Lift questions?

[High prince of geeks he/him]

Can lift use stormlight from spheres or is she limited to the kind she can make on her own. I ask this because her ability to make her own stormlight seams less useful if she could just breath some in (especially since she is now a friend of the prime)  Secondly what does the fact that she is partly in the cognitive realm mean beyond being able to touch spren. Wyndle seemed pretty worried/excited about it. Even though she only had a small part in the book I am almost certain that she will be a major part in one of the next few books.

[kaellok he/him]

I would assume that Lift can use the Stormlight from spheres as well.  However, this doesn't change the amazing uses of her food-transforming trick; remember near the end of WoR, how Shallan says that Stormlight itself, and not just spheres, would become increasingly valuable.  If she has a way to fuel her Surges without needing Light from a sphere, that means that it can be saved for someone who doesn't have that advantage.  And if she becomes able to infuse spheres with Light that she has metabolized, then it's possible that doing that all day every day (and eating) is the most effective way for her to use her powers.

 

Another way to look at it is like this.  When coal is easily accessible, cheap, and plentiful, then people tend to use it as a power source.  When it becomes more scarce, they look to other alternatives.  Stormlight will likely become scarce indeed in the coming days, so an alternative way to get it will be critical.

[11thorderknight]

The scarcity and value of stormlight, though, is a complicated topic once you start really analyzing it. First of all, it's not really scarce; in fact, as far as we know, it's infinite. What's scarce is the ability of humans to capture it and store it for later use - that's determined by the number and size of gemstones that you have available to hang out during a highstorm. If you have lots of gems, you have lots of stormlight; if you have only a few, you'll have only a little bit. The only time that stormlight itself would become scarce would be during a weeping, when there's no highstorms for a long time.

 

So really, what will happen is that the price differential of infused spheres to dun spheres will be constantly shifting, being lowest just before a highstorm (since all the dun ones are about to become recharged) and being greatest just after (since you have to wait the longest to re-infuse).

 

I'm sure we'll see lots more Awesomeness from Lift; it's been confirmed by WoB that she will the a flashback character for the back five.

[OdiYum]

Does anyone think that the Highstorms will eventually end, and Lift will become the defacto source of stormlight by just eating food and infusing the stormlight into gems?  With her obsession over food it seems like a win for her!