(no subject)

[we_bring_hell]

You would need an advanced degree in Nonagesamics to realize that Harrowhark is ecstatically happy this morning, but even the layman can tell that her usual spikes are retracted somewhat. Not the spikes on her boots--Gideon liked these boots, and she has no intention of wearing anything else for a while. But the metaphorical spikes.

Aside from her boots she is back in her standard habit--black trousers, black long-sleeve shirt with the high collar. No gloves. Her hair is freshly cropped back to her scalp. Her face is painted with exceptional care, in what Harrow considers the sexiest pattern, because Harrowhark has opinions about things like that. This one is called The Chain and has considerable, immodest flourishes. She has edged the perimeter of the painted skull with midnight purples and deep blood reds, an even greater departure from propriety.

She is writing in her journal, and since she writes in code there is no way anyone can tell she has doodled One Flesh One End approximately one hundred times. She has been eating oatmeal, and by God she even ate the raisins.

Things are good. For now, for once, things are good.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

"I think I have it," she says. "Is there a special closing procedure for it? I know you said it has perils if it runs out of control."

[we_bring_hell]

You did good. She presses the words carefully in a mental scrapbook of victorious moments, then carefully lets go of her cavalier.

"What did you intend to do today?"

[we_do_bones]

"Eat, train. Up the average level of physical attractiveness in any room I happen to inhabit. The usual."

She scrubs a hand through her hair, and thinks. "Maybe see if I can find Wei Wuxian. He was helping me with a...training exercise."

That's close enough, right?

[blue_ajah]

"Release the weave," Moiraine tells her. "As it dissipates, the gateway will no longer remain open."

"The particular dangers are more from trying to stop a gateway that is in the process of closing, from crossing through an unstable gateway, or in being unable to properly locate and set it so that it is clearly defined. The first may cut you in half, while the latter two may surge the power through the channeler, sometimes others nearby as well. There have been violent results."

[we_bring_hell]

"I see," she says. "So the greater danger is in making a mistake in establishing the portal."

"I have additional questions, but I do not think I need to see the weave for them."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods. "I will be in the library, or perhaps outside, if I can find Moiraine Sedai. There was a certain working she had offered to show me that requires space."

"Griddle, do you remember when I used to promise to take your skeleton?"

We all have a skeleton inside of us, and one day, yours will be mine.

[we_do_bones]

She shrugs, rotating one shoulder to loosen it. "Sure. I hated it. I always assumed that was why you said it."

[blue_ajah]

"Then release your link, and we will cross through, so that you may experience that."

[we_bring_hell]

She thinks about the strange, tense conversation with Ingress and flounders in the face of expressing... any of it.

"Of course," she says.

[we_bring_hell]

She nods and does so, her senses realigning with her own body.

She rises from the rock where she had sunk to sit, and regards the portal. "I am ready when you are."

"How much similarity needs to exist between the two places to establish the link? Is there a minimum?"

[blue_ajah]

"Not so much as you might think," Moiraine tells her. As she talks, she ties off the weave, creating the ability for the gateway to stand on its own temporarily, and releases saidar. Anticipating the question, she says, "I could have held the Source while I crossed, but I did not want to interfere with your observation."

"The process of using Spirit to establish the connection can itself help to create the similarity needed. Once you have created a gateway to a location, you will also have the knowledge of that place needed to create a gateway from that location."

She brushes her hands down her skirts, adds, "Follow me. Do not touch the edges," and walks through the portal.

[we_bring_hell]

Before she steps through, she watches Moiraine on the other side, allowing herself to be aware of the Aes Sedai's thalogram once again. It is as clear as if Moiraine was standing a few feet away.

She raises a hand, gesturing towards the lake, and the skeleton who clotheslined Gideon rise from the lake and walks up the beach, even as she steps through the portal.

It stands on the other side, dripping seawater, as she turns to Moiraine. "It is working--I could not directly puppet a construct from so far away without the portal." It raises a skeletal hand.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine nods to the skeleton, inwardly amused, and looks at Harrow.

