"Marriage is a great institution. It cuts down on illicit sex!"
It occurs to me that if one's society does not have an institution of marriage or the equivalent, then one does not have a distinction between licit and illicit sex.
This seems entirely good to me.
ooh, first paragraphs:
The Perfection:
I count my life as starting from the last day I spent in Seppenden. The best guess I have ever been able to make is that the chill summer's day when the Inueris came was about twelve years after I was brought into this world, but it could have been eleven, or fourteen. The folk of Seppenden gave us little ground for judging our age. Else and I were pale and lanky children, a study in chalk and charcoal beside the palette of rich browns that made up all the other people we had ever known - brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, and most of the people of the village dressed in brown as well, that being easiest. Matti, the headman, had hair almost as dark as ours, and in some of the other wealthy families there showed occasional locks of gold or eyes of blue, recurring signs of Airborn blood; but in general they were mud people, or so Else and I told each other in our nook when everyone else was asleep. Mud people, we called them, and worse. The children of the village had equally rude names for us, you may be sure, and great advantage of numbers. I cannot remember a time before I had learned not to provoke them, not to wander from the dubious safety of whatever errand Mistress Lanser might send me out on. There is an Inueris proverb Verda told me, some years later, about sleeping with one eye open, and I have always thought it summed up that first part of my existence pretty well; save that the second part of the saying concerns keeping a weapon ready under your pillow, and had I then been seen even to handle a weapon it would have meant my death.
Nine Children of the Dragon
Arno was out more than an hour early the morning of the drakan duel, but the rows of benches overlooking the Pale Fields were already nearly half full. He emerged from beneath the stands into the purple of near-morn, squinted around to judge his chances of getting a good seat in the centre stand or failing that one of the three others that stood on the city side of the innocuous-seeming line of stakes, their fluttering ribbons black in the moonlight, which delimited the exact boundary of the Free City of Bellancia. Beyond that line duelling was legal; beyond that line this morning's contest would take place, and there lay the majority of the stands, where those happy citizens of Bellancia who had no cause to fear their past could have admittance for a couple of coppers, instead of the half-silver he had paid for a safe seat. He glared at the cheap seats for a moment, as a man might who regretted the practical consequences of lost innocence more than any philosophical qualities, before shuffling over to Haunted John's stall and buying a quarter of a chicken and a strip of fried fish for a couple more coppers. Haunted John leered at him, but Haunted John leered at everyone; it was not his fault, Arno knew, that his smile was slightly too wide, his mind turned slightly askew by the fringes of some battlefield sorcery, but it meant he had to charge slightly less than the other vendors to win the same custom. Arno took one big bite from his chicken breast there and then, exchanged a couple of words with the vendor, and made his way up into the small stand on the left, picking a seat from which he could look down into two of the three nearest ways back into the city proper, while still having a reasonable view of the duel itself. The impression he gave was of an aging soldier whose illusions had long since blown away, lucky that his body was still in one piece and determined to keep it that way, making enough of an effort to shamble and look harmless that many civilians might only see a sour old man, but whose alertness would be instantly clear to any other veteran. It was a very convincing impression, which, considering the amount of effort he put into it, it shadowed well should be.
Previous ones on that here (http://rysmiel.livejournal.com/404393.html).
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2007-12-05 07:34 pm (UTC)It occurs to me that if one's society does not have an institution of marriage or the equivalent, then one does not have a distinction between licit and illicit sex.
This seems entirely good to me.
ooh, first paragraphs:
The Perfection:
I count my life as starting from the last day I spent in Seppenden. The best guess I have ever been able to make is that the chill summer's day when the Inueris came was about twelve years after I was brought into this world, but it could have been eleven, or fourteen. The folk of Seppenden gave us little ground for judging our age. Else and I were pale and lanky children, a study in chalk and charcoal beside the palette of rich browns that made up all the other people we had ever known - brown hair, brown eyes, brown skin, and most of the people of the village dressed in brown as well, that being easiest. Matti, the headman, had hair almost as dark as ours, and in some of the other wealthy families there showed occasional locks of gold or eyes of blue, recurring signs of Airborn blood; but in general they were mud people, or so Else and I told each other in our nook when everyone else was asleep. Mud people, we called them, and worse. The children of the village had equally rude names for us, you may be sure, and great advantage of numbers. I cannot remember a time before I had learned not to provoke them, not to wander from the dubious safety of whatever errand Mistress Lanser might send me out on. There is an Inueris proverb Verda told me, some years later, about sleeping with one eye open, and I have always thought it summed up that first part of my existence pretty well; save that the second part of the saying concerns keeping a weapon ready under your pillow, and had I then been seen even to handle a weapon it would have meant my death.
Nine Children of the Dragon
Arno was out more than an hour early the morning of the drakan duel, but the rows of benches overlooking the Pale Fields were already nearly half full. He emerged from beneath the stands into the purple of near-morn, squinted around to judge his chances of getting a good seat in the centre stand or failing that one of the three others that stood on the city side of the innocuous-seeming line of stakes, their fluttering ribbons black in the moonlight, which delimited the exact boundary of the Free City of Bellancia. Beyond that line duelling was legal; beyond that line this morning's contest would take place, and there lay the majority of the stands, where those happy citizens of Bellancia who had no cause to fear their past could have admittance for a couple of coppers, instead of the half-silver he had paid for a safe seat. He glared at the cheap seats for a moment, as a man might who regretted the practical consequences of lost innocence more than any philosophical qualities, before shuffling over to Haunted John's stall and buying a quarter of a chicken and a strip of fried fish for a couple more coppers. Haunted John leered at him, but Haunted John leered at everyone; it was not his fault, Arno knew, that his smile was slightly too wide, his mind turned slightly askew by the fringes of some battlefield sorcery, but it meant he had to charge slightly less than the other vendors to win the same custom. Arno took one big bite from his chicken breast there and then, exchanged a couple of words with the vendor, and made his way up into the small stand on the left, picking a seat from which he could look down into two of the three nearest ways back into the city proper, while still having a reasonable view of the duel itself. The impression he gave was of an aging soldier whose illusions had long since blown away, lucky that his body was still in one piece and determined to keep it that way, making enough of an effort to shamble and look harmless that many civilians might only see a sour old man, but whose alertness would be instantly clear to any other veteran. It was a very convincing impression, which, considering the amount of effort he put into it, it shadowed well should be.
Previous ones on that here (http://rysmiel.livejournal.com/404393.html).