Vivulonj Prosperu
In Transit
In which Aelliana eats a sandwich.
Mint has been established as the characteristic scent/flavour of the Tree’s seed pods, so Aelliana waking up with it on her tongue suggests that the Uncle was able to get her to accept hers.
That’s an intriguing hint about Arin having taken his own path. Does that mean he’s still out there somewhere, following his own path? Or did his own path take him somewhere that meant he could no longer share the Uncle’s kind of immortality? (And why is it his name that occurs to Aelliana?)
Also intriguing is the Uncle’s choice of meal to offer as her first in this new existence: tea and shaped sandwiches is the first meal she had as she began her new life with Daav. It might just be a coincidence, or shaped sandwiches might be a common enough thing on Liad (or perhaps specifically in Healer’s Halls) that he thought would be soothingly familiar, but there’s also that slight chance that it’s a sign he knows details of her life he probably shouldn’t have had access to.
It occurred to me, reading this chapter, to ask: Are Daav and Aelliana still lifemates? In the general sense, obviously, yes, but what about the spooky inside-each-other’s-heads sense? Daav’s inability to sense her presence, and hers now to sense his, might just have been because each was woken while the other was in a coma, but it may be that the bond has been broken because Aelliana is in a fresh new body, and will have to be rebuilt. Under other circumstances there might be a question of whether it can be rebuilt, with Aelliana in a new body that might not have whatever predisposition her original one possessed, but I expect that’s one of the things the seed pods are for.
Several scenes in subsequent stories have established that waking up to a taste of mint is not uncommon for people in autodocs even if there isn’t a seed pod involved, so that’s apparently not such a strong hint as I thought. It still seems likely that Aelliana has eaten hers, though.
Shoulda waited until I finished reading Alliance of Equals before I commented. It turns out that Aelliana has not, in fact, eaten her seed pod at this point.
PA: And why is it his name that occurs to Aelliana?
Certainly we can speculate that these “blanks” as Uncle calls them, are still basically the Uncle’s DNA, leaving them with residual memories? Thus this one, for which Uncle had none of Aelliana’s DNA to “seed,” is “related” to Uncle. Knowing that Arin himself was originally a clone of Uncle could indicate that one of his clones might mistake him for Arin? Regarding Arin taking his own path, we are told about that in Trade Secret I believe?
PA: And why is it his name that occurs to Aelliana?
Recall that while Aelliana was still residing in Daav’s head, Daav & Aelli met with Theo on the ship Arin’s Toss, which belongs to the Uncle. Thinking that a ship named Arin’s Toss belongs to someone named Arin is a reasonable mistake.
I wouldn’t have said it was a reasonable mistake for someone who has been Delm Korval and knows everything the clan knows about the owner of Arin’s Toss. But then again, the chapter does say that her memory isn’t firing on all cylinders (and perhaps that’s a complete answer to my question in itself).