Under One Sun



It was with a mix of emotions but primarily envy that Heather watched 
her sister stride ahead of her across the windswept open moor while 
chatting animatedly with the boy they'd met only the day before. 
Heather acknowledged that Fern was much the better looking of the 
two sisters-not just because she ascertained this herself but from the 
repeated observation that, given the choice, any boy in pursuit of a 
pretty girl invariably gravitated towards Fern and not at all to Heather.

      Even now, several days' walk from their village in the West 
and loaded down with baggage, it was as if the sweat and exertion of 
their brisk trek over moorland, along the river banks and through the 
thick forest was suffered only by Heather-making her seem even 
more plain-while her sister was as fresh and pretty as she ever was. 
Fern waved her head to one side in her characteristic way so that her 
long brown hair fell over a bare shoulder while she smiled coquettishly 
at Fox, the young man they'd met the previous day at a village they 
passed through on their pilgrimage to the Great Temple of the Sun. 
How could someone of the same mother (but almost certainly of a 
different father) be so very unlike? While Heather was a girl whose 
bosom was less than ample, whose ankles were thick and whose face 
was flat and brutish, Fern had eyes that shone brightly even when the 
Sun was hidden behind clouds, a face that charmed every man who 
cast his eyes on her, and slender and shapely legs that prompted a 
man's ardour as she strode bare-foot over the grass and moss. Even the 
seasonal brown tan of her skin seemed so perfect whereas Heather's 
flesh tended towards only a freckly blistering as the Sun inexorably 
approached its annual zenith.
      
      There were others besides Heather, Fern and Fox in the 
company of pilgrims that clambered up the moor burdened down by 
the wares they'd brought along with them from their homes in the 
West. These pilgrims were on the same expedition, loaded down with 
the produce of their villages to exchange with that of others who were 
also congregating from all across the land, from North, South and East 
as well as West, each and every one gathering with the intent to 
express gratitude to the Sun for his annual bounty and beneficence. It 
was principally to pay respect to the Sun that so many pilgrims massed 
at the Great Temple each year. Such an awe-inspiring and magnificent 
complex of shrines, of both stone and wood, would never have been 
raised merely to give people the opportunity to socialise and exchange 
wares. But opportunity it was and of which everyone took full 
advantage. 
      
      Neither Heather nor Fern had ever travelled before so far from 
their riverside village. Already there was much that was alien and 
mysterious about the world beyond. They'd walked across the Western 
lands, following a route marked out by tradition not so much to afford 
the shortest journey but to gather companions from other villages on 
the way. It fascinated Heather to discover how much custom and even 
language changed over distance. Those who lived furthest from 
Heather's home were the ones most difficult to understand. But 
however diverse the accent and the customs of dress and habit the 
sisters encountered as they wandered from village to village, sharing in 
the bounty of field, forest and river, it was Fern who attracted the most 
attention and the one most likely to be fucked by the dashing young 
men with their youthfully spare beards and their reliably excited 
erections. And it was always Heather who'd sit cross-legged, bare 
limbs and bare breasts, but alone dining on the last few roasted bones 
of aurochs or deer that few others were still concerned to eat.
      
      Even now, as their company-swollen to five men and five 
women-marched onwards, it was always Fern the boys were eager to 
chat with and so keen to shoulder the burden of her deer-hide sack of 
tin and copper. Heather, meanwhile, had no one to share the weight of 
her baggage and had fewer fond memories of being fucked or 
buggered by the flickering flames of a great fire. She knew also that 
there was little likelihood of respite from the load she was carrying 
towards the Great Temple, because on her return she'd be weighed 
down with as much flint from the Eastern chalk lands as she could 
carry. It was a privilege indeed to be elected to represent her village at 
the Great Summer Gathering-an honour that might never be offered 
again-but Heather knew that it was only because her sister was so 
favoured that she was also on this pilgrimage, spared from labour in 
the field and meadow for two cycles of the summer Moon, to represent 
her village at the critical moment of the Sun's highest elevation in the 
firmament. 
      
