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Description
Estraven & Genly Ai, the title characters of the 1969 science fiction novel "The Left Hand of Darkness".

“For it seemed to me, and I think to him, that it was from that sexual tension between us, admitted now and understood but not assuaged, that the great and sudden assurance of friendship between us rose: a friendship so much needed by us both in our exile, and already so well proved in the days and nights of our better journey, that it might as well be called, now as later, love. But it was from the difference between us, not from the affinities and likenesses, but from the difference, that that love came: and it was itself the bridge, the only bridge, across what divided us. For us to meet sexually would be for us to meet once more as aliens. We had touched, in the only way we could touch. We left it at that. I do not know if we were right.”

~ Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Left Hand of Darkness"

Notes: The lines across Estraven's face are purely symbolic. The cracking of thin ice. While Genly is a human ambassador (From around the year 4870), Estraven is a Gethenian and dual-sexed, but entirely genderless unless in kemmer.

Graphite pencil.

"Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way…”

Description
Estraven & Genly Ai, the title characters of the 1969 science fiction novel "The Left Hand of Darkness".

“For it seemed to me, and I think to him, that it was from that sexual tension between us, admitted now and understood but not assuaged, that the great and sudden assurance of friendship between us rose: a friendship so much needed by us both in our exile, and already so well proved in the days and nights of our better journey, that it might as well be called, now as later, love. But it was from the difference between us, not from the affinities and likenesses, but from the difference, that that love came: and it was itself the bridge, the only bridge, across what divided us. For us to meet sexually would be for us to meet once more as aliens. We had touched, in the only way we could touch. We left it at that. I do not know if we were right.”

~ Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Left Hand of Darkness"

Notes: The lines across Estraven's face are purely symbolic. The cracking of thin ice. While Genly is a human ambassador (From around the year 4870), Estraven is a Gethenian and dual-sexed, but entirely genderless unless in kemmer.

Graphite pencil.

"Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way…”