Spirit travelers and food

Roy C. Lackey · 06 Sep 2010, 04:29 · from 2010-September.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2010 23:29:58 -0500
Subject: (urth) Spirit travelers and food
Message-ID: <003a01cb4d7c$2d5dda40$36d24a0c@rclackey>

In connection with the theory that Hyacinth is in fact a spirit/dream
traveling inhuma, Fava, the issue has been raised over whether Hy actually
consumed food, as I have contended, or if she only pretended to eat. This is
what Silkhorn had to write about the issue of dream travelers and eating,
when recounting one of his spirit journeys to Urth.

"When the torturer's apprentice and I went to Jahlee's cell, there was an
unhealthy-looking young woman [Merryn] with her, so pale and gaunt I feared
that Jahlee had been feeding until I recalled that on the Red Sun Whorl
Jahlee could eat (and could not eat) as I did -- that the differences
between our digestive systems had been erased, so to speak, since neither of
us had any." (RTTW, 266)

Since spirit travelers, whether human or inhumi, can eat, there would have
been no need for a spirit traveling Hy/Fava to have faked hunger or the act
of eating. She could have eaten, or not eaten, as little or as much as she
cared to without consequence, without fretting that her thighs were getting
fat. A vain human bimbo who had used her body since she had been a teenager
to advance herself in the world did not have that luxury.

Juganu wanted to try human food while he was spirit traveling on Urth, and
presumably had breakfast with the captain of the _Samru_ (ibid, 356-57). I
presume this inspired him to eat some soup back on Blue (361) while in his
usual inhumu disguise as a little old man with a bald head.

Lest anyone suppose that Hy was in fact a real-world inhuma who faked eating
as Quetzal did, remember that when Quetzal died on that lander his body
reverted to its natural reptilian form, revealing his decades-long charade.
The body on the bier on the first page of RTTW was that of a dead
"middle-aged woman", not that of a dead reptilian inhuma.

-Roy

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