      This wasn't a privilege of blood alone. In her village, as with 
all the villages in the West, only the mother's bloodline mattered. All 
else was as one under the watchful eye of the Sun, his wayward 
partner the Moon, and their many companions the Stars, whose 
constellations guide the fortunes of all men and women and the beasts 
of field, forest and sea. Although Heather envied her beautiful and 
charming sister, she'd been chosen because there was no one in the 
world she loved more than Fern, including all the boys who'd fucked 
her only after rolling off her sister's exhausted body. And Fern loved 
her too. Theirs was a pure love where sexual intimacy was no more 
appropriate than it would be with one's mother or with one's dog or 
goat. It was like the love they felt towards the Sun and the Moon and 
the Stars who they worshipped and which also gave comfort in the 
bleakest and hungriest days of winter, gave purpose to every waking 
moment and solace in the hours of sleep. So ardent was the sisters' 
love for one another that when Fern was elected to make the great 
spiritual journey far to the East, it was only natural that Heather should 
be her companion.
      
      It was fortunate that there had been no step of their journey 
during which the sisters were unaccompanied. There were great evils 
in the world. Bears and wolves and lynx and aurochs for sure, but also 
malevolent spirits that lurked in the darkness of the night forests and 
prowled across the moors. But when a company of men and women, 
mostly young but also some who were old, wizened and balding, 
strode together singing songs of praise to the celestial bodies and 
emboldened by the righteousness and joy of their shared faith, what 
possible harm could the evil spirits cause? And it ensured as well that 
any predator, however fierce, kept a prudent distance knowing that the 
pilgrims were armed with flint-tipped spears and knives that would 
send them scampering back to their dens with their tails between their 
legs and bloody gashes across their hides.
      
      "Look ahead!" said Hog, one of the men in their company. 
"Smoke! And lots of it. Surely, that must be the site of the Great 
Temple."
      
      "What else could it be?" remarked Lynx, the oldest man in 
their company whose beard was as bushy as his head was bald. 
      
      "It could be a forest fire," warned Gorse, a woman of 
intermediate years. "I saw one once when I was but a child. It was 
fearsome and destructive, even though our village feasted for many 
days on the flesh of the aurochs and boar that had perished in the 
flames."
      
      "It can only be friendly fire," said Lynx. "See how many 
plumes there are. A forest fire is one great black cloud of menace. 
These can only be the fires on which deer is roasting on spits and 
pilgrims are gathered together in honour of the Sun."
      
      And so it was as Heather and her companions discovered for 
sure when they'd ascended the higher slopes of the moor and could see 
stretched ahead of them a wide vista of fires each attended by a 
company of pilgrims. There were many more people from villages 
across the known world than Heather believed could ever exist. 
Amongst the blazing fires and the attendant pilgrims was more shelter 
than could be found in any village. And this was in the form of 
countless scattered wooden, stone and earthen huts scattered about the 
plain and roughly the same number of paces apart. These had been 
constructed over many generations by the multitude of pilgrims who'd 
assembled, foreswearing conflict and war, caring not that in later years 
other pilgrims they'd never know, who might speak a tongue they 
couldn't understand, from hills and valleys far far away would take 
advantage of the product of their labour to shelter from the wind, the 
rain and the midday Sun.
      
      "What do we do now?" asked Nettle, another girl in the 
company much the same age as Heather but still more attractive to the 
men than Heather could ever be.
      
      "We seek a shelter for our own use and build a fire beside it," 
said Lynx. "And if all the shelters are taken then we approach a 
company of pilgrims who've arrived before us and implore them to 
allow us to share their shelter. That is how it's done here and how it's 
always been done. We are all as one under the same Sun and we are 
gathered for the same cause and in the same spirit."
      
      "And that," said Gorse, although it didn't need to be said, "is to 
pay homage to the Sun and beseech him to provide for our village and 
for all villages in the West..."
      
      "And beyond," said Fern excitedly, who was as generous as 
ever in sharing whatever bounty she had.
      
      "And beyond," echoed Lynx piously.
      
      The company were fortunate to easily find a shelter to claim as 
their own for the duration of the Festival of the Sun. Although many 
pilgrims had already arrived from the North, the East and mostly the 
South, there were many more still to come and many of the shelters, 
unoccupied since the previous Summer solstice (or perhaps the less 
well attended Winter solstice), were still available. Lynx ensured that, 
before they settled down to prepare a fire and feast on the game they'd 
earlier caught, the company should repair the shelter and, as custom 
dictated, add to the collection of baubles and decorations already on 
display. 
      
