TMOHD Chapter 2: The Sound Of Horns & Chapter 3: Transla

[Skyweir]

CHAPTER 2 - THE SOUND OF HORNS

Without quite realizing what she was doing, she pushed her chair back and stood up. Involuntaryily, she retreated. Her feet in her bedroom slippers made faint crunching noises as they ground slivers of glass into the carpet. The wall where the mirror had been glued was splotched and discolured; it looked diseased. The remaining mirrors echoed her at her-self. But she kept her eyes on the man sprawled in front of her.

Chapter 2 begins with Geraden's appearance. With his apologetic pronouncements he explains his belief that he had mis-navigated somehow ..

'I'm not supposed to be here at all. I'm looking for someone'

... for the first time he looked away from her.

'- completely different.'

And strangely Terisa questions him ..

'How do you know I am not the right person?'

I was surprised at her response .. was she being defiant? Was she tired of being not seen .. not being the person others seek out?

Not knowing Geraden .. but having been told .. she was not the person he was looking for .. most people would simply accept .. that he was seeking another and that he was simply stating his error and apology for bursting in on her.

Geraden replies with a very interesting explanation for why he may have been re-directed from his destination. That Terisa's room/home .. so filled with mirror's may have pulled him away from where he should have been.

Yet it is interesting isnt it .. because at the time of translation the masters saw their champion .. so presumably someone very different to Terisa .. yet Geraden was translated to Terisa ..

The explanation may lie in the drawing of her mirror filled apartment .. or it may be .. the mirror took him to where he needed to go .. most unusual ..

Also interesting that he panicked suddenly when she was about to leave him and enter another room .. He believed if she left the room where he was .. she would never come back ..

His pleas were effective .. she did not leave the room .. and she did respond to his need.

CHAPTER 3 - TRANSLATION

I was interested at the words used to describe her translation .. 'faded out of existence' .. it was interesting to me that this was her fate .. and that all her life it was her existence that she questioned .. and needed re-affriming .. and now here she was fading completely out of this existence .. her existence.

Clearly this translation was unorthodox .. to the other imagers Geraden was invisible to them .. so they could not see his aquisition prior to his return .. whereas most translations can be viewed by the imagers prior to and during translations.

Here in chapter 2 we meet the infamous Eremis.

One cannot help but feel sorry for Teresa .. she entered this world at the invitation of a stranger .. and when she arrives .. she is scourned by those there.

Not unlike her existence in her own world .. the difference being .. that at least by scourning her .. they did acknowledge her existence. Yet .. Eremis in making his first claim for her .. in so doing ironically .. as Geraden explains does not believe she exists at all .. that to him she is nothing more than an object an artifact of imagery .. a thing to be used and not a person to be respected.

Personally I doubt Eremis has much respect for any person .. but thats another story.

Anyway .. thats enough for now .. what was your take on these 2 chapters?

[p.s. dont wait for me to post the next weeks discussions. If you want to lead the next thread .. please do .. first in first served .. there are plenty of chapters for all. If no one has posted by the end of the week I will continue in the absence of any one else. But I do encourage all to take the initiative.

Also I think I will change the polls on each thread regularly so we can have some poll fun too]

[birdandbear]

I had to go with "The only thing she could do"

Terisa lived a vastly empty life before Geraden came for her. I think she was terribly unhappy, but having never known happiness, she wasn't fully aware of her own emotional poverty. She perceived her lonliness as empiness. Her feelings of unreality stemmed from the fact that nothing was real to her. How could it be? When you get right down to it, the only real thing there is, is love. And in all the world there was no one who loved her. She and Covenant are very similar in that respect. [As a side note, I think the contrast between their reactions to unlove is interesting. Covenant, who had known love and happiness before, is furious. Whereas Terisa, who had not, literally doesn't know what she's missing.]

I am a hopeless romantic. I believe in miracles and soul mates and love at first sight and that the light in the darkness cannot go out forever. I believe that from the moment she set eyes on Geraden, there was only one choice for Terisa. Some visceral, sleeping thing in her roared to life and began shouting that this man could change her whole life - and that there was nothing she wanted more.

Spoiler

I think maybe that same part of her also recognized even then what Geraden himself could be to her. Love at first sight. It just took her conscious mind an annoyingly long time to catch up. Geraden saved Terisa just as surely as the Land saved Covenant.

She had no choice. To refuse would have been like refusing a life preserver when drowning.

