Flickers of Light ---&RPaward

[Catisune]

Ely edit 14 June 2023:

1-6 qps, depending on length and quality.

Potential +1 qp: if part of a series: o

Total: 4 qps

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"Flickers of Light"

Catisune’s mother slapped her hard across the mouth. “You insufferable girl. Do you think these fine things pay for themselves?” She gestured toward the ornate filigree on her bodice, the scrollwork and thread-of-gold out of place in the unassuming farmhouse where they’d lived Catisune’s entire life. Catisune tasted blood, coppery and bitter; it reminded her of something else. She raised her hands to defend another blow.

“You do be a disgrace to me, Cati. Get out of here, and do no come back, or I will strike that nose right off your face,” her mother said. “Always such a plain girl, and causing me so many problems!”

Catisune ran to the small bedroom she shared with her sister, stuffing what she could carry from her collection of spare belongings into a burlap sack. She felt her mother’s anger pulsing behind her in the doorway like a wound that needed to be drained. Catisune knew she would never return here.

She spared a last look for the place she’d managed to call home, striding through the humble kitchen on her way toward the door. A sharp pain—almost hot, bright, she could see the stars . . . were those stars?—bloomed behind her right ear like a flower. Catisune crumpled to the ground.

The world flickered.

<>

Catisune tucked the letter from Jaye into the warded box of correspondence upon her desk. The news from Andor and Morgase’s court troubled her, not the least of which because the trail of a suspected Black sister grew cold there, right across the border from Murandy. Of course, Catisune doubted that anyone could untangle the complicated cipher she shared with her Blue sister, one they’d developed in banded hems, but always best to be sure, yes. This was not a time for uncertainty.

The tinkling of bells and a cluster of sensations in the back of her head alerted her to Theren’s presence. The two made an unlikely pair, the unassuming Brown and her disfigured Arafellin warder: while Catisune’s homely features often helped her evade scrutiny despite an Aes Sedai’s trademark ageless quality, the scar that puckered Theren’s face into a permanent grin invited the opposite. Still, his sense of duty was keen, and he made Catisune laugh. Reason enough to hold a bond, she thought, and Catisune had better reason.

She tucked the return letter into Theren’s fist. “You know what to do, Valdar Cuebiyari, and be discreet,” Catisune clucked her tongue as a bird might.

“Kiserai ti Aes Sedai,” Theren said with his other fist clenched over his heart. Born of jest, the pair’s penchant for communicating in broken Old Tongue had grown into something more over their years together. Catisune studied her gaidin with a critical eye as he made to depart for the pigeon coop. Snakes of silver threaded his belled braids, and he showed signs of age around his eyes and mouth. His sinuous grace belied all that though, and Catisune knew from experience that you only heard bells tinkling when Theren wanted you to hear them.

Catisune drifted to the window and studied the River Erinin coursing outside many stories below, her mind reflexively moving through a calming exercise she’d learned over a century ago in whites: the river and its banks, an apt metaphor. Some sisters eschewed pigeons all together since rediscovering Traveling—they considered the practice quaint, even—but Catisune knew its usefulness. Her letter would arrive in Cairhien’s royal library and then travel south toward Caemlyn in the care of one of her eyes-and-ears. She prayed it would arrive in time.

Catisune tried not to worry for Jaye, but something about that Lord Gaebril put her off her lunch as few things could. The undue influence he now wielded over Morgase, the wedges he drove between the queen and the houses that had helped see her installed on the Lion Throne, even dismissing her longtime Aes Sedai advisor—no, no good could come of it, even if Catisune’s suspicions did not bear fruit.

Catisune often played at the bumbling Brown, a useful archetype for one who wished to weaponize another’s misguided expectations.

But even so, she hardly felt the red stone dagger as someone plunged it into her back.

Flicker.

<>

Flicker. Flicker. Flicker. Flicker. Flicker. Flicker.

Catisune lived and died an Aes Sedai. Or she never made it to the Tower, wasting to death from a sickness no Wisdom could treat. She met Fleur. She met Fleur again. They ran away from the Tower. They helped split the Tower. In some weaves, a striped stole adorned her neck, and, in others, the livery of a scullery maid, brought low for her hubris, by her many schemes. She met Raeza. She met Raeza again. She married a man. She died in childbirth. A trolloc cookpot. A fade’s eyeless gaze. She lived and died and died and died. But she lived. She yet lived.

Catisune gulped for air as she emerged from the portal stones, not so much reminiscent of a bird but a beached fish with her large, watery eyes bulging. She remembered everything. She remembered only fragments. She stood, barely able to steady herself. She wondered which life this was.

After some time, she wove a gateway to the Tower.

[isabel]

Way to make me forget the name "Brandon Sanderson"

/Still recovering

PS - how do I order 200 more pages of this?