(urth) Short Sun notes: Remora

[Marc Aramini]

Just wanted to clarify my biological scheme for inhuma and neighbors one more time in light of the tree on the whorl being called a "parent".

The trees are vanished gods, different from vanished people in that they haven't gone anywhere but they "create " all multilimbed creatures by "eating" creatures and spitting out stronger hybrids, symbolized by the doubled limbs of bluvian life, which was once not doubled and had half the chromosomes.

Thus the vanished people are all that was left of humanity after they were eaten and hybridized, and they left.  

Liana vines parasitized the mystical life of the god-trees but failed to attain it fully.  They drink blood but revert to their primitive form.  Reptilian victims breed reptilian generations of inhuma, human victims breed sentient inhuma.  

The multilimbed creature rising up from the sea might not be ancient.  A sailor is shot and falls into the ocean.  Is that genetic material enough to create a new hybrid with the giant herbs that are actually the islands on blue? However, perhaps it is ancient, with all the accumulation of detritus and rot, unless that is a feature of the submerged god.

It is a morlock-Eloi scheme- both inhuma and vanished people are simultaneously convergent and divergent evolution through consumption.  Both are vegetable and human to achieve sentience, but the inhuma are a more sterile and imitative combination, not a true hybrid, who must always drink of the blood, but do not have life within them eternal. 

The neighbor Horn is only made after Horn falls into the pit, which can be inferred to be the Maw of one of the giant herbs that make up the islands on blue.