Lifelode

by Jo Walton

west, they say, you come to the lands where people are like statues, going through the day's round the same each day out of pure routine. Contrariwise, if you set off east, people become feyer and stranger, more powerful, maybe, but less able to remember who they are from moment to moment, until at last they run together and separate as fast as rainbows on oil and only the gods can keep themselves whole.

of Applekirk spend their lives concerned with their work; with falling in and out of love; with sickness and recovery; and the birth and bringing up of children. Their stories are all tiny eddies in the great story that is life. Things happen, oh, things happen and are so important that those they happen to feel their hearts will break, yet all is the same in a hundred years.

Deciding what it is, discovering it, is a different thing. Some people are born with a lifelode which it would be difficult for them to avoid."

"But unused choices make uneasy guests, and may disturb this world that is our charge."

But these are little eddies in the great story of life, and everything is the same in a hundred years.