---Tradition---

---Tuun’s perspective---

“…and, finally, some heartwarming news from Western Nýr Norðlands: A local group of reenactors were interrupted during a performance, yesterday, by a mother troll, coming to them for aid in freeing her trapped baby! The reenactors managed to liberate the infant, with help from an unlikely individual… we go now to footage from the event.” smiles the newscaster.

The man Victor and I are sharing this capsule with was alone, when we got in, and didn’t offer to turn off the newsfeed he was playing on the wall.

I’m glad neither of us asked him to now I’m seeing Victor heaving on the long end of a strap, bringing that baby up from its confinement.

I wish I had been there but… my mum specifically said strong volunteers… there was limited space… I would have been in the way…

The man cocks his head before turning around, to Victor.

“Is that you, man?” he asks, in New Norse, gesturing to Victor, still dressed as Prince Alfred of Wessex, hauling on the end of his line. Samus, Mage, Thran and Steve are all visible in the shot, as well, but Victor dominates the foreground.

“Yeah, that’s me.” answers Victor, in English, having inferred the question from his tone and body language.

“Good job, bro!” says the man, appreciatively, switching to English.

“Thanks.” he smiles, clearly still tired from yesterday.

We see Tcakqaal emerge from the ravine, after the troll, with a little description of her being a R’qali ship Captain, who’s visiting the planet.

Finn (still dressed as King Æthelred of Wessex) is shown, treating the baby, the mother looming over him and watching closely, with an explanation of him being a xenobiology professor at Fjalltindr U. The baby troll is shown being carried off by the grateful mother, fully treated. The segment ends with the one behind the camera approaching Finn, tapping him on the shoulder and, when he turns around, presenting him with the gold crown he wore at the reenactment, saying “You dropped this, King!” causing his eyes to crease and his teeth to bare in laughter.

“Brave little gardenworlder! You’d not catch me crawling into the space under a trapped troll!” comments the man.

“You’ve no idea(!)” smiles Victor, through closed eyes.

The capsule touches down in a small town, the man gets up, turns to the two of us, seeing that we’ve made no move to leave, at which point he clearly puts together where we’re going and, so, waves us goodbye with a “Good luck up there!”, gesturing in the direction of our destination, before disembarking.

“Thanks!” say Victor and I, in unison.

The hatch seals and the craft rises to angle itself toward the mountains.

Flying over jagged peaks, capped with snow year round, we reach a valley basin that is extremely difficult to access by foot, even in Summer.

Through the twilight dome field (which is the largest field, of any kind, on Fennoscandia) I see a snow covered valley with a large tarn in the centre, the water of which is dark and far too deep to freeze from a single snow.

The buildings in this valley are all in the architectural styles of a planet I barely remember.

We land and I shake Victor’s shoulder.

He starts from the doze he’d slipped into.

“Welcome to DonKhoru.” I smile.

We step from the craft.

“That’s the largest field I’ve ever seen! That’s gotta have a diameter of over a kilometre!” he says, craning his neck back to look up at the monolithic field.

“Yes… It screens out over half of the sunlight that would otherwise pass through it, stores it and reemits it, at night, creating a tolerable approximation of the illumination of DonOlu’s habitable zone.”

“That seems…” he spends a few moments clearly searching for a diplomatic term, before settling on “…extravagant…”

“My brother would agree with you… and, I’m told, so did my father. It was one of the demands his advisors insisted he make for the community… Of course, he was negotiating from the much stronger position of being the heir apparent to Clan Oria, on DonOlu, and being here as an ambassador, with the approval of my grandfather, the Ruler of Clan Oria… I don’t know if the UTC would have gone to the expense of procuring such a massive field if we’d already been refugees by the time we asked for it(!)”

“Uhm… Tuun…”

“Yes, Victor?”

“I don’t know if you ever told me… How many people were in your clan, on DonOlu?” he asks, warily.

I grit my teeth, bracing myself for his reaction “Well… last time we had contact… I believe Clan Oria had about… 16 million Don, living under its protection.”

He begins a gasp but, clearly not having been prepared for that answer, chokes, coughs and splutters.

When he’s recovered, he asks “Six…teen… mill…ion!?”

“Yep.” I confirm, awkwardly.

“That’s like a legit country! When you told me you were a Clanchief’s granddaughter… I was sorta imaginin’ a guy who chairs meetin’s of an extended family in a village hall, then sends out a newsletter to those that couldn’t make the meetin’s! Your grandpa was like… a King!”

I shrug, noncommittally.

“Can’t believe I’ve been datin’ space royalty for the best part of a year and only just realised!”

I frown “I’m not exactly royalty given that, even if we could go back, I wouldn’t be in line to inherit anything!”

