Jul-21-2011, 04:27 PM (UTC)
If you give yourself to the stone willingly, it seems you lose both the memory and the emotional connection you have to it. Except for when Fitz put his pain into Girl-on-a-Dragon, I'm still working on that one.
If you hold yourself back from it, as in try to guard your memories, it appears that the stone takes the connection and duplicates the memory itself, leaving you with a copy of the memory, but not the attachment.
This got me thinking about the Skill pillars, because as you recall they're made of the same type of stone. No wonder it's dangerous to use them! Basically, you're throwing your entire being into this giant piece of memory stone. Not just all of your memories, but all of the ways in which you connect to the world, and all the attachment you feel to the world with all of your senses. Then you have to cross your fingers (metaphorically, as you can't really do that when you've given them to the stone!) and hope against hope that it spits you out intact and in a timely fashion on the other side. The reason you can't use the pillar too often is that you need enough time to reattach yourself to the world, otherwise you'll be scattered in the Skill river forever, or some benevolent being will collect the pieces and make you reattach to the world, but with a delay. Or you might leave the pillar without all of your connections.
Eep.
If you hold yourself back from it, as in try to guard your memories, it appears that the stone takes the connection and duplicates the memory itself, leaving you with a copy of the memory, but not the attachment.
This got me thinking about the Skill pillars, because as you recall they're made of the same type of stone. No wonder it's dangerous to use them! Basically, you're throwing your entire being into this giant piece of memory stone. Not just all of your memories, but all of the ways in which you connect to the world, and all the attachment you feel to the world with all of your senses. Then you have to cross your fingers (metaphorically, as you can't really do that when you've given them to the stone!) and hope against hope that it spits you out intact and in a timely fashion on the other side. The reason you can't use the pillar too often is that you need enough time to reattach yourself to the world, otherwise you'll be scattered in the Skill river forever, or some benevolent being will collect the pieces and make you reattach to the world, but with a delay. Or you might leave the pillar without all of your connections.
Eep.
Avatar: Hobb quote, by nerwende
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