Kesatan Life Cycle

Now that I have this thing working for me (It's still a little weird for me thinking words and seeing them pop up on the screen, but at least its not so painful anymore.) I'm going to go on to that post about the Kesatan life cycle. And to open it up, I've got my human-form yela'kaja with all his information laid out (and by that I mean he has stuff laid out in what looks like the Xala language and a couple other languages I don't recognize up on screens) and is ready to start us out, so handing it to the man:

The life cycle of a xala kesata, or "Kesatan", as Vinceon calls them, starts when the females eggs, after being laid in an underwater cave-like structure, is fertilized by a male Kesatan's sperm. The embryo develops one Kesatan month, which is about half of one of your Gregorian months, into a small creature similar to what you call tadpoles, though it seems from what I've found that they are much larger than any tadpoles on Earth or on Jed. In Yeltax we often call these gaxesê, which roughly translates as "little fish" and refers to any tadpole-like amphibious offspring.

This "tadpole" will gradually evolve into the adult. The most immediately apparent part of this process is usually the growth of limbs, which are often present within one of your months and continue to grow very rapidly throughout the growth period. Kesatans divide the stages of the metamorphosis differently, depending upon the local culture. The most common division is as follows (using Yeltax names for lack of an effective way of transliterating the Kesatan sign language):

1. gogo: egg
   
2. gaxesê: "tadpole"
   
3. xasedê: "little salamander", which begins with the first appearance of the limbs
   
4. tôkoxe: "tailless", which begins when half the tail is lost. Also by this stage, the gills have generally been totally replaced by lungs
5. xala êdag: "full adult", which is marked by the growth of two large maxillary barbels.
   

The entire process takes many of your years to complete. The first three stages are usually last a matter of weeks or months and during that time the young are under constant supervision, either by their own parents or by the community. In most Kesatan cultures, the young are cared for communally by an entire village of mostly related individuals, which we think is responsible for the sign corresponding most closely to your word mother is usually extended to all females of the previous generation in one's home village, and the same occurs for the sign corresponding to father. This, of course, is dependent on the local language and dialect.

The later two take years to complete on their own, during which time they are gradually given more freedom and more responsibility as they are more thoroughly socialized by the community. It should be noted that it is very difficult for Kesatans to learn the various sign languages on this planet until the limbs are fairly well developed and the chromatophores are fully functional. The entire process is usually complete in ten to twelve of your Gregorian years, at which time the young adult Kesatan is free to either stay in it's home village or move to some other village or even to other islands.

Kesatans will become sexually potent and produce new offspring upon reaching or sometimes before reaching adulthood, and will usually continue to be fertile for their entire lives, which is incredibly short at an average of around fifty-three of your Gregorian years.

So, that's it in a nutshell, I stopped him for now, as I didn't really want to make this post too long. I'll let him get into some more about fertility and such next time. By the way, just so you know, Xala live for two hundred to three hundred years, so the Kesatan lifespan looks a lot shorter to him than it does to us (though you have to admit that fifty years is pretty short compared to us, too). Personally, I seem to recall meeting a Kesatan here that was about sixty, but I was told that she was a rarity and is revered in her community for her incredible age.