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978 NE
The Accepted were allowed an additional freedom of study not afforded to Novices. There were still chores, of course, and errands and assignments, but an Accepted was expected to devote much of her time to her own research and practice.
Their lessons were often held in smaller groups or individually in an Aes Sedai's study if there was a topic of particular concentration. Additionally, several new sections of the library had been made available, with older and more varied works and a few large tomes that had been made by Ogier bookbinders. Those were among Moiraine's favorite parts of the newly-expanded library.
She and Siuan often spent several hours each day reading and in deep discussion about what they'd learned or something they'd been thinking on. They'd developed a pattern as Novices: when one found something of note, she passed it to the other, then they discussed their thoughts on the material. If, occasionally, a less-than-academic note slipped into the mix, it was accompanied with a wink and a promise to take care in her studies.
Moiraine knew others thought of the two of them as an insular sort of coterie, attached in a way that passed beyond most pillow friends. Moiraine agreed, in a manner. Mostly, she thought of them as complimentary parts of one unit. The delicate gears of a clock, a button and a loop, a left glove and a right.
When Moiraine arrived at their usual nook, a plain table and chairs ensconced in the glow of late afternoon sun, it was clear that Siuan had been there for some time. She leaned forward somewhat, engrossed in the small leather-bound book she held in one hand. She startled when Moiraine reached for her chair, her head shooting up before she realized who it was.
Without so much as a greeting Siuan said, "Do you think a weave can be handed from one channeler to another?"
Moiraine’s brow furrowed; the question had inspired several in return.
She blinked.
"I will get more books."
The discussion carried them into the night. And the next, and the next. Before week's end, they were debating the best way to test the idea.
They sat on the floor of Moiraine's room, atop the rough woven rug that they’d pulled to the hearth.
They weren’t able to spend as much time on the question as they would have a year ago, or even half a year. The test for the shawl loomed unnervingly on the horizon, now. They had all but selected the Blue Ajah already, though they Yellows had vied for Moiraine’s talent for Healing and the Whites for Siuan’s talent for logic puzzles.
The question and the attempts to pass the weave become somewhat of a side project, a distraction to occupy their minds when they couldn’t possibly focus on the hundred weaves any longer.
-
979 NE
“You don’t have to come with me every time. It’s much warmer in the Tower.” Siuan spoke without turning. In front of her, the Erinin flowed along at a steady clip, helped by a cutting wind from the north. She sat atop a wide rock on the bank, soaking in the last rays of midwinter sunset.
“I have come to find solace in the river as well,” Moiraine replied, her voice rang softly as she stepped up from behind Siuan. She sat delicately, arranging her heavy cloak to settle over folded legs.
Siuan looked over to Moiraine. A golden dusk glow reflected off the water, catching in her dark hair and painting her in a lovely warmth.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Its invariability is a comfort.”
Siuan smiled at that. Moiraine met her eyes and smiled back, a soft little pull at the corners of her mouth.
“Did you feel that way before?” Siuan asked.
She didn’t need to specify before what. It had been just over a week since they had accidentally bonded. It wasn’t quite like the Warder bond, she knew. It was more like an extension of the unusual closeness they already shared. A heightened awareness of one another that they were still trying to understand.
Moiraine nodded in response. “I’ve found my own reasons to love the water.” She leaned a bit closer to Siuan. “Though I cannot deny your influence.”
Siuan bumped their shoulders together lightly before turning back to face the river. Though it was High Chasaline, the Day of Reflection in Cairhien, Moiraine had declared that morning that she would not spend the day in her rooms. In previous years, Moiraine had locked herself away for hours, only emerging at the last dinner bell.
Siuan had always regarded Cairhienin guilt as a bit dramatic and more than a bit unnecessary, but Moiraine never did things by halves. She admired that, even when it occasioned vexation.
Siuan, as soon as she could get away, had always snuck out of the Tower on High Chasaline. She would filch a few sweetcakes and bring them to the river to share with the reminder of her father. Moiraine usually joined her after dark, and they stayed on the bank until the cold got to be too much.
