Morgane nods to the Elder who speaks again, “first thing they did was locate a group of citizens who were willing to send out the messages they needed delivered. To our people having society at peace is extremely important, then they found another group of people to scour the cites and villages to find any children. Then they asked their brightest to find out the cause of our inability to procreate, at the time the group was sent out to find children there were three in my town. I was living in one of the locations bigger than this village but still much smaller than one of the cities. I was in my tenth year and was excited to see a person from the capital city in our town, the 'runner' asked our town Elders if they could take us children to the Capital city for a period of time. They detailed that there were no children in the Capital, and they were not sure how long it had been since one had been born.”

The Elder closes his fist as if in anger, “if our Elders had just denied the request of the Capital 'runner' it might have saved us. However because of how our society worked at that time they sent the three of us to the Capital City, I did meet my future mate there as she had been from another smaller village. When we arrived at the capital city it seems the scientists and learned people had figured out that the only major change had been the stopping of the 'New Life' and 'Blessed Harvest' festivals. As we were approaching the fall they would hold a major 'Blessed Harvest' festival in the Capital City asking people from surrounding cities, towns and villages to attend. This is where the second part of our downfall occurred, while plans for the festival were being made all of the children were being housed in the Council's dormitories. Our ruling Council is given a Dorm like the one you currently live in to show they work for the people, all of our people bring food and clothing to them while they are part of the Council. During the period that the preparations for the festival were under way the contingent to make peace on the moon had gone to talk with the wolf people to stop their impending war.”

The Elder looked upset again, “while the festival was one of the most beautiful that our people had ever had that year it had it's cost. What we did not know is that the delegates that went to the peace talks had been infected with the illness that then turned into a plague. They even infected the two children they brought with them, in case they missed the festival. They however had returned in time for the festival, thinking they had established peace on the moon. Once the festival was over the children were all sent back to their homes, the scientists and learned people thinking they had solved the problem with our people's reproduction cycle.”

The Elder takes in a slow breath and looks out the window again and then with a twinkle in his eye he waves the three children over to look. When they do they see that Aqua and the male were asleep cuddled against each other. “That children is a good sign, to late for our people; but still good for them. Now where was I, oh yes. When the pregnancy cycle competed it was discovered the only ones who were able to get pregnant that point were those who had been keeping up with the tradition of the festivals. As our gestation is almost two years and not all females are 'in season' at the same time the smarter of us had no idea, when the first cases of illness started among our people. I started pretty benign, as a bit of mange like symptoms, which something akin to your world's mange occurs here in the spring randomly. It's our version of the flu of your world, no one thought anything of it as it started in the spring.”

Dylan looked like he was making mental notes in his head now, Morgane imagined the three of them will probably have a very busy night writing copious notes about what each of us garnered from the information. The Elder continues, “two things wound up occurring at the same time. We learned that the illness wasn't our normal wave of spring mange and the learned people discovered that no one in the cities that stopped having festivals became pregnant. Our people do have illnesses that include fevers and coughing on occasion as well as throwing up, however they do not generally occur all at the same time. Also no one could find a way to reduce the temperatures, eventually death would occur after all of a person's fur fell off. I say fell off verses fell out, because it would come out with bits of flesh attached. Then these 'sores' would get infected from some unknown pathogen,” The Elder holds up his hand. Before you get concerned about illness spreading to your world, I can guarantee that the illness is no longer active and traversing through space would have killed anything that might have been on anything that was placed within the city we sent out.”

Dylan nods as if he was just going to ask about that, the Elder continues again. “After an initial die off we thought that what ever illness it was had burned out and was gone. That maybe it was perhaps something that jumped species from the wolf people to us, as they had mange like illnesses as well. We were wrong however, during the first wave of the plague I had been randomly communicating with my future mate. The two of us knew when we met that we wanted to be partnered, so until we reached our fifth decade we could just communicate and every summer season we would swap towns learning the micro culture of each other's towns. We had been so proud when we had out partnering, both towns came together for the event; and it was held days before that fall's 'Blessed Harvest' festival so that both towns could celebrate it together. Something we had not seen was that my mate's father was losing some of his fur.”

The Elder pauses as if he was fighting back tears, “we were so happy that she had gotten pregnant at the first festival after our joining. A few months after we discovered this we went to go see her family, as when a pair is partnered from different areas they move to the male's home; we enter the town to discover people yelling for us to leave that they had the plague. We didn't want to be infected so in response we shouted our news and left very distraught, a few days later a 'runner' from the Capital arrived to tell us they made a horrible discovery. It seems that the original illness while it could infect children but not 'activate' in them, believed to be due to a hormonal change at the adulthood stage. They were infectious to others, also that the two children who had gone to the peace talks had been purposely infected, just like the rest of the delegation. The 'runner' then asked about my mate, whom I had not known was one of the two children that had gone to talk to the wolf people. When the 'runner' saw she was pregnant the 'runner' got very sad, telling us he hoped that she would live to bring the child to term and that it would not be infected.”

The Elder did start crying now and Morgane went over to hug him, “she didn't though; it seems because she had been infected as a child it was more virulent than the original and she died a month later with my child still within her. We found out after the death ritual that most of my town was now infected with this stronger strain, also that her whole town had been decimated by it; they had all died days after we had left.”

The Elder stops unable to control his emotions and Triton as well as Dylan came over to hug him as well. It takes the Elder a few minutes to regain control during this time many others in the village came in to going in the hug to console their Elder. I wonder how many of these people had to witness the same thing, Morgane thought to herself. A high pitched female voice enters her head, none here child. All of us are people who never had children at all, also from what we do know it was discovered before anyone else who was infected became pregnant. To have a child die in such a manner to our people is unnatural.

The voice left her head as the people slowly left the house after the Elder calmed down, though Aqua and her former mate remained looking concerned. The Elder gives the three a large group hug, “thank you children, you are certainly more in tune with other's feelings than most of your species is. Now I have to finish this telling even though it does pain me to do so. At this point the learned people knew the wolf people had engineered the illness to directly target our people, it infuriated our remaining Elders that not only would the wolf people attempt to kill another species off but to intentionally infect children with their plague. When they decided they needed to address the wolf people about what they had done, it was discovered that the wolf people had already wiped out their own civilization with another plague they created. See it appears that the two factions thought they were different enough that they could tailor an illness to kill one of the them off, little did either side know that they both made the same killer virus. It wiped their people out in a manner of months in your time, it was found however that once they realized what they did; they made a peace treaty so they could find a cure. They had even been considering contacting our people to help them with the promise of a cure for the original illness they gave our people. However, at this point the illness had mutated; and their cure would not have worked at all.”

Aqua's former mate then starts speaking, “the illness wiped out most of the remaining members of our species. Me and Aqua, as you call her were the last two of this village to live; we had learned the death ritual for our people. However as we were only five years of age we knew nothing of the festivals, and we spend the next two decades eking out a living on our own.”

Dylan scratches his head a minute then asks, “'death ritual' you have mentioned it a few times; what is it and how could even from your species a five year old take care of adult dead bodies?” The Elder smiles a bit, “that Dylan is because the 'death ritual' is something we do that creates the life stones you just opened up in the box while disintegrating the body of the dead. Upon death our blood goes through a process that will crystallize it and we can infuse that with the memories of the person before their spirit passes on, Morgane has such a crystal; what do you think 'The Star of The Sea' is? It is the crystallized blood and memories of one of our leaders.”