"I do not think we need to give overmuch consideration to specialized Talents, in this case," she says. "Unless that is something you experience, in your world. By Talents, I mean a particular skill for a use of power that one discovers, over and above the usual, and different from a particular special technique that members of a House might focus their training on."

[we_do_bones]

She looks at Harrow a little more closely.

"Why?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Such things are not unknown," she says. "Prodigies. But they generally do align with the specialties of the House--it may be that specialties develop to reflect the talents of their great families."

"It is uncommon, however."

[we_bring_hell]

"It struck... someone else... as oddly..." Her face heats up wildly; she feels light-headed. "Affectionate."

Is it possible to get a nosebleed from embarrassing yourself?

[blue_ajah]

"Then we will leave it aside for now," the Aes Sedai decides, "unless you show signs of a Talent for Traveling."

"If you think you are ready, let us go back through to familiar ground, and you can attempt a thanergetic weave. If you do not feel ready yet, I can create another one as an example, if you would like to observe it again."

[we_do_bones]

Fortunately for Harrow, this isn't an anime.

"...How? Wait, no, never mind, I'm not sure I want you to answer that."

Admittedly, if anyone were going to express affection via laying claim to her skeleton, that person would be Harrow. "Besides, I'm not the type of girl to give someone her skeleton all willy-nilly on the first date."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods, the sudden tang of nervousness pressing her as always to greater heights of dignity and stiffness. "I believe I am prepared," she says.

Her misgivings, such as they are, lie in the realm of theory rather than the specifics of the weave. She steps through, dismissing the skeleton back to its watery grave, such as it is.

[we_bring_hell]

"Gideon Nav, I formally swear I will not take control of your living skeleton without your consent," she says, with the weird formality and tension that marks Harrow in the grip of some strong and incomprehensible emotion.

Dead skeletons are fair game.

[we_do_bones]

"Is that something I should have been worried about?" she says, astonished. She feels certain that she's missed something, maybe something important, but has no idea what it might be.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine follows Harrow back through the gateway, channels briefly, and severs the tied-off weave, allowing the portal to dissipate.

As quickly as she had embraced saidar, she releases it again, and turns to Harrow.

"I will observe," the Aes Sedai tells her. "If you find yourself struggling to hold the weave such that it may recoil on you, release it at once. If I notice you struggling and you do not release it, I will treat you as I would an Accepted in the same situation. I will not have you endanger yourself unreasonably."

[we_bring_hell]

"No," she says. "But I have never given you assurances in that direction."

"This is absolute nonsense," she says dismayed. "I have no idea what I'm talking about any longer."

"I believe Lady Ingress was struggling to understand the... nature of our relationship, whether it was friendship or chivalric or sororal, or, or," She has climbed all the way up to the top of the diving board, looked down into the shimmering waters of the word 'romantic,' and is now trying to figure out if she can climb down.



"--otherwise."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods. "You will need to provide the living thalergenic magic, however," she says. "I cannot--extrude--thanergy in that way. Once it is converted, I should be able to shape it."

"Spirit comes first, then Earth and Air," she repeats; not to Moiraine in specific, but setting her mind in place.

[we_do_bones]

That otherwise is like a landmine between them; Gideon stares at Harrow and thinks she sees the reflection of her own panic there under the layers of paint, and is that color she sees? Has she lost her mind? Is Harrow trying to look extra nice, and if so, why?

"Uh," she says, eloquently. It's just as well that she has no words, because her heart is in her fucking throat and she's pretty sure she's about to choke to death on it and then it'll be a moot point! And Harrow can have her bones just like she always planned.

She wants to run and she wants to move towards Harrow and that otherwise is lying there, just waiting to trip her whichever way she goes. There's a flush building into her cheeks, and she doesn't even have her sunglasses to hide behind, and Harrow – Harrow –

...She has never made Harrow look at her the way Harrow looked when she talked about that freezer-burnt dead girlfriend of hers. "I'm your sworn sword," she says, finally. "You're my necro. Everything else... whatever people want to think... it's just noise, Harrow. It's just words. We don't need them. It's always been you and me."