Haru knew she was ugly. Some ancestor's alchemical tinkering had left its mark on her own hide; what had been vibrant and colorful on her graceful skydancer mother was disfiguring on Haru, and the few patches of color on her wings were drab and unappealing. Even her pearl was misshapen and ugly, covered in dull and dark patches. She didn't like to look at it, and kept it hidden away in a bag or a fold of her clothing whenever other dragons were around; she couldn't blame anyone else for disliking the sight of it either, though their reasons were different. To them, it was simply an unsightly pearl. Other Pearlcatchers might guess at the sorrows and misfortunes that had dulled its sheen and darkened its color, but they couldn't know, like she could, which lost child or failed nest was represented by each mark on the surface. So when the magnificent, sunset-colored Imperial dressed in fine silks hailed her while she trudged about her chores on a market day, she didn't even think he was speaking to her at first.

Recruited by Tohil to build a clan memorial, which she naturally intended to make out of stone; this was controversial in a Nature clan, where the Gladekeeper's adherents tended to plant trees as memorials. But the clan was also multicultural, and she had her supporters. Not to mention there was the underlying rift between those considering pulling up roots and moving to another territory, and those who would never think of such a thing; Haru, ironically, would have dearly loved to stay in the lush jungle, so different from her desert home, but her friends and allies were all in favor of moving to the Sunbeam Ruins. So move she did.

She moved, and she built a memorial, inscribed tablets and shaped pillars and cut stone. She spoke to the clan's old-timers and took notes, writing down all they could tell her about the clan's beloved dead. The clan's stonemasons and architects and carpenters worked as she did, building up the homes of the living while she built the abode of the dead. Sometimes, she'd look up from her marble, across the fields of sunflowers and the golden redwoods to the dark green of the Viridian Labyrinth in the distance, and wonder at the turns life could take.

She wondered even more when Rosemary, the rude, abrasive, ancient Fae who ruled the clan's garment industry with an iron claw, approached her


Memory keeper, recording the elders' accounts of clan members long gone:



Ceridwen, , Aquamarine


- Unnamed exalted offspring are stillbirths and failed nests