Things Morrigan learnt from her mother that she hasn't passed on to others but might to a favoured Orlesian: you never attempt to guess the age of a Warden because inevitably you'll do it wrong. If Teren says that, she'll have to go with it.

"There is a danger in nostalgia," she agrees, not that nostalgia's the right word but a voyage by sea is never the one she'd choose if she had a hand in the choosing and it gnaws at her still. "Sooner than you realise you find yourself mired in a bog, sinking up to your neck. My mother's eye is the eye of a crow following men off to war, that twinkle you speak of is the one that would tear strips from you should you not take them first."