A/N: I did update, eventually, since there seems to be enough interest to continue.

Spring 1378 AF

Perhaps I should tell you about my family now. I really only love Laia and Justien. Sammy...well, you can like him, but you can't really love him. And Kally is too young for me to know what she's like.

The oldest, Thom, gets most of the attention. He's tall, with a square, challanging face, and bright, blue-green eyes. He has hair the color of just-ripened wheat, and he's very charming. I suppose he'll capture some wide-eyed court beauty and wed her, and produce plenty of children to continue our line. To tell the truth, I don't know much about Thom. He rarely associates with anyone but our father, as he is twenty years of age and therefore a man, as well as our father's heir. Thom will probably go to court next spring to see about winning that wife.

Then there is Kylaia, my next and favorite sister, even at eighteen, four years older then I. Laia, as we often call her, is as tall as Thom, with golden hair and brilliant blue eyes. She looks just like the kind of beauty that Thom will wed someday, except, unlike that beauty, she isn't brainless. Laia is the most intelligent of us all, and the quickest to learn. She will likely soon be married, and she's told me that she is frightened to death of it. She doesn't want to be...but that will keep, for another day.

Laia is my closest sister. She and I are twins of the mind, rather then the body. I know she will be Chosen someday, if she shows signs of a Gift. Laia taught me to read and write when no one else would. She also bullied Master Aliar into teaching me more before she left for court. She'll return in a few weeks.

Lerali is the beauty in the family, but I think Laia far the prettier. Where Laia is strong, and challenging, Lerali is soft and submitting. She's also brainless. She can't do more then order servants about. I think that our father will foster her at court, where she can show herself to advantage and capture a husband, preferably a rich, noble one. There is little else to say of Lerali, so I won't bother to try.

Then comes me, at fourteen, and after me my favorite brother Justien. He's rather ugly, and as such likely won't attract the kind of wife that Thom will. So my brother applied himself to his studies. He's very well-spoken, and well-learned. I love him because he believes, like Laia and unlike our father, that women are more then livestock, good only for childbirth. Justien, I think, will manage to persuade Father to send him to the Colligium, to become an Unaffiliate. He will probably become an Artificer. He would be good at it, and bring our family more fame then we already have.

Sammy, my next youngest brother, is simpleminded. Mother was helping him up the stairs a year ago when he slipped, and both of them fell. Sammy escaped with only a knock to the head that made him lose his wits. Mother went into labor with our youngest sister, Kally, and lost her life.

I don't blame Sammy. He was only three, and can't quite remember what went wrong, on account of his simplemindedness. He's so adorable one cannot blame him. I don't especially miss my mother, either. She couldn't stand up to Father at all. She was much like Lerali, except she had the wit to know some things.

Kally is the sweetest little baby you ever saw, with huge blue eyes and a faint dusting of dark hair. This is surprising, as she and I are the only people in our family with dark hair. I sometimes wonder if we have different parents. Unlikely, though, as Mother was too frightened to be unfaithful to my father.

My father....but someone is coming. My father can wait for another day.