Radiolaires' doodles

WoTtober + Inktober 2025

Day 1: Pact + Mustache

Because I'm a fool who cannot make up her mind I will attempt to not only do a Watercolober instead of being kind to myself, but also try to combine the WoTtober and Inktober lists.

We were melted in the furnace and the pit—    We were cast and wrought and hammered to design

— The Secret of the Machines, Rudyard Kipling

In continuation of this drawing showing Siuan's hair going white from shock after her stilling, I wanted to draw and reflect on women and violence in fiction, and letting brutality and age and survival mark their skin rather than enshrining their youth in death and memories.

What really affected me with Egwene's dreamwalking is that this is a woman who has lost a bit of herself and her connection to others due to trauma. She uses Tel'aran'rhiod to reach out to her loved ones, whether they are physically or emotionally cut off from her. They cannot see or hear her though, so Egwene is haunting them, content in seeing them at peace again. In turn, we see through the characters' dream that sleep is the space where we can find again those we lost, those who are far away from us, those we will lose, even those we can never be.

Sleep becomes the last refuge from grief. Unlike memories it is a world in its own right where the people we lost persist and where we can meet them.

I will be adding more of my drawings progressively, but If you are interested in a specific work, don't hesitate to message me so that I can upload it to the shop.

I've dreamt of you so often that it is doubtless no longer time for me to wake. I sleep standing, my body exposed to all the appearances of life and love and you, who only count today for me, I could touch your forehead and your lips less easily than any other lips and forehead.