(urth) Undines

[Lane Haygood]

Why not Dorcas herself?  She has connection to rising from water/watery deaths.

LH

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 3:50 PM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
>> We are led to believe Severian gains his connection to the New Sun/White
>> Fountain via intercourse with Apheta. I hope she didn't have to kill him
>> for that to happen (though many female bugs do that sort of thing).
>
> I interpret this as the Yesodis collecting a gene sample so that the White
> Fountain can be attuned to him; this may also explain some of Juturna's
> transcending of dimension, since she shares roughly half his chromosomes.
> Despite the name, I don't think the White Fountain gives him underwater
> breathing, since the its power is blocked by even the limb of the earth,
> and the stars don't shine deeply under the water.
>
>> Elsewhere, aren't we told that Severian's Yesod tests were all a sham?
>> And that Tzadkiel had already imbued Severian with his White Fountain
>> connection on the ship. Again we have the possibility that eidolon
>> formation allows this.
>
> I got the impression that there's no one time where he is imbued so much
> as the WF sends out power on a frequency that he receives whenever its
> light shines upon him, including frequencies that pierce storms and
> clouds. This doesn't mean that he always has the skill or knowledge to use
> that power, depending on where along his personal timeline he is.
>
>
>> If not that then perhaps he became a water-breathing eidolon at the end
>> of Sword. He had B, F and O above him and perhaps Juturna and Abaia in the
>> lake below him. Perhaps either were capable of doing it though one seems
>> more likely than the other.
>
> Juturna tries to coax him into the water and apparently other people are
> taken below the waves. If it isn't all a murder plot or dinner for the
> hungry undines, it implies that undines can convert humans to breathe
> water, and perhaps that the converted humans may even breed
> water-breathing children who later return to the land, like Idas. A
> symbiote could be involved, similar to the Green Man's "pond scum".
>
> There remains the question of where the undine in Severian's family tree
> is. Was Dorcas' husband some kind of spy for Abaia?
>
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