Nynaeve and Elayne are skirting dangerously close to calamitous cockamamie cacophony by hanging around the alleys of Falme, watching all the damane and sul’dam passing by. Elayne had stolen those tasty, tasty apples, but Nynaeve pretends that she isn’t hungry. She begrudgingly takes an apple because she has lost 45 pounds and is waify as shit now.

Nynaeve is certain that there must be some way to disengage those damane collars via channeling. At some point she must try again! Eventually, they hide in an alleyway with a view of a damane / sul’dam hovel. They stake it out and hope they’ll catch Egwene or Min coming in or out.

Meanwhile, Egwene is in her cell picking at her collar lock subtly by channeling a little bit at a time, which hurts like a bitch I tell you whut. Min visits her cell dressed like a serving girl and tells Egwene that she has found a ship for them to set sail and fuck off from stinky Falme altogether. Egwene tells Min to go without her; Egwene passed some test where she “has an affinity for Earth”, which makes her so valuable that she’ll be on a ship anyway in a few days back to Seanchan. Min tells her to not give up and that there’s still a way to get out of this horrible nonsense.

Egwene relays her knowledge about two Aes Sedai captives who are so miserable that they want to kill themselves, and they can’t because they can’t channel without pain and permission. Egwene can sympathize, which pisses Min off. Just imagine Nyneave hearing that! She would box her ears for acting the goose!

Egwene can’t kill herself even if she wanted to, and she barely wants to. Hell, she thought about hitting Renna with a water pitcher and she couldn’t lift her arm for three days. Egwene gets hopeless, but Min reminds her that she’s all wrapped up with Perrin and Rand and whoever else, I don’t care. She’s still in her visions, she’s still important to the Pattern of the Threads of the Time Wheel.

Renna enters, seeing Min and Egwene chat. Renna decides that she’s been too lenient with Egwene, so she renames her after he cat and tells her that she’ll punish Egwene until she says she loves being a damane. And Renna has to believe it.

Fucked up, this is. Makes me want to get more Cheez-Its.