hangar

In a valley filled with apple trees and green grass and starlight, a little girl is growing up in a life filled with joy and love.

Her mother loves her; fills her life with hugs and warmth. Knowing all the while that the girl will be taken from her.

Her father grieves for her, knowing that she has been claimed to be Priestess of the Tombs. He cannot express his love for his daughter or his concern for his own and his wife's impending loss other than through surliness.

There is a month left for the girl to remain at home with her parents and her four siblings - a month left for her to know hugs and kisses and running barefoot through the orchard under the starlight.

A month left to be a child before she is claimed by the Tombs.

Heh. True enough.

Yeah, this prologue was largely wasted on me before I became a father. Now... Well, not being the religious type, my reaction would be something like: *laugh* "Over my dead body."

Since you brought it up again... Just for the record, the day you stopped talking to Beorn because he married outside your religion would be the day I stopped talking to you.

That's a vastly greater plan. Fine to mourn the passing of traditions. Even ways of life. But cutting your child out of your life is... Well, I do not have a good opinion of it. My kids would have to go to great - great - lengths of evil before I did that. Hell, I'd regularly visit one of them in prison if they were serving a life sentence for murder. "You're a f@#*ing idiot. I love you. See you next week."

In spite of all his deeply conservative misdirected political philosophy, Prebear has some wellsprings of wisdom when it comes to parenting.

...and he's stubborn as an ox and won't let a matter drop...

Yeah well, I think my opinion on this has been made known. And it's probably not much different from Prebe's either.

--A

...yeah, yeah, yeah...

It's not...

Just read it, my heart skipped a beat, I said to myself, "My god that's Elora Grace!" black hair and all...