milliways_bar | (no subject)

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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.

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It's close enough for Beverly to sit up a bit straighter, suddenly feeling a bit like she's back in school.

"I'm pretty sure it was Tibetan. I know it was from the Himalayas. And the Himalayas are in Tibet."

She pauses, then asks, "...Is that important?"

"It might well be," she murmurs. "It may simply be coincidence, one of the similarities between worlds that exists in this place, and yet..."

Moiraine shakes her head, adding,

"Please continue, child. I would very much like to hear more of this tale."

Beverly nods, and goes on. "The description of the ritual Bill read said that when you found a taelus, you bit its tongue, and it bit yours, and then you both told riddles, and the first one who laughed in spite of the pain lost. And if the taelus lost it had to go away for a hundred years, but if you lost, it ate you."

Which, really, was all a lot easier to talk and think about when it was just a story in a book and not the memory of Bill and the Spider.

"I think the thing about the tongues was sort of a metaphor. Bill just...it was like his body was with us, but the rest of him was just...somewhere else. I don't know where. I'm not sure I want to. And then the Spider started screaming and thrashing around like It was hurt. Like It was dying."

It is not similar to any ritual she knows, but Moiraine is listening very intently.

Anything that might be of use cannot be discounted, not now.

Bev swallows hard at the memory, and keeps going.

"It ran further back into the cave, and Bill wanted to go after It and make sure it was dead, but Its web was falling down, all over the place, and touching it hurt...so we just got out."

She pauses again, then holds out her hands, laying them palms-up on the table. There's a line of scar tissue, a few years old, running across each.

"Those aren't from the web. We haven't seen any sign of It still being alive, but we all swore that if It ever comes back, we'll fight It together again. That's what the scars are from."

"I see," she says quietly, studying Beverly's scars.

Moiraine looks up then, meeting the girl's gaze.

"It was very brave of you, I should think."

Bev pulls her hands back, folding them in her lap.

"Well...It was killing people. Killing kids. And no one else knew how to stop it."

She's looking down shyly, but there's a bit of a pleased smile there.

"Anyway, it's not like it was just me. It was all of us. I think it had to be all of us."

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