Using the word "Fenestra" actually makes some sense: when a soul passes through a Fenestra into the otherworld, it's portrayed as being like passing through a window which looks out onto heaven. (I assume Meridian is meant to indicate that she stands between one world and another; she's named after her great-aunt, also a Fenestra.)
It seems that people born with windows to the otherworld get to choose whether to be Fenestra or Alternocti; good people tend to be Fenestra and bad people, Alternocti, because being Alternocti gives you advantages (immortality, primarily, whereas Fenestra both die of old age and can be killed) to offset the disadvantage of sending people to, well, Hell. Fenestra and Alternocti, as well as Sangre and Nocti angels, seem to have free will; it's everyone else who has no influence over whether they wind up in heaven, hell, or reincarnated.
Both Fenestra and Alternocti do seek out the dying; Meridian's great-aunt was a WWII army nurse, and they both work in hospice care and home nursing. But it's clear that the dying are drawn to them and will travel to find them if need be.
I don't think it's so much that she hasn't thought out the next step of her cosmology as that it's just very, very odd. She really makes no bones about the fact that an innocent little girl wound up in Hell because an Alternocti dragged her soul out of Meridian's care at the last minute.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-03-19 08:19 pm (UTC)It seems that people born with windows to the otherworld get to choose whether to be Fenestra or Alternocti; good people tend to be Fenestra and bad people, Alternocti, because being Alternocti gives you advantages (immortality, primarily, whereas Fenestra both die of old age and can be killed) to offset the disadvantage of sending people to, well, Hell. Fenestra and Alternocti, as well as Sangre and Nocti angels, seem to have free will; it's everyone else who has no influence over whether they wind up in heaven, hell, or reincarnated.
Both Fenestra and Alternocti do seek out the dying; Meridian's great-aunt was a WWII army nurse, and they both work in hospice care and home nursing. But it's clear that the dying are drawn to them and will travel to find them if need be.
I don't think it's so much that she hasn't thought out the next step of her cosmology as that it's just very, very odd. She really makes no bones about the fact that an innocent little girl wound up in Hell because an Alternocti dragged her soul out of Meridian's care at the last minute.