TWK: The Aelf dilemma

Roy C. Lackey · 05 Dec 2005, 07:59 · from 2005-December.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2005 01:59:55 -0600
Subject: (urth) TWK: The Aelf dilemma
Message-ID: <000a01c5f971$e57073e0$7c3ec6d8 at rclackey.stic.net>

A few weeks ago I wrote:
>At the end of the book, Odin asks Able if he is ready to return to Skai.
>Able is speechless, so Etela speaks for him, "He's afraid she [Disiri]
won't
>come with him." Odin responds, "She would not, child." [. . .] "She
cannot."
>He then goes on to demonstrate that Disiri is nothing but animated debris,
>and tells Able to pick one or the other, Skai or her. Able makes his
choice,
>giving Disiri enough of his blood to render her, apparently, completely
>human. Odin disappears, and with him goes Able's chance of ever returning
to
>Skai.
[snip]
>"She cannot" suggests that there is some sort of immutable, categorical
>prohibition against Disiri and/or her kind that would keep her out of Skai.
[snip]

Again, I overlooked the obvious. Able said, when he was speaking to Leort
about Disiri and indirectly about his time in Skai,  "it's where she can
never go." (W, 102) The reason she can never go there is that the Aelf have
no souls, no "spirit". (W, 46) When they die, they die dead, kaput, unlike
humans. Those humans who get to Skai have to die, just as Able had to die,
to get there.

Given that the Aelf are not spiritually immortal, they have no hope of
eternal reward (still less the denizens of Muspel). So why the hell should
they worship humans -- or anyone or anything else? If there's no "pie in the
sky when they die", where's the payoff for whatever passes as righteous
living for an Aelf?

-Roy

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