Eldine’s family was a quiet and happy one. Though they might be considered nobility, they enjoyed simplicity. After Eldine retired from his post as governor of Meriusul, they returned to the family estate near the Mai’on River. There, his wife Candesce gave birth to Endine. Three springs later, they take Endine with them to the Imperial City to congratulate Emperor and Empress Decaelum on the birth of their daughter Gemma.
          “Eldine, Candesce, it is always good to see you. This is your son Endine, correct?” Emperor Kinto asked.
          “Yes,” Eldine replied.
          “No need to be shy, Endine,” his mother coaxes him from behind her dress. “They are friends.”
     He cautiously looks up at the strange adults with their black hair and white wings.
     Empress Yulka kneels down and shows him the newborn girl sleeping in her arms, “This is Gemma Aurilius Decaelum, our shining jewel.”
     Endine had little interest in a baby; no, everything else was much more interesting. The myriad of people and buildings and other things he could not identify beyond the palace walls were wildly more entertaining. For the moment though, the familiar green of the gardens beyond the open doors beckoned. The adults laughed at this and engaged in a short conversation before it was time for them to return home. While he was sad to leave the wondrous sights of the city, Endine’s relief at returning home was greater.
     Candesce doted on her son. Endine was her only child and she devoted most of her time with him. She made sure he had only the best tutors and taught the entire gamut of subjects he could possibly handle as well as the proper decorum of his status and the arts.
     Endine grew. He learned quickly and so he was often finished with his studies for the day quite early. He then would go out into the woods escorted by a servant and explore. He learned all the names of the plants and creatures that lived near his home. He was well acquainted with local the tribes as well, the familiars of the vegetation and creatures of the wood that have a human form and intelligence.
     She was very modest about it, but Candesce was quite talented with the flute-pipe. Anyone who heard her play would tell you so. After tending to the garden, she would sit on her favorite stone bench and play. Endine would settle down at her feet and listen with rapture. She eventually taught Endine how to play it, giving him one of his own.
     Then, when Endine was sixteen everything changed. Endine first noticed one morning that his mother did not glow anymore. He wanted to ask her but could not bring himself to do it. Instead he told himself that she had caught some rare sickness and that it caused her not to glow anymore. Still, he knew only certain maliren could do this. He wondered what had she done that was so terrible. Why had his father not said anything? Surely he had noticed.
     As the weeks passed, her glow did not return. She seemed to slowly lose weight and began to have bouts of coughing. The golden feathers of her wings fell off one and two at time. One of the servants disappeared for no apparent reason. Finally the truth became clear.
     Eldine and Candesce were tending to the garden. Eldine held a basket for the flowers Candesce was trimming. Endine was sitting on a stone bench nearby playing the flute-pipe. Candesce uttered a soft cry, pricking her finger on a rose stem. Endine rushed over to see that she was all right and he saw it, a single drop of red blood where she had pricked herself.
     She looked up at her husband, awaiting the inevitable question.
     He helped her up, “Let us get that cleaned up. It might get infected.”
          “You are not going to ask about...?”
     He shook his head.
          “I told him to go; I could not do it anymore. I am sorry,” she said quickly and quietly, hoping their son wouldn’t hear.
     Eldine looked at her as one does with an errant child who has realized their mistake.
          “First, your hand,” he said and led her into the mansion.
     Cleaning a prick on the finger was pointless, she was already sick. The feathers of her wings began to fall out in tufts until there were none left. With only the red blood of mortals, what was left of her wings shriveled and died. Endine could not bear to look at her in such a state. Her clothes were altered to cover up the scarred studs on her back and fit correctly as she lost more weight. Her coughing increased, sometimes there would be blood.
     Eldine called for a doctor, hoping there would be a way to cure his wife’s sickness and restore the ‘liquid light’ in her veins. The only way to heal her would be a transfusion of the light from another of her elemental type but she refused. This was her due and she would not fight it. She died.
     Hers was not the usual funeral. Had she died of old age (which wouldn’t have been for nearly a thousand years if not for the terrible malire she committed), she would have lain on soft sheets over a glass frame bed. Upon her dying breath, her body would fade leaving behind a single glowing jewel. Instead she was buried (as in the manner of humans) in the garden and a blue ruffled star planted over the grave. Endine mourned silently and without tears, staring blankly at the blue flowers blooming in the moonlight. He could not understand why they bloomed so brightly when all he and his father had loved was now gone.