He stops, turns and smiles up at me “You’ll always be a princess to me, baby!”

I give a chuckling sigh before letting him pull me into a kiss.

It lasts a few moments before he grunts and breaks away, looking nervously toward the dome.

“Should we be kissin’ here?”

Confused, I ask “Why not?”

“Well…” he says, awkwardly “…it’s just… never been to a patriarchy before… Never been to a patriarchy with a woman I’m datin’, at least… Ain’t sure what the rules are…”

I giggle “As long as you don’t dip me and stick your tongue down my throat while making direct eye contact with anyone, we won’t have a problem(!)… I mean… you’re right! Public displays of affection are less common and more frowned upon, here, but a chaste, little kiss on the lips, hundreds of metres away from the nearest person, won’t count I don’t think(!)”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Alright… Got it…” he says with a demeanour that suggests he might be about to pull out his holopad and start making notes “…and what should I do when we walk past those women over there? Will it look lecherous if I smile and wave? Will it look, like… disrespectful if I don’t?”

“Honestly, Victor! Don aren’t ali…” I stop myself but it’s to late.

His eyebrow raises and he wryly asks “Aliens? Is that what you were about to say?”

“Nooooo… Shut up…” I say, giggling with embarrassment.

He smirks but simply asks “Where did we land on smilin’ and wavin’ at women?”

Hiding my blushing cheeks with two of my hands, I answer “Acceptable and encouraged… so long as you don’t leer.”

He laughs “Wasn’t intendin’ to but I’ll bear it in mind!… Shall we go?”

“Let’s!” I smile.

We walk through the dome and instantly seem temporally transported to the gloam of twilight.

I remember learning in school how Terran society used to be every bit as patriarchal as Don society. Probably for the same reason, too.

Nothing to do with the average disparity in strength between men and women in both Don and Humans.

If that were why, then the result wouldn’t be ‘women are subordinate to men’, it would be ‘the weak are subordinate to the strong’.

Nor is it anything to do with any difference in intelligence (which no data collected in good faith supports the existence of!)

Again, if that were why, then the result would be ‘the stupid are subordinate to the clever’.

Instead, patriarchy arose as a practically universal cultural constant, on both Earth and DonOlu, because both Humans and Don have long, debilitating, gestational and nursing periods and didn’t discover any reliable means of preventing themselves from becoming pregnant until thousands of years after their societies first specialised their labour.

If you’re your planet’s first ever blacksmith choosing the first blacksmith’s apprentice, from a girl and a boy (who are otherwise the perfect equals of eachother, in all ways), you’ll choose the boy, simply because he can work through his partner’s pregnancies.

The girl can’t work through her own, meaning that she’ll have to spend half her working life engaged in procreation.

Women got excluded from all the highest skilled jobs in early labour specialisation out of practical necessity.

A simple, brutal, utilitarian efficiency.

The thing is, that tends to happen long enough before societies invent writing that, by the time the first written records show up, patriarchy already seems as old and as natural as the hills, to people.

The pragmatism has been lost and all that remains is tradition.

‘We’re doing it this way because it’s how our fathers and our fathers’ fathers did it! We would insult their memory if we changed things now!’

Of course, the difference between Humans and Don is, after the first reliable contraceptives appeared, it took less than a century for women to have the vote nearly everywhere on Earth and less than three centuries for the last vestiges of patriarchy to die out, completely.

When faced with the choice of keeping the traditional ways alive and giving rights to those who hadn’t had them before, Humans chose the latter.

Perhaps not unanimously, perhaps not immediately, but consistently enough to matter!

No Don I’ve ever asked about it has any clue if anyone ever invented contraceptives on DonOlu.

Most seemed to find the notion offensive!

Don have had the capacity to synthesise rubber like substances for millennia at this point and I cannot imagine that no one ever had the idea of using them as a contraceptive!

That probably means that all the Don proponents of birth control and women’s suffrage were stamped out so hard that their names are lost to history.

“How come that lady’s skin’s crimson?” asks Victor, quietly, shaking me from my rumination.

“Which one? Still don’t have colour vision(!)”

He tuts at his own forgetfulness before saying “Second from the left, as we’re lookin’ at ’em.”

I look at the woman who, to my eye, has a skin tone indistinguishable from mine.

Her facial features, on the other hand, are far sharper than the Don of Clan Oria.

“She’s from Clan Olta, a clan on the other side of DonOlu. Her family defected and came here after we had already been banished. If her skins a different colour it’s just ethnic divergence. If you see any Don with lighter skin they’re from clans more on the sunward side of the habitable zone.” I explain.

“Makes sense… Interestin’ though! On Earth, brighter regions tend to lead to darker skin.” he observes.

