rand and mat are like... if childhood best friends had unprocessed romantic feelings for one another and also chose just to simply avoid it because it’s convenient for them since rand is the king of repression and mat hates processing his feelings and prefers to keep running.
Only three nights before, she had married Bael, in a ceremony that made her his wife and first-sister to his other wife, Dorindha. That part had been just as important as the marriage, apparently;
yeah, sentences like this make me think RJ really wanted to write poly relationships but was too enamoured with his kinks and obsessed with heterosexual relationships to do so. I’m fascinated, though, by his choice to make women choose other women as the most important people in their lives over even their love interests - min is the rare exception to this rule.
“Well, just you remember it. It was not your fault.” She heeled Mist on, and began talking to Aviendha before she was out of earshot. “I am glad he is taking it so well. He has the habit of feeling guilty over things he cannot control.”
once again, egwene Gets rand! and she cares so much! people who dislike egwene are fully delusional and probably base their dislike for her off of her characterisation in sanderson’s books. again, I feel the need to mention that egwene only ever admonishes rand in private in RJ’s books - and not even in front of moiraine! - but publicly insults him in front of world leaders in the sanderson books. plus rand undermines egwene’s authority and makes her look powerless in book 13 by walking into the white tower and demanding promises without offering any explanations. lol, sanderson has a tendency to write from a place of “Does this sound cool?” rather than “Is this a politically or logically sound action?”
ohhh and while we’re still on the topic of sanderson and bad characterisations and egwene telling rand that rand that it wasn’t his fault that the shaido ravaged Taien - rand makes a fucking point about trying to save as many people as he can! and blames himself for not achieving everything he sets his mind to in order to save people! part of the reason his mental health worsens as the books progress is because he can’t protect everybody around him despite trying his best to do so - this holds true at least up to book 11, if not book 12, and nothing really happens in book 12 to warrant a change on that note. so the fact that sanderson makes rand monologue something stupid about how he’d stopped caring for the people around him during his dragonmount epiphany infuriates me to no end. I just generally hate any of the new character flaws he introduces for all the characters. who asked him to do that 😵💫
[Rand to Aviendha] “Did you ever for one minute think that it could have bitten you?” he said. “Did you ever think of using the Power instead of a bloody belt knife? Why didn’t you kiss it first? You had to be close enough.”
they’re both so funny. yeah, avi and rand are also a similar kind of stupid, lol.
avi feeding rand the meat of a poisonous snake she killed is unironically the height of romance actually. and rand doesn’t complain, so I’m proud of him. anyway, I love her. have I mentioned that I love avi?
Aviendha sniffed at him in perfect imitation of Egwene. Those two women were definitely spending too much time together.
aw, avi is copying egwene’s mannerisms! back in chapter 5 she was also appreciating egwene and telling her that she was very good at everything she did <3 in chapter 22, we also have egwene stepping in to calm her down after rand yells at avi for nearly hurting him in the process of trying to kill a draghkar.
Aviendha appeared disappointed that he did not spit the stew out in disgust, though sometimes it was difficult to tell what she was feeling. At times she seemed to take great pleasure in discomfiting him.
sort of mat vibes from this, again! I think avi and mat could have been best friends if they’d tried. I’m honestly kind of shocked that we don’t see more of mat and the maidens being buddies except when he’s trying to catch their interest - because men and women can’t be friends, of course.
“You are thinking of Mat Cauthon?” She actually giggled. “Sometimes, a man gives up the spear for a Maiden.”
once again, weird mat gender moments! only maidens giving up the spear is really a thing in the books.
… he dreamed a dream of Min and Elayne helping him throw Aviendha, wearing nothing but that necklace, over his shoulder, while she beat him over the head with a wreath of segade blossoms.
wearing nothing but the necklace EGWENE gave avi? rand doesn’t know that egwene gave it but. anyway. more rand/egwene soulmatism, I guess.
Nothing after Artur Paendrag Tanreall, and nothing before Maecine of Eharon.
hello! mat’s memories have a specific limit apparently. but don’t the finn grant him memories of everybody who’s ever entered the redstone doorway? a bunch of rulers from mayene were using it pretty recently, I think? I need to look up the wiki later.
