“We’re siblings. Born together in the same walk.” I, with my Semadran raising, struggled to see through this simplified structure to the bloodlines below it. Further probing revealed none of them paid much attention to parentage. Few knew who had fathered them, and many refused to point out their mothers. It was impolite, Halaavi explained later. It broke the bonds. I once raised a concern about incest, but Halaavi didn’t understand. As I said, they were all siblings. No differentiations were made. In a Semadran sense, incest was likely somewhat rare due to generational differences and the fluidity of people’s movements between clans. In a Droma sense, incest was common, expected, and encouraged.

That first night, when I was told I was in the unpaired’s yurt, I took it to mean those in it were unmarried, and I took that to mean they were abstinent. I was wrong. I woke to the thrashing sounds of sex. Two of the unpaired Vralas had drifted together in the night, and they were at it in earnest. It woke another, who joined them. Halaavi woke next to me and crawled over to the pulsing knot of limbs. As the group of them grew—voices crashing like waves, heat pouring off them, the sounds and sights and smells of it unavoidable—more of the sleeping unpaired Vralas woke and joined them until only I was left. I didn’t know what to do. Should I leave? Yes. Yes, I should leave. But I stayed frozen in place, watching, listening, captivated, curious, and embarrassed. Wanting it and frightened of it at the same time. It was animalistic, frenzied, and athletic. It was languageless and purely physical. Kishva, who I later learned was an empath groomed by Old Arvada to take the empathic pulse of the clan when decisions loomed large, extricated vimself from the rest and came to me. Ve was flushed with half-sated desire, wild-eyed and incomparably alive. Ve was fine-boned and delicate, something I’d noticed in the calm in the early evening around the fire. Ve took me by the hand and tugged, but I stayed rooted in place. “You want to,” Kishva said. “I feel you want to.”

“What is this?”

“Sex.”

“No, I mean…are you all…” I couldn’t find Droma words for it.

“We’re all having sex,” ve said. “Shinnani sparked it. Come join the fire before it burns itself out.”

“I…no. No, I’m all right,” I said, and I slipped out of the yurt into the cold night before Kishva could ask me anything else.