One of Ayan's wings is injured. Therefore, he can neither fly nor walk. By flapping the good wing, he kept himself warm at night. Flapping also pumps oxygen into the blood. His alien face is unreadable to Jack.
Ythrians are physically shorter than human beings. Staring is more offensive to carnivores than to omnivores. As Sean said recently in the combox, spoken Planha sounds abrupt because much Ythrian communication is by changing patterns in the feathers.
"Planha was in fact not as laconic as its verbal conventions made it seem."
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT p. 459.
Human-alien interactions can be a major part of sf. See Water And Wind.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I have also argued that contact with non-Ythrians would tend to make Ythrians use the spoken forms of Planha more often, to develop and extend its use and vocabulary. At least on planets like Avalon. Centuries later, in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN, we see a Ythrian agent from Avalon (working for both the Domain and the Empire), being able to converse at length in Anglic with little apparent difficulty. Precisely because of SPEAKING more often than most non-Avalonian Ythrians.
Sean
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