Tag Archives: Korval’s chalet

Scout’s Progress – Chapter 27

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?