In a message dated Apr/18/2005 5:05:26 PM Eastern Standard Time, Alma Gaiz <almagaiz at gmail.com> writes: > Sethra states in Issola that she's become one with Dzur mountain > before. This might have slowed her aging to the extreme, even for a > Dragaeran. It also meshes with the "Dzur Mountain is a spaceship" > theory-hibernation boothes, anyone? That makes me think of this song: Who has seen her, following the wind, From end to end, long hills Winding, black and midnight when her voice Comes shadowing down the sky? I know her eyes from ages past, and this A year ago, a day, Still too wise for the touch [...] From where she stands -- to where I stand, Is but a hand, a link, and a lock, But there are doors, mine poor for Being always wide -- I wait in stillness. I wait in the speaking of grasses, in their voice, I wait in the open of wander. The world holds me, its smallest stone, But for the moment she comes. The moment she comes to me, The moment she comes, Her eyes now light in light on dark, Her voice a silent, known and humming In my heart only: wider, call and empty. Her fingers pulse the edges of the sky [...] I lose my days in days of days, I know my time by nights of yes or no, In going, stepping into dark, And standing, marking yes or no [...] Until my own hands meet once, And fleeting, learn her place among The empty spaces I will arrange myself Among the changes of the dark. I will Find myself in waiting, forget I wait, And what is known, unknown. When she is gone, I am sole and only [...] And she will tell me, when she speaks again: the cry Of stars, the sweet of light, the secret tang of numbers. When last I sang she smiled, and I will sing again While all the world and winter rain complete, Until fleeing has no home but her words, Last known, last awaited, last spoken, last heard. "The Ghost-Lover", excepted from Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman novels. I can't reccommend this series highly enough. It's kinda like epic fantasy in the style of Asimov's science essays. Anyone looking for intelligent characters should go to the bookstore and read to first couple chapters of _Steerswoman's Road_. Amazon has some sample pages available, (though they messed up the first page of text): http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0345461053 --KG