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Yuki, and Olin too. Those three wanted to choose for Dakka at their time of blush—all four were blood-close siblings; decisions always echoed and re-echoed off each other, so it was easily assumed by Jobe that she would choose for Dakka too.
    Of course, she tossed the faces, but she didn’t heed their answers, the coins just smiled with knowing eyes. The Oracle consulted always spoke with different answers, but the message never varied, one form or another of, “The right-minded one moves with the winds and travels with the tides. She allows their strength to direct her sails, and so she joins their flows. Her goals, therefore, will not be against the holy flows of the world; to seek such goals would waste her precious energy, and ultimately tire the seeker.”
    By the time that Jobe was old enough to understand what the Oracle had meant, it was too late. She’d moved with the flows already, or been moved unknowing by them.
    Choice comes to us in many forms—but it is the all-important Choice between Reethe the Mother and Dakka the Son and Lover that shapes most of us and our attitudes toward our world. But—and this is the most important of all to know: choice, even the all-important one, is not merely a decision between options; it is a moment of spirituality, when the individual must be in tune with the essences of Reethe and Dakka to understand the correct option for her. Choice is a process of discovery of the correct option. That is why we toss the faces—those three Reethe-and Dakka-colored coins, one side a smile, the other a frown—whenever we are faced with a choice of importance. We need to consult the oracles of our essential spirit, for guidance, for meditation and for understanding of which is the proper way.
    Each person must discover for herself who she is going to be. Even if we see with the clarity of a sun-bleached day what must be the proper choice for a person, we cannot force her into it, we must not, for it is only when a person accepts her discovery and her choice as her own that she can live with it. A wrong choice accepted is still correct—far more correct than a proper choice forced.
    Discovery must be accepted as part of oneself before it can become choice. If a person is to discover her proper path, she must be allowed to explore all of the paths possible. And this is true of every choice that life presents, even down to the matter of which flowers to place on the table before dinner.
    Our lives revolve around this principle, a spirituality derived from the gods of our world; thus it is that the one they pity the most is the one who searches and searches and still cannot discover her way—they pity this one even more than the one who has not choice at all.
    â€œPotto used to tease me unmercifully. Whenever we played Big Dog-Little Dog, I was always paired with her. She was very good, and I wasn’t—I was her handicap. I used to drop the melon a lot. Once, on the Tangle, I did manage to grab the melon and score, but it was a lucky accident. Potto was always very impatient with me. She chided even my one victory by pointing out that if I could do that more often, they would let me play more often.
    â€œTo tell the truth, I couldn’t see much value in pursuing an activity in which my contributions were continually denigrated. Potto used to pull at my kilt and say, ‘You are going to be a mother, the way you play. You will never be a Dakkarik. Look at that pretty little slit—it’s going to stay that way. I am ready to fill it, any time you want.’
    â€œPotto was only three years older than I at the time, but the gap was one of understanding, not of age. I did not know what she was saying, but I did know that she was making fun of me and I would run crying to the nearest parent.
    â€œPotto was chastised so often for picking on me that it was a wonder she did not take me out behind the rocks and drown me. I probably