Post by L.E. Ott on Jan 18, 2006 0:03:58 GMT -5
Mai was the daughter of Hoi-Na emmissary Li Koa Hua and his wife Beri Ni Ji. She was very intelligent and a dedicated scholar. By the age of twelve, she was in the service of Lord and Lady Inji as a scribe.
Shortly before her fifteenth birthday, Mai's father took her on a journey to Adaven to meet Victor Defrin, to whom she had been betrothed at birth. The teenagers were married quickly, and Mai was left by her father in a strange land with no connections. Her main source of comfort was her husband's brother, Farzi. He was a student of Hoi-Na religion and other matters, and became her best friend in Adaven.
In three years starting when she was sixteen, Mai gave birth to three children, all of whom died in infancy. Her marriage was loveless, and after the death of their third child, Victor essentially left her alone. He did not divorce her and free her to return to her homeland as she would have wished, so she continued to reside in the hall of his father Miklos.
When Victor died in Gasmei at age thirty, most assumed that Mai would return at last to Hoi-Na. Instead, she followed her brother-in-law Farzi into exile. When he briefly returned to his family home some months later, she remained behind at the temple by the sea. The reason: she was pregnant with Farzi's child and did not wish the family to know.
Farzi returned, and Mai soon gave birth to their son, Hengi. This child lived. A daughter, Maia, followed four years later. She also grew to adulthood. Mai lived out the rest of her days with Farzi, happy at last.