(no subject)

[we_bring_hell]

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.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

"Yes," she says neutrally. "I had undergone the ritual of the Sewn Tongue to fulfill my role in the ritual. However, one of the individuals assisting me became overwhelmed and I had to violate my silence to complete the consecration."

She runs her tongue along her gums and feels the holes in her upper lip.

"The consecration itself was not nullified, but I broke my vow. As the Reverend Daughter of our Order I could pardon myself, but I have always loathed the taste of hypocrisy."

[blue_ajah]

She inclines her head in acknowledgement.

"Are your apparent injuries part of your penance, or might I offer you Healing?"

Her glance flicks to Harrow's hands again. The makeup, however, hides the marks in her lip, rendering the Aes Sedai unaware.

[we_bring_hell]

"By no means," she says. "If anything, injuries interfere with the ability to carry out penance."

"I would appreciate it greatly." She lifts her hands.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine takes Harrow's hands in her own as the faint golden light which marks her channeling appears around her.

Threads of Spirit spiral from her fingers like a spiderweb, covering Harrow's hands in gleaming silver gloves. Blue and golden-white ribbons appear, wrapping around the bandages and sinking through them, knitting flesh and sealing skin, chased by the feeling of wind rushing over water.

The Aes Sedai frowns slightly, and another flash of silver light dances up Harrow's arm and to her face, where it presses a gentle touch as of invisible fingers against her lips.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow holds perfectly still as the magic presses against the nine holes divided above and below her mouth. Her eyes widen, vivid against the black paint that surround them, but she does not move or say anything.

(The delving of the magic may detect a slow build of scar tissue in these holes where the ritual has carried out before, many times.)

[blue_ajah]

When the younger woman does not protest, Moiraine sends the Healing weave to follow where she has Delved, filling the holes with the same rush of power. She cannot remove the scars, but she can soften the edges and repair nerves damaged by the needle.

The light fades as she finishes, first from the weave and then from around her. She opens her hands.

"I have done what I might."

[we_bring_hell]

"Thank you," she says. "It is not an unfamiliar set of wounds, but I admit waiting for them to pass is tiresome."

She begins to unwind the bandages so she can put her gloves on. "Would you like some water? Or we can order tea if you prefer."

[blue_ajah]

"Water would be pleasant, I think," Moiraine says.

"Wounds of any sort are very often tiresome."

[we_bring_hell]

She has more than one glass and a pitcher, having taken lessons in hospitality from Moiraine herself; she pours a glass with her bare hand before slipping on a glove.

"Indeed, and yet blood has so many uses, even for a bone magician. The convenience of healing almost makes me wish I had taken an interest in flesh," she says, with a skeletal moue of distaste.

"I recognize I know very little of where you go when you leave. May I hope that all is well in your world?"

[blue_ajah]

She inclines her head in thanks as she accepts the glass of water, and takes a sip before setting it down on the table.

"To an extent, I suppose it depends on where one's talents lie," she observes.

"In general matters are well, in both worlds that I might call mine - the one where I was born and the one where I now reside."

[we_bring_hell]

"Ah--" Her eyebrows move. "Then you are like Lord Ostium."

"The idea of relocating universes as one might move between Houses for a marriage or a profession is still novel to me. May I ask what drew you?"

[blue_ajah]

"In a sense, I suppose, although our circumstances were different," she demurs.

"I would be remiss if I said it was not novel to me as well. Still, after so many years here, I suppose I have become more accustomed to such things."

She traces a line with the tip of one finger along the side of her water glass.

"You may ask. I shall even tell you. It was a combination of circumstances, as it happens. To begin with, when I first arrived in Milliways, I was believed to be dead by most of those in the world where I was born... and as it was imperative for the future of that world that this belief was not revealed false before time, when I was able, I took up residence here until it was time to return."

[we_bring_hell]

"Ah, I see," she says. "You were not exaggerating when you said you were familiar with using this place as a sojourn, then."

"I would not interrupt your narrative, but I must ask, was your return, ah, triumphant?" Matters touching on the survival of worlds are not novel to her.

[blue_ajah]

"I may speak no word that is not true," the Aes Sedai replies. "My Oaths are binding through more than desire alone."

Moiraine smiles, and for all her serenity, it is bright with joy.

"Yes, in the end. Tarmon Gaidon, the Last Battle, has been won, and the world and the Wheel of Time itself have survived. The long struggle is over."

[we_bring_hell]

"I must congratulate you," Harrow says, "although even without full context I gather that is understatement indeed.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine studies her for a moment.

"Do you wish to know?"

[we_bring_hell]

She inclines her head. "In the recent past I have been desperate for advice or support, and so I find that the people I have met here know far more of my circumstances than I of theirs."

"But if I am going to spend a longer period of time here, I have time to slow down and satisfy curiosity and courtesy both."

[blue_ajah]

"I have found that it often takes some getting used to," she says, "when it comes to adapting to the possibilities that this place offers. Including time."

She takes another sip of water, then sets the glass aside. Moiraine opens the artist's sketch pad to a blank page and takes a dark grey pencil from the set.

"Very well." She draws a circle, which, while not yet reaching Harrow's level of freehand skill at such, clearly shows that she has been practicing. Moiraine adds a second narrower circle inside, then draws seven spokes.

"The Wheel of Time turns," she says, tapping the image, "and as it does, Ages come and pass." She indicates each of the spokes and the spaces between them. "It was made by the Creator at the dawn of time, and draws the power for its turning from the True Source, which I have spoken of to you before. In its turning, it weaves the Pattern, with the lives of people as its threads. All things are part of the Pattern."

Moiraine looks up from the drawing.

"In this Age, a danger arose; a mortal threat not only for all things living, but also to the Wheel of Time and to creation itself. The Dark One, bound by the Creator at the moment of creation, sought to break free of his prison and bring his Shadow, his evil, to bear upon the world, corrupting and destroying until nothing at all remained."

"Whatever the Dark One wishes, I oppose."

[we_bring_hell]

And this is the Shadow she senses in Wei Wuxian? That seems impossible. If anyone--

She puts this aside for now.

"I see. How does one wage war on an entity of such magnitude?"

[blue_ajah]

"With great difficulty."

Very, very dryly.

"But as it happens, there was a prophecy."

[we_bring_hell]

"And you found a role for yourself within it?" she guesses.

She has never known a prophecy with any robust predictive power, but she is willing to meet anything in Milliways as it presents itself.

[blue_ajah]

"I was present when it was spoken."

She is not certain she has ever told anyone at Milliways about this. Moiraine remembers staring at Siuan in shock as Gitara Sedai jerked bolt upright, words spilling from her lips with the unparalleled power of her Foretelling, the shock of which had killed her.

"Gitara Sedai had the gift of Foretelling, and saw when the Dragon was Reborn. He was born to lead in Tarmon Gaidon, the Last Battle. I spent the next twenty years searching for him."

[we_bring_hell]

"Reborn?" she says. "As opposed to Resurrected. You used that word when we were experimenting with weaves."

[blue_ajah]

"Reborn," she confirms. "Reincarnated. The same soul, born into a new body, in a new Age."

"During the Age of Legends, Lews Therin Telamon, the most powerful of the Aes Sedai, was known as the Dragon. He led the armies of the Light during the War of Power, after the Bore was drilled into the Dark One's prison and he first put forth his hand to touch the world."

"He died in the Breaking of the World that ended the Age of Legends, and returned to the world as Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn."

[we_bring_hell]

"I see."

Reincarnation is a heretical deviation in the Empire, as they believe in a more physical reaction. But of course they would.

"I had somehow gathered the idea that the Aes Sedai were a sisterhood."