Thus the preferred Tsimshian arrangement of consanguineous adult women in separate places gives way to a more rudimentary form of society. But the inadequacy of the pair mother + grown daughter is starkly revealed by a subsequent opposition, displayed at the end of the sixth paragraph:

Both were left (alone) by death, (she) and her mother. Then they sat down and wailed and wept because of their husbands, who had died of starvation.

    The fifth paragraph of the story produces yet another new opposition, drawn this time from the context of Tsimshian economic customs. The Tsimshian normally transhumed upriver in the fall and downriver in spring, moving toward natural supplies of vegetable and animal food that awaited them in those directions at those times of year. At the height of the famine, the two widows mechanically perform the economic act of transhumance. Each of them moves in a proper direction along the Skeena, but in winter, which is out of season for any movement. Moreover, they contradict each other, the older woman going upstream, which is appropriate to fall, (i.e., retrospectively correct, since it happens in winter) while the younger woman's simultaneous movement downstream anticipates the spring transhumance which should occur in the near future. Thus a new contrast arises:

    In fact, autumnal and vernal transhumance were equally important in the Tsimshian economic strategy against winter famine. Life depended on maintaining the distinction, and rhythmically changing from one to the other in season. Food-gathering upriver in the fall, to which women contributed heavily, produced stores of food that had to nourish the Tsimshian until they moved in spring to their fisheries downriver, their first dependable source of fresh food in the new year. Both autumnal and spring transhumance are therefore rational but unseasonably deployed tactics against the crisis of famine in this Tsimshian fable.

    Given the condition of dire winter famine, the daughter's travelling toward spring fisheries might seem more promising than her mother's repetition of an autumnal economic act which had obviously already failed once to satisfy Tsimshian needs for the winter. But in the story of Asdiwal, the logic of the real world is again reversed. The sum of their movements toward each other leaves the two women camped in temporary shelter on the upper course of the Skeena. That would be the outcome of the usual Tsimshian autumnal transhumance upriver. Thus the mother's movement is decisive in determining the location and the economic means which mother and daughter together (but mostly daughter) will subsequently exploit to overcome the famine. Despite the nearness of spring the opposition between the two seasonal patterns of transhumance is reduced to the autumnal pattern implicitly elected by the elder woman, and that opposition is one of the very last to be restored late in the story. Even then it cannot be restored until the death of the mother to whom the autumnal form of transhumance figuratively "belonged." True to the narrative pattern of the Cosmogonic Triad, the infertile elder woman sets both the terms and conditions under which the (re)generation of the Tsimshian world must come to pass.

    At the end of the sixth paragraph of the story of Asdiwal, famine and winter have nearly wrecked the Tsimshian world, partly by outright destruction, and partly by unstringing the lines of tension between opposites which normally hold that world together. And yet, though the damage is undeniably severe, more has survived than has been destroyed. First, there is a large and useful residue of categories without opposites waiting to be re-paired, and even a small remnant of binary contrasts that have miraculously escaped the famine's havoc, shaken in some cases, but still intact (underscored in the chart above). Moreover, the damage wrought by winter famine is distributed unevenly over the various discernible aspects of the Tsimshian universe: its geography, economy, society, and personalities.

    In the realm of geography, all distinctions have ceased. The widows meet in the sixth paragraph neither upriver nor down, neither on land nor on water. Food, the basic coin of the economy, is completely wanting, but hunger remains real for some of the characters in the story -- the living ones. The widows respond to their hunger with contrasting economic actions, transhuming in opposite directions, although it is not the season for transhuming and though they gain no ordinary economic benefit from it. In the words of the Tsimshian conteur, when the women met: "There was nothing to eat." Thus, while distinctions of geography are being completely eliminated from the story, some economic realities are retained, although in a state of great derangement and imbalance.

    Social organization seems to suffer most from the destruction of contrasts in the first six paragraphs of the story. Certainly Tsimshian society is represented in this fable by a larger number of distinctions than are posed for geography, economy,or personality. But while many social distinctions have been reduced up to the end of the sixth paragraph, a few of these too are still unharmed, tucked safely away in the persons of the two widows like seeds of future renewal. The contrasts of authority, procreative function, and consanguinity which reside in the two women are left intact:

    The last aspect of Tsimshian life disturbed by winter and famine is the category of personalities: the egos of the tale. This turns out to be the realm where distinctions are simplest, fewest, and least destructible. The women share a mutual grief in circumstances that would test anyone's mental balance. There may be a fleeting implication of psychological regression or withdrawal in the mother's and daughter's desperate steps toward each other when they are economically and socially threatened; perhaps their long walks with empty stomachs on the icy river were not perfectly rational ways to overcome hunger and cold. But when the two widows meet and learn the whole terrible extent of their helplessness, they face the bereavement of their husbands and their disappointed hopes of obtaining food from each other in the best possible way, with ritual homage to the dead and to past happiness. Then, in the seventh paragraph, they take deliberate, perfectly sane steps to make the most of present and future. From that point in the story onward new contrasts appear and old ones are restored one after another without reduction or impairment of any contrast until the death of Asdiwal's grandmother and the departure of his father, far in the future of the narrative.