It had been harder to get away this year, despite the shawls they had both recently earned. Or perhaps because of them. Siuan’s induction into the eyes and ears network brought brutally long hours and Moiraine’s management of the Tower bounty was little better.
They sat in companionable silence, indulging in a moment of peace away from watchful eyes and heavy expectations.
Lost in the almost hypnotic flow of the river, Siuan let her mind drift. She knew Moiraine was next to her, physically, but if she let herself be aware of it, she could feel her in a way that was less corporeal. More instinctual. She knew that Moiraine truly was comforted by the water and Siuan’s presence, and that her spirits were buoyed by the recent festivities. She knew that Moiraine’s fingers were cold, though she was doing her best to ignore the sensation. Beyond that she knew there was a deep lingering worry that seemed to be ever present in Moiraine.
A persistent bit of curiosity appeared at the front of it all, though Siuan couldn’t tell much more than that. Emotions were fickle things without the thoughts to give them context. No, not fickle. They were a bloody mess. A tangled, poorly woven, constantly contradicting mess.
A sharp gust of wind blew past them, rippling the loose end of Siuan’s cloak and pulling at Moiraine’s unbound hair.
Siuan felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, though not from the wind. She fought the urge to shiver at the sensation.
“Siuan.”
Moiraine angled to face her.
“Yes?”
Siuan matched Moiraine’s position, their knees brushing together.
“It’s like you were staring at me.” Moiraine’s voice held a note of uncertainty, as if she was still working out what she was saying. “We were both looking ahead and yet I could feel you looking at me, so I looked back.”
Siuan nodded. “I was looking; I’m still trying to figure this whole thing out. And I thought you might ask me something.”
Moiraine’s cheeks colored.
“I wondered if you were going to get another tattoo.”
A full-throated laugh spilled out from Siuan. She had expected something else. Something to match the gravity of their days since hearing Gitara’s foretelling.
“Yes, I think I will.”
The sun had slipped past the horizon some time ago, and it was almost fully dark now. They would have to be getting back soon or they’d lose their way.
Siuan covered Moiraine’s hand with her own. As she looked up to meet Moiraine’s eyes, she brought their twined hands to her mouth, placing a gentle kiss across the back of Moiraine’s knuckles. “Thank you for sitting with me,” she said.
“I would be nowhere else.”
Siuan felt her chest warm at the immediate sincerity. Moiraine rarely spoke so plainly. When they were Novices she seemed to find the idea of speaking about feelings for another to be downright alarming. Siuan had never been daunted by this fact; she rarely needed words to hear Moiraine.
“Come on then,” Siuan said in a lighter tone. She kissed Moiraine’s hand again before standing. “I heard Leane and Adine just got their hands on some truly awful wine. It’s probably just to your liking.”
Moiraine narrowed her eyes as she stood. Despite the look, Siuan could feel her amusement.
As much as they had shared recently, it seemed increasingly as if the Wheel was pulling them apart. It happened little by little with an unyielding determination. But they had time yet, Siuan had to remind herself often. Moiraine would likely not leave for weeks, maybe even a month or more. Siuan tried to focus instead on the present - on the weight of Moiraine’s mind beside hers and regaining Leane and Sheriam as friends and the languid kisses they had shared before First Rise. Yes, those were better thoughts.
The age would not come to a close this evening. They had time yet.
-
984 NE
Moiraine stepped into the Tairen hut, making a conscious effort to relax her shoulders as she met the heavy, humid air and familiar bamboo underfoot.
She’d scarcely found her bearings before she was enveloped by Siuan. Surrounded first by her presence – that place in the back of her mind was alight at their closeness, near overwhelming after being apart for so long – and then by her body as Siuan hugged her. It was a crushing thing, borne of fear and relief both, warm where their skin met and scented softly by Siuan’s earthy soap.
“Light, Moiraine. I thought – that felt – light!” She had never seen Siuan, silver tongued and quick witted, at such a loss for words. “The way Anaiya told it… if I hadn’t felt it myself I’d have thought she was baiting the line.”
