No Flame Just Void

starting with rand and the gang's arrival in Rhuidean where i'm first introducing Galad -- so unfortunately he wasn't at the Stone of Tear or one of the Aiel involved there, but is with one of his adoptive mamas Amys when everyone arrives and gets a little reunion scene with Rhuarc. also the mat 'concerning amount of knives are you sure you've got over your breakup with the cursed dagger' cauthon scene is here bc the show should have given us that.

i also put together his family tree in this. good god its worse than in canon. i wanted to put all of the eventual relationships here too but it got wayyy too messy way too quick doing that.

but hey at least in this turning of the wheel he has a support system that is far more accessible to him than in canon!

because as far as we know, the only constraints were that she couldn’t tell anyone where she going and couldn’t return to andor, so if she just. never told galad where they were going and just took him with her. technically, it would be within the bounds of gitara’s fortelling.

galad as we know him would take to be being raised to follow ji’e’toh like a fish to water. one of the main things elayne has to say about him is that his honour and drive to do the right thing is almost always at the forefront of his mind, even at the expense of himself and others. it would genuinely be perfect for him. he may not have the look of the aiel but he would certainly have the conviction of one.

plus, being able to see him and rand develop a real brotherly relationship while they are both with the aiel would make his fight against demandred in tarmon gai’don — He is not here, but his brother is! — even more compelling. the siblings he didn’t grow up with need him, and he will be loyal to them to the end because not only is that how he was raised but, aeil or damodred or trakand, that is simply who he is.

furthermore a galad who didn’t have to suffer through taringail for longer than he absolutely had to would probably have a healthier childhood. janduin would have been able to have a pseudo/second?-son he would have adored. (though i doubt tigraine would have been able to directly raise galad after becoming a maiden, she would have still been in his life. he wasn’t born when she was a maiden so there would probably be some arguing but a compromise could be made i think)

post-rhuidean reveal galad would have jumped at the idea of a free first-brother and two free second-siblings. and maybe a even near-brother in mat, who would be a little freaked out but honestly has bigger problems at the minute so kind of just goes with it. galad and aviendha would have been bickering about the best ways to teach rand about aiel culture and poor rand would just be stuck in the middle of it. galad having a little sulk about the winespring brother’s shelter and not being able to go be with his baby first-brother.

i imagine that Janduin would consider Galad his son, though him and Tigraine/Shaiel not being married would likely mean Janduin does not *call* him son. if they were to be married, it would be similar to step/adoptive son, which the Aiel do not consider to be any different to a biological son so nothing changes there. Janduin is a good dad to Galad, legally recognised or not, probably helped raise two-year-old baby galad when Tigraine went to train.

the matter of Shaiel being able to treat/keep Galad as her son while she is a maiden will be... mmmm. more difficult. he would still be her son, but maidens quite famously aren't supposed to have those. former-son is too cruel for the aiel, who only ever consider shadowspawn and darkfriends as reason enough to abandon familial bonds. spear-son implies Galad would be one of the maidens himself and that is much closer to Rand's thing. second-son exists. shield-son as the opposite of 'spear', or heart-son for the sake of sentimentality.

i think the Sha'mad Conde/Thunder Walker society suits Galad best, as a Chief's primary reinforcement in battle, particularly since he would look up to Janduin in much the same way that he looked up to and was immensely loyal to Morgase in canon. then post-rhuidean, he certainly would take up the same role at Rand's side, and maybe at Elyane's.

im gonna say that Rhuarc took him in and adopted him, once again a la Morgase in canon, post Aiel War. it works well with the Thunder Walker idea, and Rhuarc/Amys/Lian are some of the only named Taardad Aiel and i can't be arsed to come up with OCs. plus Galad gets little sisters out of it.

"Five ride forth, and four return. Above the Watchers Over the Waves shall he proclaim himself, bannered 'cross the sky in fire."

Hello @asuitablegirl ! I'm your not-so-secret-santa this year!

As requested, Moiraine and Lan before the Eyes of the World. I chose the classic scene from New Spring. It's been quite a while since I finished that book so before I started I couldn't even be sure who threw whom into a pond (ok wikia told me they both did????), but I sure as hell enjoy putting a frog on Moiraine's head. 🐸🤫😂

Thanks for organizing this event @feast-of-lights ! Happy holidays folks!

*Btw this was my first attempt using acrylic and honestly I haven't coloured in traditional medium for years, so I adjusted the original colours which I'm not super satisfied with. The original work looks like this 🤔⬇️

Amazon gave me a stunning a'dam design, so thank you. Amazon denied me of Taim's appearance in S4, so fuck you. 

and what's even funnier is that in the show version, when egwene asks and is rejected, rand is absolutely silent about it. no effort to change their minds, not at all bothered that she can't come with him. meanwhile in the book version, when mat asks and is rejected, rand, who doesn't even KNOW why mat wants to come because this is book!mat who would rather kill himself than confide in his friends about his problems, immediately goes "fuck you, my boy is COMING WITH ME and that is FINAL!!!!!"