Moonstar by David Gerrold Page A

must be .
    The first chorus returns with:
    Resist the breeze and risk a storm .
    Flow with me, my child .
    The second chorus resists:
    I flow with different currents. I feel a different breeze .
    Release my sails and let me flow across the golden seas .
    Both choruses then harmonize:
    And so the flows of east and west will meet and swirl about, turning back and back again, a maelstrom of doubt .
    Nothing flows and nothing grows, and nothing comes about . *
    It was known in those days that children who were chosen tended to be more sensitive than those who were not of Choice; perhaps it was their differentness they felt, perhaps it was reflection of their training in both genders while possessing neither as a right, only as an option. Lono and Rurik must have been so sensitive—many tellers emphasize that they were the only two chosen of their age on their island, and if this is so, the sense of separation would have been intense in them. They could not have helped but been especially sensitive to each other. While such feelings among chosen are not uncommon, in those days when there was so little knowledge of the patterns of the life, even among the chosen themselves, it must have been considered “queer” by those who lived around them that Lono and Rurik seemed to be an island to themselves. As they grew closer to each other, they grew apart from others. And those others, including their parents, must have been concerned.
    But this separation was a prelude. For a youngling to determine her own life, she must step apart from larger events so that she might know which elements of her environment are part of her and which are not. The growing closeness of two chosen younglings is necessary so that their first stirrings of sensuality might have receptive ways to be expressed. The stirrings, these experiments, are the fumbling first movements toward the time of Choice itself; whether the moment last a season or a year, each step must be taken in its turn before the next can be achieved, before the threshold can be reached. For Lono and Rurik to learn of Choice, they had to learn about themselves—and as it was for the, it is for all of us. For them to learn about themselves, they had to be apart from others.
    It begins with curiosity, first about oneself, and then about each other; whatever the truth of these two lovers, it must have been just one more faceted reflection of the larger truth that applies to all of us who love. Perhaps they were casual in their first steps, not unromantic, but neither overwhelmed by the memories of previous passion; without knowledge, there is the wonder of discovery. There would be trust. And innocence. And sharing. Perhaps they played with sex and sense without yet knowing what they were. They could not become expressions of romance until much later, after the lovers began to understand the why of what they did. And yet, even in the earliest gestures, it is love—it always is; a purer kind, all love is based on trust and innocence as sex is based upon sensation. To share sensation, one must trust—to learn sensation, one must be innocent of its touch. Lono might have said, “Let me show you something that feels nice.” And Rurik might have said, giggling, “That tickles—let me show you,” and touched her back in the same way.
    Their discoveries were joyful—the myth is told no other way, for this is the myth of all of our discoveries and we want it to be sublime. There was giggling and laughter. Some of the ways of sex are tender, some are fun, and some are just absurd—perhaps the silly ones are best of all, for when two lovers laugh together, they grow closer in their joy. To the ones who come new and fresh to such a sport, all of its absurdity exalted, and therein lies the wonder and delight.
    These two children turned to younglings in that summer, exploring changes of first blush with little shame between them—and this too they must