MHO

[duchess of malfi]

For the poll I went with the sound of horns. I believe this was Terisa's destiny.
I also found it interesting that for her whole life she worried about fading out of existence, and she ends up doing just that very thing (in our world at least) when she goes to Mordant.
Lastly, I found it to be amusing that there is already some masculine tension going on between two of the male characters over Terisa, who was completely ignored by the men in our world (or so she thinks). A sign that things are going to be different for her in Mordant?

[Earthblood]

Nice intro Sky. I like your thought on her statement of "How do you know I'm not the right person?" It is strange that she would respond in that way...maybe it is defiance - maybe it's pure hope - that she might be the one that someone, anyone, might not only want to encounter, but need to encounter - to give her existence some point or pupose.....

I like Geraden. The hapless assistant, fumblefooted & awkward(sp?).
True, honest & caring. In all the corners of Orison, he is a breath of fresh air. The way the 'common people' respond to him tells me of his true character. They all love him, respect him & look out for him.

Not the back stabbing gossip like most of the courtiers and especially the Congery.

[birdandbear]

oops... edited my post above... This was my first time on this forum, and I just clicked on the first thread and started blasting away... Didn't realize until just now that I was spoiling on a group read... Sorry.

[Earthblood]

thats ok B&B - I think most of us have read before anyhow.

Keep 'blasting' away!! You have some interesting insight...

I guess I'm saying sort of the same thing - having the feeling that you can mean something of importance to someone & that they have meaning for you is what could be called love, don't you think?

[birdandbear]

Yes, or at least the potential for love. I think Terisa sensed exactly that in Geraden.

[MsMary]

Interesting train of thought you've opened up here, Sky.

Imagine the confusion Terisa feels at having this strange man appear in her apartment, apparently having come through her wall(!)

As carefully as she could, she said, "This doesn't make any sense. I know you are trying to explain something, but it isn't working. None of this has anything to do with me." You don't even know my name. "I can't help you."

Geraden doesn't really accept that. He

shook his head, dismissed her protest. "You don't know that for sure. You don't-"

Isn't it interesting what he asks her next?

"Are you happy here?"
"Are you necessary?"

Of course, we know that Terisa is not happy, and does not feel necessary.

"Are you in love?"

I've always thought that was an odd question to ask her - but maybe he felt that if she was in love, she would not come.

Like the Duchess, I feel that is was fated for Terisa to go to Mordant - the horns and the dream were just two symbols of that fate.

~MsMary~

[Skyweir]

yes I agree ms mary .. very unusual questions .. Maybe it was some percipience Geraden felt .. which would accord with 'the fate proposition' ..

what did she look lost and disconnected from her own world? Could Geraden really perceive that? I doubt it .. yet he may have felt it instinctively somehow ..

EB .. I like Geraden too .. he was a breath of fresh air .. especially in those first chapters where all the action seemed to take place in the refines of Orison ..

[MsMary]

yes I agree ms mary .. very unusual questions .. Maybe it was some percipience Geraden felt .. which would accord with 'the fate proposition' ..

I think you're correct, Sky. Remember, Geraden is always getting these "feelings" that he feels he has to listen to...

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't have the right to place demands on you. I just suddenly have the strongest feeling that if you leave the room you won't come back."

As soon as he spoke, she realized that one reason she wanted to go into the kitchen was to reach the phone. She wanted to call security and tell them there was a crazy man in her apartment babbling about mirrors and translation and champions.

"Do you get these feelings often?" She was stalling while she tried to figure out what to do.

He shrugged; his expression held the shape of his formal question. "Not often. And they're always wrong. But I trust them anyway. The have to mean something."

Note he says his feelings are "always wrong." But in this case his feeling appears to be right - she did intend to leave and not come back - call security, and have them get rid of him.

"I have the strongest feeling..." that Geraden's feelings are significant.

~MsMary

[matrixman]

What has always stood out in my mind about Chapter 3 is the moment when Terisa looks into the mirror that shows the "champion" the Congery wanted in the first place, and sees for herself what this champion is. The scene excited me because it was the first time in SRD's fiction that I had come across a sci-fi setting, as opposed to the strict fantasy setting of the Land in the Chronicles. It's a very strange feeling (to me anyway) to behold a technological reality from the perspective of a place where magic rules. I realized this would not be a "standard" fantasy story. The possibilities just explode when you start mixing things like lasers and magical mirrors--science and lore.

It's great stuff for a story, but it's an uneasy relationship to maintain in my mind. From the point of view of a party-pooping scientist, as soon as you apply scientific thinking to the foundations of magic, those foundations start crumbling pretty fast: it's all just smoke and, er, mirrors. The only way I can sort of reconcile magic and science in my head is if I remind myself of Arthur C. Clarke's immortal words: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."