#renther

Mononaternity/monoxaternity (monorentherhood/monorenthership, solonaternity/soloxaternity, solorenthership/solorentherhood, uninaternity/unixaternity, or unirentherhood/unirenthership): the state of being parented solely by a non-binary parent; and/or being a a single-renther/ceteroparent.

Alternate adjectival labels: solonaternal, soloxaternal, monoxaternal, unixaternal, uninaternal.

The armies of the changéd are no more and the once-mighty Argur dynasties were murdered – proof that even they could not wholly bend fate to their whims. Or perhaps they did, having no desire to live in the world that followed them. No one knows. If the dead speak, those who can hear them keep quiet about what they say.

My jail cell is somewhere far above the city of Skyshear, perhaps the last of the floating prisons left in the world. I’m not sure anyone knows how to fix them, but I doubt they much care: if the prison falls, it’s just less criminals for anyone to care about. The skyguard marched through the low districts, burning down homes and killing anyone who tried to stop them. The poor had burdened the stretched graneries of the city, so the poor would be no more.

I’d slept through most of it, only waking when a skyguard blade brought down an inn around me. I survived, and was hauled away with the other survivors, tossed up into the ancient prison. I think they expect us to eat each other to survive. The story might even make the evening news. I was half-considering dying, as one does, when he arrived. The smiling stranger changed all that. She was blindfolded but moved among the terrified and the violent with ease, untouched by anything, swift and certain as death in a hospital or the last smile a lover has.

Her gaze fell on me, and I knew – without needing to know why, without knowing why – that I wasn’t going to be as lucky as I had hoped.

“You have eyes that See,” I said, my voice rough even to my ears. To call someone an Augur was a killing offence. To be one a far worse thing now.

“And you are a Render,” she said, her voice low, her smile unwavering. “And I have need of your skills.”