{"id":3117,"date":"2026-01-13T23:43:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T04:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/?p=3117"},"modified":"2026-01-13T23:43:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T04:43:15","slug":"chapter-35-sharp-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/?p=3117","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 35: Sharp Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote class=\"tldr\"><p>Egwene meets Elayne in the World of Dreams (<i data-path-to-node=\"6\" data-index-in-node=\"51\">Tel&#8217;aran&#8217;rhiod<\/i>) to share information, but is forcibly pulled out by the Wise One Amys. After a stern reprimand for her unauthorized dreaming, Egwene is invited to an Aiel sweat tent (sauna) with Moiraine, Aviendha, and the other Wise Ones. There, the Wise Ones order a reluctant Aviendha to stay close to Rand at all times to monitor his plans and ensure his safety.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Egwene is in the World of Dreams at the Heart of the Stone of Tear. So is Elayne, and they are basically doing the\u00a0<em>Wheel of Time<\/em> equivalent to a Zoom call. Thanks to the vagaries of dream mechanics, Elayne shows up to the meeting topless. I guess the girls are out thanks to all the titty she has been seeing aboard the <em>Wavedancer<\/em>. It got into her head, and here it is creeping back out. The moment Egwene points out her nudity, Elayne&#8217;s outfit changes to something very conservative. Amusingly, her clothing keeps morphing into different styles as the two friends catch up.<\/p>\n<p>Before they can finish, Egwene is dragged out of the dream. She has a brief, nightmarish vision of Amys chastising her for entering the World of Dreams without permission. Amys transforms into an abominable monster and prepares to devour her before&#8230; Egwene wakes up again, this time for real. Yes, Robert Jordan just couldn&#8217;t resist throwing one of those &#8220;false awakening&#8221; scenes into this book. I&#8217;m not giving him a pass on this one, because I&#8217;m pretty sure that was already cliche, even in 1992.<\/p>\n<p>Back in reality, Amys is really there, and she really is upset with Egwene for entering the World of Dreams. Amys basically says she refuses to teach someone who can&#8217;t grow the fuck up and follow instructions, so Egwene meekly agrees to comply. With that matter settled, Amys tells Egwene to follow her into the cold desert night for &#8220;women&#8217;s business.&#8221; When the pair approach a tent at the edge of the camp, Amys undresses and tells Egwene to do the same. Oh, for fuck&#8217;s sake, here we go again. Inside, Moiraine, Aviendha, and the other Wise Ones are all gathered naked around a hot stone, and Aviendha ladles water on top of it. Yes, the Aiel women have invented the sauna.<\/p>\n<p>The topic of discussion is &#8220;what to do about Rand al&#8217;Thor.&#8221; Ugh, this meeting\u00a0<em>had<\/em> to have been Moiraine&#8217;s idea. The women agree that if they&#8217;re going to help Rand survive the challenges ahead, they have to learn what he intends to do. To that end, one of the Wise Ones tasks Aviendha with &#8220;staying&#8221; close to Rand. You know&#8230; talking, listening, waving her ass around in front of his face&#8211; just the usual, right? Whatever it takes to figure out what he&#8217;s up to. Aviendha initially refuses, citing feelings of hatred for him, but Egwene coaxes her into agreement. And you know how it&#8217;s said that hate lies not so far from love.<\/p>\n<p>Lastly, do I need to say it? This chapter began\u00a0<em>and<\/em> ended with nudity. It was bookended by\u00a0<em>more porn<\/em>. I wonder, was Robert Jordan familiar with the Japanese concept of &#8220;fan service,&#8221; or was this merely the product of parallel evolution?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Egwene meets Elayne in the World of Dreams (Tel&#8217;aran&#8217;rhiod) to share information, but is forcibly pulled out by the Wise One Amys. After a stern reprimand for her unauthorized dreaming, Egwene is invited to an Aiel sweat tent (sauna) with Moiraine, Aviendha, and the other Wise Ones. There, the Wise Ones order a reluctant Aviendha [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-shadow-rising","book-the-shadow-rising"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3117"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3133,"href":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3117\/revisions\/3133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wot.jesse-carroll.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}