[Miranda_]

"Luckier than some," Aleta said, looking sad for a moment as she remembered the street kids from Ave. Even the ones who came to the temple for food were hard done by; some, like Victor, were addicted to opium. Others simply were homeless and poverty stricken due to being abandoned by their parents.

Child abandonment was extremely common in Ave due to contraceptive potions being largely unobtainable for the vast majority of Avians. Such things were expensive and therefore were outside the reach of most Birds. There was also a high level of women dying in childbirth or miscarrying due to the prostitution and drugs. Those who survived often couldn't afford to raise their babies, so abandoned them or, if they were informed, gave them up to the temple.

Victor, for example, had seen many of the street girls dying on the pavement cuz their drug and starvation ravaged bodies simply could not stand up to the rigors of pregnancy and birth. There were too few healers to cope with the flow and of course the King of the Cats couldn't care less about the suffering of the Avians, just about how much money he could wring out of the stricken country.