Fanfic:Return
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Death.
It is an ending. Or is it?
It is a beginning. But it cannot be a beginning. It can only be an ending. What happens when death is neither an ending nor a beginning…
Miahala Sha’hal… Miahala Machera… Miahala Jolstraer… Miahala Ives…
All of these women stood in one body leaning against a window frame in a farmhouse in Saldaea, looking out over the horse pasture below her. Amongst the green, a mare and a yearling grazed. Or, the mare grazed and the younger horse danced around her and did its best to annoy her. Like all good children…
Looking down at the length of her own body, she saw her form--the form she had always had--in the pale colored shift. An ugly scar, one that couldn’t even manage to exist in a straight line, stretched between full breasts and disappeared beneath the fabric. She had already seen it, of course, and knew that it didn’t stop till it reached the top of her stomach.
It wasn’t alone.
Her smooth, ageless face crumpled with tears that she resisted. She flattened her palm against the glass, feeling her hand almost as cold as the window as she shuddered with breathing; her heart beat stuttering in her chest.
“Gramma Mia?” It was a small voice from the door. Inhaling sharply, fire flashed through her mind before she stuffed it back into the dark corner it belonged and turned, smiling at the little face peering through the door.
Nearly two decades had passed, apparently, since Mia had died.
A young woman with freckles and twin braids that had lived here before Miahala was murdered was now a wife, mother, and mistress of this farm. Her son was the one looking in on “Gramma” Mia, even though she was...far beyond that.
“Mama says that dinner is ready,” he told her with solemn politeness. “She wants to know if you want to eat with us.”
Since crawling out of the Blight some months ago and somehow finding her way home, Mia had stayed sequestered in this room. Her family had been considerate, once the shock and horror passed, and she had assured them that she was--somehow, someway--alive.
How much longer could she hide? “I will, Alon,” she said, knowing by the widening of his eyes that she had surprised him. “I’ll be down shortly.”
A decision took root in her mind. She could not hide any longer, and this… It had been a long time since this had been home. No, it was time to go truly home. Running her hand over the dress provided for her, she reflected back to the style she’d need to pursue again. The way she had dressed when she had walked the stone corridors that comprised most of her life.
It was time to go home...to the Grey Tower.
She had no idea what happened. Not truly.
Miahala remembered the cold, underground halls that she had traversed. She remembered knowing how foolish it was, but she had done it. She remembered the young, stupid Aes Sedai with the Black heart. She remembered the bastard child of her second husband, and the knife he drove through her ribs.
Weeping. Telling Caden she loved him as she touched his scarred, beautiful face and then...died.
She bloody died, so why was she not still dead?
Like death had not been death, time had not been time. Life had not been life, until she awoke for good in the desolation beyond the borderlands. Like a bird that always knows where the place of its birth is, she managed to find her way to Saldaea. Bloody. Beaten. Broken. Covered in terrible wounds just beginning to scar that she had no memory of receiving.
In flashes, in nightmares, in shattered shards… She could remember pain. She could remember the sour taste of the shadow’s power on her tongue and in her body. Words she could not understand… And pain.
Then, nothing. Then, the Blight… Always that place. That infernal place. It would never leave her.
Astride a horse bred of high quality from fine Saldaean, Sha’hal stock, Mia made the long journey from the Borderlands to the Mountains of Mist. She knew she could still touch the One Power, but she had never had the skills to Travel well with it. She did not know if she trusted it enough to try, especially alone. And she wanted the journey. The days to clear her mind and find something like the center of herself, if she could ever find it again.
Then came the colors of Hama Valon, and rising out of the misty streaks...home.
Miahala Sedai had returned.
