we_bring_hell | (no subject)

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Harrowhark is in the bar, wearing the style of facepaint known as the Vanitas, with no lower teeth and sharp angular edges. It's good to be back in her makeup, even if the consecration was a greater undertaking than anticipated.

Although she is formally painted from the neck up, she is wearing some of the more informal clothes her room had supplied; soft trousers and a hoodie all in black. She is not wearing gloves today, because her palms are wrapped in bandages, but it is the kind of wound she is used to dealing with and it is healing quickly. The pinpricks of pain around her lips are worse, if only because it's been a very long time since she underwent the ritual of the Sewn Tongue.

She is diagramming spirals on paper, working in ink rather than blood right now. She can't spare any blood currently. She has refreshments to share, if you like faintly cucumber-flavored water and very bland, crumbly biscuits.

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"Perhaps, if you are willing," she suggests, "we might try diagramming one together."

"Certainly," she says, shuffling her own diagrams together into a heap she can set aside.

"Did you intend to use the foundation of the spiral? Or did you find a better way to represent the concept of weaving?"

"The spiral, I think," Moiraine says.

"Although perhaps modified to show interaction between flows by using connecting lines. Something like a spiderweb, in that regard."

She studies the colored pencils for a few moments, then selects shades of crimson red, orange, and sky blue.

She taps her chin thoughtfully, and cocks her head to look at Moiraine's previous diagram of the wheel of time. "Perhaps with five spokes? For standardization, so the notation can follow a consistent schema. It may be that some of the elements are set to zero from the beginning and never increased, but they exist like... like the zeroes in place value, if you see what I mean?"

"Although that does open up the problem of standardizing an order..."

"Did you want it to spiral in or out?" Her spells spiral in to a center, and that's her instinct, but Moiraine's magic is rooted in growth, not decay.

Edited 2020-09-16 21:55 (UTC)

"One for each of the Five Powers," she observes. "Yes, I think that should work.

"The rendering of the spiral would appear the same either way, would it not? I do not see that it makes much difference, in this case, given that the threads of the weave will cross and blend in the diagram, would you not agree?"

She is not certain, as this is a new mechanic for her, and thus the question is sincerely asked as of another Aes Sedai, rather than in a rhetorical sense.

She nods, thinking. "I agree, I think--only if we begin from the center, the different threads begin closer together. It may be easier to render.... or more confusing."

"We can experiment."

There is more than a hint of wry amusement in the dark-eyed glance she gives Harrow, but she nods.

"Indeed we can. I have already chosen a first weave to attempt to document in this way. It uses two of the Five Powers - Air and Fire."

Her lips curve in a serene smile.

"And, if it turns out that this process enables you to mimic the weaving with your own working, it may be a useful one for you to know."

"Oh?" She lifts an eyebrow. "What does it do?"

"I have not yet been able to generate the... differentiated thanergy without using your weaves as a starting point. But that is a problem for a different day."

"It is known as Folded Light," the Aes Sedai tells her.

"It renders an object - or a person - unseen."

"Useful indeed," she deadpans.

Hot damn!

"If it uses Air and Fire--does it bend light around the object?"

She inclines her head in assent.

"Precisely so."

Her lips slip into a shallow, almost imperceptible curve.

"Shall we begin by drawing from the outside? It's the way I'm most familiar with, after all."

"Certainly."

She takes her water glass and sets it across the table from them both.

"First I shall demonstrate. Since you will be able to see the threads, that should assist with determining how best to render them."

The familiar golden light forms around her as she speaks, and sky-blue threads tinged with white gleam brightly between her fingers.

She leans closer, studying the weaves intently. Without looking at her hand or pen, she jots notes for her own memory, just quick scribbles in her private code.

In her mind she returns to the memory of the necromantic equivalents; the gases of decomposition and the wheeling psychopomps of the air burial, the heat of putrefaction and the flame of the crematorium.

She holds them steady, as sharp sparks of red blossom and grow. Threads of Fire snake up and down, criss-crossing the grid of Air, as though grasses woven in a basket.

The Aes Sedai pushes the weave forward, wrapping it around the glass, which shimmers and vanishes from view. The flickers of Fire reflect the more usual light from the room, and the Air creates a false wall, or so it appears.

"Hmm--let's begin with the wall, and weave the fire elements in afterwards."

She turns her gaze to the paper. "I am trying to consider how many turnings we need to get to the point where it is tied off. I suppose the exact number of weavings would depend on the dimensions of the wall, but..."

She stares now through the paper, the black heat of her gaze threatening to set it on fire. "I'm thinking about it wrong. We have to think about unique steps repeated a designated number of times." She tries to run through the three-dimensional interactions in her mind, then frowns and begins to moving her fingers.

"Unique steps," she murmurs. "Let me see."

She drops the first weave and starts again, as deliberately as she can. It is harder by far to construct a weave with such excruciating control, but she has been Aes Sedai for a long, long time.

"First to channel, then to select Air from among the Five Powers," she says, as the bright strands begin to thread between her fingers once more. "Then to create the ... the grid, I suppose; the boards -- or bones --"

Wryly said.

"--of the woven wall."

"Yes--" She scribbles again, not writing this time but simply drawing. "It goes both over and under--and it expands in two dimension. So two unique crossings, repeated indefinitely, in two dimensions."

"Is that kind of weaving common, however? A basic lattice?" It might be common enough to be shorthanded.

"Common enough," she says. "Lattices and braids form a great deal of the woven structure, with varying numbers of strands. Knots, too, are very frequently used."

"Different types of intersections, then," she says. "Yes. Hm."

She sketches a circle with her pen, drawing ganglia at one-fifth intervals. "Is there a preferred sequence of elements?"

Edited 2020-09-17 00:49 (UTC)

She has to consider that for several seconds.

"Not especially, I think," Moiraine decides, finally. "Often we build upon how the weaves were demonstrated, more than anything else. I would say that the sequence might be more determined by the construction itself, rather than which elements would be preferred."

Wryly, she adds, "But after a while, one can generate them so quickly that it might seem almost instantaneous."

"I see." She studies her diagram. "Would you like to begin coloring in, then? As you think is appropriate."

"I wanted to retrieve something from my room."

"Certainly. Take your time."

She releases the weave and her hold on saidar both, then picks up the sky blue pencil.

After a moment's hesitation, she takes a blank sheet of paper first and begins attempting to draw the lattice there, rather than in the spiral.

She returns fairly quickly. "A gift for you I had thought to craft. As I said, such things are traditional."

It is a pair of bone compasses, with a scapular joint carefully etched with degrees.

"They have not been inside of anyone," she promises, with studied seriousness. "I grew them from bone I carry with me. Sadly the pair I received as a girl are back on Drearburh. They were my great-grandmother's."

She does not mean that her great-grandmother owned them.

Moiraine looks at first surprised, then delighted.

"That is very kind of you. Thank you, Lady Ninth."