Covetous Teyla may be but vain she's never been. There's little closeness between them. Kate loves her strength, the musculature of necessity; Teyla loves Kate's softness, the few guilty pounds around her hips that she knows Kate has been trying to lose. No one on Athos would be like this - made of anything but bone and muscle and scant skin. For the most part Teyla couldn't think of a less similar person to Kate than Rodney but in this way they are the same: unspoiled, wasteful. Lavish in the ways of their bodies.

This is excellent. It also reminds me of some countervailing thoughts on Athosian sexual mores that artaxastra discussed a couple of weeks ago, which I'll share here (including remarks unrelated to a taboo on same-sex relations) because I think they're interesting both in and of themselves and with respect to how they might affect Teyla.

First, rules follow function. People don't make up rules that are unfunctional. Old rules may become unfunctional as circumstances change, but they weren't unfunctional to begin with. One thing that immediately made sense to me was a strong prejudice toward exogamy and a strong incest taboo. When you have a population that flirts with genetic unviability due to the Wraith, you have to have strong reasons to keep that population as genetically healthy as possible. Incest, to Teyla, is relations within the fourth degree. In other words, for her incest would not only be her father, brothers, uncles, grandfathers and first cousins, but all the way out through third cousins. Half of the people in the settlement would be too closely related to mate with. Because otherwise you are going to get a very inbred population very quickly! (And clearly this is a problem anyway, otherwise you would not have her and Kanaan with the Gift. In a population that wasn't inbred, a genetic difference that was recessive would not appear "a few times in each generation" as she says it does.)

To go with that, you need a strong prejudice toward exogamy. It's good to bring in strangers, to bring in new blood through the stargate. That's ultimately what keeps the population healthy. ...

Another logical thing in a culture stressed as this one is by predators, and nomadic, is that children have to be spaced. Children born too close together are dangerous -- for their mothers, and for each other. Each child too young to walk and migrate, each child in need of constant supervision, reduces the chance of others surviving. One child under four at a time is what a mother can handle.

So Teyla has no taboo against birth control. The Athosians don't have hormonal birth control, but various herbal remedies and condoms are used. When she's given the opportunity to use the Depo-Provera shots that most of the women on the expedition are using, she has no reason not to embrace it.

Secondly, there is no taboo against non-procreative sex. If you need to space children out, then sex that can't result in pregnancy is absolutely necessary, whether that's heterosexual or homosexual. Cultures with strong taboos against homosexuality tend to be cultures that need to grow the population, or that have plenty of room to grow, while cultures that are very accepting tend to be ones where there is population pressure and the need to slow down growth. Bisexuality is functional in a society where you need to cut down the amount of time spent in procreative sex and reduce the number of children. Teyla has no taboos against homosexuality, nor against heterosexual non procreative sex. For example, heterosexual anal sex is perfectly normal, because you can't get pregnant. (There have been some fascinating articles done on the rise of sodomy laws in Europe in the wake of the Black Death -- when the population had declined dramatically and growth was desperately needed.

I think you might mean expansiveness for expense? And in the next paragraph, where is missing an h.

In the dark, it is hard to tell, but it seems like Kate is mostly unscarred.

Good details in that concluding sentence.