Meva went outside in the cool of the morning and paced off a large square field, then a second field in the shape of a giant circle. The square field was for boys, and the circular was for girls. By our custom it was mandatory to build both fields, and to decide which field would house the seed only after both were complete. Some couples demanded only males. Some demanded only females. Some demanded the exact same amount of each sex. Some decided to plant all of the offspring in one season. Still others chose not to plant any seed at all.
We had long walks around the two fields, Meva gleaning every weed from the area so that it looked pristine. All rocks and pebbles were moved to the outskirts of the fields, making an accidental sweeping rock path around them. She set up boarder markers of stick then drew a string taught between them. We gathered smaller sticks and placed them along the string to mark the border. She sang a song about the family inside the border, and how one day they would meet the family outside the border. The land was rich for reproduction.
It came time to plant. I exhaled, and a small sack lowered from the bottom of my torso. Where I am from, the sacks have three black marks on them; two of them look like circles for eyes and one mark below looks like a smile. Inside of the sack contains any number of seeds from one to ninety-nine. We are forbidden from checking the count of seeds in the sack, so the day of planting is always a surprise.
The next part of the planting ritual is up to Meva. She pokes her finger into the "right eye" mark of the sack, and the line that looks like a mouth opens up and says, "YAAAARRR!" then the number of seeds we are to plant that day come out of the mouth. In our case, one seed came out and landed in Meva’s open hand. Next she was to choose which field would receive the seed. Would it be the square field or the circular field? But before she could make her choice, something terrible happened. The seed withered in her hand and blew apart in a puff of smoke.
Shock came over Meva’s face as she considered the seed obliteration in her hand. She looked up at me to see how I would respond. I was not sure how to act. The first thing that came to mind was what people would call her from now on, "Obliterator." I pushed that word out of my mind because-- OBLITERATOR. No! Not Meva! She would not be known as an obliterator! It is true that other obliterators who did not want to be known by that name often claimed that they never tried to have children in the first place. But that was hard to do for the couples who more publicly built their square and circle fields in thickly populated areas. Sometimes the husband took the blame, claiming that no seed was ever produced from the sack in the first place. He would be known as "Seedless." That is a name so shameful that we would shout that curse to our enemies on the other side of the battlefield, "Seedless! Seedless! Seedless!"
Meva wept in my arms, and said I could leave and find another female. I told her that I would rather be married to even an obliterator than any non-Meva female!
She had the desperate idea to use the soul transfer device to put her into the body of a viable female, but the idea was wrought with difficulties. The first would be to find a female who wanted to be pulled from her body into Meva’s. Why would a female want to be removed from her own body? Perhaps if she had an incurable disease! If she was going to die anyway, she would want to switch bodies with Meva, then Meva could bring us a baby, and we could figure out something else to do with her incurable disease. Perhaps I could build her a mechanical body in which to house her soul in case of an emergency.
Meva was willing to do this, but I did not like the idea of using the soul transfer machine lightly. It was for emergencies, and it needed much more experimentation before we knew the limits of its power. I was not sure how trustworthy the housing device we got from the rock people would be. What would happen if the device failed? What would happen if the device killed the purple fuzz-ball in the middle of a soul transfer? I assumed the body would be obliterated, and the soul could be cast into the air, a homeless ghost in search of a body! No! Experimenting on Meva would not do! She was already sad enough by not being able to bring us children.
We did not turn the two fields under, but we did not keep nature from claiming the ground for the forest again. Trees grew in those fields, male trees where the square was and female trees where the circle field used to be. Rocks tumbled back over the ground, male rocks where the square field used to be and female rocks where the circle used to be. The weeds came.
Meva and I never brought up what happened in those two fields again.