Character Spotlight - Katuwan and Lura

Katuwan and Lura enjoy a small but important role in Tears for the Moon God as Xirakura's spouses. They present a window into a different way of life than most people, I think, are used to seeing in fiction.

Hunters and Gatherers

As members of the Katuwiti Tribe, Katuwan and Lura are part of a rich culture with traditions that date back almost to the births of the first humans. They reside in a village in Sufa Salein forest, a jungle in northeastern Gora. Katuwan is a hunter, and Lura spends much of her time gathering what fruit the trees in the forest will part with. Both spend substantially more time in the jungle surrounding their village than their husband, and this shows in their senses of practicality throughout their arc.

While Xirakura serves as a Spirit Caller, a kind of medicine man for their village, neither Katuwan nor Lura possess any ability to utilize magic. Instead, they must rely on their wits in order to see them through their quest in husband hunting, as they would characterize it. Their journey begins when Xirakura succumbs to a strange affliction they can't identify the source of with any certainty, and progresses as they march across Gora in pursuit of a healer. Xirakura does not want to burden them with his affliction, but they view it as their duty as his spouses to support him on his journey, and won't let his refusal to allow them to join him stop them from doing so anyway. This tenacity is born out of a deep, intimate love for each other, a need to support each other through the hard times, which their husband seems to take for granted.

Lacking Magic in a Magical World

What makes Katuwan and Lura so interesting, at least to me, is that they exist in a world in which magic is everywhere; however, lacking access to it, they must rely on more conventional means of solving their problems. In a world in which magic is everywhere, they are nonetheless left in a state of being that allows room for exploration of the world and its elements, while also focusing on small struggles and practical solutions to the hurdles they face.

Lura is perhaps the most logical of the three, and its with her that most problem solving occurs. Be that identifying local customs and taking steps to blend in, or formulating plans for how to obtain the local currency, or simply trying to locate the man they married, her choices reflect need based considerations for both the logistics of their journey and the attainment of resources to sustain them, putting the emotional needs of her and her spouses on the backburner in order to ensure they are capable of navigating in unfamiliar territory and surviving.

Katuwan, by contrast, is perhaps more practical than Xirakura, but finds himself much more concerned with providing a base of emotional support, whether he believes his spouses want it or not. He is the emotional bedrock on which the stability of their household is founded, which is made doubly interesting in that both he and Xirakura sought to court, and eventually marry, Lura independent of each other, only deciding to try out a polyamorous marriage later. Nonetheless, when Katuwan makes a choice, he commits to that choice, and his feelings for Xirakura are as heartfelt as they are for Lura. His one great hope is that Xirakura feels the same way about him.

When it comes time for them to pursue their husband across the countryside and into unfamiliar territory, it's him who insists on following him, despite Lura's reluctance to believe their love for each other is genuine. Though neither Xirakura nor Lura is likely to admit it anytime soon, Katuwan is the emotional core of their relationship, and its from him that stability in this throuple is derived.

Nonconventional Relationship Structures

Writing Katuwan and Lura took me out of my comfort zone in many ways, but ultimately resulted in an interesting dynamic that I will be happy to explore later on.

Relationships of this nature do exist broadly across cultures, and certain other dynamics that defy the monogamous norms we tend to see normalized in the west are also often present in indigenous populations. Be it that a tribe choses to raise their children as if every man is their father, because they have no means of identifying patrilineal descendance; or that one man may be married to multiple women and cohabitate with them, the nature of relationships throughout the world is not as black and white in its structure as we tend to believe it ought to be in the United States. Even here, it is not uncommon, especially in the queer community, for people to have open relationships or open marriages, to date multiple people simultaneously, or to invite a third person into the relationship and attempt to establish a trust based relationship thereafter.

What is true is that love takes on many forms, and the structure of one relationship may not look exactly like another, but every one of those dynamics is valid insofar as it works for the people who are in it. Katuwan, Lura and Xirakura embody a different relationship dynamic. Through them, I hope to challenge people's perspectives on monogamy and the viability of open and polyamorous relationships, to normalize the unconventional to the extent that I can, because wheat we perceive as the norm here is not necessarily perceived in the same light in other cultures. In writing these characters, my hope is that constructive conversations can be had more easily around this subject matter, and perhaps some stigma surrounding open relationships and unconventional relationship structures can be removed.

Love is love, after all. Just that. Love is love.

Tears for the Moon God is available on Amazon.com. Read for free with a Kindle Unlimited Subscription.

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