[ there is a hollow part of her; it was a part that she knew was in Dany, and a part that Ahad had felt in their days of Nalawi, when they had been the thing created from the essence of their combined divinity. she had tried to fill it with so many things, none of which had left her anything more than what she had been before. ]

Ah, well ... is it what you want, or is it what's expected of you? There is disquiet that has come before you, and the road to victory is sometimes more comforting than the trials that come after.

[ she wonders, briefly, bitterly, if her failures were blessings in disguise. getting what she had wanted would have always ended the same. ]

There are always ghosts, always weight. That's what fate is. Not some pre-written end, but the course of our own path narrowed by the actions of those that came before us, and how their wants affect what we do when we step forward.