the mouth of the Great Mother River (Danube). Thonolan is charismatic, good looking, engaging, likable, irreverent and hardly ever serious while being skilled at wood bending and spear straightening, his craft in the master-of-all-trades world imagined by Auel. He has a tendency to devil may care heroics: a moment of carelessness gets him mauled by a woolly rhinoceros, and another episode gets him killed by a Cave Lion. Jondalar's life is impacted as well by both episodes of his brother's behavioral carelessness. In the first case, Thonolan's mauling allows the brothers to meet with another Stone Age society, winter with them, and Thonolan marries into the group. The two renew their journey to the end of the Great Mother River when his bride dies in childbirth. Thonolan's personality changes, becoming dark and fatalisticand even more prone to taking risks. In the second case, Thonolan's death brings him together with Ayla. Zolena Zolena, now First Among Those Who Serve the Great Earth Mother (Zelandoni), was the first love of Jondalar's life. Originally his tutor in the art of sex, Zolena and Jondalar developed a strong emotional, but socially unacceptable, attachment as well as physical compatibility. Before the incident with Ladroman which resulted in Jondalar's temporary exile, Jondalar and Zolena were planning to tie the knot. After Jondalar left in exile, Zolena became an acolyte of the zelandonia, and joined the ranks of doniers during the Summer Meeting when Jondalar left on his Journey with Thonolan. Upon Jondalar's return, Zolena displays great affection for Jondalar, and, according to Ayla, still loves him. She has become 'a fat old woman'; Zolena has guessed that she was able to become First because the Great Mother knew she would grow to resemble Her. She has no children and is fiercely protective of those in her charge, especially the man she once considered breaking traditions for and mating. Joplaya During the time he lived with Dalanar and the Lanzadonii, Jondalar came to know his 'hearth cousin' Joplaya quite well. (As conjected by Ayla, Joplaya is most likely Jondalar's half-sister via Dalanar, but since it is understood that only women can make children there is no such connection aside from a cultural relationship of 'hearth' or 'close' cousins.) Joplaya fell madly in love with Jondalar, and hoped that he would come to feel the same way about her. It was obvious by the way he treated her