Shipyear 65
Tripday 182
Second Shift
8.30 hours
In which Priscilla is welcomed home.
There’s a moment in “Moonphase” where Priscilla stands in front of the Temple and speaks her name, and the reaction she gets (or doesn’t get) drives home to her the fact that she is no longer Priscilla Mendoza, Maiden of the Circle. The moment in this chapter where she stands in front of the mirror and speaks her name, and adjusts her self-image to accept the person she is now instead of defining herself by the person she was, feels like a bookend, or the far end of a period of transition.
I wonder where Lina did get the clothes she gives Priscilla. If they’re handmade to specification, it’s unlikely that they were ordered and made in the time Priscilla’s been asleep. It was mentioned earlier that she was head of her Line, so she’d have clothes of that kind for her own use, but would they fit Priscilla?
I’ve been wondering about the nature of ships stores and whether there exists a tailor on board (not a bad idea for a trade ship playing at the highest levels) if only as a secondary talent. Alternatively, it could be that the authors just pull clothing out of a rabbit (sort of an inverse magic trick) fully formed from whole cloth as needed. I didn’t look to see how long it might have possibly taken to create this clothing (ie time between mentioning its procurement and its appearance in fact). Maybe they have advanced tailoring technology.
I wondered too about the clothing, and certainly didn’t connect it with her being a nadelm off-planet. All of that information was more interesting cultural explication.