(no subject)

[blue_ajah]

Shortly before sunset, Moiraine had come downstairs and gone quietly out the door to the lake. From time to time, a particularly observant or sensitive patron might well have noticed a flicker of golden or silver light near the edge of the building, or by the greenhouse, or at the fringes of the forest.

Sunset had turned into deep dusk, and now night has fallen. The Aes Sedai is still outside, gliding noiselessly over the grass under the dark of the moon. Silver fire sparks from her fingertips as she tests possibilities and considers threads.

Frequently, her gaze flicks upward as she scans rooftops and skies and the branches of trees.

Comments

[silver_flecks]

"They eat rodents."

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine glances up hastily from her study of the ground between two trees.

"Del." She smiles, faintly. "Good evening."

There is a pause.

"They?"

[silver_flecks]

"Them." Clarifying.

[blue_ajah]

Moiraine looks past Del toward the rooftop of the bar.

Instead of twelve golden-eyed owls, there are only two. She mutters dryly,

"Golden eyes I am used to; even the use of birds as tools of foul work, as well. It is not as though I were not told."

A pause.

"How are matters with you this evening, then?"

[silver_flecks]

Del looks at the owls and the eyes and smiles.

"I wonder what they taste like baked in a pie." She blinks slowly and looks back at Moiraine.

"How're you?" she asks instead of answering.

[blue_ajah]

"As well as may be expected." Moiraine does not press the topic of Del's own state.

"And well-accompanied," she adds dryly, although she does not look to the trees again.

[silver_flecks]

"I like them."

This is not endorsement, exactly.

Just that she likes them.

"When you were little, did you ever go outside at night and hoot and hoot like a birdy til you realized you were screaming and then your throat was raw? Some people do. I've seen it. They're weird."

She's bent over at the waist, almost neatly in half, nose near the grass which she's studying intently.

[blue_ajah]

Oddly enough-- or perhaps not -- Moiraine is reminded sharply of River as she watches Del's examination of the ground.

"I did not, as it happens."

Said quietly.

[silver_flecks]

Del is looking for something.

There it is.

She picks up a frog, carefully, and cradles it in two hands.

"He was missing." Explaining. "Good. Good. Screaming's good for the brain, but bad for the voice."

[blue_ajah]

"I would not disagree." Calmly enough, even as her thoughts flash to days uncountable in the confines of the Tower of Ghenjei, where she had screamed until she had fallen silent.

Sa souvraya niende misain ye.

There is a careful pause.

"Perhaps it is as well that he is not a rodent," she adds, tilting her head toward the nearest owl.