Cultural shock was nothing much compared to the biological shock I suffered as a human male among human beings who were, five-sixths of the time, hermaphroditic neuters.
It was very late when they realized it was late.
All men were alien to one another, at times.
But in time nothing can be without becoming.
Good night, Ai” said the alien, and the other alien said, “Good night, Harth.
Nobody can explain a dragon.
Touch was a main channel of communication among the forest people. Among Terrans touch is always likely to imply threat, aggression, and so for them there is often nothing between the formal handshake and the sexual caress. All that blank was filled by the Athsheans with varied customs of touch.
Fear, in a person of my temperament, is endemic and inevitable, and I can’t do much about it except recognize it for what it is and try not to let it rule me entirely. If I’m in an angry mood and aware of it, I can ask myself, So what is it your afraid of? That gives me a place to look at my anger from. Sometimes it helps me get into clearer air.
Terran man was clay, red dust. Athshean man was branch and root. They did not carve figures of themselves in stone, only in wood.
They were not listening – only waiting for him to be done talking.
But why hate? Hate is not functional. Why are we taught it?
The grave is without egg.
There again was the delight, the courage, that is most admirable in the Karhidish spirit – and in the human spirit – and though I could not share it with him, to deny it would be a detestable act. I said, without sincerity, but with absolute truth, “It is a marvelous thing indeed for them as well, the coming to a new world, a new mankind.
In this barbaric society, when women speak truly they speak subversively.
Sun shrunk to moon. Cold comes soon.
He stands higher than we stand, seeing wider, but he is himself only the height of a man.
It happens sometimes between two people: there are no barriers, no defenses.
You learn to say goodbye to places, to keep them in your heart and go on. Over the hills and a great way off.
I run no more; the winds dance me.
Despite what some adults seem to think, teenagers are fully human. And some of them read as intensely and keenly as if their life depended on it. Sometimes maybe it does.
There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared.