Fanfic:Liaran's Arches
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Liaran steps into the first arch...
Fireballs. Again. Irritably, Liaran thrust her hand out in front of her, a rather large ball hovering over it in almost no time. Why do I have to bother with this yet again? She thought she could have hurled it at the Accepted instructor quite happily, simply out of sheer frustration. "How do you do that so fast, Liaran?" the little girl seated next to her whined. "Fire never works right for me!" Ninety years of practice, child, Liaran thought to herself. I don't recommend it. Around her, girls barely past their fourteenth naming days struggled to embrace at all, let alone create the ball of fire they were supposed to be working on. Bored, Liaran dropped her weaves, then reformed them. She repeated this process for the rest of the class. She would have liked to have made more, or altered their coloring, anything to make the simple task interesting, but every attempt she'd made in the past to do such things always landed her in the Mistress of Novices' office. That wasn't a place Liaran wanted to be, not that she wanted to be anywhere in the Tower.
As with all of her classes, the fire class dragged on for ages. Twice, she snapped at the little girls asking her their endless questions, earning sharp looks from the instructor, but no punishment. This particular Accepted barely even took notice of Liaran, who was well aware of her reputation for being unteachable, kept here only because her peculiar wilder talent made her too dangerous to be permitted to leave, even with the old block long broken . She left the class, grey streaked hair blowing behind her, wondering where she had gone so terribly wrong here. She had not been outwardly defiant since she was a young girl, in fact, was careful to do everything she was told, if not one bit more, yet she knew of no other girl who had been a novice as long as she. Her next stop was the kitchen, a chore Liaran almost enjoyed. It wasn't that scrubbing pots was enjoyable work, but that it allowed her time to herself, free from the interference of fellow novices who were young enough to be her children's children, had she had any. Such peace, rare in the life of a novice, was something Liaran considered to be well worth the time spent with the pots in exchange for it.
This is all wrong, the novice complained to herself as she reached her small room. Years ago, she'd been given a private room, and if she had had to guess the reason, Liaran would have said that the Mistress of Novices did not feel comfortable placing a child in the same room as a woman who was rapidly reaching middle age. The private space was perhaps the one bright spot in Liaran's misery, but something didn't look quite right about it as she stepped up to the doorway. It was outlined in silver, something she both did not recognize and instantly identified as familiar. She thought it might even offer her escape from the Tower, though she wasn't quite sure why. Curiously, Liaran stepped through it. She knew she had to, for some reason, and whatever it might to do to her, the fate it offered had to be better than remaining to face another day here.
Liaran steps into the second arch...
Liaran checked the streets to make sure nobody was coming before she dared approach the back door of the inn. Fixing her eyes on the door, she was careful to stay out of the line of sight of whoever would be opening it. Innkeepers did not take well to beggars such as herself. The door swung open, and an unseen person deposited the contents of a large bag on the ground. It was an effort for her to wait for the door to close entirely before she pounced. Moldy fruit and old, stale bread littered the ground, but Liaran did not care about the condition of the food. She cared only that she got to it before someone else did. Ignoring the moldy spots, Liaran stuffed food in as fast as she could, all too aware that she was likely to be interrupted at any moment. She was terribly hungry, of course, yet she was not entirely sure why eating remained so important. Surely, even starvation would have been better than this.
She almost choked on the bread in her mouth when someone grabbed her from behind, pushing her against the wall of the building. Liaran did not bother to resist. Fighting back, she had quickly learned, would only result in a true beating as opposed to just being pushed aside. She was still hungry, but the effort to get up and search for food elsewhere was more than she could stand. Instead, Liaran curled herself into a ball where she lay, wishing fervently that she were anywhere else, that one small error had not led her to this.
Liaran had thought the assigned task to be quite simple at the time. The novices had been instructed to create the largest weave possible using their own strongest Power. Even now, years later, she remembered how determined she had been to do it correctly, how forceful the Accepted teaching had been with the students. The woman had pushed her to take in more and more Fire. She hated to remember how dutifully she had obeyed, right until she had collapsed from the effort of holding far more than she should have. She wished that just once, she had refused an order, but wishing changed nothing. Liaran knew she would die on these streets, probably soon, and the Tower that had abandoned her to them would never even know.
Not that they'd care, unless an Aes Sedai dirtied her slippers stepping over my body. She hated them for leaving her to this. The former novice closed her dark eyes, hoping the night would get cold enough for her to slip away peacefully. She slept, right there in the dirt, but was awakened by what she first thought to be a flash of light. Yawning, Liaran opened her eyes. Surely it couldn't be dawn yet? The night was as black as it always was, the light that had caught her attention coming from a strange silver door shining in front of her. That made no sense; she'd been here many times before, and there was no door in the side of the building. For some reason she could not identify, Liaran felt compelled to go through it. Still tired and hungry, she could not summon the energy to get to her feet, but she could crawl, which she did until she entered the arch and was swallowed by its light.
Liaran steps into the final arch...
"How is our course, Windfinder?" her Sailmistress asked. The obnoxious woman rarely called Liaran by her name. "We'll be in port shortly," Liaran answered, never once taking her eyes off the large threads of Air she was manipulating that would see them to that port. It was a difficult task, and thought she would never have given voice to it aboard ship, Liaran did not think very highly of her ability with the weaves. Years of practice, first as an apprentice and then as a Windfinder in her own right, had rendered her only adequate at Weaving the Winds. It was not that she could not do it well enough, but that she, at least, did not consider her ability with it to equal that of the majority of other Windfinders. None of the others would ever have considered judging her for it, but Liaran never forgot what she saw as her lack of skill.
As the ship pulled into port, she was finally able to drop the exhausting creation. Her work had ended as soon as they arrived, and she would be permitted to retire to her own cabin while the unloading and trading was done. When she reached it, she lay on her hard bed, asking herself the question she asked herself at least once a day, and recently, much more often. Was I wrong to come back to the sea? Liaran had never thought her return to her own people would be easy, but she had expected to be content here. She had rank and influence now, a life within her own culture, and everything she had dreamed of every day she spent within the Tower. Somehow, once she had arrived and begun her second apprenticeship, all of that had failed to be enough. Liaran thought it might be her place in life never to be truly happy anywhere.
Liaran wove a fireball and hung it in the air before her, regretting that it was all she could do within the small space. She had never considered how much she would miss working with Fire, in particular. It was not that she was forbidden from it, but that as a Windfinder, she was expected to be extremely skilled in Weaving the Winds, studying that to the exclusion of any other weaves. Such a demand gave her little free time to exercise her own strengths, and she was convinced she forgot a little of what she had once known every day she was unable to use it. In its own way, the Moon Dancer was as much of a prison as the Tower had been to her, but this time, there would be no escape. Lost in her regrets, Liaran's eyes were only half open when she noticed the shine. She pushed herself off the bed, coming closer to what appeared to be a metallic doorway in the middle of her cabin, something that simply could not be! It reminded the Windfinder of the arches within the Grey Tower, which she had refused to enter three times. I will not refuse them again. was her last thought before stepping through.
