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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"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."

Her ears redden briefly again. "It is a tradition, and the Ninth is nothing without its traditions," she says awkwardly.

She clears her throat and studies the diagram. "So--the weaves of Air overlap in a lattice at right angles, over then under, and expanding indefinitely."

"If we draw in the inner turns of the spiral and draw the spoke for Air--" She does so-- "Then at each intersection we should indicate the weaving." She marks these intersections with a quick line. "But that is only one row. I am not sure how to indicate the expansion in the second dimension. What do you think?"

She taps the tip of the pencil against the paper, considering.

"Something with arrows, perhaps? And a number, to indicate repetition or size?"

"Yes--or perhaps the ganglia at the top could use arrows to indicate that the weave will expand at right angles? And it would be assumed to expand in width as it expands in length with each rotation? But no, that would require the field to be square..."

"We should not assume a square, I think," she says. "This weave is one that can be curved and bent around shapes."

"I agree--but there are so many variables in that case. The diagram will have to represent a generic example that can be adapted, I think."

"What if... what if the ganglia indicates a perpendicular expansion, but we mark the loop when the rows stop increasing and the columns continue? So if there are 12 loops, and we mark the fifth intersection, that indicates a 12 by 5 grid?"

She studies the paper absently, a slight crease between her brows, below her kesiera, as she considers.

"I think... I think that will work."

"So..." She sketches that in loosely; perhaps they will not commit to these signifiers, but the idea is in place. "So this should convey the Air wall? Is that legible to you, as the adept?"

"If so, we can consider the Fire axis, I think?"

"It is, although it will be interesting to see how this works with a weave or spell that is new to me, in the future," she observes. "But that is for another time, I think."

She resumes channeling and renews the weave, demonstrating slowly and carefully how the threads of Fire snake through the woven lattice at key points.

Now that they have the diagram, she finds it already effective in making marks to indicate where it weaves through.

"Hm... we need to go back and indicate how loose or tight the weave is, too, don't we?" She runs a hand over the stubble of her scalp. "And the two dimensional aspect of this part is much harder than the lattice. But did I mark the points of intersection correctly?"

"I believe so," she murmurs. "Let me just..."

Moiraine shifts her hands, manipulating the weave in three dimensions, and carefully extends it to float sideways above the diagram.

Glints of Fire shine in their pattern and reflect against the intersection points marked below.

"Ahh--no, I think I got it wrong."

"Perhaps I can try to hold it? So you can work on the notation?"

"Very well," Moiraine says.

"Place your hands against mine, like to like, and thread your fingers through the weave while I hold it."