Ythrians And Nature

The People of the Wind.

Ythrians are part of their natural environment, not alienated from it.

"Sunlight from behind turned her wings to a bronze fringed by golden haze. She could be the sun itself, he thought, or the wind, or everything wild and beautiful above this ferroconcrete desert." (XIV, p. 590)

"The roofs of the buildings, the peak beyond them stood in impossible clarity against a sky which a pair of distant wings shared with the sun." (XV, p. 610)

Mourning Vodan, Eyath flies alone in a storm, then perches on a crag for hours, cold, wet and stiff but energized by air in nostrils and antlibranchs. Despair is burned out by straining wings, buffeted out by wind and washed out by rain. She swoops on a reptiloid, snaps its neck and eats it raw. She will rest not indoors but among trees and flowers. Earth odours make her lightheaded and her blood sing.