Happy Winternight! Pretty appropriate seeing how our first day of spring was Sunday and the skies are still gray.

So if you’re ever considering re-reading The Wheel of Time, I recommend the first 6 chapters. I definitely see the allure; they are dense with foreshadowing. Basically every other sentence. It’s awe inspiring how much of the characters is there from the get-go. Mat’s mischievous, Perrin’s frowny, and Rand’s worried even though his only problems are wolves, strangers, and Egwene.

As for the seasonal parallels, on March 23rd, 2016 it’s still too cold and everyone’s complaining about it. We didn’t have as rough of a winter as the folk from Emond’s Field, but I had another good laugh at that consistent culture that revolves around complaining about it.

I had a few ideas of tallies I should try and keep throughout the story. I considered odd feminine gestures, animal analogies, but finally settled on prose words new to my vocabulary. Today we had quilted, harrumphed, quicksilver (adj.), belied, declaimed, and scudded. Maybe I can test some of those out here.

~~ Eye of the World: Chapters 1-6 ~~

Regular boy Rand al’Thor and his nothing special father Tam travel from their farm to the coziest village in the world, Emond’s Field, delivering cider for the holiday. This Bel Tine the stars have aligned so they have an annual peddler, decennial fireworks, a rare gleeman, and once-in-a-lifetime strangers, Moraine and Lan. The former deflects questions like she’s running a presidential campaign and the latter totally looks like a Warder but they’re just in stories, right?

Rand encounters all the colorful townsfolk including his besties: the prankster Mat and the somber blacksmith apprentice, Perrin. The peddler, Padan Fain, brings news of a False Dragon who can use the One Power which Mat is super excited about. Then Rand gets a scolding from the Wisdom Nynaeve and talks with Egwene the girl whom he is obsessed with feeling nervous about.

Thom the Gleeman shows off and the Village Council is concerned about the black-hooded stranger many of the boys have seen. Following this, Tam takes Rand back to the farm where he puts on a sword that’s too nice for him to own before Trollocs, monsters from bedside stories, attack.

His father is slashed resulting in a too-severe fever and Rand luckily skewers the last Trolloc. He cobbles together a litter and drags his father back to Emond’s Field. Meanwhile his da hallucinates and like a good farmer but bad father, sows seeds of doubt regarding Rand’s birth.