Moiraine pulled back, sharp eyes meeting Siuan’s. “What has she been saying?”
“Nothing, nothing. It was just to Cetalia and I. But nevermind that.”
Siuan’s grasp at Moiraine’s shoulders eased. She dropped a hand to ghost over the tender spot between Moiraine’s ribs, barely touching, as if afraid she would aggravate the Healed wound. “You’re alright?”
It was almost too forceful to be a question. As if Siuan’s sheer willpower would make it so, regardless of the pattern. Through their bond, she was steadfast, as always, but shaken.
“I’m alright, Siuan.” Moiraine nodded her reassurance. “I’m alright.”
She covered Siuan’s hand with one of her own, then looped an arm up and around Siuan’s neck, pulling her back into their embrace. Once, she would have been embarrassed at the eagerness with which she sought out this physical comfort. Now, she tucked against the taller woman and pulled her closer for both of their sakes. How many nights had she lain awake, brimming with appetency at the simple thought of pressing her body against Siuan’s? Of feeling the rise of her chest as she inhaled or the brush of loose curls against her cheek?
Moiraine curled her fingers, dragging her nails across the back of Siuan’s neck. That was the spot, she knew, where Siuan most strongly felt their bond.
Siuan shivered, and goosebumps rose on Moiraine’s skin.
“Yes.” Siuan’s voice was a reverent whisper. “Yes,” she said again, breath warm across Moiraine’s lips before they kissed, sweet and searing together at once.
Moiraine would not tell Siuan what she had said to Lan, nearly delirious yet still paralyzed by the fear of revealing too much in her altered state. Go to her, she had repeated, over and over until the words lost all meaning in her fever-addled mind. She had clung to them still. A lament not for herself but for the hurt she caused.
She would not tell Siuan that she had tried to mask her bonds in an offer of preemptive protection against the fraying of her tie to this life. She had been too weak to do so – even before Lan recognized her attempt for what it was – and she knew that she would not have lived to reach Anaiya had she not drawn upon his strength in the end.
Moiraine gasped for air, angling her neck as Siuan moved to kiss along her jaw, open-mouthed and purposeful. Roving hands pulled at the loose shift Moiraine wore, then wound through the dark waves of her hair, grasping at any bit of her with the covetous edge of someone searching for solace.
Only hours ago, Moiraine had seen Leane, six months after losing Anjen and changed in an undefinable way. Siuan would not tell Moiraine stories of the weeks immediately following the Warder’s death but what Moiraine imagined would haunt her anyway.
In recent days, she had come to fear the depth of the connection between herself and Siuan. Not because of what they had now but because of what it would leave behind when she was gone.
“Bed,” Moiraine breathed.
“Yes,” Siuan said again.
Moiraine felt as if she was returning to her body. Like she had been apart from it somehow since the injury and was only now able to ease back into place. She had always felt a distance within herself, and a further interval between herself and others. That nebulous space and uncertainty faded with Siuan, and these past years on the road with Lan had helped to solidify in her a sense of identity and of self worth that somewhat eased the discomfort of the rest.
However, Moiraine had recently found that an arrowhead lodged deeply between one’s ribs had a way of unsettling a person. This seemed a surprise to no one but her. She felt off kilter, away from herself more intensely than she had in years, as if existing a few paces astray. She had never come so close to death, and thought often now of the intensity of mirrored terror and trepidation that had rolled through her bonds, though muted by distance and the ko’di.
Being in this place - in these arms - it alleviated outside concerns or fears, if only for a short time. There was a certain safety here that was not possible on the road or in the Tower, along with the release of knowing with unphased certainty that she would be understood and taken care of.
She stumbled when the back of her knee hit their bed, but Siuan held her steady around the waist. She could feel a trill of simple amusement dance through Siuan at that, bolstered by something deeper. The pride of providing support, Moiraine thought. Not just literally, but as a physical demonstration of a larger abstract concept.
Siuan pushed lightly at her shoulders and Moiraine sat.
Above her, Moiraine thought Siuan looked weary. Despite the heat in her eyes, she looked aged and tired in a way she wouldn’t show to anyone else.
