That was a sentiment Sahel could never argue. She could make her way in the world however she wanted, but somewhere in all her wanderings she had realized that the only place she could really call home was Tar Valon. More specifically, the White Tower. Here she had friends she would gladly die for, friends who had risked their lives for her sake. And she had the only family she had ever actually shared blood with, a half-sister in Alya Sedai. She had a lifetime of experiences involving the White Tower and no matter what, she had always returned. Returned to the place where here worst nightmares had come true. Losing the ones she had loved, losing her own sense of self. Losing Saidar.

But what were all of those memories really worth? They were just another way of keeping track of the choices she had made. She was the result of all those twists and turns and forks in the road. They had brought her to who she was.

"...too young to die!" The voice was a stranger's. "She should never have been allowed..."

"That has never stopped them before." The voice was familiar, and filled with a weariness and sorrow that Sahel's clouded senses recognized but did not flag as important.

"She should have been supervised..."

"She was an Accepted, Child. Even if we had been able to supervise her all the time, she still might have come to this pass."

"But she is so young!"

"Do you know this girl's story, Liren?" There was a pause. "She came here from the keep of a Dreadlord in Illian when she was sixteen. She had been his slave. Light knows what horrors she faced. She's run away from the Tower twice already, and she led an expedition to find a missing Novice, and destroy the same Dreadlord that had terrorized her childhood. She has never been young, not like those others are young. She never played pranks. I daresay she is older than you are, Liren, and not just in experience." A gentle hand brushed Sahel's hair back from her face. She did not give any indication she felt it. Truthfully, she hadn't. Nor had she felt the bed beneath her, or the blankets over her body. "She looks so young like this. But she's nearly thirty years old. Can you say as much, Accepted?"

"...No, Aes Sedai."

"I thought not. As well, until you have faced what she now faces, you will speak of your thoughts and feelings to no one."

"...Yes, Aes Sedai." The footsteps of the erring accepted retreated.

"Come back to us, Sahel." Said the voice that had defended her. The hand brushed her hair back from her face again, and then was gone.

So many years later, that voice still echoed in her mind. Come back to us.

Perhaps that was why she had chosen to fight her way to life. To fight her way away from death and to take her first hesitant steps into the land of the living. Without Saidar she had no reason to live for herself. She could no longer goad herself forward on dreams and visions of her own future glory. All of that was gone, lost forever in the swirling mist that had obscured all life from her senses. She had suddenly realized her own weaknesses, and had been faced with a lack which she could never fill on dreams.

She had spent many months on the road. When she could find a task, she would stop to help the farmer or the inkeeper or merchant that asked it of her. That was when she had learned a new way of life. One that didn't include her past dreams. She was young enough, and lithe, agile, and had developed her strength while working on various farms across the continent. What little excess she had gained in the tower had melted away under near-starvation, and had not come back due to hard work tha kept her always busy.

But she had come to realize that she was not meant for a life of farming. True, she loved working the earth, but whenever she had begun to think of settling, and perhaps buying a farm of her own, those few words would slip into her mind.

Come back to us.

She had not taken the most direct route. She hadn't even truly decided if she would go back to Tar Valon and the White Tower. But without asking her approval, her feet carried her unerringly to the gates of the White Tower, where she had stood staring up at the white spire that seemed to descend from the heavens and only touch lightly upon the earth.

Come back to us.

She had resisted, had put it off. And ultimately, she had relented. She had entered the gates of the White Tower, and walked without hesitation to the office of the Master of Arms. She had once again signed her life away to the Tower. But more than that. She had signed her life away to the service, to the protection, of another human being. Of an Aes Sedai, whose life and breath were Saidar, and whose frailty Sahel could understand with an intimacy that no other warder could express. It only took a moment to lose everything that had taken years to build.

"I, too, never belonged. Here, I DO belong. When I was lost, someone asked me to come back. I spent years in darkness, those words drifting through my mind. When I finally was strong enough to face my life, I didn't think I could. I didn't think I could find something worthwhile. Some reason to keep living. What had I but a broken shell of what I was? Saidar had kept me alive before, without that...what had I to live for?" Sahel's words were steady, the rhythmic cadence of memory. "There was something to live for. There were people who loved me, people that I loved. I could not just leave them behind. They would claim understanding, and yet not be able to grasp what had taken me from them. Now...my life is sworn to protect the Aes Sedai. I will lay my life down to protect those whose frailty is masked behind Saidar, masked behind ageless faces and chill voices. I know what it is to lose that which is their life. No one should ever have to go through that again."

Voicing what had become her misson statement gave it power, and that power rippled down her spine as goosebumps appeared on her skin. She had a purpose.