Let's Talk about the Sunlit Land

So, the Sunlit Land. Where and what is it?

Well, first of all, let's get it out of the way up front that it's not Finland. To my amazement, some readers have apparently finished Fireborn without understanding that simple fact. I have some difficulty grasping the failure of reading comprehension necessary to enable such a scale of misunderstanding.

No, it's another place altogether. But where is it? It's certainly not anywhere on Earth. It can't possibly be.

Alrekr Járnhandr believes that it must be thousands of light-years from Earth. But is that assumption necessarily true? He has verification that the speed of rift transit has been measured experimentally and is at least close to the speed of light, which, given his best assumption that it is thousands of light-years from Earth, would necessarily mean that it took him thousands of years to arrive there.

However, this presents certain inevitable causality issues. If we accept the hypothesis that the world chose him to bring there for a reason, then that would have to mean that somehow the world knew that he would be needed, thousands of years before he actually was. It also suggests that the source end of the rift opened thousands of years before the destination end, which is also problematic — like a rope having only one end.

Neither of these makes very much sense.

But what if, rather, the Sunlit Land is in another plane of existence altogether?

Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine taking two yardsticks, and laying them side by side on the floor.

Now imagine that they aren't straight. They can touch each other at various points, even cross, without being side by side or always in contact.

Imagine that the points of contact can be further apart on one yardstick than the other. Imagine that while they both claim to measure, let's say, inches, the inches on one are not necessarily the same length as inches on the other. Perhaps both yardsticks cross where they are marked 6, and again at the 24 marking ... but the distance between 6 and 24 isn't necessarily the same on both.

Now imagine that the second yardstick is in, say, Japan. But it can still sometimes touch or cross the one lying on your floor. Without moving from where it is.

Are you starting to get the idea?

Alrekr Járnhandr is probably wrong about how long he spent within the rift that brought him to the Sunlit Land. But he's trying to understand it as best he can. It's not his fault if he's mistaken.

Is he mistaken?

Maybe. Maybe not. Who can say?