Ora had escaped Outer Light and the Lord’s House specifically to avoid becoming a parent. It was unfair to say that she had become a parent to Ato in the last year that Ato had been attached to her. It was fair to say that Ora felt a lot more responsibility for a child than she’d hoped to end up with.

Ato wasn’t the source of this particular confusion, but the closer Ora felt to Ato, the more her confusion crystallised. Ora and Emen got along well enough, they were probably friends, but whatever relationship they had was entirely premised on the fact that Ato was very fond of the both of them.

After the raid on Rhatal, Ora and Ryoko hadn’t seen each other for nearly three months, which was the longest the two of them had spent apart since they’d met over two years before. As much as Ora hadn’t minded Ryoko joining the army headed to assist Altok, she’d still missed her friend.

Ryoko had been in Lookout by the time Ora, Tengu, and everyone else got back from their scouting trip into the Lord’s House. There had been much hugging and breathless recounting of everything that had happened in the time they were apart. Ora had felt much better for Ryoko being there, and Ryoko had said she felt the same way.

For a few, quiet months, everything had seemed right and normal again. Ora, Ryoko, and Tengu were all in the same place again. They were going on hunting trips again, with Ato and Emen. The only difference was that they hadn’t been on an expedition out of the wastes since they’d gotten back from the diplomatic trip to Kzara and Altok.

The five of them had had a nice dinner for Ora’s twentieth birthday. Ryoko had showered Ora in compliments, as she always did, and Ora had returned the favour, as she always did. Ora felt a particular way about Ryoko complimenting her. But that just made sense, didn’t it?

Ora’s relationship with Ryoko was necessarily different from her relationships with anyone else. Tengu felt somewhere between a teacher, an older sister, and some kind of maternal figure, like maybe an aunt. Ora had never had an aunt, she didn’t know what it was like. Tengu certainly wasn’t like a mother.

People like Andros, Weir, Beetle, Owl, Heft and Pest were a little more distant. Ora thought of them all as friends, but they didn’t spend so much time together, and they were all older than Ora. Even Foren, Ora’s first close friend in Haven, who was only a couple of months younger than her and had accidentally uprooted Haven’s social order for her, felt more distant. Foren stayed in Haven.

Most recent, of course, were Ato and Emen. Ato felt somewhere between a little sister and a niece. Ora had never had a niece, but Ato didn’t feel like a daughter. Ora felt a lot more like she needed to be responsible for Ato than she did anyone else.

Emen felt like Ato’s older brother and maybe a bit like her father. He was a month older than Ora, and the exact nature of being the maternal figure to his paternal figure was the biggest source of Ora’s current confusion.

Ora had escaped Outer Light because of the threat of ending up with a husband. But if she really was some sort of maternal figure to Ato, didn’t that sort of make Emen her husband? It didn’t, and she knew that. But she didn’t know for sure what it made him.

If Ora had been back in Haven, she would have gone to talk to Andros and his partner Logan. They certainly weren’t the only people she knew in a committed, romantic relationship, but Ora worried that if she actually talked to any parents, she would end up having the wrong sort of conversation.

Luckily for Ora, the perfect person to talk to about all this was currently in Lookout. Though Ora worried that Beln had a much too casual perspective on relationships, based on how many different men she’d seen him bring to his room in Kzara, he was the best option she could think of.

Ora had not made the connection that both of the people she wanted to talk to about her relationship conundrum were homosexual, a term she had learned from Andros after asking him about it not very long after she’d escaped the Lord’s House. Andros had patiently explained that sodomite was not considered polite terminology.

The more she considered it, as she noncommittally struggled to get Beln on his own, the better fit Beln seemed to be to ask for advice. He had been so certain about his romantic needs that he’d risked getting enslaved for them, and had been enslaved for them.

Ora got distracted one afternoon wondering if the situation in the men’s slave barracks in Outer Light had been any different to the situation in the women’s barracks. It was pure coincidence that she missed her chance to talk to Beln.