[Mat] He supposed that he would marry someday, settle down. That was what you did. A woman, a house, a family. Shackled to one spot for the rest of his life.
this is definitely another one of those mat things that are usually discussed in reference to female characters more often. and again, I vibe with the idea of him being allowed to be single - I think he has a lot of romantic tension with practically every character he interacts with, but I personally really relate to him saying he’s not interested in marriage. plus he just sounds so despondent about the prospect? I’m sad! very mat is repressed vibes too, because he specifically makes a note to mention disliking the thought of the two rivers having a lot of expectations about marriage, family etc.
“You are not made for spits, but for great honor, I think,” Melindhra said softly.
lol, melindhra and lanfear both try to get mat to step out of rand’s shadow and reach for honour/glory! and they both fail! I love mat. your faves want what mat has with rand - the narrative keeps goading him to become demandred 2.0 but mat consistently refuses to do so and manages to defy the narrative and some sort of potentially darker fate at least in that little way even if the prophecies mostly knock him down a bunch in the books.
It was being near Rand that got Mat into these things. All he wanted from life was some good wine, a game of dice, and a pretty girl or three.
hello??? three girls?? put him in rand’s polycule! again, mat is very repressed and in denial about his feelings.
once again poly vibes from melaine, dorindha and bael! the wise ones are betting on whether melaine will check on dorindha or bael first after the shadowspawn attack on the camp.
rand is wondering why moiraine didn’t come to find him immediately after the alarms went off - I’m guessing it’s because she saw a future in the rhuidean ter’angreal that said it wouldn’t be a good thing to do so.
rand is also showing a lot of restraint and being courteous! he’s not abusing the power he has over moiraine now - he briefly considers forcing her to tell him why she didn’t appear immediately but decides he won’t do something like that to somebody trying to help him. I think this is the section where rand is learning to find a balance - he’s come into a lot of power and is consciously preventing himself from abusing it.
This time he dreamed of Aviendha hurling fire, only she was not hurling it at a Draghkar, and Sammael was sitting at her side, laughing.
rand has the weirdest dreams about aviendha. what am I supposed to make of this.
I can’t shake off the feeling that avi would enjoy femininity if not for the way the wise ones sort of force her to adopt it? she genuinely enjoys exploring wearing wetlander clothes when she and elayne try to teach one another other about their respective customs. I just really dislike the line where sorilea tells avi that she has hips made for making babies - leave her alone. as a concept, I love the wise ones but I’m also irritated by their matchmaking and babymaking agenda.
avi and rand also do have a bunch in common - they’re forcibly expected to channel and are pushed into radically different lives from the ones they’ve been leading prior to rhuidean/rand finding out that he’s the dragon reborn.
[Egwene about Rand announcing he’ll hang chiefs who violate his rules about not hurting Cairhienin] Justice would do him no good if he found the others [the chiefs] turning against him as well as the Shaido.
see! she gets him!
He could waste an hour being soothed by the flow of a river.
Rand is so right.
When he doesn’t see familiar faces amongst the maidens who usually guard him, rand is constantly asking other maidens if they’re sick - it happened with joinde in rhuidean, and he’s now once again asking after adelin and enaila! I love this relationship sooo much.
Sitting on the stone rail of the wide flat bridge in the heart of the town,
area man sits weird again!
Elayne would have known what taxes were used for; it had certainly been more fun taking advice from her than from Moiraine.
I’m. I guess I agree about the principle of the thing I suppose, lol 😭
edit: help, this is also the book where we learn that two rivers folk are tax evaders! RJ is fully clowning on rand here, lol.
[Rand to Aviendha] “Do you have any idea how I will miss hearing you breathe at night?”
romance <3
He watched Asmodean from the corner of his eye, but the man only sat there, looking slightly ill. He could not know whether Rand meant to stuff that spear down his throat.
do I even need to say it?
ah, yeah, I did remember a weirdly specific fact correctly! avi accidentally taught rand the lesson of ~being hard~ when she told him he should have been harsher with the seanchan they dealt with. his demeanour completely shifts after that one exchange and he becomes noticeably colder - he’s a lot harsher with asmodean after this. insert tumblr post *having plot relevant sex with my thematically appropriate wife* (quite literally!)
And I’m only skimming chapter 41 but… there is so much going on in this quote. so much:
[Rand] He thought he could have been friends with any of the four, but especially Mangin, who had a sense of humor much like Mat’s. If he had no time to study women, he certainly had no time for making new friends. Little time for old friends, for that matter. Mat worried him.
