{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1287",
    "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": 1287,
    "subject": "Who is Patera Grig?",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2001-03-26T14:05:25+00:00",
    "last": "2001-03-26T14:05:25+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0012-0485@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at charter.net"
      },
      "date": "2001-03-26T14:05:25+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) Who is Patera Grig?",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Here's another little scene from the Short Sun troika I'm puzzling over.\n\nHorn has transported himself, Fava, and a number of Soldese from a snowy\nhillside on Blue to a prison cell on Green. (Chap 13, IGJ) Having had his\nwooden staff previously confiscated upon the orders of Captain Sfido, Horn\noffers to tell the disconcerted Soldese how they may get back to Blue if\nthey'll return the staff to him. Horn misses Oreb, you see, and believes\nthat repossessing the staff may prompt the bird, who likes to perch on it,\nto come back (the soldiers having chased him off earlier).\n\nFava soon notes the return of Sfido, but remarks that he doesn't have the\nstaff. Whereupon Horn says cryptically:\n\n******************\n\"Once in a while,\" I whispered, \"when I'm nearly awake...\" (p.203)\n\n******************\n\nQuestion # 1: how might the whispering Horn have finished this sentence?\nWhen he's nearly awake (as opposed to nearly asleep), what??? It seems to\npertain to Sfido, but how so?\n\nHorn subsequently segues into how Sfido sounds: \"At times Sfido had an oily,\nalmost feminine way of speaking that reminded me of one of the augurs at our\nschola\"; and then seems to fall into a sort of trance, wherein he pictures\nOreb soaring above Lake Limna.\n\nMeanwhile, Fava is still attempting to relocate Horn's staff, which\noriginally has been confiscated by one Private Gevaar:\n\n******************\nFava asked someone, \"Where did he put it? and Patera Grig replied, \"What\ndifference does that make?\"\n\n*****************\nBut there is no Patera Grig in the Soldese party. So is Horn, tranced out,\nconfusing Captain Sfido with the aforementioned (but unnamed) augur? The\nnext sentence after the above mentions \"a rougher voice,\" so I believe this\nis plausible. But why doesn't Horn correct this when he details the scene in\nhis manuscript--since by then he must know there's no Patera Grig present.\nWhat also, we're given to wonder, is the relationship of \"grig\"--which can\nmean, variously, grasshopper, cricket, young eel, short-legged hen, or\ndwarf--to Sfido, and does it somehow connect to Horn's unfinished sentence?\nAnd just whose schola is Horn talking about, anyway? The one of his Vironese\nchildhood? There's no mention of a Patera Grig in LONG SUN (or at least none\nthat memory recalls or mantis's Characters in the Long Sun pamphlet lists).\nSo perhaps he means the schola in New Viron, or possibly even this is the\nSilk remnant of PassilkHorn recalling a P. Grig from either his pre-or-post\nEXODUS days.\n\nEither way, it's an odd mention, but I've learned to be very wary of Wolfe's\none-off references because they usually connect up somewhere.\n\nUnfortunately, with this one, I remain clueless.\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}