[pfsb] the mirrors of the wheel

[blue_ajah]

The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, and all things are part of the Pattern. There is little that she can do now but wait, guard against events worsening as best she can, and watch.

As a result, Moiraine is in the bar this evening, musing over her thoughts with a cup of tea at hand and a slender, leather-bound journal open to a blank page before her.

Comments

[blue_ajah]

"I am not certain that we do," she murmurs. "Fighters, certainly; swordsmen as well, including those who have devoted themselves to fighting monsters of various kinds for various reasons. Those with golden eyes, as you and I have touched on. But these mutations you mentioned before, that is unfamiliar to me in the way you speak of it."

[bialy_wilk]

"Just as well," he tells her. "The process is damned dangerous. Lost plenty of brothers just to the mutagens, let alone later on the Path."

[blue_ajah]

"The Path?" she asks. "In my birth world, I am only familiar with one person who sought to change living creatures through experiments. It did not end well."

[bialy_wilk]

"We're itinerant," he explains. "Witchers travel alone, wandering the continent, most of the year. Call it being on the Path."

The rest of her statement deserves a shrug, which is what he gives. "Only one? Prefer your world, then. People can't seem to stop meddling in mine."

[blue_ajah]

"I see." For an instant, there is a flicker of something almost wistful about her slight smile. "Do you have a direction to your travels, or do you instead pursue where need takes you?"

She makes no comment on people who meddle, which given how often Aes Sedai have been accused of such - and not without reason - is probably just as well.

[bialy_wilk]

"The latter, usually. Sometimes receive a summons to come to one place or another, but that's the exception."

He sets aside his glass, considering it. "Sometimes I'll winter back at Kaer Morhen. Home of the School of the Wolf."

[blue_ajah]

"Where you were trained." Given what he had said before about being their product, it is not precisely a guess. "What is your school like?"

[bialy_wilk]

He nods to her deduction. "Ruined," he says, blunt. "Literally and metaphorically. Only a handful of us left, and the keep itself is in bad shape from the last time someone stormed it."

[blue_ajah]

She draws a soft breath, and forces her thoughts away from Tar Valon with the strength of trained will.

“Do you seek to rebuild?”

[bialy_wilk]

"No." This, too, is blunt, though there's something a little softer about it. He shakes his head. "Couldn't even if we wanted to. The methods of making witchers were lost years ago. When the last of us goes, that'll be the end of it all."

[blue_ajah]

She nods, and does him the courtesy of not offering meaningless platitudes in the face of what he has just told her. "Difficult times, at the ends of Ages."

[bialy_wilk]

"Everything ends," he says, with a degree of certainty that suggests he's seen plenty of things end before. "The elves say va'esse deireádh aep eigean, va'esse eigh faidh'ar. Something ends; something begins."

[blue_ajah]

"We have a similar perspective," she says. "As the Wheel of Time turns, the ending of one thing is the beginning of another."

[bialy_wilk]

He huffs a half-amused breath. "Hopefully not the same thing starting all over again," he says. "But I guess we'll see."

Or someone will. It seems optimistic in the extreme to assume he'd be alive to watch it happen.

[blue_ajah]

"I suppose we will," she agrees, with a slight smile. "One way or another."

[bialy_wilk]

He lifts his glass to her in a wry toast.

"Hopefully not anytime soon."