The Broken Hourglass Weekly Update
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 743
Halima is gone, leaving tomorrow for Mal Nassrin, wherever that is. Never to return? I doubt that. The same easily-given affection and near-depthless capacity for sentiment which urges her to her birth family will bring her back to us in time. Probably far less than is average for those on Tour.
They all have it difficult, these young men and women. No matter what they recall, or what word their correspondences bring from the mainland, they invariably have an impossible, distorted view of what Tour means for them. Halima, I suspect, will find it more trying than most. She will seek anyone and everyone who was a part of her life before her training here, and whether they find her over- or underwhelming, they will not, and cannot, be what she expected. And oh, how Halima hates unmet expectations, most of all her own failure to meet them. As many years as she has worked under my tutelage, it never ceases to amaze me how she can project such a calm air of rationality one moment and the next, explode, a ball of nerves and emotion. As if, unsure what the best response to a given problem would be, she decides to try them all, to show how earnestly engaged she is in the situation.
