#only through

[butterflydm]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 4/9 Fandom: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Rand al'Thor/Mat Cauthon, Rand al'Thor/Aviendha/Mat Cauthon/Elayne Trakand Characters: Mat Cauthon, Rand al'Thor, Elayne Trakand, Aviendha (Wheel of Time), Min Farshaw, Thom Merrilin Additional Tags: Canon - Book, AU - Canon Divergence, spoilers through book 11: knife of dreams, Polyamorous Character, Polyamorous Negotiations, aftermath of sexual trauma and rape, no on-screen rape or non-consensual sex, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, spoilers through book 14: a memory of light, my earlier spoiler tag was before i'd realized how far exactly the fic needed to go, in order to feel properly completed Summary: Rand presses on and takes Ebou Dar, pushing the Seanchan back into the sea and discovering someone unexpected in the city.

Their next step — after Rand finally talked things out with Elayne and Aviendha — would be to search out Perrin and find why he hadn’t already returned with Masema. Rand had been fretting over it but hadn’t had any plans to seek Perrin out himself, believing that he needed to keep his focus on the Seanchan. Seemed a bit of nonsense, to Mat’s thoughts. They had these odd color swirls when they thought of each other for a reason. Might as well use them to track Perrin down and find out what was keeping him.

Luckily, Rand did seem at least somewhat willing to listen to Mat’s advice.

It was also easier to wrangle Rand back to Caemlyn than Mat had been expecting — that was due to Lan, in a way. Rand had been startled beyond anything when he’d found out that Lan and Nynaeve had gotten married, and he’d spent almost two hours rambling about it at Mat the night before they’d all gone to Shadar Logoth together. Apparently Lan had told Rand some fool thing after Moiraine had died about doomed men and poisoned love and other such nonsense, and Rand, like a fool, had taken it to heart and decided to live his life that way.

Seeing that Lan had failed to take his own advice had given Rand pause, and made him think again about some of his more ridiculous notions about Elayne and Aviendha. So that was all to the good.

[batvalentinworld]

excerpt from Michael Frayn’s play “Copenhagen”, a fictional dialogue between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg:

We put man back at the center of the universe.

It starts with Einstein. He shows that measurement, on which the whole possibility of science depends - measurement is a human act, carried out from a specific point of view in time and space, from the one particular viewpoint of a possible observer.

Then, here in Copenhagen in those three years in the mid-twenties we discover that there is no precisely determinable objective universe. That the universe exists only as a series of approximations. Only within the limits determined by our relationship with it. Only through the understanding lodged inside the human head.

[michaelkearney]

Only through failure do you receive a sense of urgency.