Dragaera

Aliera & Kiera

Fri Jun 18 07:53:50 PDT 2004

> With Kiera, I think we're reading an unexpurgated version of
> the events 
> in question. Whether she's telling her story to a little metal box or 
> just writing it down in her diary, we can't really tell. 
> Nevertheless, 
> the story she tells Cawti can't be the same story we read, because we 
> get Vlad's account in the first person (and I doubt Kiera 
> tells it like 
> that to Cawti), and we also get the unexpurgated version.
> 

That's true. Kiera as narrator is speaking to the reader (or Brust the
interviewer if you like). Looking at the interludes where Kiera is talking
directly to Cawti, it's clear that she's not telling Cawti exactly the same
things that she's narrating.

All that this means for purposes of determining the relationship between
Aliera and Kiera is that we can take Kiera's words at face value. In other
words, it's wrong to try to interpret them as some sort of cover-up because
they aren't intended for anyone who would need to have the truth hidden from
them.

Given that, it seems we can accept Kiera's word that she stole the blue gem
>from Aliera. Your average person (though we could go back to the klepto
theory) wouldn't casually steal from a friend. Ergo, the conclusion that
Kiera and Aliera are no more than casual acquaintances. If I was going to
make a guess at it, I'd guess that Kiera probably took it on herself to
bring Aliera and Mario back together after Aliera returned to the land of
the living. Hence, the smile exchanged between them when Vlad introduces
them.