      The stone shelter that Lynx had chosen was as solid as any 
building in her own village but it had obviously not been built as a 
permanent residence. There was space to sleep but nowhere to store 
domestic fowl or dogs and no surfaces on which to prepare food, nor 
even a hole in the roof for smoke from an indoor fire to escape. But, as 
in every home in Heather's village, there was space reserved for a 
shrine to the Sun, and it was to this that the two sisters bestowed a clay 
figurine of the Sacred Mother, the spirit of fecundity and prosperity. 
The two sisters kissed the holy image and then, with due respect, took 
turns to press it against the crotch in order to bless it with the scent of 
womanhood. They then placed it in the little space left between the 
other tributes already placed at the shrine. And these were strange and 
diverse.
      
      There was a necklace made from mussel shells. There was a 
clay figurine of what resembled a beaver. There was a wooden carving 
of a deer's head and antlers. There were many precious stones-
including flint, tin, pebbles, ammonites and fossil wood-together 
with feathers, bear's claws, viper's fangs and shrivelled toadstools. 
There were so many different ways that the various people under the 
one Sun honoured the mother and father of all creation.
      
      The sisters enjoyed their best night's sleep since they'd left 
home, stretched out on the bare dry ground in the flickering glow of 
the fire they'd helped prepare, limbs entwined with their fellows and 
hardly much space between them for even Fern to fuck. And on the 
following morning Heather and her sister were granted permission to 
explore the environs of the Great Temple of the Sun towards which 
they'd travelled so far. It exceeded anything that Heather had ever 
imagined. Not only were there so many people, far more than Heather 
could count however many notches she made in the sand, but scattered 
all around the complex were many splendid sacred tombs and temples 
whose purpose remained mysterious to the sisters. But it was towards 
the Great Temple at the heart of a concentric ring of pilgrims' 
settlements that the girls' gaze was drawn. This was a massive edifice 
of towering wooden poles and massive stone obelisks within ring after 
ring of ever increasing magnificence, culminating in a final inner circle 
built so high that only the tallest trees could exceed its height. This 
splendour was further enhanced by the fact that there were no trees 
growing freely in any direction for many paces, although a generous 
supply of timber had been piled high on the outskirts of the settlement 
so that pilgrims could build their fires. And so neatly were they sliced 
that they must have been felled by axes with the sharpest flint edges 
that had ever been knapped. 
      
      The pilgrims were so various in appearance that Heather was 
initially startled and even shocked by what she saw. Only those from 
the West were attired in the same style as herself, that is, in deer-hide 
smocks that covered the torso from below the arms to the top of the 
thigh but barely hid the groin. The bare legs, arms and shoulders of the 
Westerners with which Heather was familiar wasn't at all typical of the 
attire of other pilgrims. Some were completely naked (but surely only 
for the summer months), but nudity could never shock Heather as most 
people in her village wore clothes only when the Sun shone least 
warmly or, as at the moment, when venturing beyond the tribal 
territory. There were some who were bare chested, but wore skirts 
almost to the ankles. There were some who wore strange attire that 
enclosed all the leg and groin. There were some who sported 
headdresses or had feathers, twigs and even pebbles knotted into their 
hair. But the priests of the Sun, whose role it was to preside over the 
ceremony to celebrate the annual zenith of the Sun were the ones most 
outlandishly attired.
      
      The priesthood of the Sun were held in high esteem throughout 
all the land. Only they could reside all year round in the vicinity of the 
Great Temple, which they equipped and tended. And it was they who 
ensured that the sacred rites of the Solar and Lunar Calendars were 
correctly observed. The priesthood was represented by both men and 
women, although custom dictated that women held the most senior 
positions, thereby reflecting the significance of motherhood and 
fertility in the Sun's domain. The priests were elected from the 
company of shamans who lived in villages throughout all the land. A 
new priest was appointed only when an existing one had died and, 
according to custom, only on rare occasion from the priest's child or 
kin. Both male and female priests wore resplendent headdresses, most 
often made from the skulls of aurochs, boar, bear or deer, adorned with 
as wild an array of feathers or antlers as could be found. The rest of 
their dress varied from priest to priest but was generally colourful and 
wild, and mostly assembled from the fur of wolf, lynx, bear and 
beaver. The genitals and bosom were generally uncovered (at least in 
the summer) to make apparent whether the priest was a woman or a 
man, as the priest's sex was significant in the lovemaking that usually 
followed the climax of the festivities.
      
