Highsky Choth

The People Of The Wind, III.

Choths regard guests as sacred. This is relevant because Arinnian of Stormgate visits Hrill of Highsky.

Highsky occupies a long stretch of the Oronesia archipelago and controls the fisheries at latitude 30 degrees North. Choth members are conventional as far as the term applies to Ythrians but how far is that? There are 100+ sovereign choths on one planet. Military leaders find unified action almost impossible.

A quarter of Highsky membership is human. Hrill, human, and Draun, Ythrian, run a private commercial fishery. 

Hrill lives on the island of St. Li where:

"A wind blew, warm but fresh, full of salt and iodine and fragrances." (p. 30)

This sentence concludes a paragraph full of colours and other visuals. We notice: wind (of course); minutely detailed descriptions; perhaps five senses, if we can count salt as both smell and taste.

Hrill/Tabitha Falkayn later tells Arinnian/Christopher Holm that Highsky is mostly of the Old Faith. Human beings have been integrated into a society very far removed from the Terran Empire which harks back to the Roman Empire and which is the present embodiment of Technic civilization which has succeeded Western and Classical.