Seawrack/Babbie

Sorry I haven't figured out how to reply to a thread, I'm still creating new ones instead. Re: Unpronouncable Seawrack: Some relevant passages. On page 148: "...the truth is that her name, which was no word of the Common Tongue, baffled me, and that Seawrack was near to it in sound and seemed to suit her very well." I guess you could say that "no word of the Common Tongue" means an alien language, or it simply means an archaic name taken from a very old language. Either way, Horn can't pronounce it properly. Page 149: "She smiled, It was if a child had smiled, and by smiling had made her face transparent, so that I could see the woman she would someday be and had always been, the woman who stands behind all women and stands behind even Kypris, Thelxiepeia, and Echidna. If that woman has a name I do not know it; "Seawrack" is as good a name as any." The three Long Sun Gods are linked to Greek mythology: Kypris = Aphrodite, born of sea foam Thelxiepeia = One of the sirens in the Odyssey according to Tzetzes Echidna = Mother of all Monsters, head of a nymph and body of a serpent So, I think that Seawrack is a Common Tongue translation of an Ancient Greek name for "a woman who stands behind all women," probably the Great Mother who shows up in the Soldier series. I see parallels between Short Sun and the Odyssey, so will dig around more when I can. Re: One Arm The Babbie evidence appears at the top of page 155, where Seawrack is petting Babbie's head: "As her left hand stroked it, I noticed dried blood among the folds of skin on the stump that had been her left arm, and understood why she had been so afraid of Babbie, and whose blood had stained the deck of the bow."