Teaser---because I love to cause you agony. (Patreon)

Sunlight spilled into the large window blanketing Keelee in warmth. Soft music drowned replaced the noise of barbaric magic. Distance from the filthy streets blurred the misery, the anger, the absolute hopelessness painted on the people's faces. But it did not mute it from their souls.

Keelee traced the crooked branch of the havatree until the pulse beating inside the plant faded. He angled his pruning sheers through the clumps of delicate flowers and snipped away another dead stem. 

There’d been a time when caring for the havahad brought him pure joy. But like everything else, he’d lost his happiness the day he lost his young. So many of his people had lost their young. Some still taking nectar from the flower. 

The oldest of them hadn’t even developed pouches of their own. Far too many hadn’t even dropped their peos. And those even younger? There was no way they could have survived. Their tiny bodies too weak to sustain life outside their parent's pouch.

Young needed their parent’s constant touch and the safety of their bodies until they could at least walk.

A dull ache, nothing but an unwanted memory, raced down the line of Keelee’s birthing seam. Sometimes when he was very still the ghost of his young would weigh his belly. He longed for that feeling again. He longed for the touch and gentleness of his family.