When I became winded Master Damien called a halt to me and I knelt before him. He wanted me


    closer to him, so I crawled into hisp and rested.


    “So, Ronal, you’ve seen a ve that had this problem before?” he asked stroking my stomach.


    “Yes, many lunar cycles ago,” Ronal said simply.


    “I believe they were from the red mountains.”


    Master Evan was irritated. Ronal was being evasive and dragging this out. First the dancing and now


    he was giving the same information he’d already told them. Master Bane agreed and his anger started


    to rise. Their emotion wasbining and mixing internally, readying to spill over.


    Men don’t think right when their tempers are up, I reminded them and the fire all receded into the


    background.


    “You’ve mentioned that, Ronal. What else do you know?” Master Damien asked calmly.


    “ves,” he said leaning forward, “be very attached to their young. The night the boy chose his


    family and they put the mark, the woman had to be kept tied to the bed. When it was sent to the Child


    Keepers, I thought we’d never hear the end of the screaming.”


    That made me feel better. The women would mark the child even if it was mine. It would not be an


    outcast. The bit about us being “attached” to our children wasn’t really news to me, but it was to my


    men.


    I felt the difort they all had about that part, but I ignored it. My curiosity had to deal with how they


    sold the boy. Who made sure his owners would be good enough?


    Ang’s Library


    Master Damien asked Ronal who sold the boy and the other man grunted.


    “Your family’s offspring are valuable. Mistress Nu-reeh will im the child as hers. That’s what the other


    woman did. She put the boy in a family. What I heard at the time was she handled the sale Like it was


    her own,” Ronal answered.


    “Anything else about the men strike you as unusual?” Master Damien asked. “They seem to have any


    special attachment to their ve?”


    “No more so than any of you that choose this Life,” Ronal said Looking confused. “You have some


    unusual attachment to your ve?”


    Master Damien scoffed and cupped my cheek as though examining me, “Only wondering why this


    happened to us is all,” he said.


    I met his eyes and the understanding passed between us. The bond was unusual. That was what they


    had wanted to know and Ronal_ had inadvertently answered the question.


    The rest of the conversation was pleasant and not that enlightening for me. My men had never seen


    things Ronal described, like nursing, but I had. They neglected to tell Ronal they were already


    intimately aware of what my breasts could produce. My Masters Listened intently as Ronal described


    the life of a child.


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    “How Long does it Last?” Master Evan asked.


    For a human child I knew a mother kept them for eighteen years, but this wasn’t Earth and this child


    wasn’t human.


    “They kept it for six full turns of the small moon,” Ronal said.


    That had meaning to me now. About four hundred twenty days, if the calction Master Damien did


    was correct.


    I was sad and my eyes started to tear. A little over a year to know my child and release it into this wild


    world forever. It was too soon, much too quick for any mother.


    Water touched my Lashes and threatened to spill over as my body started to tremble. It took all my


    fortitude to sit stoically on Master Damien’sp as the men talked. I’d never lost anything this precious


    before.


    Master Bane grunted and stood up. Master Kein made a show of stretching. They felt my pain and I


    was breaking. It would be better not to do that in front of these men.