"'Can [Chris/Arinnian] ever make a normal marriage, for instance? Ordinary girls aren't his type any more; and bird girls -'"
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 461.
What about bird girls? This is what Arinnian himself later does when speaking with Tabitha/Hrill, breaks off in mid-sentence. Eventually, we understand but I found it difficult - which makes this discourse authentic.
Daniel has to adjust his human terminology:
"'...when he first started running around, flying around, with Ythrians, why I was glad...'" (p. 460)
The conflict with his father became so intense that Arinnian did for a year what Diana Crowfeather later did permanently, ran/flew away to live with another species.
Two other details in the conversation between Holm and Ferune:
"the yellow light of Laura cast leaf shadows on the floor. They quivered." (p. 456)
A hint of the pathetic fallacy - the man and the Ythrian are restless, as is their environment.
Ferune observes:
"'...we don't catch time in any net.'" (p. 462)
The winged Ythrians hunt with nets. Metaphorically, Ferune applies this practice to life but only in order to say that at that level it is impossible to catch everything that comes our way.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't think Diana Crowfeather ran away from her own species. What I recall from THE GAME OF EMPIRE was that after the death of her mother the man she was living with tried to do well by Diana but was clumsy and officious about it. Yes, she ran away, but she lived mostly in the Old Town quarter of Olga's Landing on the planet Imhotep. And while manyTigeries visited (or even lived there if they had the surgery necessary for using a "gill") the people there would be mostly humans.
Sean
Sean,
Diana is living mostly in Old Town when we meet her but I was remembering this sentence: "She had passed her life among Tigeries and Seafolk." (FLANDRY'S LEGACY, p. 214)
Paul.
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