Jelena Malaros
| Jelena Malaros | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Created by | Elizabeth Halvorsen |
| Information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Aes Sedai of the Green Ajah |
| Affiliation | The Grey Tower |
| Bondmate(s) | |
| Nationality | Cairhienin |
| Attributes | |
| Talents | |
| OP Strength | 8.0 |
| Affinities | Air, Water, Fire, Earth, Spirit |
Jelena Malaros is a Cairhienin Green Oathsworn Aes Sedai of the Grey Tower.
Description
Though physically a typical Cairhienin, both petite and pale though her hair is dark, Jelena hails from the foregate rather than the upper echelons, and therefore shares little of her nation's reputed taste for dark clothing and repression. Though she turned to thievery through necessity, she took to it easily, and continues to steal small items now and then...just to keep in practice. She's sassy and rebellious and stubborn, but she takes her fight against the Shadow very seriously.
She's also spent rather a lot of time at the Tower's infamous Farm, the most dreaded of punishments for a city-girl.
Biography
Jelena hated Mistress Nurim. Jelena hated the hired hands who left all the hard work to the suffering students. Jelena hated the stupid sheep and especially the stinking pigs. Jelena even hated the carrots, and Light knew that was the easiest job around there. Jelena hated the light-blasted Creator-forsaken flaming farm.
But she was leaving it today.
All she had wanted was to leave the bloody Tower with Aed and live in peace; he'd told her stories about his father's house in the mountains, and though it didn't sound much better than this flaming farm, she'd be with him, and she wouldn't be taking orders. But no, they'd come to collect her ; they called him a deserter and left him there, but they bundled her off to this place, bound and shielded until they dumped her at Mistress Nurim's feet.
After six months of only holding saidar when she wouldn't be caught, they relented that much and sent someone to teach her a lesson now and then. She wished she could teach all of them a lesson, but she bent her head and studied hard like a good girl, and it had paid off in the end.
After all, she was leaving the farm today.
As the sun peeked over the horizon and spilled its light across the fields, Jelena finished bathing and pulled on a garment that had sat in a cedar trunk for more than a year. She'd never thought she'd be happy to put the damned thing on, but here she was, grinning like an idiot as she pulled the white dress with its parti-coloured bands over her head and stretched her arms around to do up the buttons. On the farm, she was just another student being punished, and if she was distinguished at all, it was by being treated more harshly and kept there longer than anyone else. In the Tower, the dress and ring of an Accepted meant something. In the Tower, she was marked as one who had faced her fears, and conquered them, somehow emerging from the ter'angreal alive. In the Tower, she was worth more than her ability to haul slops to the pigs.
She combed out her long black hair and impatiently dried it with saidar. Instead of braiding it as she'd been doing for practicality's sake, she twisted it up on top of her head in a way she'd seen an Aes Sedai wear once. The silver pins she secured it with had been snitched from Mistress Nurim's own jewelry box, but she'd taken only a few of them so they wouldn't be missed. It seemed one needed more pins to hold such a complex style up, so she took it down and tried again. She ended up with an untidy swirl pinned on top her head and a lot of loose curls straggling down from it. Still liking it better than the hated Two Rivers style braid, she flashed a grin at herself in the little looking glass and flounced out of the bathing house, kicking happily at the striped hem of her skirts.
She had wondered many times what had become of Aed while she had been in this dusty, callous-building hell. As Jel followed the Aes Sedai toward the gateway, though, she suddenly wondered what had happened to Rillas. And that wondering prompted another; was there a girl named Khar there now? The bloody scene inside the bloody ter'angreal arch was the last thing in the world she wanted to create, but she was curious.
Still wondering, she stepped through the gateway and left the farm.
Knives spun, blades flashing in the sun, and the apple thudded heavily to the ground, twin hilts protruding from it. Smirking, Kharienthe stalked forward to retrieve her prey. She took a moment to clean the sticky juice from the matched blades, and then they spun again and slid into the sheaths at her narrow hips. She gave the master gardener a saucy wink as she bit into the fruit, and he gave her a long-suffering shake of the head and a grudging smile in return.
And then her hackles rose--no, it was just gooseflesh--and she turned. One of the gaidin stood there, silent and disapproving, yellow eyes slitted, a lean grey wolf at his side. A growl rose in her throat, turning into a cat-like hiss before it left her mouth, and she fled, backing away slowly at first, then spinning and breaking into a loping jog as she headed for the grove.
Surrounded by trees, thick foliage shielding her from the wolf eyes, Khar gave way to rage, her fists clenched, her thin body shaking. Why the hell were they always after her? It wasn't her fault the wolves didn't like her. She'd never done a damned thing to earn their censure. It was such a relief to have food to eat and a roof over her head that she'd been too grateful to ever do less or other than the trainers asked. Well, or order. They do like to give orders. The narrow cot, hard mattress, and thin blankets the other trainees complained about were luxuries she hadn't expected. She sighed and folded herself in half, burying her face in her knees. If the creepy golden-eyed wolfkin wanted to make life hard, there wasn't much she could do about it but stay out of their way.
After all, nowhere but the Grey Tower wanted to take in a girl with creepy silver eyes. There was nowhere left to go.
Somehow more exhausted from a morning of channelling than she would have been hoeing turnips, Jelena skipped out on a proper lunch, instead appropriating a chunk of brown bread and a slice of white cheese from the larder while no one was looking. She took her haul to the gardens to eat it in peace.
The grove, her grove, and Aed's, was occupied. A beautiful, hauntingly familiar girl in the uniform of a ji'dar sat on the rock in the middle, her head cradled on her knees, a mangled apple held loosely in one hand. Jelena thought about leaving again, but dammit, this was her grove, and she'd eat in it if she liked. And she wanted to know why the girl seemed so familiar.
"Want to trade some of that apple for some of my bread and cheese?"
"Huh? Oh. Sure."
Jel caught the tossed apple neatly, wrinkling her nose a little as the sticky surface shared its mess with her palm. If she wasn't going to do farm work anymore, she wanted to stay clean. She divvied up the food anyway and gave the girl half. She elbowed her to scoot over and make room on the boulder, and Jel sat down next to her.
"I'm Jel."
"Kharienthe. Everyone calls me Khar."
"Khar, then. Properly, I'm Jelena."
So this was Khar. The girl's face snapped into place in Jel's memory, smack in the middle of her very worst memory. Khar and Aed dead, Rillas carrying her off slung across his saddle, blood and the Shadow all around. Khar dead in Jel's final trip through the arches.
"Come here often?" The little eyebrow-waggle turned the inane query into a joke, and they both laughed. They ate quietly after that for a few minutes, and it was Jel who broke the silence again. "I used to come here often. I used to meet a boy in this grove."
"A boy?"
"Mm-hmm. He used to get me into a lot of trouble. Not that I minded...."
Gossip and a quick lunch in a secluded grove turned into a close friendship. By the time Jelena was found worthy of the shawl--just three months later--they had agreed to share a bond. They had to wait another six months for Khar's own training to finish, and Jelena spent all her spare time as a new-made Aes Sedai wearing her green-fringed shawl in the warder yards, watching the students train and the gaidin spar.
Career History
- Novice
- Accepted
- Aes Sedai of the Green Ajah
