And he remembered another bicycle ride, long ago, across another divide, with Esther, a young woman with curly dark hair and a small smile. They had met in the community. Their parents knew one another, as did almost everyone in their section of their small town, situated in a valley, near several other towns. One afternoon he suggested to Esther they bicycle out to a pool he knew to go swimming. On the way, the light shone down in a way that seemed to Oslo to indicate this meeting was fated. It was the hard light of fate guaranteed this moment for them. They were traveling through time, and despite anything else that life might have in store for them, this moment was sacred, it was preserved, just this bicycling on the flat stretch of road through fields that led to the pool. They began to go up a gradual incline. Esther was in front, and Oslo could see her back shifting from side to side as she increased her effort, and he suddenly imagined her thighs, underneath her long dark skirt, the exercise they must be undertaking to propel her, by the mechanism of the bicycle, up the hill.

A little later, they arrived at the place, and set down their bicycles on the grass. They sat down and began talking.