(no subject)

[blue_ajah]

The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again.

In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the mountains north of Arafel. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.

But it was a beginning.


* * * * * * *

The wind blows steadily onward, sweeping down from the highest peaks and over the barren, stony surface of the lower mountainside. As it passes, a brightly-colored wisp of thread tumbles ahead of it, driven haphazardly over the ground by each uneven gust.

For all of its brightness, it is a ragged piece of thread, barely more than a loosely-gathered tangle of fibers; and yet, strangely, nothing seems to impede its passage. Once, as it fetches up against a boulder for a few seconds, the strands shimmer and seem to form into the near-translucent figure of a woman-- a shape lost to sight in the next instant as the wind gusts harder and tears the thread free.

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[creator_raven]

There are songbirds here, still, furtive and fluttering. Such a thread would make a fine addition to a nest, would work to fill in the gaps that leave creatures bare to the elements.

One particularly daring bird, small and brown, darts toward it, buffeted aside by--

kaw

--the heavy wings of a hungry black bird.

The little thread twirls higher, borne skyward by the updraft of beating wings.

It is no butterfly, but perhaps it will serve well enough.

The cousins often do.

[blue_ajah]

A particularly hard gust ruffles midnight-black feathers before the wind eases its grasp on the fragile strands and turns elsewhere, as if losing interest... or letting go.

(a haven - outside the Pattern)

Unfettered by any restraint or earthbound pull, the wisp of thread hangs in midair, seeming almost to float for a timeless, impossible span.

[creator_raven]

It is nothing at all like stepping between one place and another.

It is even less like reaching out to catch hold of a speck of dust, a grain of sand.

And yet there is a hand, and a wrist, and a tangle of bedraggled threads hanging from a timeworn sleeve.

And then there is nothing save the sky, and the stars, the harsh ringing cry of a black-feathered bird--

and the absence of a weight almost too great to bear.





The rest is silence, and the space between.

[blue_ajah]

At first there is nothing more; no sound, no wind, no movement. Nothing.

Except--




--no, nothing.

Only a spark; the smallest flicker of light.

[creator_raven]

Time passes.









Time always passes.








Save when it does not.

And in the dark and the silence, a whisper slowly grows louder. One voice, then five, then half a hundred.

And that selfsame spark flickers in a wind heralded by the rustle of feathers.

Flickers, and catches alight, though there is, in this lack-of-place, no wood to burn.

[blue_ajah]

I remember this--

She has been here before, she thinks; what there is of her to think, that is.

--danger; there is danger in the Ways when the Black Wind blows--

A soft not-quite-a-sigh, a soundless shift, and a formless figure seems to stir.

[creator_raven]

There is another source of motion, shadow flickering in counterpoint to the light.

Something shifts, stirs, and resolves into the figure of a man.

Stretching behind him, soft-edged and deeper than the surrounding darkness, is his own shadow.

It has wings.

And when he tilts his head, the angle awkward and too-sharp, the voices fall silent.

It will not last.

It never does.

[blue_ajah]

Recognition, of a sort, and the spark flares brighter and dims at once as scattered pieces pull together, coalescing into the shape of a whole and the whole of a shape at once.

I am-- I can't be--

-- am I?

A sense of confusion swirls almost tangibly around-between-through the space that is no place at all save for all of the ones that it lies between.

"But I did not bring the feather."

[creator_raven]

There is silence.

Time fails to pass.

Posture unchanging, Raven laughs.

The sound, bright and warm and--for this one moment, one moment out of all the others--free.

It fades but slowly. There is power in echoes.

"I am, I think, not so easily tricked as that, yes?"

[blue_ajah]

"It was no trick."

She looks

(does not look)

down

(up sideways nowhere everywhere here)

at her hands, then at him.

"I did what I meant to do."

She sounds certain of this, even as the timbre of her voice makes it a question at the end.

[creator_raven]

The sand that isn't there shifts beneath their feet, and Raven takes one step forward.

"There are, I think, always tricks. Mostly they are not so much from you. Still."

The wind that fails to blow carries the sound of the sea with it.

The whispers return.

failed failed go down into the dust and ashes and forgot

"What you meant and what was done are not so much different. That, perhaps, is why you are for being."

He doesn't say 'here', and not just because it would be redundant.

[blue_ajah]

She tilts her head to the side, listening; dark hair falls like ash around her face as darker eyes fix on him, wide and unblinking.

"Everything. All of me. What was taught was taken and what was given was woven -- "

[creator_raven]

"And what was returned, perhaps, has also never left. Some things stick, yes? It is not a thing I forget."

He tilts his head in the other direction, watching her carefully.

The rest of him remains very still. Even the shadows.

Especially the shadows.

"There are always prices. Choices, too."

His smile is small, and crooked, and true.

"It is, I think, what I am for."

In part. The whole of it is another story.

A longer one.

[blue_ajah]

"When it is high, that is how you know it is worth paying," she replies.

Silence, then; long silence, broken only by the distant whispers.

"I cannot go back without undoing what was done."

Can I?

Spoken or unspoken, heard or merely thought-- the question is, all the same.

[creator_raven]

"That, I think, is mostly a question of how far back, yes?"

the beginning beginning beginnings are endings the end the end it ends

"Or possibly it is a different kind of forward. "

He fails to blink.

"And there is death. That, too, is not so difficult."

[blue_ajah]

"It is anything but difficult."

Her nod toward his winged shadow is the only movement in the stillness.

"It is lighter than a feather, or so it is said; it is duty that is hard. To hold, despite everything."

The faintest hint of a smile flickers.

"When ever have I sought that which was easy?"

[creator_raven]

"This, I think, is not so much meant to be hard."

He reaches out--the gesture only careless on the surface--to ruffle her hair.

"Or a duty, yes?"

[blue_ajah]

In turn, she reaches up, but whether she means to take his hand or to stop it does not matter in the instant that she catches sight of her own fingers.

Faint and faded, tattered at the tips and barely even there at all, nevertheless the sight of her own (threadworn) hands sparks sudden realization.

"There was the tiniest bit left over; I wondered why, but it did not seem to matter, not then..."

She looks up at him.

"Four years of life beyond the Pattern at Milliways marks its own thread, it seems."

A pause, scarcely the space of a breath in length.

"Is it -- can it truly be so?"

[creator_raven]

"I am, I think, not always so much for lying."

Not when there is no purpose in cruelty, at least.

Stealthily, while Moiraine is distracted with her own faded hand, Raven attempts to ruffle her hair again.

Because he can.

"Not here. Not to you. So."

[blue_ajah]

"Then--"

She looks past him, past herself, behind and through and in all directions at once as well as none at all before focusing on him once more.

"--where?"

She might as easily have said How? or When? or Why?

In the end, it is all the same, at least in this.

[creator_raven]

"Mostly not here, yes? Though it is, I think, like enough."

He grins, wide and bright and--as ever--full of teeth.

"Also there are other worlds. You will see."

Raven holds out one hand, head tilted, watching Moiraine.

"There is time."

[blue_ajah]

"More than I might have ever dared hope, it seems."

Slender fingers tangle with his as Moiraine takes his hand, smiling up at him in truth.

"I am glad of it."

[creator_raven]

"It will be better, I think, with cookies."







They take the shadows with them, when they go.

And the light.

It is always and ever so.