I mentioned that a lot of mat’s personality was moulded as a direct consequence of being rand’s friend, but this is a lot! 1. rand loves mat’s sense of humour 2. rand makes friends based on that blueprint! hello, I’m crying. what does it MEAN that rand hangs mangin in LOC? is there some hidden symbolism there about how he’s left his boyhood behind? the hanging parallels are making me insane. does it imply that rand accidentally forces mat through a traumatic arc from books 7-9 the same way he can’t help but kill mangin for violating one of his laws? I will not be normal about this. local girl has been found dead on the streets!!!!!!!!
(I honestly skimmed everything from chapter 30 onward, I think, so there really was not much to say in this post - I never intended to really read much past rand arriving at eianrod, at most)
But I’ve officially finished rereading the parts I wanted to! I’d fully forgotten how the characters sounded in my head and I mostly wanted to go back and immerse myself in RJ’s writing style because I was not in a happy place after reading sanderson’s style in AMOL (literally to the point where I was wondering if I actually liked reading the series, lol). I think I managed to like TGS way better than I did the other sequels - but it kind of feels like TGS might have still been a mostly enjoyable read because he was piggybacking off of iconic plotlines that RJ had already set up and left notes for - but I’m consciously going to shut up about AMOL now. I only accept book 12 as canon at most anyway, lol, idk why I waste my energy yelling about the last two books at this point.
This covers chapters 6, 7 & 20 mostly, and in a very small measure chapter 5, too:
I lightly skimmed the egwene pov - I definitely remember why I got such gay vibes from her and avi.
also I was definitely not misremembering why I enjoyed the series so much for all its flaws - I really didn’t vibe at all with sanderson’s writing style and his priorities - which are on the opposite spectrum of RJ’s priorities (and my priorities!). every dialogue exchange is purposeful and pulls its weight with characterisation and character development; RJ also manages to do a shit ton of worldbuilding in every other passage, and does such a great job of immersing you in the setting and the culture he’s currently writing about. I really missed his writing style - but the joy the books brought definitely wavered while I was reading CoT, I think, because you could tell that the series was starting to really drag at that point. I was thinking of rereading the series only up to book 8* next year, maybe, but I’ll probably try to extend it up to book 11 because I don’t remember those last 2 books very well.
*in another post I said I’d advice people to stop reading the series at book 12 - but that’s still a very long way to go so I think book 8 feels like the better stopping point since it’s midway through the series. I mostly say that because it ends on a high point for every character except mat, but mat doesn’t have any high points after book 8 until book 9/11 anyway. rand understandably faces the consequences for ignoring the black tower at the end of the book and I feel kind of bad about negating his accomplishment at the ending of book 9, but getting into book 9 would mean immersing yourself in new plot angles for elayne, egwene (off-screen) and mat. (book 7 is also a valid cutting off point but TPOD is short, so. you could as well read it anyway, tbh.)
anyway. back to the book.
Striding to the center of the room, he planted himself atop the mosaic there, the ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai, ten feet across. It was an apt place. “Under this sign will he conquer.” That was what the Prophecy of Rhuidean said of him. He stood straddling the sinuous dividing line, one boot on the black teardrop that was now called the Dragon’s Fang and used to represent evil, the other on the white now called the Flame of Tar Valon. Some men said it stood for the Light. An appropriate place to meet this attack, between Light and darkness.
rand fully has a thing for theatre and performance and silly little symbolisms that matter to him alone - we also see it when he picks jeade’en’s name, puts callandor back in the stone of tear, starts carrying around the seanchan spear to remind himself of the threat they pose, etc. his middle name is drama, and I love it that he chooses to do some of these things purely for himself. it’s such an interesting character thing. he’s also a nerd (affectionate).
darkhounds are as big as ponies???
oh he’s channeled balefire before? I’ve forgotten the details, but I somehow thought he first used the weave in TFOH - was it in TSR/TDR then? Hm, I don’t think so - I’m inclined to believe it was lews therin’s memory making him misremember stuff because I remember rand using balefire and its consequence and benefits being a major theme in TFOH.
