# Mint *The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 05 Feb 1997* > 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. --- ### David_Lebling *05 Feb 1997, 09:58* I'll definitely have to spend some time carefully reading all the recent posts before replying in detail; there's a lot to absorb. I hope I can find the time! In the meantime, I'd like to take up the question of Maytera Mint, aka General Mint, aka the Sword of Echidna. First, let me reassure Algae that Mint was not possessed by Echidna, cognomen aside. When Echidna's theophany begins, Mint is described as advancing "head bowed." When Echidna calls on her, she "barely nods." In short, she doesn't look at the Window. In her previous theophany (of Kypris), she looks away from the Window and thus only gets partly possessed. Kypris wonders later about the effect of this partial download; it's enough to make her a superb general and masterful politician -- Mainframe knows what a full download would have done! In any case, Mint is very interesting. She has an unrevealed past which we learn tantalizing bits about. For example, she refers to at least five major things she gave up or renounced, presumably to become a sibyl. This occurs during the Kypris theophany, when she looks away from the image of Kypris _because it looks too much like her_. But wait, Mint is a small, apparently mousy woman. In the Grand Manteion, we get to be Peeping Toms as she changes clothes, and she is very critical of her body and her appearance; but she remarks that once she was called beautiful. She's repeatedly described as shy, quiet, and withdrawn. At one point Marble implies that some great sadness or other terrible experience lies in her past. It can't be overtly sexual, otherwise she would not be able to see the goddesses. She cannot, for example, be Auk's mother (something people seem to hint at now and then). She's too young in the first place, she would no longer be a virgin in the second, and third, such references were metaphorical anyway. What lies in Mint's past? What did she renounce? Of all the characters in _Long Sun_, she is the one who changes the most in the course of the story. Auk may become more responsible, but from the start we know he's a good guy at heart. Silk changes allegiance from a set of trumpery gods and goddesses to a real one, but otherwise is the same Silk. Dave (david_lebling at avid.com) Questions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com ---