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Words knit the skein between and aesture and expression, allto fashion a tapestry that, as every woman understood, could tear in but one direction, by deliberate vicious effort A friendship a women knew but one enemy, and that was hter the weave

Seren Pedac had lived most of her life in the company of men, and now, on her rare visits to her home in Letheras, she was viewed by women who knew her with unease As if her choice had made her loyalty uncertain, cause for suspicion And she had found an unwelcome aardness in herself when in their company They wove from different threads, on different frames, discordant with her own rhyth them, trapped by her own silences

To which she answered with flight, away from the city, from her past From women

Yet, in the briefest ofof two s, she was knocked a step back – alround, this trail with its rocks and trees, yet in another world

Too easy to conclude, with a private sneer, that ht well be circling and sniffing each other’s anuses right now Inviting conclusions that swept aside all notions of coeneralizations But the eneralizations and challenged the conteer

And the strange, malicious desire to step between them

On a cobbled beach, a man looks down and sees one rock, then another and another A woman looks down and sees… rocks But perhaps even this is siular and women as plural More likely we are bits of both, some of one in the other

We just don’t like ad it

He was taller than Hull, shoulders level with the Letherii’s eyes His hair was brown and bound in finger-length braids Eyes the colour wet sand Skin like s the broad ar naations she had treated with in her three official visits to Hannan Mosag’s tribe

‘Hiroth warrior,’ Buruk the Pale said, shouting to be heard above the wailing Nerek, ‘I welcouest I am-’

‘I knoho you are,’ Binadas replied