Highspren

[Hen]

Why don’t Highspren show themselves often? In other words, why are they so distant from their Radiants?

[Karger]

We don't know that they are.   Szeth's spren has yet to make an appearance but it is recently bonded and anyway it might be a bit scared of NB.  If they are actually distant I can think of a number of reasons.  Perhaps it is because Justice is such an elusive concept(must more so then Honor, Faith of Growth).  Perhaps they just have a hard time showing themselves(some spren are like that).  Perhaps they don't want to interfere too much with their Radiant's judgements. 

[Honorless]

They have been elusive so far because we don't have a Skybreaker PoV till OB, and Szeth only has a few chapters post swearing of the 2nd Ideal, he swears the 3rd right before Thaylen City battle, so we simply didn't get the opportunity, possibly with the addition of Nightblood making the newly Bonded spren wary.

[+Harrycrapper]

Most of the spren we see have had to make a transition into the Physical realm, which seems to damage their ability to access their memories. It's possible that because the order of Skybreakers are still around and can use their human members to recruit, the Highspren don't need to transition to find the humans to bond. We saw that Syl and Pattern were able to transition without losing memories at the end of OB, likely due to the Nahel bond insulating them from that in some way. Now that Szeth is at the third Ideal, his spren will probably be able to transfer without losing memories, but probably couldn't have before that. I'm not sure what methods the Cultivation Spren used to preserve some of Wyndle's memories, but it's likely harder than what I'm guessing the Skybreakers/Highspren are doing if I'm right about that. 

[Weltall]

Yeah, as mentioned the only evidence we have that highspren are 'distant' is that Szeth's spren rarely reveals itself. Considering that Szeth is carrying around the Investiture-eating Nightblood and could easily kill the spren by accident if he drew the sword and ran out of stormlight, it's not hard to understand why the spren might be a bit skittish.

As for why we don't see highspren floating around their bonded Radiants more frequently, bear in mind that we don't see most other spren either except from the point of view of the Radiant themselves. Pattern likes to be unobtrusive and is effectively invisible to everyone else for most of Words of Radiance, Glys completely hides (albeit for obvious reasons), Syl only appears to people she wants to see her (and people like Rock and Vasher) and we never see Malata's spren Spark.

Edited July 20, 2020 by Weltall