Biography for Calia Selle

Calia Selle

In my many years of living in this Age, I have discovered that there are only two things sweeter than the all encompassing embrace of saidar. The first is life itself. Not life as just the state of being alive, but really living. Life in a world that, for all its imperfections, could be no brighter in your eyes. Nothing is more precious than life, and few things are its equal. However, one thing that equals the pureness of life is love. Love has both the power to heal and destroy when wielded by man. Wars have been waged for no less than love and lives have been lost for the sake of love true and pure. There is no bond that love will not strengthen, and no heart that the loss of it will not break. That is a fact that I can personally attest to. Love is the Light’s greatest weapon to meet the hatred of the Dark for the Darkness cannot understand something so pure. I am getting ahead of myself though. I intend to tell this story properly; from the very beginning.

I was born in Noren M’Shar, third largest city in Seanchan, to Laran and Tyrai Selle. My parents were both so’jhin, hereditary upper servants to members of the Blood, as were their parents before them and their parents before them. So is the history of my family as far back as anyone can recall. Now, what one must understand about Seanchan culture is that, despite the fact that we were no more than property, so’jhin were respected. The average free citizen of Seanchan tread lightly around so’jhin, just as the Blood tread lightly around the so’jhin of the Empress, may she live forever, because the social structure dictated that we held a position above that of a free man. As so’jhin I held power but not freedom, yet I was very content with my life. I was happy, and I was never without a friend because I had a sister.

Custom dictates that the woman who was – is – my sister, is not to be spoken of as a person any longer. By custom so strong it might as well be law Jocelyn, my sister and twin, is less than human. She was leashed when we were just past our sixteenth nameday, but my story would be incomplete without her. The day she was collared was the same day I was handed the leash. For an entire year after that I was educated in being sul’dam and had to keep my newly shaved head covered the entire time. Now it seems insignificant, but it was on of the things I always remembered about that time. Hair was an outward mark of rank; so’jhin wore half their head shaved completely as a mark of their position in society. A sul’dam was not so’jhin so my head had to be shaved of all the glossy black hair that I so loved. Of course this meant I had to cover my new baldness because only members of the Imperial family had their heads completely shaved. An odd custom if there ever was on; at least looking back now it seems so because then it was a very important part of life.

In that year I was first educated in the cursed power of the damane because one cannot control what they do not understand. To understand cursed saidar was to understand the damane. The second part of my training was learning to handle a damane. It wasn’t a difficult task once you understood the use of an a’dam. It was in this same year that Jocelyn, who had always been too stubborn for her own good, was broken and reshaped into the perfect damane. After that she was handed over to me to learn to really use her power. I feel horrible now that I look back on what I did, and I’m certainly not proud of my actions from back then. I no longer so Jocelyn as my sister though, I saw her as dirt beneath my boots. She was damane, no better than a dog. I promptly renamed her Juri after a kitten we had had as children. After all, Jocelyn was no proper name for a damane.

Four years later, five years after when it was found that I could and would be sul’dam, Jocelyn and I were both sent with the Corenne at the tender age of twenty-one. I thought I knew everything at that point and Jocelyn was no longer the girl I had grown up with; she might as well have been a body with no soul. I quickly found out the hard way that the grand return of the descendents of Artur Hawking’s armies was not as glorious as it was supposed to be though. It began with months on a wretched ship to cross the Aryth Ocean and ended on the continent of our ancestor’s birth where they allowed the unthinkable. Marath’damane were allowed to run free and endanger not only themselves but everyone around them as well. Not only that, but it seemed these Aes Sedai, as they called themselves, held power here. I, of course, found it utterly despicable! Who would have ever had the stupidity to let those who could channel saidar run free?

I became obsessed with these marath’damane who fashioned themselves better than all others. They put themselves on pedestals to make themselves equal to the Creator himself. I quickly got myself and Jocelyn, the damane of my choice as she was my twin after all, assigned a mission to learn as much about those who called themselves Aes Sedai as was possible for the assistance to the Return. I thought I was invincible; no marath’damane could stop me from gaining information to complete my mission. If I was successful I might even stand a chance of someday being made a der’sul’dam. It would be a truly high honor. My confidence in my own infallibility was my downfall though. Eight months into my mission, a year after I had first arrived in this strange land, I made a grievous mistake. I allowed one of the pitiful Aes Sedai to capture both Jocelyn and I and drag us to their home base. The stupid marath’damane believed that I could touch the filthy saidar as well. With proper training, of course. In less than a day I was enrolled as a novice in the White Tower.

The rest… Well, the rest is a tale for another time.