Ythrians And The Elements

I said here that Ythrians are less distanced from their natural environment than are human beings. When Arinnian sees Eyath in flight:

"Sunlight from behind turned her wings to a bronze fringed by golden haze."
-Poul Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (New York, 2011), p. 590.

That is a good image but I have fully appreciated it only in the process of quoting it. Arinnian thinks:

"She could be the sun itself...or the wind, or everything wild and beautiful above this ferroconcrete desert." (ibid.)

Descending, "...she braked in a brawl of air..." (ibid.)

Thus, sun, wind ("The People of the Wind") and brawling air.

Eyath's way of mourning is to immerse herself in turbulent Avalonian weather. She perches on a crag in rising wind for hours at night, becoming cold, wet and stiff. The rain is "...slow as tears..." (p. 606), an explicit pathetic fallacy. When Eyath ascends at Laura-rise, air in nostrils and antlibranchs wakens blood, making her muscles throb.

"At your death, Vodan, you too were a sun." (ibid.)

Despair is dispelled by beating wings and buffeting winds and "...washed out by rain..." (ibid.)

Hungered by energy expenditure, she hunts, swoops, grasps a reptiloid, snaps its neck on impact, sits on a sea rock and eats raw meat, surrounded by spouting surf. Poul Anderson has truly imagined an alien intelligence that remains much closer to its animal origins and natural environment.