But Ma-ah had already gone back into her body. She didn’t have the greatest disposition in the world, Seven thought, looking about. The cold wind swept scraps of dry weed past his face, and the cliffs were white with frost. Seven sighed: she didn’t have the greatest environment in the world, either. The cliffs rose straight up in the air, making dry curious noises as if the rocks were coughing.

Seven was impervious to the weather, but he found the view fascinating and he entertained himself by dematerializing from the valley, appearing on a cliff peak, and looking down at where he’d just been. Then, guiltily, he remembered his instructions: “Identify as best you can with Ma-ah,” Cyprus had said. Clearly, he thought, she had something else in mind. Uneasily he went into Ma-ah’s cave.

She lay asleep on a few hides, bundled in another that was used as cloak and cover. Her brown straight hair was matted, all emphasis gone from her dark face, making her look vulnerable and more like twelve than the twenty Earth years she had to her credit. Seven sighed again: Cyprus was right, he had maintained too great a distance. Unaccountably he felt suddenly drawn to Ma-ah as he never had before. At the same time, a curious lassitude possessed him.

He saw Ma-ah’s mate, Rampa, sleeping beside her, but then without warning he felt Rampa’s breath coming in warm waves at his own face, astoundingly close. His viewpoint changed too. Rampa was now beside him; beside … Ma-ah. He was feeling Rampa’s breath from Ma-ah’s body…. Because he was in Ma-ah’s body!

How odd settling down into a real body was! Ma-ah wasn’t aware of him, of course. Since he was Ma-ah and Ma-ah was himself, there was no conflict. Yet so far she only knew herself as Ma-ah, and him as the old man when she was out of her body. Seven was confused. He tried to get his thoughts in order. In one way, then, he thought, he was getting to know himself better by getting to know her.

Still, Seven’s consciousness wriggled uneasily. To be confined to one body for all practical purposes—it wouldn’t be like changing forms whenever you wanted to, as he did. To have the responsibility for keeping the same body going all the while! The details involved really threw him for a loop when he thought of it. Of course, his energy helped maintain her body to begin with—his was the spark, so to speak, from which her body grew, from which her spirit had come, but….