Yeah, if you forced me to commit to a pick right now, I'd say the poem is about Zach. I agreed with Quest's take on it earlier in the discussion, but going line by line...
His own blood condemns him.
Two ways to read this, I think: A family member(s) are actually condeming him, perceived or otherwise. Or by a quirk of fate he is part of a family where circumstances themselves doomed him from the start. I think either can apply to Zach here. The first requires some liberty here that the poem is taking the perspective
of Zach and his belief that Yolun favored Lilly and ignored him. The latter that by having been born into a Bloomling/Lillyspiracy family he was fated to develop his inferiority complex and jealousy.
Hours forgotten grow slim.
This is the one line I'm least sure of in its meaning. Time running out? The inversion?
The boy calls for his kin.
Sounds like Zach during Lilly's not-death/disappearance given the next line.
But the only answer, her sin.
Lilly "returning" as if in answer to the above line (I just had a terrible thought, hold a moment.) The sin being Lilly's running away and/or the multi-ethos depending o how you look at it and from whose perspective.
Woe the day, to be so scorned.
Might be that the even further intensifying focus on Lilly upon her return deepened Zach's issues over being passed over for her.
The order they came, twas not which they left.
The line of the day. If it's about Zach then this has to be future-tense. Lilly is the firstborn, so it can't refer to her actions; it would have to be a prediction about one of her brothers.
Four to be born, yet three to hold breath.
This line establishes that we should probably be looking for quartets/trios to examine to decode this. In the Zach/Lilly case, four children, and given Lilly's modifications and abilities I'm pretty sure she's left the point where she's required to breathe if she had to. Or if this is
specifically about the events of her disappearance then I'm pretty sure she wasn't breathing that month. Or at least Zach didn't think she was, of course.
Woe the day, to be so mourned.
In the case of "It's Zach" I think it's reinforcing that him seeing the reaction of Yolun to Lilly's death helped start the sequence that has led to today, that the mourning of Lilly reinforced his inferiority to him.
Now, to my "bad thought": "
The boy calls for his kin." What if Zach did something similar to Lilly in the True Song episode
- call for help from anyone to please bring his sister back. We know his Ethos was "auctioned to Manoth" did he cut a deal either knowingly/unknowingly to assist her? Given all the stuff around Lilly I don't
think so but the thought creeped into my mind, especially since it's a poem coming from an entity that's obviously looking to form a contract with us. The most straightforward reading of all this, if Zach, is indeed a reference to his imminent inversion.
Now, as for alternate theories on the subject of the poem if it's not Zach. As I said, Yolun was my first thought too, but I checked back on when he told Lilly his family situation and here's what we have:
He steels himself, then goes on, a strange hollowness rings through his voice, "Clarrisa, Penelope and little Cherish. These were my sisters three. Oh my, its been so long since I've said their names." You've never seen your father cry, it's poetically fitting that you don't see his face as a wipes something from his eye. After a long pregnant pause, he recites to you a list of the most morbid sort. A list that carries the weight of decades old grief, "Clarissa was the first, ran through by a noble in the street for speaking back. Cherish second. The infection took her after she lost her hands. Penelope was last, I don't even know where, she simply didn't come home one night. Then finally Mother, she drank a full cup of crushed Night's Lily. I knew then that if I didn't leave Erisdale, it would be my grave too."
As far as I can tell, we don't know Yolun's place in this. Is he the firstborn? In the middle? That he calls Cherish "little Cherish" makes me think she's the youngest. We know Clarissa dies first, then Cherish. That probably confirms the deaths were out of birth order... but that's two deaths that seem pretty difficult to say Yolun was mistaken on to fit the "three hold breath" line of the poem. I suppose if you take the infection to mean the Black Lung it
could be a reference to that but I don't think so. Taken together I think this makes it unlikely to refer to Yolun.
Expanding our search more generally. Bloomlings: Liatris, Lilly, Marigold. I think those are the three we know of. Just add a fourth and it could work. Deific Fragments: I actually think this is eliminated. We have the above list, plus an implied victim of Valerie's from her original interlude, and probably Valerie herself which puts us at at least 5. Unless that unnamed fourth was also a Bloomling. Past that I'm not sure. Myah doesn't have enough siblings to fit, I think and I can't off-hand think of any other categories like Bloomling to use here.