from rand’s POV there’s definitely a lot more affection and concern for mat than it seemed like there was in mat’s POV! he also seems a lot more boyish than he did from mat’s perspective, obviously - and once again I’m delighted by how RJ does POVs so well. the problem is, rand is growing colder & more distant and mat is increasingly finding it difficult to parse out his friend in the midst of everything - mat’s question to rand, constantly, in this book is, “Won’t you stop me from leaving? Won’t you ask me to stay? Will you just be sorry to see me go and not do anything about it?” and rand’s answer is, “I want you to have a chance at not being trapped by fate like I am so I’m not going to stop you from doing what you want.” He doesn’t realise just how subtle and reserved mat is with his affections. I think mat is generally very embarrassed by the thought of being affectionate with people he actually really cares for - but he doesn’t mind being easygoing with random strangers - and I relate to that, lol. I get it. But rand has very demi vibes for a reason - he needs people to be more communicative because he never makes the first move + he also has that “I’m the dragon reborn and it’s better for everyone if they don’t want to be friends with me even if I’ll miss them” thing going on.
I was also maybe wrong about rand seeming cold and distant in mat’s POV because he probably mostly sees the leader in him, the more I think about it. I think rand seems cold because he’s consciously choosing to front an emotionless part of him even in front of mat. the same thing happened with moiraine and egwene - and I’m honestly blown away by the number of times we see rand try to maintain an expressionless face/remain cool/look calm and composed/try to give away as few emotions as a rock etc. it’s a lot!
Not only a friend. Another ta’veren, and perhaps a key to victory in Tarmon Gai’don; anyone who wanted to strike at Rand had reason to strike at Mat, as well. But Mat always tried to deny both things.
so…. yeahhh. the loops and holes mat jumps through to hide his personality and feelings really does a number on the people around him.
“You watch your tongue with me,” Moiraine told Mat, getting up, “or I will find Nynaeve and put her in charge of you.” But her heart was not in it; she could have been talking in her sleep. She was trying not to stare at the foxhead as Mat hung it back around his neck. “You will need rest,” she said absently. “Stay in bed tomorrow, if you feel like it.”
Mom! antagonistic mom-son relationship! also further confirmation that moiraine likes nynaeve even if the latter dislikes her - I just really hated nynaeve’s weirdness around lan and her trying to get him to choose between her and moiraine while reading the books? a platonic warder relationship shouldn’t count as competition with a romantic relationship. I’ll see how I feel when I reread those stuff next year - as much as I love the wondergirls, I think egwene’s character suffered because of her romance-heavy plot & nynaeve’s hate of moiraine seemed to descend into caricature levels of weird in the first few books. I’m not sure how RJ went from writing such a great platonic relationship between moiraine and lan to feeling the need to insist that romantic relationships should necessarily involve warder bonds.
rand asks the maidens to give mat some space and also admonishes them about essentially not respecting their boundaries - fair! but also he’s fully referring to how the baby him indirectly. let them baby you, rand.
“Maybe I’ll ask if I can borrow it from him.” He turned away from her. There was still one he had to check on, though one way or another the urgency was gone; the Darkhounds would have done what they intended by now.
I didn’t get it then, and I don’t get it now - if I were rand I’d be anxious to figure out if the only person capable of teaching me to channel was dead! maybe the logic here is that rand doesn’t mind if one of the forsaken dies, but also… this passage just goes such a long way in showing us rand’s true priorities - he really, really cares for mat. I miss the road trip and I hate that I didn’t finish rereading it before I stop my teotw reread.
(like obviously, a best friend is always a greater priority than a useful enemy, but that shouldn’t have stopped him from immediately checking on asmodean anyway)
[Moiraine to Rand] “I have given my entire life to the search for you, to find you and help you.”
Yeah, this was the line that fucked me up while reading the books! moiraine really did sell her life away to finding and guiding the dragon reborn, at great personal risk. in the end, siuan paid the price for their scheming. plus moiraine didn’t hesitate at all to sacrifice herself to kill lanfear to save rand even if she had good reason to suspect that 1. he was consorting with at least one of the forsaken behind her back 2. he was starting to go mad. at the end of the day, for all her complaints, I think she trusts his heart and for him to do the right thing.
this is unrelated but moiraine is the one who approves of balefire, rand using asmodean as a teacher and generally utilising questionable methods of achieving your goals that would horrify other aes sedai - cadsuane is notably stuck up about such stuff, and therefore, in my view, doesn’t make a good advisor, tbh. I think RJ even knew that - I don’t get what he was trying to do when he was criticising how old-fashioned she was while simultaneously worshipping the ground she walked on.
