Situated in the austere Deka Mountains, on the faraway planet O, Danro is a farmstead managed by the rugged and hardworking Shahes. Her duties included the fleecing of the livestock, called yama, selling their pelts at the village that sits further down the mountainside, and finding a husband to complete the Danro sedoretu. In Ki’O society, the sedoretu is the sacred configuration of two husbands and two wives who are all married to each other. The religious rites governing Ki’O marriage require the four partners to take part in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships with each other, and deviating from these rites is taboo. When Enno, a traveling religious scholar, visits the farmstead and offers her spiritual services, Shahes is quick to initiate a sexual relationship with her that soon gives way to love. However, Shahes is committed to marrying her childhood friend and lover, Temly, and the suitable male companion Otorra, and therefore needs a second husband to complete the Danro sedoretu. Enno, who goes by her childhood name of Akal when around Shahes, is reluctantly convinced by Shahes to crossdress and pose as a male suitor when she returns to the farmstead during the next season, ensuring that a sedoretu could be created, despite the sacrilegious nature of doing so under false pretenses.  Six months later, when Akal returns to Danro posing as a male suitor, Shahes pretends to have never met her, and gets approval from the village elders to make a sedoretu. It is originally planned for Akal to claim that she objects to sex with men so that she need not sleep with Otorra, thus revealing her secret, but during the marriage ceremony Otorra confides in Akal that he prefers to have sex with women. Akal assures Otorra that there is no shame in his heterosexual preference, and that they can keep their celibate behavior towards each other a secret. Weeks after the sedoretu is consummated, tensions rise as Temly learns of Akal’s deceit and resents Shahes’ possessive relationship with Akal. One day, Shahes kills an injured yama by slitting its throat, and Akal confronts her about the subservient and neglected role she has placed Otorra and Temly in within their sedoretu. Later, Shahes is enraged to overhear Akal, Otorra, and Temly laughing and commiserating over Shahes’ treatment of them. She brandishes her knife and suggests they all take a walk down to the village together.