Ritesofpassage Stories

Magic still holds power in this age. Tribal affiliations are still dominant. Settlers and nomads raid each other and regard each other with suspicion. Cultural contacts are often fraught with peril. When a young boy of the nomadic pastoralist Sharp-Shooter tribe, Frakâna, shows up in the Settlement of the Deepmoors, asking permission to visit one of their holy sites, it naturally raises suspicions. The two Deepmoors sent to accompany him, Satbai and Nâla, seek to uncover the truth about Frakâna, but in so doing they trigger an avalanche of violence and intrigue that threatens to split the Deepmoor Settlement apart. Can the Deepmoors and the Sharp-Shooters put their differences aside long enough to prevent an all-out war?

Sorry in advance for all the complicated names! They're just names, and if enough of you don't like them, I can change it! I know sometimes it's really boring reading the blurb, and if it's too long, you just give up reading it. Please comment if it is too long, and I will try and shorten it. * In the region of Kahlabergin, known as Bergin, when a baby is born, they are marked with a special ink that disappears into their skin until they turn into an adult. To become an adult, a child has to pass the Wilderbeast Trials, when all of the children from the whole country gather to take the tests. There, all of the children are the same, no matter what region, and there, they all face the horrors of the Trials. The Berginiers are the enemies of the Alyiners, those who live in Alyin. The Alyiners rule the majority of the country. And to the North lies the region of Ikche. There, no-one who enters comes out the same. They are neutral in the hatred that runs among the country. Freya Gholah, an ordinary girl from an ordinary family in the ruling region, one of three in the country, just turned 16. Her region is the biggest and best of them all. Like every other 16-year-old child born that month, she travels to the Trial Islands, where she will be tested for her strength, ability and judgement. If she survives, she will become an adult. If she dies, she will... be dead. But something else lurks in Freya's skin, ready to come out and cast her out of the only place she has ever belonged. Lonely and lost, Freya must travel North, to the country where no-one who enters returns the same, to the moonlight figures of the Ichæns, and to where fate is ready to play more games with her.

Kaira is an 18 year old Gujrati girl living in London. Life is not easy being surrounded by youngsters free to do as they wish with regards to boyfriends, alcohol and parties; while she is restricted by her ever so strict parents. How is she to pursue her true dream as a journalist whilst her parents are determined for her to become a doctor? Will things go absolutely crazy if she steps away from the boundaries clearly laid out in front of her? Especially when the free willed Rishi, who has escaped his family to live alone, steps into her life. Is freedom as good as it seems?