The corner of Siuan’s mouth ticked up, half of a smirk dancing there. “I am meant to be worrying about you tonight, love. Not the other way around.”
She brought a hand to Moiraine’s cheek and Moiraine turned into it, kissing first her palm then each of her fingers in turn.
Slowly, Siuan placed one knee on the bed next to Moiraine before doing the same with the other, settling fully onto her lap. Moiraine’s breath caught.
She let out an involuntary hum, her eyes closing at the thrum of resonance between the two of them. She laughed when she realized Siuan had done the same.
“My Moiraine.”
Moiraine felt a flush rise to her cheeks. Siuan had always possessed a command and clarity in speaking that Moiraine felt she lacked. Such a simple phrase, yet it warmed her with its sincerity. She had never heard lovers in Cairhien speak of one another with the affection and care that came so easily to Siuan. Despite the years shared between them she often felt unable to express her own thoughts and intentions in the same manner.
Moiraine met Siuan’s eyes and Siuan nodded, understanding.
She let her gaze lower, taking in Siuan in a way she hadn’t yet had the chance to. She was wrapped in a familiar robe of worn linen, deep blue and trimmed with delicate flowering embroidery along the hems and around the wide sleeves. Siuan wouldn’t wear it in the Tower, as the cut was Cairhienin, so it passed between the two of them here.
Siuan’s taller frame and her position on Moiraine’s lap caught the fabric in a pool around her thighs. Moiraine traced her fingers over the bundled cloth, resting her palms low on Siuan’s hips. Her thumbs slid over the juncture at the very top of Siuan’s legs, just below her hip bone.
The movement made her thighs jump, as Moiraine had known it would, and Siuan let out a breathy huff caught somewhere between a moan and a laugh. Moiraine leaned forward in response, her nose trailing up the line of Siuan’s neck until the woman tilted her head back and away.
Siuan’s pulse leapt beneath Moiraine’s lips and both women moaned in satisfaction. Moiraine smiled at that, biting softly under Siuan’s ear.
Siuan slid a hand into Moiraine’s hair, gripping tenderly at the base of her skull. Moiraine moved in kind, tracing up Siuan’s sides and pulling her closer as Siuan’s hips pressed into her.
She found the thin ribbon belting the robe closed, the simple knot as familiar as the fingers that had fashioned it. The tie fell away, though the cloth revealed only a long thin strip of Siuan’s sternum. With a sound deep in her throat, Moiraine moved her mouth to the newly revealed skin. Her hands slipped easily under the robe to the warm softness of flesh beneath, her fingers skating over the lines of ink that she knew were there, though she could not feel them.
Siuan was gasping, a series of small, quiet sounds that made Moiraine ache, lightheaded with desire. Breathless, she pulled back for a moment, looking up at Siuan with wide eyes and a heaving chest. Siuan met her gaze with a heavy-lidded one of her own. The hand in Moiraine’s hair slipped forward to her jaw, and Siuan’s thumb dragged slowly across Moiraine’s bottom lip.
Moiraine’s eyes fluttered closed, her body pliant under the intensity of Siuan’s heady focus.
It had been almost immediate, their ability to understand one another. Almost since their initial meeting had the two shared the ability to anticipate one another, to match wit for wit. To orbit as sun and moon do. Still, Moiraine found herself shocked by the intensity of wholeness, of homecoming, that she felt while with Siuan.
Even before their minds had met in their accidental bond, Siuan had been adept at truly seeing Moiraine. It had infuriated her initially. She, child of the Sun Palace, raised in Daes Dae’mar, seen so completely by someone who claimed to have no hidden motive. Who claimed the Game was stupider than swimming with the silverpike in spring. A pivotal cognizance had begun to unfold then for Moiraine, who had never before trusted another with the kind of closeness that she feared and longed for with equal measure.
After every meeting in this secret and transient manner the parting hurt more. She had known it would, when she set out that first time. She had not foreseen the grief she would come to feel each time she approached the Tower. An anticipatory mourning for their impending separation, though they had not yet reunited.
