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Mar. 8th, 2005 09:35 pmWhat we learn in childhood stays with us.
Roland is sitting in -- not his room. The other's room.
He's sitting in one of the -- overstuffed and too soft -- armchairs, hugging his knees tucked under his chin.
Alain and Cuthbert. And Susan. Kindness, here. And the Lady Morphia -- but he won't think about her.
But then there are Moiraine, Will, and Meg. And Eddie and Susannah Dean.
What we learn in childhood stays with us, and he is reminded now of an old rhyme -- only it's not the one he was raised with. There had been a storyteller from the Borderlands once, and he had told them a variation on the Turtle rhyme. Roland recites it softly to himself now:
"See the Turtle of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the earth.
His thought is slow but always kind;
He holds us all within his mind.
On his back the truth is carried,
And there are love and duty married..."
His voice trails off. Love and duty. Only now it's love versus duty, for him.
His older self is hard. They all say so -- Meg, Will, Moiraine. Bernard. Devoted to duty, and yet filled with love for his tet.
(Something in his chest tightens when he acknowledges that one day, he'll be part of a ka-tet again. A new one.)
Roland knows what he has to do.
Roland is sitting in -- not his room. The other's room.
He's sitting in one of the -- overstuffed and too soft -- armchairs, hugging his knees tucked under his chin.
Alain and Cuthbert. And Susan. Kindness, here. And the Lady Morphia -- but he won't think about her.
But then there are Moiraine, Will, and Meg. And Eddie and Susannah Dean.
What we learn in childhood stays with us, and he is reminded now of an old rhyme -- only it's not the one he was raised with. There had been a storyteller from the Borderlands once, and he had told them a variation on the Turtle rhyme. Roland recites it softly to himself now:
"See the Turtle of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the earth.
His thought is slow but always kind;
He holds us all within his mind.
On his back the truth is carried,
And there are love and duty married..."
His voice trails off. Love and duty. Only now it's love versus duty, for him.
His older self is hard. They all say so -- Meg, Will, Moiraine. Bernard. Devoted to duty, and yet filled with love for his tet.
(Something in his chest tightens when he acknowledges that one day, he'll be part of a ka-tet again. A new one.)
Roland knows what he has to do.