      As the days passed, Heather observed more and more pilgrims 
arrive. Generally, those from the North were the ones dressed most in 
defence against inclement weather, while the Southerners were the 
ones most often naked. As she'd learnt as a young girl, the further 
south you went, the nearer you approached the Sun. And it was known 
that beyond the Southern Sea there was another land where although 
the Sun shone more fiercely it was accorded less veneration and 
where, consequently, there was much strife and warfare. And this, 
more than anything else, was what the shared ceremony of the Festival 
of the Sun guarded against and which gave the lands north of the 
Southern Sea such stability and prosperity. 
      
      It wasn't long until all the available shelters had been taken 
even while yet still more pilgrims were arriving, tired and exhausted 
after their long trek across hills, moors, valleys and even rivers to 
reach the Great Temple. Heather observed these sometimes 
outlandishly attired pilgrims warily, conflicted between her natural 
suspicion of strangers and her knowledge that the right and proper way 
to celebrate the Sun's undiscriminating bounty was to be equally 
generous to all born under the one Sun. But when people dressed so 
peculiarly and spoke in ways that was barely intelligible, generosity 
came less naturally to her.
      
      "Do you mind if we share your shelter?" asked one of these 
newer arrivals in a barely comprehensible confusion of long vowels 
and nasal consonants. "We have travelled many days, have forded 
great rivers, ascended high mountains and sheltered in dark forests as 
rainstorms have beat upon our heads."
      
      "Gladly," said Lynx, who due to his advanced years, long 
beard and evident baldness had become the spokesperson for Heather's 
company. "We extend to you our generosity as the Sun has extended 
his to us, without favour and without hesitation."
      
      "Thank you kindly," said the strange man, who Heather was 
soon to learn was called Wolverine. "We return your favour and 
kindness with the bounty of a freshly slain aurochs for our mutual 
feasting."
      
      Aurochs was the most prized of all meat, more so than deer, 
fowl or boar, so Heather and the rest of the Westerners were more than 
delighted to welcome Wolverine's company. And a hardy band they 
were too. They'd come from the far North close by a sea that stretched 
both North and West, where lived pine martens, reindeer, wolverines 
and other exotic beasts, and where the winters were so harsh that there 
were more days of snow than days without. But, as Lynx reminded 
Heather and Fern and the others, the Festival of the Sun was an 
occasion when no difference was made between those blessed by the 
warmer Sun in the South and West and those less fortunate from the 
North. 
      
      Not only were the Northerners strange of tongue, there were 
other peculiar differences between them and the Westerners. Despite 
the warmth of summer, they were attired almost as Heather and Fern 
might be in winter, although the fur was of a lighter weight, which hid 
from sight almost all their arms and legs. The men's beards were thick 
and dark brown and the hair was plaited. The women's faces were 
obscured not only by long bushy hair but by feathers and fur knotted 
into the locks. Their feet and ankles were shod by leather and tough 
hide. And when they huddled together around the fire, tearing out hot 
flesh and offal from the aurochs roasting on the flames, the 
Northerners were reserved: intent more on consumption and less on 
conversation.
      
      As the evening wore on and the freshly nourished Westerners 
relaxed in intimate sport with one another-Fern as always at the 
centre of the action, but Gorse and Nettle also enjoying attention-
Heather resigned herself as ever to be the one the men resorted to from 
need only rather than desire. As a result, she had more opportunity 
than the others to study the Northerners. And no greater contrast could 
there be. While Heather's company were naked and carnally engaged, 
the Northerners sat together fully clothed, hardly exchanging a word, 
warming themselves by the fire and bashfully averting their eyes from 
the lovemaking opposite.
      
      And in amongst a company of generally much older men and 
women gathered round the fire, was but one boy of about Heather's 
age who sat slightly to one side and entertained himself by poking the 
flames with a stick.
      
      What the heck, thought Heather. We are all one under the Sun. 
So, although she was mindful of the difficulties of communication and 
of the greater likelihood of finding sexual satisfaction in her own 
company, she sidled over towards the young man and addressed him 
boldly.
      
      "Hello," she said slowly and precisely. "My name is Heather. 
What is your name?"
      
      The boy seemed startled, shocked even, at being addressed. 
"Name?" he exclaimed. 
      
      "Mine is Heather," she repeated. "What are you known as?"
      
      "My name is Marten," said the boy just as slowly and carefully. 
"And you are...?"
      
      "Heather."
      
      "Like the plants that grow?"
      
      "Yes. And my sister is called Fern."
      
