Ayame

The oldest of Kousa and Haru's children, Ayame was always keenly aware of the secrets her parents weren't telling her; the reason her mother's pearl was so dull, discolored and misshapen, the reasons her mother kept her and her brothers so close and worried over their every bump and bruise, the arguments they'd have, after they thought she was asleep, about family legacies and expectations.

Her father wanted her to be a knight. Her mother wanted her to be safe. For years, Ayame had no patience with her mother's anxieties, or, for that matter, with her mother's ugly pearl and homely looks. Her father might have a plan for her to follow, but at least it was one she liked.

She trained harder and learned faster than either of her brothers. They said Pearlcatchers were cowards? Ayame was going to use sword and claw to fight, not magic or projectiles. They said her Guardian brother would be the natural fighter? She was eligible to enter the knighthood years before he was.

Maybe that was why she was drawn to Alberich. He was trying to live up to a warrior legacy, too. He wasn't as driven as she was, but he supported her, and never questioned her goals. And he was kind, if a little goofy.

It's only now, as she watches over the single egg in her first nest, that she understands more of what her mother felt. That fierce desire to protect. And she knows, finally, after her father told her in confidence, something about her mother's history. Hatchlings dead in the shell, eggs sickening and drying out, their protective rock coating crumbling away, while Haru watched helplessly. Ayame watches the soft glow of her own egg, pulsing in time with the hatchling's heartbeat, and wonders how her mother kept going all those years.

She can't make it up to her mother for her attitude when she was a vain and impatient youngster, but she can do her best to be a good mother and a good knight now.