Post-Halloween

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow is working. Very seriously. She is not mooning over her new relationship with Gideon even a little bit; she has too much work to do.

She is, however, wearing a skull with accents of deep, almost black purple, with a starburst or floral pattern just below her temple, that she has never been seen to wear before.

Other than that sentimental embellishment, however, she is entirely focused on Obaeg's Toward a Common Haemographology. She is making copious notes in the margins--courting future simian fury--and thinking that she should have found this for Moiraine before they started working on her weave notation.

Comments

[blue_ajah]

"I have been called a hard woman. I do not disagree. I am as hard as I have to be; as I believed I had to be."

A waitrat hops up on a chair and waves a paw at Moiraine, who nods at it, then points to herself and to Harrow. It squeaks assent and scurries off again.

"I was married to my battle, as Lan was married to his, and we worked together in common for over twenty years. There was neither room nor time for anything else."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods again, slower. Harrowhark puppeted her parents' corpses for 7 years for the Ninth and to save herself from an arranged marriage; to be as hard as you have to be makes all the sense in the world to her.

What's the alternative? Failure? Unthinkable.

"But then you won."

[blue_ajah]

"First, I arrived here," Moiraine reminds her.

[we_bring_hell]

"I remember," she says. "They believed you dead, until Rand came here. You worked with him in secret... and then you 'found a way to buy time'." She pronounces the inverted commas distinctly, acknowledging Moiraine's previous euphemism for what is no doubt a complex story.

And afterwards--as a result?--she could not return home.

[blue_ajah]

"Yes," she says, simply, as the rat returns with a pitcher of spring water, cucumber slices, mint leaves, and a pot of tea, along with glasses and cups. Moiraine accepts the tray and begins to set everything out on the table.

"When I first came here, it was a relief to escape my imprisonment, even for a time. The Aelfinn and Eelfinn are not pleasant. They ... feed ... on those they capture, like me."

Her voice remains steady as she says this.

"But I have never been good with enforced idleness."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow has spent enough time among the faceless nuns of Drearburh to know two significant pauses when they cross her path. "I can imagine that's true," she murmurs.

As Moiraine continues, she takes a moment to pour tea for the Aes Sedai, before preparing a glass of vaguely-minty water for herself.

[blue_ajah]

She smiles her thanks, and takes a sip of the tea.

"Well. Suffice it to say that I involved myself with matters here to a great extent. And in the process, I made friends, and more than friends, and learned things."

[we_bring_hell]

"Lady Ingress mentioned such things--cadres of people, she said, taking an interest in each others' problems across worlds."

[blue_ajah]

"Indeed. Such involvement, in a way, is how I first became aware of certain matters in Twin Peaks. It is not, however, how I came to relocate there."

She lays her hand against the side of the teacup, drawing in its warmth.

"That was after I tore myself from the world of my birth. For a while."

[we_bring_hell]

She frowns. "Tore in what way?" She says it in a way that seems more than figurative language.

[blue_ajah]

"I have told you about Lews Therin and the seal that was created for the Bore," she murmurs. "And that it was imperfect."

"It was weakening too quickly. If it tore open too soon--"

She shakes her head.

"Here, in this place, I learned to weave with more complicated things than the weaves of my own world alone. The Pattern is formed of the threads of lives, Harrow. I took the thread of my own life, from my birth world and its Mirrors, pulled it free, and used it to reinforce the edges of the seal."

[we_bring_hell]

"To weave with your own soul," she murmurs. "God's teeth."

To think she thought she had anything to teach Moiraine Sedai about necromancy!

[blue_ajah]

"Well, I do not think I could have done so with another's," she points out, practically. "But I knew myself well enough."

[we_bring_hell]

"Yes,"she says, almost to herself, "exactly."

"Forgive me." She shakes her head. "I was struck by certain similarities. But how did you survive it?"

[blue_ajah]

"I did not expect to," she says.

"But as it happens, the years I had spent here created a new thread, a new life. And I was able to return to it."

[we_bring_hell]

The Fourth House indeed, she thinks.

"How did you come to live in Twin Peaks?"

[blue_ajah]

"I was invited," she says. "First to recover there, afterwards, and then to stay."

Her glance goes to the violet of Harrow's paint, and she adds,

"By someone very dear to me."

[we_bring_hell]

"I see." Her smile is faint enough to be a trick of the paint. "Is it very different?"

Both Is Twin Peaks very different from the world you know? and Is it very different, to live for yourself and perhaps one other, and not for a whole planet?

[blue_ajah]

"I will not deny that it has taken some getting used to," the Aes Sedai says.

"It is something that Dale and I have discussed, more than once. Both he and I have faced our separate battles and have supported each other in them, and we both understand the requirements of duty as well as what comes after it."

[we_bring_hell]

So that is her balance; a work in progress, she has said, but worth it.

"Did his battles involve this cursed location? Or is that a false inference?"

[blue_ajah]

She does not bat an eye.

"Some of them. Not all. But Twin Peaks has been affected by it more than once, over the years."

[we_bring_hell]

"I see."

So his retirement is threatened by this, as well as Moiraine's new world.

"...is he the one you have referred to as a bodyguard of sorts?"

[blue_ajah]

She inclines her head in assent.

"He has acted as such more than once. Including when he returned with me to my birth world, for Tarmon Gai'don."

[we_bring_hell]

That completes the narrative she had mentioned before, then, of returning to her own world. "And having seen both, you chose to return to his world to... retire, as it were?"

[blue_ajah]

Part of the answer is that Dale had indicated that he would not have wanted to leave Twin Peaks, but that is his business, and it is not the whole of the answer in any case.

Moiraine says,

"It is a little more complicated than that. For one thing, I am still able to travel between the worlds, and when there is a particular need, those who are aware of how to reach me may do so, and I will assist if I can. As I said before, I do not do well with enforced idleness."

A small smile curves her lips, then.

"But I do think that all things considered, it is a better choice for the two of us to have remained in Twin Peaks than to have settled anywhere in the world in which I was born."