      "Your sister. The pretty girl?"
      
      "Yes," sighed Heather resignedly. "My sister Fern. The pretty 
girl."
      
      Nevertheless, despite this halting start and the fact that both 
Heather and Marten often had to repeat themselves to be understood, 
their conversation became relatively animated. It was fascinating to 
Heather to learn about the many differences between Marten's home in 
the far distant North and her own home to the West. It was a novel 
experience to describe her daily customs and local habitat to someone 
who knew them so little. Marten's home, however, was in a range of 
hills and fells with peaks much higher than those in the West where 
roamed reindeer, ptarmigan and wolf. And in amongst these hills were 
many lakes and babbling brooks. However, whereas Heather's life was 
settled in one place where villagers tended crops and cared for goats, 
fowl and a few tethered aurochs and boar, Marten's tribe led a roving 
life, as they followed herds of aurochs or goat up hills and across 
dales, with the constant company of their dogs and always with a spear 
in hand to fell any deer or boar they should encounter. The Northerners 
were experts in building temporary shelters from stones and slabs of 
shale which they might find on their wandering and which might still 
stand unperturbed when their travels next took them to the same valley 
or hilltop.
      
      "Is it very cold in winter?" asked Heather sympathetically.
      
      Marten seemed puzzled by the question. "Yes, of course," he 
said. "But we stay out of the snow and the biting cold. The winter is 
when we rest in a cave where it is never very cold and we live off the 
grains, nuts and salted meat we've hoarded for the months when it is 
hardest to forage and hunt."
      
      Heather was sure that Marten was a fine young man, although 
all she could see of him was his face, which was only lightly bearded, 
and his hands which continued to nervously play with the stick he used 
to poke the fire. But out of politeness, if nothing else (after all she 
hardly knew him), she placed her hand on Marten's groin and 
squeezed what she fancied was his penis under the aurochs-hide gown. 
She certainly didn't expect his sudden and panicked response.
      
      He immediately leapt up, looking guiltily around him at his 
family, who were mostly now dozing together, still fully dressed, and 
brushed down his crotch as if a wasp had stung him.
      
      "What are you doing!" he exclaimed rather than enquired.
      
      "I was just being friendly," said Heather who was as alarmed at 
Marten's response as he'd been at her polite gesture.
      
      "It's not our way in the North," said Marten who warily 
positioned himself out of reach of Heather's probing hand.
      
      Although Heather and he continued to talk for a while longer, 
the air of growing intimacy between them had dissipated and so it was 
with relief that Heather returned to the company of her sister and 
companions who had now amassed inside the stone shelter. As Heather 
gratefully received the few last dry humps from Fox who'd exhausted 
all his semen on Fern, Gorse and Nettle, she ruefully contrasted the 
offhand attitude that Western men had towards sex with the more 
earnest one held by the Northerners.
      
      The following day, Fern and Heather were again out together to 
admire the Great Temple whose magnificence they both agreed could 
never be surpassed. How could a building ever be larger or more 
splendid? The legends of how the great stones that were the Great 
Temple's foundations were transported from the mountainous lands 
across the Great Western Channel had been recounted many times and 
never ceased to amaze the two sisters. Such dedication. Such effort. 
And such an honour to have been one of those who'd volunteered for 
such a holy duty.
      
      But Fern and Heather weren't the only ones admiring the Great 
Temple from a vantage point. 
      
      "Hey!" exclaimed Fern excitedly pointing towards a nearby 
hillock. "Look over there. Isn't that the Northern boy you were 
chatting to last night? And I notice that he's been staring at us rather 
more than he's been admiring the Great Temple... And look, now he's 
pretending not to have noticed us. I do believe he's taken a liking to 
my bare legs. Perhaps he doesn't see many bare legs where he comes 
from..."
      
      "Or much else," remarked Heather grumpily.
      
      "I'm sure he really likes you, sis," said Fern. "Look at how he 
keeps looking at you..."
      
      "You know it's not me he's looking at," said Heather.
      
      "Oh rubbish!" said Fern. She waved towards Marten and 
shouted "Coo-ee! Hello! We're over here."
      
      Marten couldn't really pretend not to have heard, but after 
almost perfunctorily waving back to acknowledge Fern from where he 
was, he then abruptly stood up from where he'd been crouching and 
strode off.
      
      "Not very friendly, is he?" remarked Fern. "And I quite fancied 
a Northern cock inside me. Do you think Northerners fuck differently 
to us Westerners?"
      
