Nynaeve al'Meara

Nynaeve al'Meara carried her office chin-up, braid pulled tight, daring anyone in the village to say a young woman had no business in it. Some did say it, or muttered it at least, and the grumbling followed her around Emond's Field. She answered it by doing the work. When fever reached a farmhouse, it was Nynaeve who answered it, and when the farmers wanted to know what the sky intended, it was Nynaeve they asked, whatever they said behind her back.

She was not a woman to be talked around. The Village Council, all of them men and most of them twice her age, learned that she considered no door closed to the Wisdom, and she asked whatever questions she thought needed asking. She scolded grown men as readily as boys, and boys most of all, especially the ones foolish enough to make light of dark things for a laugh. Her tongue had an edge, and she saw no reason to blunt it for anyone's comfort.

The village she watched over sat among quiet places, the Westwood on one side and the Waterwood on the other, with the Winespring running through and neighbors no farther off than Watch Hill and Deven Ride. That year the cold hung on long past its season, and explaining a frost that would not break fell to the Wisdom, fair or not. She kept at it anyway; stubbornness was never something she lacked.