    So the pivot of change from systematic destruction to systematic regeneration of the Tsimshian world lies in an opposition of emotions -- an arrangement of psychological facts -- at the close of the sixth paragraph. The pivotal point is the opposition between the women's happiness and sorrow:

    This narrative tells us that winter and famine attacked the Tsimshian most fiercely in the impersonal aspects of their universe -- their geography and economy. But the assault weakens as it passes through the organization of society toward the inner resources of human feeling and the mind. The end of the sixth paragraph is the right place finally to appraise and tabulate the havoc of winter and its distribution, before the women resolutely begin their work of reconstruction in the seventh paragraph.

    The residue of paragraph one that remains after the onslaught of famine in paragraphs 2-6 forms a caption or plan for the next section of the story.

Individual, unwed, noble Tsimshian women, governess and governed, menopausal and fertile, mother and daughter, live during famine in a wilderness devoid of geographic contrasts.

Two powerful, differentiated females exist alone in an undifferentiated void.

    ἤτοι μὲν πρώτιστα Χάος γένετ᾿· αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα     116
Γαῖ᾿ εὐρύστερνος, πάντων ἕδος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ
ἀθανάτων οἰ ἔχουσι κάρη νιφόεντος Ὀλύπου,
[Τάρταρά t᾿ ἠερόεντα μυχῷ χθονὸς εὐρυοδείης,]
ἠδ᾿ Ἔρος, ὃς κάλλιστος ἐν ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι,
λυσιμελής, πάντων τε θεῶν πάντων τ᾿ ἀνθρώπων
δάμναται ἐν στήθεσσι νόον καὶ ἐπίφρονα βουλήν.
    ἐκ Χάεος δ᾿ Ἔρεβός τε μέλαινά τε Νὺξ ἐγένοντο·
Νυκτὸς δ᾿ αὖτ᾿ Αἰθήρ τε καὶ Ἡμέρη ἐξεγένοντο,
οὓς τέκε κυσαμένη Ἐρέβει φιλότητι μιγεῖσα.
    Γαῖa δέ τοι πρῶτον μὲν ἐγείνατο ἶσον ἑωυτῇ
Οὐρανὸν ἀστερόενθ᾿, ἵνα μιν περὶ πᾶσαν ἐέργοι,
ὄφρ᾿ εἴη μακάρεσσι θεοῖς ἕδος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ,
γείνατο δ᾿ Οὔρεα μακρά, θεᾶν χαρίεντας ἐναύλους
Νυμφέων, αἳ ναίουσιν ἀν᾿ οὔρεα βησσήεντα.
ἣ δὲ καὶ ἀτρύγετον πέλαγος τέκεν οἴδματι θυῖον,
Πόντον, ἄτερ φιλότητος ἐφιμέρου· αὔτὰρ ἔπειτα
Οὐρανῷ εὐνηθεῖσα τέκ᾿ Ὠκεανὸν βαθυδίνην
Κοῖόν τε Κρεῖόν θ᾿ Ὑπερίονά τ᾿ Ἰαπετόν τε
Θείαν τε Ῥείαν τε Θέμιν τε Μνημοσύνην τε
Φοίβην τε χρυσοστέφανον Τηθύν τ᾿ ἐρατεινήν.
τοὺς δὲ μέθ᾿ ὁπλότατος γένετο Κρόνος ἀγκυλομήτης,
δεινότατος παίδων· θαλερὸν δ᾿ ἤχθηρε τοκῆα.7

In truth, Chaos came into being first of all; but thereafter     116
broad-bosomed Earth, who is the secure abode
of all the imortals forever, they who rule upon the summit
    of snowy Olympos
[and the murky depths of Tartaros far beneath the broad
    avenues of the inert earth,]
and so too came forth Eros, who is goodliest of all
    the deathless gods to look upon,
who melts the limbs     121a
and overrules in their hearts the wits and wise provisions     122
of all gods and men alike.     121b

Then out of Chaos Erebos and darkling Nyx [Night] were born,
and Night in turn gave birth to Aither and Hemera [Day],
whom she conceived in loving union with Erebos.

But Gaia too gave birth to a first-born, equal to herself in size,
starry Heaven, whose great expanse should cover her all over
and be a secure seat for the blessed gods forever.
Next she gave birth to the mighty Mountains, lovely haunts
of the divine Nymphs who inhabit wooded heights.
Thereafter she bore the waste of open sea pouring forth
    its swollen waters,
Pontos, whom she got without delightful concourse of love.
    But then
by coition with Heaven she brought forth Okeanos with his
    deep-swirling waters,
and Koios and Kreios and Hyperion and Iapetos and
Theia and Rheia and Themis and Mnemosyne and
Phoibe of the golden crown and Tethys the fair.
But the youngest of those born to her was wrong-minded
    Kronos,
a most terrible child. And he detested his lusty father.