For years, after being sent back to Hed, she kept her feet on land: Ships didn't suit her, and she never learned to fly; she thought the lesson she'd been taught was, "Stay home, little, unmagical girl, and leave the work of saving the world to those who are destined." There are, after all, endless tunics to be patched; endless meals to be hunted and gathered, cleaned and cooked; endless hearths to be scrubbed and scrubbed once again: It was right, she told herself, that she contribute in the ways she knew best, was most skilled at.
But now she's older than Morgon was, when he left on his Quest (Older than he is: His face has aged while his time has slowed, her years to his minutes); somewhere along the way she learned more, learned better: That no one, no matter what inscrutable powers they draw from, can successfully rule a land and its people unless they understand the hearth, the sty and the stables, the ancients who drowse in the sun and the children who frolic in the streets. To be a land ruler is to know as intimately as your breath the rustle of each leaf on each tree, the shifting of sand dunes and the drip drop of water in caves darker than a starless, moonless night; but the innermost desires of those who sit under them (walk across them, venture into them) will remain a mystery, without curiosity and conversation.
Her home is a peaceful place and Eliard not unwilling to be taught by her (not that different from her); which gives her ample opportunity to venture into the world again, on her own terms this time, by ship if she chooses though they still don't suit her; to talk and listen and share her knowledge if the land rulers are willing to hear her out (not all of them are.) At the end of the day of counselling in her fashion - part tact, part directness, part impetuousness, a great deal of caring, she is emotional and unafraid to be so - she might drowse under a mighty tree that's drawn her attention, or sit quiet as a rabbit while a great hawk circles and lands, cools its summer sticky feathers in a river, and share what she's learned, free of Destiny and the achingly slow movements of trunk and water and stone, in case he who measures time in eons rather than decades forgets: What it is to be human.
(This might be a slightly sideways interpretation of what it means to be a land ruler, but...)
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But now she's older than Morgon was, when he left on his Quest (Older than he is: His face has aged while his time has slowed, her years to his minutes); somewhere along the way she learned more, learned better: That no one, no matter what inscrutable powers they draw from, can successfully rule a land and its people unless they understand the hearth, the sty and the stables, the ancients who drowse in the sun and the children who frolic in the streets. To be a land ruler is to know as intimately as your breath the rustle of each leaf on each tree, the shifting of sand dunes and the drip drop of water in caves darker than a starless, moonless night; but the innermost desires of those who sit under them (walk across them, venture into them) will remain a mystery, without curiosity and conversation.
Her home is a peaceful place and Eliard not unwilling to be taught by her (not that different from her); which gives her ample opportunity to venture into the world again, on her own terms this time, by ship if she chooses though they still don't suit her; to talk and listen and share her knowledge if the land rulers are willing to hear her out (not all of them are.) At the end of the day of counselling in her fashion - part tact, part directness, part impetuousness, a great deal of caring, she is emotional and unafraid to be so - she might drowse under a mighty tree that's drawn her attention, or sit quiet as a rabbit while a great hawk circles and lands, cools its summer sticky feathers in a river, and share what she's learned, free of Destiny and the achingly slow movements of trunk and water and stone, in case he who measures time in eons rather than decades forgets: What it is to be human.
(This might be a slightly sideways interpretation of what it means to be a land ruler, but...)