“Yeah, sunburn and skin cancer aren’t really concerns in permanent twilight but being too dark for your region’s illumination silhouettes you and makes you easier for prey to spot.”

“That’s really interesting!” he says, no longer whispering.

We draw close to the gaggle of Don women and Victor raises a hand, smiling “Mornin’!”

They all giggle as we pass.

“What did I do wrong!? I thought you said smilin’ and wavin’ was encouraged!”

Mirthfully, I answer “Perhaps they were so overwhelmed by your animal magnetism that they simply couldn’t contain themselves…(!) So jealous of me that they immediately began plotting how to break us up so they could take you for themselves…(!)… Or… perhaps it was that you wished them a good ‘morning’ which, though very polite in your culture, doesn’t translate very well, for obvious reasons!”

He inhales for a moment before saying “No more ‘mornin’’s! Got it!”

We keep walking, down the heated path, along the side of the lake.

Victor admires the luminescent flora, visible through the snow.

We discuss the possibility of them becoming invasive species.

I assure him that, even if a species were capable of surviving outside of the dome (which none of them are, as they get so confused by day-night cycles that they simply give up and die) they would still be trapped in this basin, surrounded by snow capped peaks on all sides. Not to mention the fact that they would be competing with deathworld flora!

He asks whether seeds couldn’t flow out on the water, pointing to the tarn.

I explain that that lake is simply where the ground goes lower than the water table. There’s no outflow.

Then we stop… because I see a very unexpected set of people sitting opposite eachother, outside of a café!

We approach them and I hear my sister explaining “No, no, no, you’re using the second tone there! You want the twelfth! You just told me your mother [slaps sea creatures] for a living! The twelfth tone turns that into [writes books]!” she explains in DonAvu, switching to English to give the translations.

“Hello, Baasa… Hello… err… Yasmin?… You two have met, I see?” I say, uncertainly.

Baasa whips her head around, grinning broadly.

“Tunie! You’re here!” she says, seamlessly switching to unaccented New Norse and standing to hug me before turning to Victor and, in English, saying “And Victor… It’s good to see you again! I very much enjoyed your performance at the feast, the other night!”

“Good to see you too, Baasa. I enjoyed chattin’ with you! What’s the story here?” he asks, gesturing between my sister and our crewmate.

Baasa laughs “So, a couple of days after the feast, I’m having a lie in, when one of my attendants bursts in to tell me that there’s a tourist in the valley, making people uncomfortable… Happens from time to time, someone hears about the valley of tall, dark and sexy blue elves, with four arms, and decides to come here thirstier than if they’d walked across the sunward side(!) Anyway, she asks if I wouldn’t mind dealing with it. I get up and go out, expecting to find some horny mouthbreather, who’ll spout crude innuendoes at a rate of 4 per minute, that I’m going to have to order hauled to the landing pad, thrown into a transport out of the valley and blacklisted from coming back! What I find, instead, is a woman I recognised from the feast, looking like she hadn’t slept a wink in the intervening time and chasing people around while trying to greet them, in broken DonAvu! I stopped her, asked her what, by the Father, she thought she was doing and she explained that she was a linguist and was trying to learn our language, she’d already got as far as she could with what she’d found online and needed conversational partners now! I’ve been teaching her, since, and honestly, she learns our language faster than I can speak it!”

I look at the visibly sleep deprived Human who shrugs “Much practice in learning of languages.” in marginally better DonAvu than I can speak!

Baasa turns to Yasmin and, switching back to DonAvu, says “Sorry, girl! Got to go with these two, much as I don’t want to leave your lovely warm [climate field]! Why don’t you see if the proprietor would like to chat with you until I get back?”

“I am sad of this… but shall to do as you suggest.” says the woman, in the gold shayla, stiffly but still unbelievably better than you would expect for someone who started learning a language a week ago!

My sister joins me and Victor and the three of us walk together, toward my brother’s palace.

“Will… err… will you be let in? Tuun told me that Ástríðr and her’d be the only women there.”

My confident, elder sister scoffs, with a cocky smile, and answers “Technically, no… Technically, the Clanchief’s wife and the woman ‘at issue’ are the only ones allowed to be present. However, the only one who’d have the power to make me leave is Vol… and he won’t!… I’ve heard it said that it’s ‘good to be the King’… Personally, I’ve always preferred being the King’s big sister(!) All of the power, none of the responsibility(!) VoVo wouldn't dare toss me out!”

Victor chuckles “Fair enough! You ain’t gonna hear any objection from me!”

My sister looks down at the love of my life and says “Good luck by the way, Victor.”

“Thanks, Baasa.”

“You’ll need it!” she grins, mischievously.