Shaman, Scientist, Shadow

There are days that I like to think that I understand Yeesha. And there are days that I know I can't understand her at all.

As a shortlived woman from the surface, who grew up in a community with friends that were all part of the same world that I lived in, there is no possible way that I can ever understand Yeesha. She lived with her mother and father for ten years, outside of but party to two communities - the D'ni on Releeshan and the Rivenese on Tay. She presumably had friends there, may even have linked there with her parents to visit.

But I don't know how much a part of that community she could really be, daughter of Atrus, daughter of Katran. Those two were each, in some way, the saviours of their people, and their daughter? No matter how much her parents may have tried to avoid it, there is a certain expectation that comes from that sort of thing.

Then, sometime when she was older - my best guess is sometime between 15 and 17, because that's about the usual sort of age to go Questing when you're a rash teenager - she left her parents an went into the Desert. She learned things there, and finally, she came to the Cleft and went down into the Earth.

There are a lot of legends about this sort of thing. Inanna in the Underworld. The Navajo myths of the worlds that came before that are startlingly familiar if one knows about the D'ni (indeed, the Navajo word for themselves is Dineh), and so forth. And down there, Yeesha was tested, made strange otherworldly friends with unusual powers, was granted great abilities...

And used them wrongly.

Now she has grown - older, wiser, I suspect. Lonelier almost certainly. The peril of being a Shaman is to stand outside the community, to be the gateway through which the young travel for their rite of initiation. The problem is that our world - the world which so many of our explorers come from - is not a world in which the path of the Shaman is understood.

Yeesha knows mysteries. The mysteries can be shown to those who are prepared for them - part of me wonders about the pillars, and swimming among the stars - but they can't be explained to anyone. Mysteries are things that have to be experienced and understood intuitively.

This is not a thing that anyone who follows her father's path - the path of the scientist, the path of logic and reasoning - can really grasp. And for all of those explorers who see only Yeesha's power and the ability to Link at will, or do any number of things...

It must be incredibly lonely to be a messiah, or even someone who is treated like one but isn't. There are a great many people for whom Yeesha - and to an even larger extent, Atrus - are the messiah.

I can't claim to be exempt from this. I'd love to see the mysteries Yeesha has seen. In my heart, I hope that I could learn from them. But knowing just how many people might see her and start clamouring - Dr. Watson is a perfect example of this - I don't think I will ever get the chance. I think she will see the crowds of the cavern and flee in terror.

Perhaps the Bahro have the right idea. All I can do is watch and wait and listen and learn, and try to see below the surface.

And drop pellets in the lake, hoping that a little more light might lessen the power of the greater lights. Light is powerful in the darkness...but if there are an equal number of shadows and lights, then who is most powerful?