*
Kalus sat on a piece of broken stone with his head in his hands, unable
yet to look up and go on. Alaska stood before him, puzzled. Her young
mind had continued to develop, so that now she was aware of her
existence as clearly, if without the same complexity, as any human
adolescent. In the preceding weeks she had realized that such a choice
might come: a choice between the two people she loved. And for reasons
no more complicated than simple feeling, she had chosen Kalus, had
remained with him as he lay helpless on the floor, and not followed when
Sylviana called to her angrily.
It was his one compensation. He knew that if he left the colony the cub
would go with him, regardless of what lay ahead. It was that simple,
and that beautiful. And in that moment, alone and forlorn among the
ruins of yet another tortured depression, this singular act of giving
broke his heart. Because he saw in her pure, animal innocence the thing
that he had always wanted from a woman, but had not dared to ask:
Loyalty, which so many have forgotten, and for which there is no other
word. And not the pale imitation of it found in some marriages, which
demand that each cut off and subvert some part of themselves, to be
joined like hobbled twins at the place of amputation.
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