(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

[blue_ajah]

She is very still for several seconds, but then Moiraine nods.

(I'd prefer not to die, if it's at all avoidable)

"I know," she says quietly. "And yet, the creature within him has taken control of others before, and escaped, with its victims dead. I would see its rampage stopped."

[it_has_teeth]

"Perhaps it has a role of its own to play."

Ed continues to circle.

"The Powers, or so I have heard, are not ones to create lightly. Some of their creations are well-described as terrible."

Ed himself is one of these, or so many would say.

[blue_ajah]

"All things are part of the Pattern," she agrees.

"Perhaps it may be so. And yet I do not intend to surrender, because I may well have my own role to play in such matters, when considered in those terms."

[it_has_teeth]

"It might not be the one you prefer."

He submerges again, only the very tip of his fin rising out of the lake. For a moment he would seem to be a perfectly normal shark.

There is a flash of teeth in the dark, below the surface.

[blue_ajah]

"It might not," she replies steadily. "Still, that does not mean that I may not do everything that I can to ensure that it will be."

Dryly, with the weight of memory,

"I have done so before."

[it_has_teeth]

"Eventually, Moiraine, luck runs out."

And then he disappears from her view, far more suddenly than one might expect from a creature his size.

The surface of the lake grows still after his passage, stars reflecting faintly off the calm water.

He might not even have been there at all.