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Page 54
Rhiannon sighed and sat down. The cat was heavy, and she knew it was useless to try to bait her mother, who really did have a calm of spirit that surpassed Rhiannon's understanding.
"Very well, let us say I do desire Simonwhat am I to do?"
"How should I know?" Kicva asked. "It is your desire. Only you can know how to satisfy it. All I can tell you is to make sure what you desire before you grasp for it. Is it only your body de Vipont has wakened? You have been very long about growing into a woman, Rhiannon."
The cat was purring in a steady roar so loud that Rhiannon had to raise her voice a trifle. "I began my flux at the usual time. What do you mean?"
"The flux does not make a woman. At ten or twelve, a girl with her flux is still a child; at forty or fifty, a woman without her flux is still a womanin every way. All I meant is that until now you have shown no sign of interest either in bedding or begetting."
"It is not a child I want," Rhiannon said quickly, and then wondered if that was true. Simon's child? That was a pleasant thought.
"Probably not," her mother agreed.
"Perhaps I merely wish to couple?"
"That might be so. All beasts have their seasons," Kicva said judicially.
"And am I no more than a beast?" Rhiannon cried.
"Your body is no different from the body of a beastit is a body. You are not a beast because you can rule your body. A heifer couples when she is in season. If the bull is not there, she bellows for him; when he comes, she yieldsany bull, any time. You can choose your time, your bull, or not to couple at all according to the dictates of your soul. Thus, you are Rhiannon, and a heifer is a heifer. But the desire is the same."
Rhiannon knew all that. Kicva might not have been so explicit in the pastshe never offered more than

 
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