As a child it didn’t matter. Transgender play was not only accepted, it was encouraged: boys and girls both made flutes and set bones with the men, tended crops and learned spinning with the women. Empathy grew from full understanding. Each surgeon had a leg broken and reset before he could practice on others; each farmer burned the mice from the fields herself. Action and consequence led to sobriety and right thinking.

When Gwion grew older, however, there was talk in the senate. His fathers spoke to him. He remained adamant. His mothers took him walking and explained things. He begged, he pleaded. They remained adamant. They empathized, but sex was a law that could not be broken, no more than death or gravity.

And so he left. For long years afterward they spoke of the boy who had left to find a place where a man could remain a woman; his leaving bolstered the faith of the women. Right thinking led to right action; how could it not?