out in the grapes

Termina is broken in a box (but she shares some kind of headspace with Bolaire)

Azune casts mending on Bolaire and "the spell energy goes into something"

we never find out where the spell energy went

it certainly is never mentioned what/ if it has an effect on Bolaire

Termina jumps out of her box all kintsugied

Azune Nayar is someone whose childhood and youth were marked by adults who, faced with bad choices, made the less-worse one because they cared about him.

His parents starved themselves to give him and his sister the chance of being recruited as child soldiers by a mercenary group, because that was the only way to protect him from starvation.

Thjazi Fang saw a child abandoned by the roadside, desperately, determinedly, and implausibly claiming he could fight. Thazi Fang was in the middle of waging a rebellion against the powers of Araman. That rebellion wasn’t the best place for a child of twelve. But it was a better place than abandoned by the roadside or picked up by another mercenary group, and Thjazi cared, so Thjazi took him in and assigned him to noncombat work away from the front lines.

By 15 Azune was fighting on the front lines. (In an earlier war, the same was true of Thazi at that age.)

Thjazi’s rebellion failed. He asked his brother Hal to look out for the teenage Azune. Hal did so, treating Azune as part of his family. Hal did the same for other people who needed it. Being like family wasn’t the same as being Hal’s kid.

The tragedy of Azune isn’t that he was failed or abandoned or uncared for or used. The tragedy of Azune is that the best that people who cared about him could give him still wasn’t the same as what he needed, because being an adult doesn’t make you all-powerful. Azune’s problems weren’t created by those who loved him. They were created by the world he lives in.

Azune lived his adult life for the Torn Banner because it was the life he knew; or out of loyalty; or because they were the ones trying to change that world into something different.

He offers understanding and empathy to enemies (Julien) and strangers (Vaelus). He learned that somewhere.

🤝

and it makes the halovar’s control over and manipulations of hal’s theater even more despicably evil because that is the site of the rungjani’s suffering. it’s the site where their people were forced into worship and where they are trying to reclaim their history and a bunch of human houses blessed by the gods (who are dead and gone and who cares about them anyway), are throwing their weight around with it. the council, or the chamber of the lords advisory decided whether or not hal got this site. the halovar are deciding what history gets told there. not a single orc is involved in that decision making. and when thaisha calls this out, that it’s her people’s history and truth that yanessa’s reshaping, she’s completely dismissed, despite the fact that she is right and also her family name should give her a level of status that the halovar should respect, if not consider an equal (not that she should need that status to be listened to).