( there isn't as much she knows factually about what separations between warder and aes sedai means; only stories, only the words from the warders themselves around shared campfires. she can't pretend to a largess of emotion she doesn't have: it suits her not to have to deal with moiraine here, or the parts of herself that are frustrated and fascinated by what the aes sedai mean when it comes to learning, rather than so much of the rest.
there's a thirst to know, to learn, to be better, to be able to handle all the things she's been helpless before in the past. a driving need, expressed as protection, and the harshness of caring for those who are hers by her own calculus. it's a generous line, at least when it comes to pains of bodies. minds are more difficult to quantify.
but it's toward that end that she tracks him down. not hard, they're in the same space, and unless he's wandering the maze there's not much to disappear into. still, here she is, carrying tea (not that she knows he'd be familiar with it, but no, not tea meant for hard sleep) with a small chipped plate over the top, and apparently, a steamed bun. the ghosts in the kitchen are really making those right now apparently. )
Hey.
( here: food and drink, held out with the expectation that they are to be taken. )
How are you handling this?
( ................... being direct is about what she can do. )
[He's still adjusting really, having not been here long. It's all new and frustrating in a way that he never thought could have been. At first he thought the bond was gone, but his powers still seem to be active so it's merely masked. However, there's no sign of her here, so he's not even quite sure on how that all works.
He'll figure it out. He has time. They have time.
He's dealt with enough women of few words to know he is supposed to take the items from her with a nod.]
Thank you, Wisdom. [Look, he's not ready to move past that title yet. He's still trying to get a handle on all this yet again somehow.]
It feels like a dream, nothing more. It's quite hard to accept, surely just another spinning of the wheel but...
( Her eyebrows lift, climbing higher with the sort of disbelief that goes hand in hand with the words that follow, her patience a variable thing even when she has reasons to tap into the depths that surely exist, time to time. )
The Wheel weaves as it will, isn't that what she'd say?
( Unfortunately, it feels exactly like what Moiraine would say, with the same lack of transparency as she approaches most things, in Nynaeve's opinion. Her biased, but correct, opinion. (In her humble opinion.) )
I listened when the lot of you spoke around the campfire, Lan Mandragoran. I don't have to like the woman to know there's some impact for the separation. Isn't there?
( Regarding him with a steady gaze, fingers of her hand falling away from the end of her braids. )
[He tilts his head to the side, raising his eyebrows as the more direct question comes in.]
Oh, is that what you were wondering about? [Of course she was, but that didn't mean he was quite ready to give in and explain the complexities of the feelings tied to all this.
When you lose a connection which you've had for the last twenty years. Of course, there was the additional complexity that he as pretty sure the magic was still there, it's just that Moiraine herself that was not. Does that mean she's alive somewhere? He doesn't know, and he's not quite ready to ask Nynaeve herself for that answer.]
It's too quiet. [He'll admit that much. He closes his eyes after he says so for a moment, like he's taking in the quite.]
So much directly to so little, it feels a bit like whiplash.
( A noise of acknowledgement, almost a hum in her throat. There's the layers of silence here, the one he feels and the one that intermittently surrounds them. She settles back, allowing both silences to persist for the moment: to give comfort in facts and those reassurances she can do, but in general?
Not so much. After a moment, she reaches out, and with all the gravity that someone expected to be ancient before she'd even left her youth might possess, pats his arm. Reassuringly. )
You can listen to the pendants or whatever that woman Karsa gave you if you start missing the chatter. It won't be the same, but it'll fill in some of the silences. Sometimes even be worthwhile.
( Attempt completed, she settles her hands into her lap, refraining from commentary on Moiraine. She'd love to forget her, and no, she doesn't care to examine or discuss why at present. Who would? )
My understanding of this all is we're returned to the time we were taken. For what comfort that might be.