The opportunity that presented itself, more than a month after Ora had decided she should talk to Beln, was what Ora had thought of as a commitment that would mean she would miss her chance again.

Ato’s fourteenth birthday was almost exactly two months after Ora’s twentieth. They were only off by two days. It was a bigger event than Ora’s birthday had been because Ora and Emen both thought that Ato needed to spend time with people her own age.

‘Oh, that dress is very pretty,’ Ato said, when Ora arrived.

Ryoko had nodded seriously. ‘You look stunning, Ora.’

Ora was wearing one of her two nice dresses. Most of her clothes were for work and travel, lighter and paler, with pads and loops sewn in to help support her armour. She had two dresses of slightly thicker material that she was steadily embroidering whatever took her fancy all over.

The dress she’d worn to Ato’s birthday had a pleated skirt with brown and red stripes, with a pale violet bodice and pale red sleeves. Ora had embroidered it mostly with flowering, climbing vines in the closest she could manage to black thread.

‘You look very nice too, Ryoko,’ Ora said. Ryoko was wearing very normal clothes.

Ato pouted at her.

‘And so do you, Ato,’ Ora said.

Ato, who had never worn a dress in her life before meeting Ora, was wearing a loose shirt and pants, very like her bother, with a skirt down to her knees over top. She did look quite pretty, Ora thought, in the way of a child having fun with clothes.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Ato pouted at Ryoko, next.

‘You look relaxed and floaty,’ Ryoko said.

‘But not stunning?’ Ato scrutinised.

‘Your brother would be upset at me if I said you were stunning,’ Ryoko smiled.

‘You’re too old for me anyway,’ Ato announced.

Ora was still a little surprised at the way Ato joked about romance and sometimes even sex. She supposed it made sense, given the attitudes in Wasolan.

From what Heft and Pest, and late Emen, had told her about Wasolan, it was a little like the Lord’s House, where men and women were thought of as fundamentally different. Pest and Heft had been surprised when Ora made the comparison, Emen had not.

Unlike in the Lord’s House, men in Wasolan were essentially free to do what they wanted in terms of romantic and sexual relationships. Everyone had always assumed that Heft and Pest’s relationship was sexual, though it wasn’t. The only type of relationship that was prohibited for men was with someone under the age of sixteen.

For women in Wasolan it was different, they were expected to be heterosexual, another term Ora had learned from Andros, who had just as patiently explained that it was a bit impolite to just called them ‘normal’ as if everyone else was deviant. And they were expected to be monogamous, a term Ora had learned from Beln during their diplomatic trip.

Everyone had agreed that that was, indeed, very similar to how it worked in the Lord’s House. Weir had pointed out that it was very common for women to have much stricter rules imposed on their sexuality so that men could ensure paternity and preserve their familial line.

So it made sense to Ora that Ato would rebel against the system she had been freed from, and make lots of jokes about romance and sex. Ora didn’t give much thought to why she hadn’t done that, when she escaped the Lord’s House.

If it hadn’t already been on Ora’s mind, she might have used the birthday party as an excuse to continue not talking to Beln. But she had a suspicion and, while there was undoubtedly other people she could talk to about it, she still thought Beln would be the best option.

‘Beln,’ Ora said, catching him in between conversations. ‘I was hoping we could talk a bit later, privately. I want to… pick your brain about something.’

‘Sure thing,’ Beln smiled. ‘I’m supposed to meet Hobbs and Mu after this, but my evening is currently free.’

Ora was a bit distracted through the rest of the party, but she did her best. Ato claimed to love her gift, a loose skirt that Ora had made for her and embroidered primarily with images of spears. Ato still had the spear she’d gotten from Ora back in Rhatal.

The birthday party ended when Ato told everyone to shoo in the late afternoon. A few people had already drifted off by then, busy with other things. Ora, Tengu, Ryoko, Ato and Emen had a pleasant dinner together and Ora wandered off to talk to Beln.

