Lila, a young fisherwoman about to get married

You float in the almost boilingly hot water, luxuriating in the feeling of warmth and the gentle scents of the perfumed water. A bath is not uncommon for you, not when your work involves getting covered with fish guts every morning, but this is not the quick rinse with tepid-at-best water of your daily routine. This is a thorough cleansing, suitable for the special occasion. As you float on your stomach, your love-mother rubs away at your back, scrubbing the grime from the parts of you you can't reach.

"All done!" she says with one last scrub.

You wriggle mostly beneath the surface of the bathtub, feeling like an overcooked noodle. The hot water has soaked all the strain out of normally tense muscles, and between that and the excitement - only a few hours more until the ceremony! - you feel better than you've felt in years.

Still, you can't float there forever. The water will get cold, and you have things still to do. You climb up out of the tub, allowing your love-mother to towel you dry and dress you in the flowing wedding robe. It feels odd, you usually wear a shirt and trousers to work in and the loose drape of a dress is unfamiliar.

With the dress in place, you turn to regard yourself in the mirror. You share the olive skin, straight dark hair, and dark eyes of both your mothers, and years of laboring with net and rope has left you with well-defined musculature. Scrubbed clean, your skin and hair practically gleam as if polished. The wedding dress's fabric is a dull ivory under Aesh's light, but you know that under Ama's more subtle illumination it will almost glow.

You can see tears in your love-mother's eyes where she stands just behind you. "My little girl," she says. "My little girl, all grown up!"