# liana staff *The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 02 Jan 2002* > 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. --- ### maa32 *02 Jan 2002, 01:22* Since it seems like there is very little going on in the discussio lately, I'll continue posting my crazed observations. What have we made of the narrator's staff in The Book of the Short Sun? I know mention was made of Cugino's cutting stroke as conceivably multi-limbed in nature. Here are a few other interesting things: In On Blue's Waters, the narrator reveals that the most horrible things on green where the huge trees that ate each other, and even more horrible were the strangling liana vines, the "female" aspect of the cannibalistic foliage. Cugino cuts the staff from a vine resembling the lianas. Are there lianas on Blue? It would seem that there are, for the following reasons: In On Blue's Waters, the narrator reveals that the scary island he tarried upon before reaching Pajarocu was actually made up of huge, huge trees. When the storm hit, he could see that they bloomed from the ocean and separated. The pit he fell into was covered by vines. These vines might have been the lianas that were so awful to him on Green. Now, if these liana vines are wicked, and Cugino made his staff from one, how are the neighbors related to lianas? Remember that fellow in the town of Blanko who went into the forest to cut wood, and said that the neigbors were looking at him in so unfriendly a fashion that he had to turn around? Had he threatened the vines? What powers does the staff really have, with its little face? Why does the narrator always ask for it, but seems to never possess it, when he partakes in that astral travel. Remember, too, that the neighbors first take notice of Horn after he falls into the pit on Blue when he disturbs the vines that hide the pit. (of course, he has also looked through the blue glass - but which is the true trigger of their attention?) Marc ---