Nynaeve

My name is Nynaeve al'Meara. Born in Emond's Field, I led an almost normal childhood to your average farmer and his wife (except that they were on the Village Council and the Women's Circle). I was taught what every child my age learns: to read, write, numbers, and every manner of things our parents decided we should know. But it wasn't all work. My friends and I learned to climb trees, swim, and make ourselves conveniently otherwise occupied when our parents came looking for us.

There are two things that distinguished me from the other children in my village. The first of which is my ability to play several instruments and perform some rather unique disappearing tricks; all thanks due to a dear Gleeman who got himself snowed in with a peddler many winters ago. The second is not as fond a memory. The man who taught me everything about the woods, the love of reading, and to believe in myself died. This man was my father.

It was the strangest death. Around my tenth Naming Day, he started having these awful headaches. They kept on for months, and there was nothing the Wisdom could do. Then one night they just stopped. Everyone was glad at first, but we were all sorely disappointed. My father hadn't gotten any better-in fact, he'd gotten worse! After walking around in a daze for a month, not caring about anything around him (including himself), he died in his sleep.

This is what sparked my intense interest in herbs. I was intent on not letting anyone else go through my sorrow at seeing a loved one pass away in such an awful manner. I was apprenticed to the current Wisdom, and on my twenty-sixth Naming Day, I was entitled Wisdom by the Women's Circle.
The following year went without excitement until an elderly woman "come to
visit some cousins" told me what I was. Naturally, I didn't believe her, but
when she started telling me things about myself that I had never told anyone,
not even my mother, Elnore, I decided to listen. She told me I must leave my
home and travel with her to the White Tower. The pain of leaving was immense, but I went and here I am now, an Aes Sedai of the Yellow ajah. A family lost and a family found-even if they do only consist of a Mother, Sisters, a Warder, and a problem solved… I didn't know then what had cost a cheerful, outgoing man his life, but now…now, I know. That's why I joined the Yellows. It's said anything short of death can be Healed, so there must be someway to gentle a man without making him feel as though he has lost the world-and I intend to be the one to find it.