Beln had set himself up in one of the little houses closest to the wall. Most of them were still empty, since very few people were intending to stay in Lookout beyond the construction, and impending fight with the Lord’s House. It was still two months before the Lord’s House arrived early.

Ora knocked. Beln opened the door with a smile.

‘Ora, what can I do for you?’ he said, waving her in and gesturing at one of two plush armchairs. ‘Can I get you some tea?’

‘Oh, sure, thanks,’ Ora said, sitting down and fidgeting.

Beln filled a kettle and put it on the hob. ‘So, what did you want to pick my brain about?’

Ora’s heart was suddenly pounding in her chest. Did she really need to talk to Beln about this? She could work it out for herself, surely? It wouldn’t be too bad marrying Emen, would it? He seemed nice enough.

‘I just…’ Ora grabbed at the air vaguely. ‘I’m feeling conflicted… I suppose.’

Beln nodded seriously. The kettle started to rattle.

‘I know the feeling,’ he said, tone possibly more serious than Ora had heard him before. ‘When I was quite young, back in the House. I struggled with the same thing.’

Ora’s heart calmed down. ‘You did?’

Beln nodded. The kettle started to emit steam. Beln filled the teapot before he said anything else. ‘It’s nothing to worry about,’ he said. ‘Not here. I couldn’t say anything, when I felt it. I had to struggle with it on my own for years.’

Ora nodded along, that certainly made sense.

‘We’re not in the House anymore, Ora,’ Beln said, sitting across from her.

‘I’m still… confused.’

Beln nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s confusing. Trust me, I understand. But I really think the best thing is to just talk to her about it.’

Ora wanted to act confused, wanted to ask who the ‘her’ in this situation was. But she supposed Beln would know. He’d had to struggle with the confusion a lot longer than Ora had.

‘But… how? I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what I’m feeling, really.’

‘Ora, I’ve seen the way you look at her,’ Beln said, gently. ‘The adoration on your face. The way you blush whenever she compliments her. The way you hug when you haven’t seen her for even a few hours.’

Ora was blushing just thinking about it.

‘She might be older than you, but you’re both adults,’ Beln continued.

Ora took a deep breath and tried to relax. ‘You think… I just can’t get my thoughts together. I don’t know what to say.’

Beln poured some tea. ‘I’m not a woman,’ he smiled, gesturing down at himself. ‘But I saw what it was like in the House. If I’d been given a wife before I got caught, I would have been expected to… to want to procreate, I suppose. My wife would have been expected to accept that, not to… want anything for herself.’

Ora frowned, and sipped her tea. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘No one in the Lord’s House was supposed to really want to have sex,’ Beln said. ‘But women’s opinions on the matter didn’t enter into the question. You… woman in the Lord’s House were not supposed to want to have sex. Even if they were married, they were only supposed to want to have more pious babies. Not to have the sex that’s necessary to produce them.’

Ora frowned harder, and sipped her tea. ‘So I’m not supposed to want anything? Just do my duty?’ That certainly made sense. Why else would she even consider marrying Emen?

‘And now that you do want something, you have no idea how to act on it.’ Beln nodded. ‘You need to start simple. Just talk to her, tell her that you want something more… something different to what the two of you have now.’

‘But what if…’ Ora was struggling. ‘What if she doesn’t want the same thing?’

‘I think,’ Beln started slowly, sipping his tea. ‘I think that that’s fine. It’s better to have gotten it out of your system, gotten it out of your head. If you just dwell on it, and don’t act, it’ll fester. If she doesn’t want the same thing, you can move on.’

Ora frowned. ‘Move on to who?’

Beln smiled. ‘More on from her,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to find someone else. Maybe you will, and maybe she’ll want the same thing as you, maybe you won’t and that’s fine.’

Ora took another deep breath and a lengthy sip of her tea. That all made sense, she was pretty sure. ‘So what do I do?’

Beln chuckled. ‘You just go up to her and say: “Tengu, I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I want our relationship to be romantic”.’

Ora choked.