[It's certainly complicated, discussing any of this. Although for some reason it doesn't bother him to be questioned by Nynaeve in that way. If he thought about it for too long it'd almost be unsettling. ]
Ah yes, I haven't gotten a chance to make use of that yet. I assume if I have any questions about it, I can ask you?
[It's easier to turn the discussion to that of the device then settling too much on the emptiness in his mind, in his feelings.]
I suppose it's nice to know that she's home, and, well I suppose safe as one ever can be when you are Moiraine Sedai.
( Her exhalation turns into a snort at his assumption, her smile for the moment wry, because at some point, any answer would have been bluster. She notes her own gratitude that it needn't be right now — she doubts he hates not knowing the function of something any less than she does. )
You can ask.
( The cant of her head an invitation for what she'd pointed out once before: it doesn't necessitate her answering. Yet she lacks the edge for it, the anger that says I'd rather see you bleed first, as an obstacle in her way. Right now, the gateways are how she might find the four she's tracing after. Right now, the people here are aid to that process, and she doesn't need to handle the complication that is her mistrust of Moiriane, who most certainly omits freely and redirects deftly, keeping close to her chest what she means to do, what she knows, what she does not.
No, she cannot say she misses that woman. )
Oh, so she knows of such a word? Safe? They didn't teach that out of her at the White Tower? At some point I started suspecting that would half be likely, unless I've only been so blessed as to meet the Aes Sedai least likely to embrace the concept.
( Yet her voice softens at that: Nynaeve takes a certain personal responsibility for the loss she hadn't been able to hold off, when her hands at Lan's throat had seen it healed with the unfettered, blinding flow of the One Source through her, channeling in desperation and anger that such an injustice was happening, her helpless, the one who might help unable to do so, Lan dying on the sand.
She doesn't want to examine why that'd set her systems to racing, why the adrenaline had surged again even after the attack by the false Dragon Reborn's army, while the true one was — surely not her, surely not, but the four youths, her missing charges. She does not want to believe that, either, but she cannot allow herself to be a woman made blind by her own choice.
She still think's it's ridiculous, but true enough, death has followed fast at all their heels. They better be okay. Fierce, that surging thought. Hard, the gritting of her teeth, the tugging of her fingers at the ends of her braid. They will be. I'll accept no other way. )
No Trollocs here, as I've said, but plenty of other nasty, terrible things. Heartbreaking ones too. The dead here don't lay resting, and some remember who they were. Who they cannot be again. I haven't seen any of the so-called lords and ladies of death myself, but what I've heard of them, what I witnessed of the effects of the one called Huntress, those I can't deny. The Wheel turns, as it always does, weaves as it wills, and the pattern here, the threads it spins, are strange indeed, Lan Mandragoran.
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action | house of manouk still
there's a thirst to know, to learn, to be better, to be able to handle all the things she's been helpless before in the past. a driving need, expressed as protection, and the harshness of caring for those who are hers by her own calculus. it's a generous line, at least when it comes to pains of bodies. minds are more difficult to quantify.
but it's toward that end that she tracks him down. not hard, they're in the same space, and unless he's wandering the maze there's not much to disappear into. still, here she is, carrying tea (not that she knows he'd be familiar with it, but no, not tea meant for hard sleep) with a small chipped plate over the top, and apparently, a steamed bun. the ghosts in the kitchen are really making those right now apparently. )
Hey.
( here: food and drink, held out with the expectation that they are to be taken. )
How are you handling this?
( ................... being direct is about what she can do. )
no subject
He'll figure it out. He has time. They have time.
He's dealt with enough women of few words to know he is supposed to take the items from her with a nod.]
Thank you, Wisdom. [Look, he's not ready to move past that title yet. He's still trying to get a handle on all this yet again somehow.]
It feels like a dream, nothing more. It's quite hard to accept, surely just another spinning of the wheel but...
no subject
The Wheel weaves as it will, isn't that what she'd say?