      "I don't think they fuck at all," said Heather peevishly.
      
      She was quite annoyed at Marten, even though she was used to 
being treated as the girl who a boy fucked only if he had to. There was 
surely a difference between a respectful reluctance to fuck and outright 
rejection. But the Northerners were an odd sort. They didn't seem to 
talk much. And the men and women seemed strangely distant from one 
another. In fact, during the night's slumbers, Heather noticed that all 
the women slept huddled together and the men slept apart. And it 
wasn't that they were expressing a preference for intimacy with 
partners of the same sex, because there was no intimacy on display at 
all.
      
      In the evening when the Northerners and Westerners shared a 
more meagre diet of squirrel, songbird and snake, Heather again had 
the opportunity to chat to Marten. As before he was amiable but 
strangely reserved, although there was so much of fascination and 
wonder in their conversation. Heather might not be eager to live in a 
cooler clime, but she wondered what it would be like to live in a 
rugged terrain where there was so much winter snow. And Marten was 
fascinated by Heather's account of a coast that was never more than 
half a day's walk from her village where you could see puffins, Great 
Auks and seals. He was especially captivated by Heather's tale of 
having seen a whale in the distance from a high cliff top.
      
      "I thought such leviathans were fantasies," he said. "Just 
fantasies that mothers tell children to get them to sleep..."
      
      "They're real," said Heather. "I know, because I've seen one. 
And not just the once."
      
      "So there must also be dragons, goblins and demons," 
remarked Marten. 
      
      There was a pause in the conversation while Marten mused on 
the mysteries of creation, while Heather wondered at his scepticism 
about such well attested phenomena. 
      
      And then she remarked: "Why didn't you talk to us today?"
      
      "Sorry..."
      
      "We called to you and you waved back to us and then you 
walked off. Why was that?"
      
      "Because you were with your sister," Marten said.
      
      Now it was Heather's turn to be puzzled. "Is it because you 
want to fuck my sister that you didn't talk to us?" she asked.
      
      Marten visibly blushed, which endeared him to Heather more 
than anything he'd ever said or done before. "No, it wasn't that. It 
wasn't that at all."
      
      "But you do want to fuck Fern, don't you? Everyone wants to 
fuck her. You must want to stick your cock inside her..."
      
      "No. No," said Marten. "It's nothing like that."
      
      "You admit that my sister is very pretty, don't you?"
      
      "Well, of course I do."
      
      "So what's the problem?"
      
      "It's not that your sister isn't pretty, and of course she is..."
      
      "Well, then..."
      
      "It's that it's you that I prefer."
      
      Heather wasn't sure she heard right. "Me?"
      
      "Of course. Fern is pretty but it's you who I would much prefer 
to give my heart to."
      
      "I don't understand," said Heather. "Wouldn't you much prefer 
to fuck a pretty girl than someone like me?"
      
      "In the North, we don't make love to every woman we meet," 
explained Marten. "We choose our partners carefully and there are 
many factors we take into account. If you want to live with one woman 
for the whole of your life there are other things to consider than just 
how pretty they are..."
      
      "Like what?"
      
      "I don't know. How well you get on with them. How much you 
enjoy their company. It isn't just about sex."
      
      "Isn't it?"
      
      "Not in the North it isn't."
      
      And so Heather came to understand that there were other 
unsuspected differences between Northerners and Westerners. And 
chief amongst these was that in the North a man and a woman made a 
sacred vow to one another and didn't share partners with everyone and 
anyone, that there was a close bond between a man and a woman 
which ensured that the children knew who their father was as much as 
they did their mother and that only on the death of one partner did a 
man or a woman seek another.
      
      Bizarre it might sound, but Heather could see the value in such 
a peculiar state of affairs and it confirmed to her what she already 
knew that under one Sun there were many differences of people and 
culture. And she also knew instantly that much as she loved her sister 
and enjoyed the sexual freedoms of the West, she could also happily 
exchange them for a lifetime's commitment to one man.
      
      "Would you like me to return with you to the North?" Heather 
asked Marten.
      
      Again he looked startled. "That's not normally the sort of thing 
that a woman asks a man in the North."
      
      "But is it what you want? Do you want me to live with you in a 
partnership of just the two of us?"
      
      "Only if you want to."
      
      "Yes, of course," said Heather. "Yes. I do."