(urth) Abaia and the undines

[Son of Witz]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave Tallman [mailto:davetallman at msn.com]
>Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 11:20 AM
>To: urth at lists.urth.net
>Subject: Re: (urth) Abaia and the undines
>
>David Stockhoff wrote:
>
>> However, in TUotNS, he dives deep down to drowned Nessus with no problem
>> because he is an aquastor who cannot be killed. When the gun of the Tower
>> fires on him, he is struck, killed, and recovers instantly; there is no
>> reason to apply narrow concepts of "living" or "dead" to him now. Juturna
>> basically tells him this.
>>
>>
>Consider Sev in his role of Apu-Punchau. He was an aquastor, but he was able
>to be killed by his people. He self-resurrected only when the light of the
>New Sun reached him. All of Sev's other resurrections on Urth can be
>explained as New-Sun-powered miracles, including the gun in the Tower, avern
>poisoning, etc.  But the situation in TUotNS is different; he experiences
>breathing water like a new type of air. It's not at all like his earlier
>ordeals of long submersion, which were like drowning (or actually were
>drowning).
>
>I think that Juturna granted him the gift of water-breathing at their
>encounter in the throne room. She said saving him from drowning was
>something she had not yet done, but would do because he said. Severian
>believed that Juturna saved him from drowning in the Gyoll in his youth, but
>he was wrong -- the skull he found and placed in the tomb was his own. What
>emerged from the Gyoll was his first aquastor.


I'm about to come to these chapters again, but I think you're onto something.
I've been pretty convinced that Sev died in Gyoll in the very beginning as well.