(urth) Fwd: Babbiehorn?: Was: a sincere question mostly for roy

[James Wynn]

>> Marc and I agree with how Silk is reanimated in front of Hyacinth's 
>> casket.
>> It is just that I think the same process occurred for Horn.
>
>
> António Pedro Marques wrote:
> But you're not at all describing it as the same.
>
> - Horn physically dies and is resurrected (how at all?) with a 
> Neighbour's spirit who acquires his personality (how, alzabo-wise)?

It is exactly the same process for Silk as for Horn.
Horn vacates his body. The Neighbor enters. Silk vacates his body. The 
Neighbor enters.


What the Neighbor acquires is Horn's body and his brain (memories). Horn 
dies and vacates. The Neighbor enters and repairs. There a two 
significant passages that explains what is going on here. One is in OBW, 
in which the Narrator actually tells a story in OBW about a puppet Horn 
had as a child in which his mother worked the puppet better than he 
could. This is foreshadowing that Horn himself will become a puppet for 
a Neighbor who will complete the task he so miserably failed at 
(breaking his neck before getting far out of New Viron).

The second is the Narrator's conversation with Hound in RttW comparing 
the soul to the resident of a house. That one dies when the spirit 
leaves, not merely when the body is damaged.

>> - The Neighbour pretending to be Horn knows nothing about the 
>> Neighbours, so he has to interact with them as if he were plain Horn.

Note that the trees where Horn is killed are small. We're talking about 
a young Neighbor. When the Neighbor (a spiritual being) combines with 
Horn's body (a physical entity) they become something new. If you've 
read The Wizard Knight then you will remember Able's conversation 
explaining this to Mani the cat -- the combination of an eternal 
elemental spirit and a very temporal cat. Does Mani regale everyone of 
the millennia he has spent as an elemental? No. Because he is not an 
eternal elemental spirit anymore than the cat is anymore an ordinary 
cat. Horn's memories are what are overriding here; that and the 
Neighbor's desire to make up for a wrong. At an important level he 
*does* remember and at another level he is in conscious denial because 
he feels guilty for causing Horn's death.

>> - The Neighbour pretending to be Horn is about to die physically 
>> (again) and is told by the Neighbours they can send his spirit (the 
>> Neighbour's? Horn's?

NO! Not Horn. Horn died in the pit. Horn's spirit has gone to the 
Outsider. If Horn's body dies, then he go back to being a Neighbor just 
as Mani's elemental will return to his former state when the cat's body 
dies. Note that as Neighbor-Horn is dying, he's not lamenting at the 
loss of his life. He's lamenting the failure of his mission.  He will 
have failed Horn. He will have failed to make up for killing Horn (as he 
sees it).  The Neighbors offer to assist him, however. They are going to 
do with Silk what our Narrator has already done with Horn. They'll send 
him (a spiritual being) into Silk. I'll venture a guess that when a 
Neighbor enters a body in that way, the very act repairs the body 
(possibly using the same method that dream-travelers create weapons and 
even people out of nothing.

See? The SAME thing that resurrected the body of Horn will resurrect the 
body of Silk?

>> Why one and/or not the other or both) into Silk's body, whose 'spirit 
>> is dying'.

Because Horn's spirit is gone. It left when Horn fell into the pit.

>> Now, I haven't met any character in the books whose spirit actually 
>> can die, so I can only assume it is metaphor - either Silk was about 
>> to provoke his own physical death, or he'd walk along as a zombie, 
>> but that isn't death, nor irrevocable (though psychiatry in the Whorl 
>> isn't better than ours).

Silk slashed his wrists in front of Hy's casket. The Neighbor entered 
Silk's body as Silk left it.

>>
>> - After Horn's and/or Neighbour pretending to be Horn's spirit enters 
>> Silk, Silk's spirit remains dormant for long, but if we are to 
>> believe the preceding point then that would have happened all the 
>> same. So it's different from Horn's assumed death at the pit.

Silk is not there. His memories are there because the Neighbor has 
merged with his body. And the Neighbor, who makes a choice to identify 
as Horn out of guilt for killing him, still recalls when he was merged 
with Horn's body. He remembers Horn's memories.
But Horn's spirit is gone. Silk's spirit is gone. Now Horn's body is 
gone. But the Neighbor's devotion to the memory of Horn remains.
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