The White Tower forbids us even to learn it. In the War of Power, the Forsaken and the Shadowsworn themselves used it only reluctantly.
#ReasonsIHateAMOL - the forsaken are tossing around balefire everywhere for some reason! what the fuck. This is why I don’t vibe with egwene’s death or that stupid flame of tar valon weave - it’s lacking any sort of creativity or nuance and tears up established canon.
“That sounds just fine to me,” he told her. “Mat’s alive because of it.”
it means SO much to me that rand listens to moiraine list out all the reasons why balefire is dangerous and then follows it up with that response.
rand makes sure to protect mat here - he makes moiraine promise he won’t take mat’s ter’angreal away. I really like that, but I also think RJ sometimes went too far with making aes sedai so territorial about ter’angreal to the point where they act like they naturally have a claim over another person’s belongings? anyway.
Moving close to the bead curtain, he peered through the doorway. Moonshadows filled the room, but one of them was Asmodean, tossing in his blankets. Wrapped in the Void, Rand could hear his heartbeat, smell the sweat of troubled dreams.
this is what I meant about their relationship being so sensual - there’s something so illicit about the whole thing. rand visits him in the night, looks at him through a curtain, and notes that he’s sweating and having troubled dreams! these are all very intimate details to note about another person. somebody really needed to introduce him to the concept of queerness.
The male figure could link him to a huge replica of itself, the most powerful male sa’angreal ever made, even if he were on the other side of the Aryth Ocean from it. It had only been finished after the Dark One’s prison was resealed—How do I know that?—and hidden before any of the male Aes Sedai going mad could find it. The female figure could do the same for a woman, joining her to the female equivalent of the great statue he hoped was still almost completely buried in Cairhien.
huh, the strike at shayol ghul said that the access keys were located in a territory controlled by one of the forsaken at one point during the war and couldn’t be retrieved? Oh! and the wiki says that these are just two access keys among several others and that egwene discovered a damaged one in tanchico when she went dreamwalking! obsessed. maybe the access keys were unfinished at that point? or rj maybe forgot what he’d written, lol.
rand is still thinking of impractical things like healing death with sa’angreal. some arrogance, there, maybe, but at its heart it’s a very pure kind of desire. he does get to reverse death at the end of the book though - mat and avi with balefire! - I suppose rj manages to wrap up that particular plot point by giving him a workaround for healing death. I love it.
I love that rand admits that he can’t be trusted with the vast amount of power various sa’angreal grant him. I love him, and I love egwene for trying to poke at the boundaries of what’s considered abuse of power and what is not - they’re both such fascinating characters to read about. they’ve both come into power having never expected such a thing, grapple with what it means to be responsible for so many people, and slowly come to realise that even if it’s a burden, it allows them to do good things.
also as a random thought, elayne haters don’t deserve rand because rand would hate them for hating elayne. and so would mat, actually.
I just remembered how annoying lanfear could be with her nonsense about loving lews therin. I love the idea of one of the forsaken being a very close friend/lover/companion of lews therin’s and having complex feelings about killing and/or allying with rand but lanfear was not it.
anyway, it didn’t make sense to me in the beginning that she would try to ally with rand when she knew he’d potentially betray her (although right now, I do think it’s very stupid of lanfear to believe that rand is allied with her and dreams of achieving power with her when he hasn’t ever done anything to prove he’d like that) but I think it’s a good idea that she’s a renegade and doesn’t really care about the dark one - she did create the bore. of course she’d try to replace him.
He dreams of you triumphing over the Great Lord and putting him up beside you on high.
yeah, even asmodean is weirdly obsessed with rand!
[Rand] He pushed away a sudden memory of this woman [Lanfear] in his arms, both of them young and just learning what they could do with the Power.
help, did lanfear and lews therin use the one power during sex? is that what this is implying?
sex jokes aside rand is struggling SO hard with lews therin’s memories. I didn’t remember it being this bad. I think him sort of growing used to lews therin later is what makes this really go hard? his only safe space is his head - he had to eventually ward his dreams to keep the wise ones out - so the fact that he isn’t allowed even that to himself is very tragic! in general, rand is just continuously having his body violated in several different ways. and because I can’t help paralleling rand and egwene, it’s interesting how loss of agency marks such a major point in both their arcs - it’s being made a damane for egwene, and dumai’s wells for rand. it doesn’t make them stronger people, and it leads them to commit questionable acts sometimes and act irrationally but that’s okay. that’s how trauma works. unfortunately, rand learns zero coping mechanisms while egwene has a healthier arc because of her training sequence with the wise ones.
