As a writer, there are questions I'd love to ask other writers, but don't think I should. I don't want to make them conscious of their unconscious, if it is their unconscious working - in this instance, I'd love to ask Lois McMaster Bujold about the source of the metaphors she uses for the sacred: pouring, filling up, overflowing. It's particularly prominent in the Curse of Chalion, because of the involvement of gods and goddesses but remember at the end of Shards of Honor when Aral likens Cordelia to a fountain, giving out honor (which is his idea of the sacred), and again at the end of Warrior's Apprentice when Miles asks Bothari to spare him some forgiveness, when his cup runs over ... I'm sure I've seen it elsewhere in her works. Presbyterian-raised, I focus on the overflowing cup - the Christian metaphor - but I'm not sure that's it. A cup or chalice is a prominent pagan symbol as well; Marie (Jakober) used it. Bujold's fiction is moral and deist, but not overtly Christian. Love to know.
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