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[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]

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."

[blue_ajah]

She inclines her head in assent.

"We have been, for a very long time, but it was not always so."

Moiraine draws another circle, then divides it in half with a single curving line. She begins to color in one half of the circle, darkening it to near-black, stark against the white of the other side.

"The One Power is divided," the Aes Sedai explains. "Saidar is channeled by women, and saidin is the male half."

"During the War of Power, Lews Therin proposed to patch the Bore and seal the Dark One's prison. He was opposed by Latra Posae Decume, who proposed a different approach. The hall split along gendered lines, and in the end, Lews Therin led a hundred of the most powerful male Aes Sedai to make the attempt."

She sighs.

"The seal was made, but it was imperfect. The Dark One's counterstrike tainted saidin, and the poison of the Shadow instantly drove Lews Therin and the Hundred Companions mad, as well as dooming all men who could channel to insanity and certain death. The damage they wrought in their madness is known as the Breaking of the World. It is only very recently that saidin has been cleansed once more, but between the Breaking and now, only women were raised Aes Sedai."

[we_bring_hell]

She frowns. "A terrible thing to be sure."

"Does the male half use the same elements? And--oh, but I have a thousand questions that raises, all to no useful purpose I suppose."

[blue_ajah]

"Indeed it was."

She finishes drawing the ancient seal of the Aes Sedai and sets the pencil down.

"It does; the five powers are the same between both halves of the One Power."

Moiraine smiles, very slightly.

"You may ask them, if you like."

[we_bring_hell]

"In a magical system divided by gender, what becomes of those who reject the gender assumptions of their birth?" she asks. "And--if for so long only women were capable of magic, did your society become a matriarchy?"

"You have spoken of Warders--were these always men?" It's a guess, but not an outrageous one, given the binarism of the system.

[blue_ajah]

"Excellent questions, all," she replies. "I would not say that matriarchy is the order of rule, although at the same time it is true that women lead and hold significant roles in both social and political structures across the kingdoms, lands, and cultures with which I am familiar. Men do, as well. And although it is more common for Warders to be men, that is not always the case."

"To the best of my knowledge, the aspect of the One Power that one channels is aligned with who one is, such that one who began by channeling saidar might find themselves reaching for saidin, for example. Sometimes one's understanding of self alters between what is believed at birth and what one later knows to be true. I would have to ask those of the Brown Ajah to see if it is known how frequently this has been the case among those who have been raised Aes Sedai, but it is not unknown."

[we_bring_hell]

"Fascinating," she says. "If not altogether apposite to your narrative. I apologize."

"Still... fascinating. I am a bone magician because of where I was born; I know that to be the case. Yet I must admit that the concept of having my relationship with magic defined by..." meat "...the accident of my birth, is a curious one."

And an uncomfortable one. Harrow, while being a master of biology in the abstract and in the practical application is not altogether comfortable with biology happening to her.

[blue_ajah]

"I see no reason that you need apologize," Moiraine tells her.

"And I suppose it is, although in a sense one could argue that one's relationship with magic is also defined by the circumstances of where and how one receives training, as well. But in the sense that we are discussing, the One Power is drawn from the True Source, which is the very force of Creation itself. Why then should it not be able to encompass all the various aspects of that creation, in all ways?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Including the ending that awaits all creation, as we have seen," Harrow observes. "Or destructive aspects of creation, as in the balefire you have described."

"What is it that defines the Shadow then, that differentiates it from the simple termination or destruction of created things?"