TC49

Bodea Redstar was a tomboy whose dark brown hair remained short, permitting no Church-mandated pony tail at all. After thousands of years the Academy still wasn’t sure how to present nephilim in a society that was largely unaware of their existence. But jen are functionally female. Bodea can be a mother and later she frequently was. So like Ariel and Doriel the Academy required hem to wear woolen skirts to class rather than trousers.

This rule annoyed Bodea to no end, but at least they did help hem avoid awkward questions about the lump between hez legs, at least most of the time. Bodea was young and horny and sometimes such questions were spectacularly unavoidable.

Ariel Zinter’s hair was about half-way between a rich mohagany and a dark ginger. With icy green eyes, she had an astonishingly pretty face, but freely admitted she was more than a little chubby, or perhaps classically Reubenesque, and this she would always be.

In the years to come when sha was a fugitive compelled to discard har given name people took to calling har Round Robyn. Rather than grow offended Ariel came to embrace it as something of a lifeline. The most powerful of the B’nei Elohim needed at least one thorn in the flesh to keep her humble.

Gabriel Shybear’s hair was black as that of his sister but only long enough to make a minimal nod in the direction of a ponytail. He spent much of his time with a Kuwapi youth named Jothan who led what might be the only gang in Headwater. Like Dory, his talent had come online early, well before his halo came in, probably due to the sheer utility of it. Gabriel was called the Magician. Hy was great at making things disappear when it was very convenient that they disappear, and he could make them unexpectedly present when they were needed. He could turn a single coin into enough money for all the elderly Kuwapi folk in Headwater to keep body and soul together. He could feed fresh bread to a gathering of any size. And the best part of Gabriel’s magic tricks was that they weren’t tricks at all.

Jael Zinter’s hair was identical in color with Ariel’s, and like Ariel it was tied up in the bun expected of a White Winger, but not for very much longer. None of Gabriel’s Kuwapi friends would speak a word to hym, but neither did they dare to threaten him, for Gabriel himself had warned them off, and Jael was perfectly capable of standing up for himself. When hy grew a little older he would be even more capable. Spectacularly so.

Jael did have a small group of friends at the Academy, boys who went about in black knee-length raincoats, whether it was hot or cold, rain or shine, and they only removed them when they bathed or slept. Jael also stripped out of his when hy sat at his drumkit and needed to sweat a little. But what really made Jael know his life was worth living was his deep and perpetual adoration of his twin sister Ariel, which was fully reciprocated. They were, in all the ways either cared to think about, a single organism.