Innocence

[Stipple]

A visit to the MDA library will give the adventurer a chance of meeting one of the more intriguing denizens of the land, an intangible named Innocence. Ve is normally ensconced in a cozy nook by the Librarian and displays as a pearly iridescence dancing in the sunlight streaming through the chancellery windows.

Innocence is unfettered from the tugs of time, completely outside the constraints of our three dimensional sight, yet puzzlingly concerned enough about our fleshly forms to offer interactions with us. Ve slides through space to cunningly reform a candle into a fantastic form, untether the dancing flame from its wick, and brand profound tales from long ago onto pages before the wondering gaze of the librarian. Flowing back into ver accustomed corner, ve responds to greetings with unworldly charm and a fey sense of the ridiculous.

There is a sense of hidden pain, quickly concealed, that threads through the warp and weave of ver conversations. The alert adventurer may find that questions about the Gatherers and their influence on Innocence laid the groundwork for ver presence here and shepard ver towards a future even ve barely senses.

Interactions with ver are apt to help us refine our half formed desires, slake our thirst for knowledge, and leave our minds refreshed and ready for more adventures. Innocence
may be intangible but the results of meeting ver are permanent.

Edited June 30, 2011 by Stipple

[Stipple]

I have elected to use Keri Hulme's gender-neutral pronouns as Innocence is genderless. An excellent example of them can be found in a novel called Diaspora.

"Diaspora focuses in large part on the nature of life and intelligence in a post-human context, and questions the meaning of life and the meaning of desires. If, for instance, the meaning of human life and human desires is bound up with ancestral human biology, then what meaning do lives and desires have,and what serves as the basis of values when biology no longer forms a part of life?" From the Wikipedia article by the same name.

[Ravenstrider]

Left Hand of Darkness > Diaspora when it comes to examining the condition of gender neutrality.

[Stipple]

[quote name='Ravenstrider' timestamp='1309823661' post='87137']
Left Hand of Darkness > Diaspora when it comes to examining the condition of gender neutrality.
[/quote]

In many ways Ursula Le Guin broke gender and androgynous landmarks with that book indeed. However she still referred to all the people of Winter as "he" and I was looking for a gender netral term and thus the New Zealand author being cited (who also borrowed the terms from someone else). I do agree very few of the classic science fiction writers ever reached the full world building abilities of Le Guin though.