06-27-2025, 05:01 PM
I got a bunch to say (and I'm going to go back over all three myths again and take some specific notes) but:
I grant you that interpretation, it makes total thematic sense. Although I will point out that although the tail turning white is a thing, black flames without a spark and blue ice shot through with darkness is ALSO a thing. I guess the writers just like black or white to symbolize some sort of corruption of purity (instead of, I don't know, rotting his tail and heading for zombie-horror land).
WHAT I REALLY WANTED TO SAY WAS
I didn't read it the same way though. When the Sea God made the vow and gave his heart, it was a little blue fish that turned into a (disguised) blue shell/scale that she could wear as a necklace. Is that symbolic of the "vow" they made which is a set of words/a contract? Or was it literally his actual beating heart, now outside his body?
In Mirrors, the shell-scale cracks and starts to fall apart as she wears it. in Golden Sands, it was never a scale, just a fish in a bowl that she kept near. He gifted it to her, when she had no way of knowing what it meant, she never spoke a vow to him (in this lifetime).
And leaving THAT aside, when Rafayel burned her name out of the prophecy, essentially resetting everything including her memory, the fish (vow and heart) were fine. It's not until she reclaims her memories (some magic how, some magic way) and reunites with him that the fish:
Yes, Rafayel was going to die without his heart, that's perfectly clear right at the end, but now they bound by neither vow nor given heart because otherwise the fish would have stayed blue, or the scale would have kept its color (going by worldbuilding logic). So the whole damn thing has been re-set, has it not?
There is no prophecy anymore that the Beloved must die by the Sea God's hand. The fish/heart he gave, never formally accepted, has faded / is now without power and has been left behind. So.. Rafayel is free to chose as he wishes going forward as a man, and not as a God? He left everything in the sand-dust and is no longer shackled by it? The devotion that is now being given wholeheartedly by his Follower, under no coercion, is what he truly needed?
Quote:"Refusing to take her heart, Your Quintessence's life must burn away. Your..."
let me just skip ahead and also quote
"deep in the palace, the little blue fish slowly turns to a silver scale and sinks to the bottom of the glass bowl."
And reference back to Romirro where Raf's tail turned white when he was dying. This ominous signs kinda point toward the fact that if Raf doesn't really take her heart back, he's going to die pretty soon.
I grant you that interpretation, it makes total thematic sense. Although I will point out that although the tail turning white is a thing, black flames without a spark and blue ice shot through with darkness is ALSO a thing. I guess the writers just like black or white to symbolize some sort of corruption of purity (instead of, I don't know, rotting his tail and heading for zombie-horror land).
WHAT I REALLY WANTED TO SAY WAS
I didn't read it the same way though. When the Sea God made the vow and gave his heart, it was a little blue fish that turned into a (disguised) blue shell/scale that she could wear as a necklace. Is that symbolic of the "vow" they made which is a set of words/a contract? Or was it literally his actual beating heart, now outside his body?
In Mirrors, the shell-scale cracks and starts to fall apart as she wears it. in Golden Sands, it was never a scale, just a fish in a bowl that she kept near. He gifted it to her, when she had no way of knowing what it meant, she never spoke a vow to him (in this lifetime).
And leaving THAT aside, when Rafayel burned her name out of the prophecy, essentially resetting everything including her memory, the fish (vow and heart) were fine. It's not until she reclaims her memories (some magic how, some magic way) and reunites with him that the fish:
- loses color
- turns into the scale we know
- sinks, in some sort of metaphor for lost and/or forgotten
Yes, Rafayel was going to die without his heart, that's perfectly clear right at the end, but now they bound by neither vow nor given heart because otherwise the fish would have stayed blue, or the scale would have kept its color (going by worldbuilding logic). So the whole damn thing has been re-set, has it not?
There is no prophecy anymore that the Beloved must die by the Sea God's hand. The fish/heart he gave, never formally accepted, has faded / is now without power and has been left behind. So.. Rafayel is free to chose as he wishes going forward as a man, and not as a God? He left everything in the sand-dust and is no longer shackled by it? The devotion that is now being given wholeheartedly by his Follower, under no coercion, is what he truly needed?
