No, wait, I’m thinking like a human. Ythrians get around more. Eyath’s own mother is from the Sagittarius basin, often goes back to visit… Why shouldn’t I think like a human? I am one. I’ve found wisdom, rightness, happiness of a sort in certain Ythrian ways; but no use pretending I’ll ever be an Ythrian, ever wed a winged girl and dwell in our own aerie.
She was saying: “Well, no, not exactly. Galemate, do you believe I wouldn’t tell you of my betrothal or invite you to my wedding feast? But he is a… a person I’ve grown very fond of. You know I planned on staying single till my studies were finished.” She wanted the difficult, honored calling of musician. “Lately… well. I thought about it a lot during my last lovetime. I grew hotter then than ever before, and I kept imagining Vodan.”
Arinnian felt himself flush. He stared at the remote gleam of a glacier. She shouldn’t tell him such things. It wasn’t decent. An unmarried female Ythrian, or one whose husband was absent, was supposed to stay isolated from males when the heat came upon her; but she was also supposed to spend the energy it raised in work, or study, or meditation, or—
Eyath sensed his embarrassment. Her laughter rippled and she laid a hand over his. The slim fingers, the sharp claws gripped him tenderly. “Why, I declare you’re shocked! What for?”
“You wouldn’t talk like that to — your father, a brother—” And you shouldn’t feel that way, either. Never. Estrus or no. Lonely, maybe; dreamy, yes; but not like some sweating trull in the bed of some cheap hotel room. Not you, Eyath.
“True, it’d be improper talk in Stormgate. I used to wonder if I shouldn’t marry into a less strict choth. Vodan, though — Anyhow, Arinnian, dear, I can tell you anything. Can’t I?”
“Yes.” After all, I’m not really an Ythrian.
“We discussed it later, he and I,” she said. “Marriage, I mean. No use denying, children would be a terrible handicap at this stage. But we fly well together; and our parents have been nudging us for a long, time, it’d be so good an alliance between houses. We’ve wondered if, maybe, if we stayed hriccal the first few years—”
“That doesn’t work too well, does it?” he said as her voice trailed off, through the bloodbeat in his ears. “That is, uh, continual sex relations may not be how Ythrians reinforce pair bonds, but that doesn’t mean sex has no importance. If you separate every lovetime, you, you, well, you’re rejecting each other, arent you? Why not, uh, contraception?”
“No.”
He knew why her race, almost if not quite uniformly, spurned that. Children — the strong parental instinct of both mates — were what kept them together. If small wings closed around you and a small head snuggled down alongside your keelbone, you forgot the inevitable tensions and frustrations of marriage as much as if you were a human who had just happily coupled.
“We could postpone things till I’ve finished my studies and his business is on the wing,” Eyath said. Arinnian remembered that Vodan, in partnership with various youths from Stormgate, Many Thermals, and The Tarns, had launched a silvicultural engineering firm. “But if war comes — kaah, he’s in the naval reserve—”
Her free arm went around his shoulder, a blind gesture. He leaned his weight on an elbow so he could reach beneath the wings to embrace her stiff body. And he murmured to her, his sister since they both were children, what comfort he was able.
In the morning they felt more cheerful. It was not in Ythrian nature to brood — not even as a bad pun, they giving live birth — and bird-humans had tried to educate themselves out of the habit. Today, apart from a few retainers on maintenance duty, Lythran’s household would fly to that mountain where the regional Khruath met. On the way they would be joined by other Stormgate families; arrived, they would find other choths entirely. However bleak the occasion of this gathering was, some of the color, excitement, private business, and private fun would be there that pervaded the regular assemblies.
And the dawn was clear and a tailwind streamed.
A trumpet called. Lythran swung from the top of his tower. Folk lifted their wings until the antlibranch slits beneath stood agape, purple from blood under the oxygen-drinking tissues. The wings clapped back down, and back on high; the Ythrians thundered off the ground, caught an updraft, and rode it into formation. Then they flew eastward over the crags.
Arinnian steered close to Eyath. She flashed him a smile and broke into song. She had a beautiful voice — it could nearly be named soprano — which turned the skirls and gutturals of Planha into a lilt. What she cataracted forth on the air was a traditional carol, but it was for Arinnian because he had rendered it into Anglic, though he always felt that his tricks of language had failed to convey either the rapture or the vision.