Read Schism: Part One of Triad for Free Online

his family celebrated at dinner. He knew his behavior puzzled diem. Their thoughts brushed his mind. He didn’t hide; if they believed he was lost or in trouble, they would come looking for him. But he kept to himself.
    He had known before the Jag landed that Althor was coming home. His brother’s luminous mind warmed his like a sun. It had always been that way with the two of them. It had devastated him the day Althor left home. He understood little about why his siblings or parents did what diey did. He loved his family, but as he had grown older, he had felt more apart from mem.
    His life here left him restless and empty, and he didn’t know how to fill the gaps. Although lately he always thought of girls, it was never those in the village. He imagined girls like himself, with white-gold hair and silver eyes, slender instead of voluptuous, ethereal and misty. In Dalvador they were too robust, too much the daughters of farmers. He wanted to ride in the wind, never stopping, never settling. To be chained to a farm, trapped by the land—he could never bear such a life. It baffled him that Vyrl wanted it so much, enough even to study agriculture at me university. Shannon loved his brother and his sister-in-law and their children, but mat life seemed hell to him.
    While the family dined, Shannon stayed in the stable. He sat in a stall next to Moonglaze, his father’s massive war lyrine. He understood lyrine in a way he couldn’t fathom people. Lyrine never analyzed. They lived in the moment, with no emotional barriers between them and the people they loved. It made sense to Shannon. Humans analyzed too much.
    One of his biology texts claimed lyrine descended from horses and had been genetically engineered for Lyshriol. Shannon didn’t care. They weren’t horses now. Moonglaze’s prismatic hooves and his two horns splintered light into colors that sparkled and danced. Even in the dim light, hints of rainbows flashed on the amberglass stall as Moonglaze shifted resdessly. The great lyrine would have kicked most people who intruded on his privacy, but he tolerated Shannon and Eldrinson.
    Shannon sat in a trance. He felt the minds of his siblings and parents questing for him, puzzled by his absence. Several times someone came into the stable seeking him, his scholarly brother Denric once, his mother later, then Vyrl’s wife Lily. He didn’t answer when they called and they didn’t intrude, though they knew he sat in Moonglaze’s stall. Eventually they returned to the house.
    Moods swirled throughout the night, the joy of his parents in Althor’s visit and the excitement of his family. Other moods stirred below the surface like eel-streamers in a lake. Tension, uncertainty, sadness. A sudden spike of shock from Althor. Shannon absorbed it all like a sponge soaking in water.
    He just took it all in. The causes would become clear later, or not.
    So he sat.
    Finally he sensed what he had waited for the entire day. Althor was alone.
    Shannon could tell by the change in his brother’s mood.
    He left the stable then.
    Soz paced through the outskirts of Dalvador, following a cobbled alley that meandered behind a row of shops with all sorts of goods: glasswood place settings, furniture, and tools; delicacies sold by merchants who traveled to Dalvador from Rillia across the mountains; finely worked metal goods from the blacksmith; glitter to grow bubble crops. To her right, the fields of her father’s farm spread out under the
     
    night sky, the reeds heavy with bagger bubbles. The crescent of the Blue Moon hung above the horizon and the gibbous Lavender Moon shone higher in the sky.
    Tahota had shaken the foundations of her life. Surely Soz could make her parents understand. She just needed to present it right, in a manner that would convince them she couldn’t pass up such an incredible opportunity.
    Realistically, they would be upset no matter how great she considered this news. But if she talked to them enough, stayed