{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1010",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1010,
    "subject": "Scylla (wet)",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-09-05T12:21:03+00:00",
    "last": "2000-09-05T12:21:03+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0011-0231@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2000-09-05T12:21:03+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Scylla (wet)",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Here are a few more plot-points to my Mother-as-Scylla hypothesis.\n\nIn addition to the previous examples I cited where Horn directly or\nindirectly compared the two, let me note the following, wherein Horn\ncompares the Mother to the still-to-be-met Quadrifons: \"And if Quadrifons\n(whose sign of the crossroads may well have become Pas's sign of addition)\nwas in the final reckoning none other than the Outsider--which now seems\ncertain to me--might not the Mother be Scylla as well?\"\n\n[Sidenote to Nick Gevers: I'll be very surprised if Quadrifons--he of the\nfour faces--turns out to be a true physical manifestation of the Outsider,\nbut wonder what the inhabitants of the Whorl might think of our old friend,\nOssipago.]\n\nHorn also seems to believe in the megatherian concept of godliness: \"It may\nbe that our gods did not come among us except by enlightenment and\npossession because they were too large to do so; even the godlings that they\nsend among the people now are, for the most part, immense.\"\n\nCompare this then to Seawrack's description of the Mother's physical\ndimensions:\n\n*****\n\n\"The underwater woman taught me to sing like that. I wish I could forget\nher, too.\"\n\n\"Your Mother?\" I asked.\n\n\"She wasn't my mother.\"\n\n\"'The Mother.' You called her that.\"\n\n\"She wanted me to. I was on a big boat, and I remember a woman who talked to\nme, and carried me sometimes. I think that was my mother.\n\n\"After that, there was only the underwater woman. She doesn't look like a\nwoman unless she makes part of herself a woman.\n\n\"She's another shape, vey big. But she is one. She told me to call her\nMother, and I did.\"\n\n*****\n\nSeawrack later reflects on her former sleeping habitats. \"The water was\nalways warm and still in them, with Mother's smell in it. I'd curl up and go\nto sleep, knowing that Mother was so big nothing frightened her, and that\nmost of the dangerous things and people were afraid of her.\"\n\nThis being of immense size sounds very much to me like Megatherian Scylla,\nthe \"sea monster of the Red Sun Whorl,\" who's taken refuge from Pas on Blue.\n(Echidna is dead, we're told; so perhaps are Scylla's brothers and sisters.)\n\nFinally, there is this from Oreb, but first I'd like to thank Endymion for\nproviding me with an additional item in my argument that Scylla is riding\nOreb, although I wish you'd quoted more (to wit: \"Dreamt that Oreb was back.\nVery strange. I was in the Sun Street Quarter again, made inexpressably sad\nby its devastation. I sent Pig away as I actually did there, with Oreb for a\nguide; but at the last moment I could not bear to be parted from him and\ncalled him back. He returned and lit upon my shoulder, wrapping a slimy\ntentacle around my neck, he having become Scylla. In Oreb's voice she\ndemanded that I take her to the Blue Mainframe.\") Incanto at this point has\njust said goodbye to the Neighbors, asking as his final question \"Do you\nknow about Seawrack and her mother?\" and this sets Oreb to squawking:\n\n*****\n\n\"Wet god? Wet god?\" Oreb cried plaintively after them. Did he mean the\nMother? Or Scylla, who haunts my dreams? I have questioned him, but he\nrefuses to answer or contradicts himself. Possibly he meant both.\n\n*****\n\nThe \"contradicts himself\" is interesting. Could Oreb be saying yes to\nIncanto's question of \"Do you mean the Mother?\" _and_ to the followup, \"Or\ndo you mean Scylla?\"\n\nI believe so --- because the Mother and Scylla are one and the same.\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}