Y’all got me thinking about gray hair this morning. Like how Davrin has a few of them when you meet him and how they might have appeared earlier than most because he’s a warden with dangerous job and an expiration date but he’s made it this far and if he does have to follow the Calling one day, those grays will remind him how much he got to live before it. How Emmrich’s are a testament to both his prowess as a mage and the life he’s already lived but remind him every day of his mortality and he could cover them up except he doesn’t because it’s the one thing no one can really escape. When they finally appear for Lucanis and Neve, they’ll be markers that they continue to come out the other side of it despite being targets all of the time and the hard lives they lead in service of the places and people they care about. On Harding and Taash, they’ll maybe be reminded of Ma Harding and Shathann and the impact their mothers had on their lives and how they sheltered them as children from a world that would be cruel them so they had a chance to live long enough for their hair to turn gray. Bellara would look at them and see magic in the long silver strands, like the glint off an artifact in sunlight, she’d be reminded of the white bark of the sylvans in Arlathan. She’d think of Cyrian, too, and imagine what he might have looked like with a few grays himself.
Anyway. Gray hair.
