Juturna, the Missing Sister

Lee Berman · 29 Jul 2010, 03:55 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:55:00 -0400
Subject: (urth) Juturna, the Missing Sister
Message-ID: <SNT123-W164AC1A386234E40F70E50CFA90 at phx.gbl>

>David Stockton- How do you account for the facial appearance of Agia/Agilus? I believe 
>Severian's description pegs them as Southerners, perhaps as related to 
>autochthons (i.e., Indians or what we would call Hispanics): long eyes, 
>flat cheeks, chestnut hair. Something like that.

A good question. First, I'd say Southerners are mostly, like Hallvard, tall, pale skinned
and blonde, from the cold parts of The Commonwealth. To the north of Nessus are the 
Indian-looking autochthon people. Quite a few around the area of Thrax, where Agia and
Agilus might have roots, if their mother is Cyriaca.

Agia is described as having a short nose, elongated brown eyes and wide cheekbones. Agilus
is described as having flat cheeks. In Thrax, when Cyriaca is describing Severian's masked
face she mentions high cheekbones and flat cheeks. It seems like there could be a family
resemblance though not a strong one.

When Severian first meets Agia she is wearing a pavonine brocade gown. I have recently 
learned "pavonine" means peacock-like. I would not be quick to associate this with 
the fallen peacock angel, Prometheus-cognate demon Azazel except that Agia has a few 
things which associate her with demonic stuff...she mentions lamia jewelry, scratches a
jurupari design, carries the warlock sword and uses a claw weapon similar to the Jungle
Sorcerers.

I think Agia's other two weapons might link her to Thrax and Cyriaca. She has the crooked
dagger at Casdoe's house. And she mentions a "misericorde" from her shop which is a slim
blade used to perform battlefield mercy killings on mortally wounded warriors. This would
be a likely item to be found in a shop run by a former Pelerine.

For those interested- The Jurupari (or Yuripari) was a monkey-like demon of the Tupi Indians
a southern, Atlantic coast tribe of S. America. He is known as the enforcer of a forbidden
fruit taboo and swallowed some child transgressors whole, to be vomited up later. Jurupari
shares its name with a cichlid family member, also called Demon Fish. This family is known for
hatching and brooding and protecting their babies in their mouths, to be spit out later when
safety returns. I find associations with Inire, Abaia and The Mother on Blue to be possible.

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