| Lift | |
|---|---|
 Fan art by Dominick Saporano[1] | |
| Biographical information | |
| Ethnicity | Reshi |
| Nationality | Unknown |
| Gender | Female |
| Born | 1160 |
| Status | Alive |
| Abilities | Surgebinding (Edgedancer) |
| Occupation | Thief |
| Appears in | Words of Radiance, Edgedancer |
Lift is a thief of Reshi descent, who grew up in Rall Elorim. Through her bond with the Cultivationspren, Wyndle, she is afforded the powers of an Edgedancer, or the Surges of Abrasion and Progression.[1] It is implied that she spoke the First Ideal of the Knights Radiant when she 'captured' Wyndle.
Wyndle frequently complains that he was 'told' to bond Lift, while his preference is for a person of importance. The Ring instructed Wyndle to bond with Lift as she had visited the Nightwatcher and received a boon.[1]
History
Lift visited Nightwatcher and received a direct physical connection with Shadesmar, allowing her to physically interact with spren and metabolize food into Stormlight.[1] Her curse is unknown at this time.
She uses the Surge of Abrasion to enter the Bronze Palace of Azir and assist a small group of thieves to enter as well. While the others search for disposable goods, Lift sets off in search of food, followed by the awkward Gawx. He chooses to raid the viziers' quarters, while she aims for the party food. She succeeds, but is pursued by the Herald of Justice, Nale (whom she calls Darkness), and his henchmen for her thievery. She is captured and, though she escapes, they've also captured Gawx and present him as a hostage.[1]
Though threatened by Nale that she was becoming something very dangerous, she managed to earn a pardon for her crimes from the new Prime Aqasix of Azir, Gawx, whom she saved from a slit throat by using the Surge of Progression (or Regrowth). In so doing, she saved the Prime's life and spoke the Second Ideal of the Edgedancers.[1]
| “ | I will remember those who have been forgotten.[1] | ” |
Abilities and Powers
Lift is unique in her ability to synthesize food into Stormlight.[1] She has not exhibited the ability to breathe in Stormlight. If she uses her Surgebinding without replenishing her energy reserves, Lift becomes malnourished and weakened.[1] In addition to synthesizing Stormlight, Lift is able to interact with Wyndle even though he exists primarily in the Cognitive Realm.
Lift is able to cause plants to grow at an accelerated rate. She is able to use Progression to cure mortal wounds. Last of all, Lift is able to cause portions of her body to produce no friction.[1] Due to her uneducated and superstitious nature, Lift is unaware that she is a Surgebinder or that she synthesizes Stormlight. She instinctively uses her abilities and references it to 'summoning her awesomeness' or 'becoming awesome'. Lift is aware that using her abilities causes hunger. She considers Wyndle to be a Voidbringer, and will ignore his advice or instructions as an attempted deception.[1] Wyndle seems to have the most recollection of his existence in the Cognitive Realm of any spren.
Notes
During her Interlude, Lift is ten years old and has been ten for three years. (She believes that an age which she can't count on her fingers to be unlucky.)[1] So, she is really thirteen years old,[2] or fourteen at the very end of Words of Radiance, postulating her birthday to be on Lightday, which is a little past fifteen in Earth years.
The Stormlight compilation - Arcanum Unbounded - with the Lift novella was released in November of 2016.
Q&A with Brandon
Q: Why does Lift feel that Darkness isn't a real person?
A: Because Lift is an interesting person who has her own perspective on the world.
Q: Will we get more with Lift?
A: You will get a lot more with Lift. She was written into the outline from the very beginning as one of the people who gets a book of her own. With Lift part of the inspiration was ... Boy, what was the inspiration for Lift? When I was building the Stormlight Archive I said "I want the Knights Radiant to run the gamut of different character styles, ages, and types of story." And when you say "knight" - When I say knight you imagine one thing, what you don't imagine is a thirteen-year-old hispanic girl, right? And I said "I want to have the people who are in the Knights Radiant to not be the standard what you think of." They are the entire world's cultures having different people. And so I said "What are somebody who does not fit that mold?" That you would say is not a knight. Lift was partially developed out of me wanting to build a character who was awesome but was so different from what everyone would think of. ‘Cause you say knight and they think of white dude in armor and I wanted something very different from that. And that's where she came from. It also came partially from my wife reading a lot of fantasy and complaining and she's like "You know the asians show up in fantasy, asian culture inspires a lot. European culture of course does. You see a lot of these things but where are the hispanics?" Yeah there's one. So she challenged me to put a hispanic culture in my books because I had never done it before and so Lift is an outgrowth of that, so are the Herdazians. They are meant to be sort of in the same way that the Alethi are inspired by Korean culture, mashed up with this sort of concept of medieval knights. Shallan is based a little off of Western American/Europe culture. The Herdazians are launching off some of the original hispanic concepts. So the thing is, you want every culture to be new and original but you are working from somewhere. And the problem is we all work from the same stories for so long that is part of the reason why fantasy is starting to feel so stale.[3]
References
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