speaking of rand and egwene, I don’t know exactly what I feel about the relationship they have. I didn’t see it before, but I do understand why people were saying they’re like siblings - and I don’t know if I ship them exactly (I mean, it could have been incredibly romantic if they’d sort of fallen apart and fallen in love again at the end of everything - I think that idea just really stuck with me while I was still reading the early books - egwene choosing rand over the aes sedai in the early TGH chapters made me very weepy) but a sort of soulmate bond that transcends romance and friendship is something I probably vibe more with. the latra/egwene parallels have me in a chokehold - and now that I think of it… it would’ve been thematically such a great thing if egwene had joined rand in shayol ghul? or if she’d at least broken the seals herself? insert obligatory AMOL hate post, I guess. I’ve read very few books in my life that managed to make me as angry as it did - I think it even manages to beat ACOSF for the Bad Books title (I think I made 160 posts when I was live-blogging it and had zero complimentary things to say about it).
I don’t get criticisms about mat struggling to come to terms with rand’s ability to channel? even egwene has a very hard time reconciling the two. it’s natural and expected - it’s a common legend and belief in the westlands that TDR and male channelers are people you should fear! the belief is as instinctual as the need to breathe. how can RJ say it more blatantly than with this line:
Growing up, she had been taught that only the Dark One was more to be feared than a man who could channel.
moiraine is just *obligatory siuan mention* whenever we get her POVs. she is so gay.
on a cliff at jangai pass there seems to be a symbol of a snake curled around a staff carved onto it - this brings to mind the rod of asclepius? I don’t know if it’s not meant to be analysed a lot - I don’t think it is. but on the other side of the pass there’s a dock and a couple of ships. this makes me wonder if it was a hospital? would a hospital from the age of legend use the same sort of symbols used in the first age? if not a hospital, I’d guess that it’s some outpost of sorts. rand is guessing that the waste could have been under the ocean before.
there was a ‘silk path’ from shara to taien! yeah, I get why I thought shara was an asia analogue even silks and elephants aside. I can’t say anything about how race was handled - we don’t nearly see enough of the sharans to pass judgement on RJ’s handling of them, and from what I recall they’re not really any better or worse than the seanchan. the seanchan are probably slightly worse because of the slavery culture they have going on, but shara also treats its channelers like animals to be put in a pen so, uh. they also have this weird practice of killing their rulers every cycle or something too? anyway, I don’t like that vibe. I also don’t like the vibe of “asian culture analogue being brainwashed by a forsaken so that he can use them as fodder to fight alongside literal monsters against the side of the Light”. I blame that on sanderson, though - I think he didn’t think through the implications of how he introduced and handled sharans. I still wouldn’t have been opposed to seeing more of them if we’d had characters like Egeanin (and I did kind of like that one sharan guy we met in KoD).
rand is now reminding himself of the prophecy that says he’d conquer under the ancient sign of the aes sedai and is making asmodean carry it. I love it when he purposely tries to make prophecies work in his favour, and I love all of RJ’s interesting takes on prophecy - I need to find that post I’d compiled and rb it again. I think I last updated it with rand asking cadsuane if the pattern would kill her if he willed it in book 12 - not exactly prophecy, but prophecy adjacent and that counts to me.
rand is being very protective of egwene and avi right now, as of chapter 20.
How long now had he been doing what was necessary instead of what was right? In a fair world, they would be one and the same. That made him laugh, a hoarse wheeze. He was far from the village boy he had been, but sometimes that boy sneaked up on him.
Nothing to note about this, really, but I remember reading and rereading this specific passage when I first read TFOH - I think it definitely makes a point of highlighting how rand’s motivations work in the latter half of the series, especially maybe his choice to treat with the seanchan instead of defeating them on the battlefield because he needs their support in defeating the dark one.
as a parting note, I think mat should stop sleeping in his fine clothes. it sounds very uncomfortable.
Rand asking asmodean to play the saddest song he knew after mat told him he'd be leaving before the battle against the shaido. Why don't you just run out and kiss him god.
