(urth) fifth head owlet- wolf

[Marc Aramini]

This is kind of the stuff I was hoping for, thanks, Tony.  Because of the "fruit of the knowledge of good and evil" connotations of those seeds ("then he is like God"), I don't view them as just regular hallucinogens.  The shadow children are affecting the perceptions of those outside the planet, not jus their own.  The idea of the river talking or singing to the stars and somehow writing instructions for God never struck me as delusional hubris, with all the other Adam and Eve imagery in that section, culminating in fratricide and a dissolution of the barrier around their world.

I think the old wise one is confused at the end because Sandwalker sees himself as a "proper" man and now that the ratio has shifted the group self perception has changed.  The hill people are definitely more like primitive humans than the shadow children are but I thought this was the irony of the work.  Exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to have on this. 

I still think their sleeping places are related to the "power" found in certain vegetation there.  The dreaming columns in the first stories eventually become a mortuary or burial plot, with the dates of all number fives deaths on the ground, but it is the focal point for eastwind and Sandwalker to be each other in dreams. 


On Mar 30, 2013, at 3:59 AM, Tony Ellis <tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com> wrote:

> Actually, it's called the country of *sliding* stones, unless my copy
> of 5HoC has a typo. Which doesn't have quite the same connotations,
> nor map as easily to the 'shifting' of the sleeping place.
> 
>> Do you feel the shadow children and the construct the old wise one, called the
>> group norm, becomes more confused about who was once human because the
>> proportion at the end shifts to one shadow child and Sandwalker?
> 
> No, very much the opposite. The Old Wise One is confused to begin
> with, because then it is mostly composed of the thoughts of shadow
> children, who are egotistical, delusional little stoners. When the
> ratio goes down to 1:1 he's clear-headed and remembers that "we were
>