People of Aenya: Avia

AVIA is the daughter of King Azrael of Nimbos, a prominent yet rebellious member of the avian people. She is known for her willowy figure, bright azure eyes, tall head crest, and bright plumage of green, blue and violet, which changes with the direction of the light.

Despite her highborn status, in Nimbos AVIA is treated like an outsider, having disavowed the avian caste system, which marginalizes lesser born families, those with dull-colored plumage and minimal (for her species) bird features. She rejects, furthermore, the sentiment that flightless species, including humans, are inferior. Her ultimate act of rebellion, however, she displays in her choice of nest mate. Ouranos is regarded as beneath her evolutionary branch, shunned for cavorting with groundlings. Adding to this insult, Ouranos introduces Avia to the Ilmar, with whom she shamelessly associates.

In Ages of Aenya (available now!) AVIA flies to the aid of Xandr and Thelana, when her king and father, Azrael, sentences them to death for war-crimes against the merquid, whom they call waterlings. Riding atop her ib, a giant pigeon-like bird, she and Ouranos ferry the Ilmar from the Tower of Heaven. But as they make their escape, they are pursued by a dreaded caw, an even bigger predatory bird, and when their ib suffers injury from the caw’s talons, Xandr and Thelana plummet to the sands of the Great White Flat. Despite exhaustive searching, Avia is unable to find her flightless companions. It is during this aerial altercation that she also loses her nest mate, Ouranos, to the monster bird. She appears toward the end of the story as a courier, to deliver a message from Radia.

Avia makes her second appearance in The Princess of Aenya (available now!). Ever the rebel, she arrives in the small trading town of Yefira to aid the exiled bird man, Krow, who is stripped of his wings after falling in love with a human. Descending from Davos’s ship, the Cloud Breaker, with her wingfoil of silver-bladed feathers, she plays a pivotal role in the final Battle of Tyrnael.