In which several people ask, reluctantly, “Now what?”
I’ve said this before, in the comments under Chapter 39 of Local Custom, but I might as well say it again so it appears in a post: I don’t believe that lifemating works on the basis of there being a pair of people predestined to join together. (Which is a relief, because it’s a pretty horrifying idea, as Daav suggests here: what if something happens to one half of the match before they meet, and the other is left forever incomplete?) Every time we see a lifemate bond form in this series, it’s a consequence, not a cause, something that happens to a pair of people who have already joined together in other ways. It makes sense that some people can’t form a lifemate bond at all, and that those can can’t do it with just anybody, but I don’t believe it’s as reductive as each person having one and only one possible partner.
Here’s an interesting sentence: “Jelaza Kazone had not spoken and he wished, with everything in him, to be at Binjali’s.” Is it that the Tree did manage to suggest an idea to Daav without him realising, or is it that the Tree didn’t speak because it knew that he was already, on his own initiative and by his own desire, going to do what it would have told him to do?
“Every time we see a lifemate bond form in this series, it’s a consequence, not a cause, something that happens to a pair of people who have already joined together in other ways.”
Since this is a reread, I assume no SPOILERS notice needs to be posted.
Well, doesn’t this kind of get shot down at the end, where we see that there was something in her from the beginning, that it was specifically related to something in Da’av, and that it was damaged by the abuse she suffered in her marriage?
My interpretation of that is that the “something in her from the beginning” was the potential to form a lifemate bond, but that it wasn’t necessarily a bond with any particular person; had her life taken a different course, she might have met different people and formed a bond with one of them instead.
The Healer does say that the lifemate area in Aelliana’s pattern incorporates part of Daav’s pattern, but that’s an observation made after the bond between Aelliana and Daav has already begun to form. It doesn’t prove that Daav’s pattern was always a part of Aelliana’s.
I’ve always assumed that the lifemate bond (and the ability to form one) was a manifestation of the genetic heritage of the dramliza. In other words, if you’ve got a lifemate, you’ve got dramliz genes from somewhere!
Yes, I think it’s pretty clear that the lifemate bond is descended from the ability the dramliz had in Crystal Dragon. If I’ve never said so, I must have assumed it was obvious enough not to need pointing out.