It was harder still to feel their awareness of one another fade as Moiraine rode away from Tar Valon. Most days, Siuan existed only faintly in her mind, a presence ghosting across the back of her neck and across her shoulders, as if standing just out of sight.
Twined together as they were in this shared space, her mind buzzed at their proximity. She could feel Siuan not just physically, but beyond the limits of their finite bodies. She could feel Siuan in the way that she felt the One Power: a force intrinsically and completely entwined with her own existence.
How terrifying, to be seen so completely. How freeing, as well.
When she opened her eyes again, she knew that Siuan understood her, as she too understood Siuan. Veneration passed between them. Exaltation. Moiraine was not sure from which of them it originated.
Siuan’s thumb still rested heavily against Moiraine’s bottom lip, and Moiraine opened her mouth to it. Arousal rushed quickly back to the front of her mind, fed by the heat of Siuan’s skin against hers, the way Siuan’s chin lifted and her lips parted as she looked down upon Moiraine.
What an indulgence, to linger under the weight of Siuan’s riveting mind. The depth of her accentuation had always been an immense thing.
“Lay back,” Siuan said, and Moiraine did.
One by one, Siuan began to undo the few slim buttons that ran down the front of Moiraine’s shift. Her fingers brushed against Moiraine’s body through the fabric, teasingly light, and Moiraine trembled as the garment fell to her sides.
Siuan braced her hands against Moiraine’s waist as she bent, her lips finding the right side of Moiraine’s ribs. The scar there was a raised line of reddish pink about the size of her little finger, stark against pale skin. Though it had lost the numbness of new Healing, mostly, it retained the tenderness that accompanied the Healing of a person without much energy of their own to lend to the process.
Siuan kissed the scar once, then again, then a third time. “My Moiraine,” she whispered against it.
Moiraine found herself wondering if Siuan said those words for herself or for Moraine. Did she utter such a profession alone in the darkness of her own apartments? Or was it reserved for moments between them such as these?
“Siuan,” Moiraine felt herself reply. An unconscious breath.
Siuan kissed her again, moving across her ribs, up her sternum, down the swell of her breast. Moiraine threaded a hand into Siuan’s hair, pulling her closer. She grabbed at the collar of Siuan’s robe. “Come here.”
Their lips met, hard and heated for a moment before Moiraine tugged again at the robe.
Siuan kept her eyes on Moiraine’s as she sat back up, settling again into her position straddling Moiraine’s lap. She rolled her shoulders, dragging the cloth down to drape at her elbows, before tossing it aside.
Moiraine’s eyes traced the lines of Siuan’s body, catching on the little spots she most liked to lavish time upon. That familiar heat tugged harder in her.
“Why thank you,” Siuan murmured.
Her mouth slid into a self-satisfied grin before she kissed Moiraine. Again and again, until Moiraine grew near dizzy once more.
She gasped as Siuan’s thigh pressed between hers, then her hand, firm and sure, just like Siuan herself. From above her, Siuan spoke quietly. “How wonderful to feel you again.”
Moiraine cried out, as much from the sentiment as from physical feeling. Siuan had always known when to speak without veils. She carried a gravity tonight that Moiraine had never seen from her. Deliberate consideration and care, always there but now magnified.
Sometimes when they met it was about challenging one another, meeting quip for quip or drawing out little games of anticipation. Other times, it was about relinquishment. About giving oneself up and letting go of anything other than the need to be present. In times like these, Moiraine felt like she would melt into Siuan. As if the lines between them would blur and disappear until the two of them became one.
It was easy to entrust herself to Siuan, to let the craving for her take over. They would have a few nights together, surely, if not the days. Time enough to reacquaint themselves with one another, to speak and to listen.
For now, Moiraine unfurled under Siuan.
She knew they would meet the sun together without sleep.
In the light of a new dawn, they would discuss Tower politics and Moiraine’s progress. They would not speak of narrowly avoided outcomes or likely possibilities or worst case scenarios. The Wheel would continue to exact a price, and they would continue to pay it.