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eBook Category: Fantasy/Science Fiction
eBook Description: It's bad enough to love a mortal when your lifespan is much longer than hers. But when a female chieri adopts a little girl found lost in the forest, things are going to change dramatically when the girl grows up.

eBook Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, Published: Snows of Darkover, 1994
Fictionwise Release Date: October 2006

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Various Authors Darkover Series

36 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [22 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [39 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [8 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [176 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [8 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [50 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [79 KB] , hiebook (KML) [46 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [48 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [7 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [9 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [38 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [17 KB]
Words: 2307
Reading time: 6-9 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Chiaryl felt a deep and inexplicable sense of sorrow as he watched Merilys, sure-footed as a doe, scrambling down the slope. It seemed such a short time ago that he'd found the human child crying over her parents' bodies, hopeless and alone in the depths of the forest he called home. They had been foolish to travel so far into the wilderness with such a small party; but from what he'd been able to learn from the girl, then a child of nine or ten, her parents had fled in fear from their own kind to seek refuge in the trackless mountain stands. They'd lost that gamble and the child would have been lost too, if not for Chiaryl's intervention. Now the chieri had begun to regret his decision to adopt this alien child.

The few remaining members of Chiaryl's powerful and once-vital people had grown morbid and solitary over the long years, mourning the death of their species and their world. They were beings of transitory gender--one season male, another female, and still another sexless. They had grown fewer with the passing of time as the mating urge came less and less frequently, until finally no children were born at all. Perhaps it had been a secret longing for a child of her own that caused Chiaryl, then in her female phase, to adopt Merilys. It might have been kinder to let her die in the mountain snows or, since the chieri had felt compelled to rescue her, to have returned her to her own kind. Still, what was done was done. She had grown to love Merilys and now he had only himself to blame for the consequences.