( Unfortunately, it feels exactly like what Moiraine would say, with the same lack of transparency as she approaches most things, in Nynaeve's opinion. Her biased, but correct, opinion. (In her humble opinion.) )
I listened when the lot of you spoke around the campfire, Lan Mandragoran. I don't have to like the woman to know there's some impact for the separation. Isn't there?
( Regarding him with a steady gaze, fingers of her hand falling away from the end of her braids. )
no subject
Oh, is that what you were wondering about? [Of course she was, but that didn't mean he was quite ready to give in and explain the complexities of the feelings tied to all this.
When you lose a connection which you've had for the last twenty years. Of course, there was the additional complexity that he as pretty sure the magic was still there, it's just that Moiraine herself that was not. Does that mean she's alive somewhere? He doesn't know, and he's not quite ready to ask Nynaeve herself for that answer.]
It's too quiet. [He'll admit that much. He closes his eyes after he says so for a moment, like he's taking in the quite.]
So much directly to so little, it feels a bit like whiplash.
no subject
Not so much. After a moment, she reaches out, and with all the gravity that someone expected to be ancient before she'd even left her youth might possess, pats his arm. Reassuringly. )
You can listen to the pendants or whatever that woman Karsa gave you if you start missing the chatter. It won't be the same, but it'll fill in some of the silences. Sometimes even be worthwhile.
( Attempt completed, she settles her hands into her lap, refraining from commentary on Moiraine. She'd love to forget her, and no, she doesn't care to examine or discuss why at present. Who would? )
My understanding of this all is we're returned to the time we were taken. For what comfort that might be.
no subject
Ah yes, I haven't gotten a chance to make use of that yet. I assume if I have any questions about it, I can ask you?
[It's easier to turn the discussion to that of the device then settling too much on the emptiness in his mind, in his feelings.]
I suppose it's nice to know that she's home, and, well I suppose safe as one ever can be when you are Moiraine Sedai.
apologies for the delays
You can ask.
( The cant of her head an invitation for what she'd pointed out once before: it doesn't necessitate her answering. Yet she lacks the edge for it, the anger that says I'd rather see you bleed first, as an obstacle in her way. Right now, the gateways are how she might find the four she's tracing after. Right now, the people here are aid to that process, and she doesn't need to handle the complication that is her mistrust of Moiriane, who most certainly omits freely and redirects deftly, keeping close to her chest what she means to do, what she knows, what she does not.
No, she cannot say she misses that woman. )
Oh, so she knows of such a word? Safe? They didn't teach that out of her at the White Tower? At some point I started suspecting that would half be likely, unless I've only been so blessed as to meet the Aes Sedai least likely to embrace the concept.
( Yet her voice softens at that: Nynaeve takes a certain personal responsibility for the loss she hadn't been able to hold off, when her hands at Lan's throat had seen it healed with the unfettered, blinding flow of the One Source through her, channeling in desperation and anger that such an injustice was happening, her helpless, the one who might help unable to do so, Lan dying on the sand.
She doesn't want to examine why that'd set her systems to racing, why the adrenaline had surged again even after the attack by the false Dragon Reborn's army, while the true one was — surely not her, surely not, but the four youths, her missing charges. She does not want to believe that, either, but she cannot allow herself to be a woman made blind by her own choice.
She still think's it's ridiculous, but true enough, death has followed fast at all their heels. They better be okay. Fierce, that surging thought. Hard, the gritting of her teeth, the tugging of her fingers at the ends of her braid. They will be. I'll accept no other way. )
No Trollocs here, as I've said, but plenty of other nasty, terrible things. Heartbreaking ones too. The dead here don't lay resting, and some remember who they were. Who they cannot be again. I haven't seen any of the so-called lords and ladies of death myself, but what I've heard of them, what I witnessed of the effects of the one called Huntress, those I can't deny. The Wheel turns, as it always does, weaves as it wills, and the pattern here, the threads it spins, are strange indeed, Lan Mandragoran.