Choth Life

In "Wingless," the Weathermaker Choth is a single extended household, its core families housed in a tall, balconied stone tower overlooking:

a paved courtyard;

rambling wooden buildings;

meadows grazed by meat animals;

a mixed Terrestrial-Ythrian ecology of grass, clover, starbell, wry, oak, pine, braidbark and copperwood;

beyond that cultivated area, native susin, chasuble bush, janie and, when Nat Falkayn looks out from a balcony, a flock of draculas in flight.

In The People Of The Wind, the Stormgate Choth occupies the Andromeda Range and includes Lythran's extended household whose senior members and their children are housed in an old stone tower in the middle of a plateau of Mount Fairview. Unmarried family members and retainers with their families live in lower wooden buildings with amberdragon and starbells growing on their roofs. Between these buildings, and also between the sheds, barns and mews, grow Ythrian trees:

braidbark

copperwood

lightningrod

jewelleaf

- and native flowers:

janie

livewell

Buddha's cup

harp vine

There are no native Avalonians to bestow names like "Buddha's cup"! All the names have to be either Anglic or Planha.

Apart from a few maintenance staff, Lythran's entire household flies under its own power to the regional Khruath on another mountain, the only exception being Arinnian who, lacking wings, flies with a gravbelt. En route, they meet other Stormgate families. At the Khruath, they meet members of other choths. We might have appreciated a description of the territory that they fly over. Instead, we read a traditional carol sung by Eyath and translated into Anglic by Arinnian which contains the memorable line:

"High is heaven and holy." (I, p. 452)

We know that an Ythrian's business activities need not be confined to within his or her own choth because youths from Stormgate, Many Thermals and The Tarns have founded a silvicultural engineering firm. We read in Chapter V that inter-species economic activities are a wonderland.