Crimson and gold petals slashed into the wind as she spliced her blade through. Getting her frustrations out every other day was the only ward she had from going insane. Practice with the scimitar relieved the mind. Away from the classroom, her problems did not seem as big as she made them. A bright unclouded day around her, she realised that she was worrying too much about how others see her. Here, garbed in breeches that liberated her, she felt dashingly divine.

 

A figure swathed in the shadows leading up to the clearing proceeded her way, strange and sharp features hitting the flame of her eye. Ears burning she ignored it, and despite, definitely being conscious of his presence, continued to chop at the vegetation, carving intently. It was her space, others were only history and time here.

 

Her errant swing came straight at him, and instead of rushing away he walked to meet it. She twisted the scimitar out of the way, and bumped into the figure instead, ending with both of them on the ground. Sudden warmth against hers, then they scattered. Having scraped, and the air knocked out of her. One terrifying moment she thought it was Rory disguised as a boy, but the lad that brushed the dust off his tunic was not known to her.

 

"Watch where you're going!" then in more tempered tones, she admonished him. "I could have hurt you, please." Eyes of soft ashes gazed past her, making her angry. She had never been unacknowledged like this. "Do you understand the common speech?" The Taraboner tried a bit of other dialects, including the old tongue she had learned as the heir to the manor back in Elmora. "Speak, boy, are you dumb?"

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Autumn again. So it had already been almost a year since his life had stopped...A year in which so much had happened and yet the world didn't appear to have moved an inch, quite the other way round actually, he had never felt that confined in the walls surrounding the Yard. Walls that symbolized safety and honor, yet Dorian was all too painfully aware of the luring potential those superficial notions could render. Already a year had passed and much of the time he had spent in a the even closer and certainly more depressing confinement of the Tower's infirmary, being literally stitched together and somehow trying to deal with what had incurred on him to leave him with a cut throat and bereft of the twin that had seemed to be the only person who was really close to him, had really been able to understand him. Somehow he had lived on though, somehow he had managed to detach himself, creating a distance from friends and acquaintances he had made during the time he had been training with his brother. Now all the romance and splendor of those days had been lost and instead of accompanied by Tiegan, her loss still tugging at his heart, even though he assumed it might have been for the better, his only compagnion was a warm autumn breeze stirring leaves that brushed against his feet as he went out to the Training Yard.

 

Right now his mind focused on the bright day around him. Even though his eyes had never been able to tell him how Red, Yellow, Gold, all the colors Danian had always associated with autumn, looked, a smile lit Dorian's sombre face. He knew Danian would have liked this day and for a moment he allowed himself to drift off in distant memories of a walk on a sunny autumn evening such as this, about talking animatedly about life here that was so much different from home. Everything had seemed so hopeful then. They had felt safe, protected unlike they had been able to for a long while, for ever? And yet both of them had to learn that presumed safety had lured them into a death trap, the trap of carelessness. A carelessness, his brother had to pay with his life and Dorian...well Dorian was still here...more or less, waking the Tower grounds looking for a life he had lost, as if expecting it to leap back at him and everything would be like it had before.

 

What leaped at him now, was a far cry from past experiences and a life that was irretrievably lost though. For such an inanimate thing the bang felt way too physical as was the sound of the indignant voice scolding for running into her like that. A woman, yes…For a moment Dorian just stood there staring at her as if he could actually make out her features. Yet her tone gave away the angry expression that must be openly readable on her face.

 

"Do you understand the common speech?" As her voice rose again, in more irritated but decipherable tones now, he recognized a Taraboner accent, and suddenly couldn’t help grinning at her remark of him obviously standing there, gaping at her like a woolbrained lackwit as she concluded with a dialect his teaching hadn’t enabled him to recognize. "Speak, boy, are you dumb?"

 

“Thank you kindly, but not quite”, he finally retorted, his voice rasping in his throat as bad as it had since he had been able to actually use it again, which had only been a few months past. Nothing could deceive him though. His voice would never even become close to how melodious and soft as it had once been. If anything he sounded like raw iron scraping against stone, which was exactly how talking felt in the ruin of his throat that he neatly covered with a black scarf not to attract every curious bystander’s horrified looks. “But where are my manners”, he wheezed, fighting back the urge to clear his throat to work back some moisture into his vocal tract. “My name is Dorian Grey and I’m a Trainee here and by the way still very capable of using my wits…unless I suddenly run into people…I apologize deeply…it only occurs to me at the rarest times…” He didn’t cast his eyes down admitting his disadvantage. Eventually he had learned to bear his blindness quite openly, even here in a place where everything and everyone was supposed to be as perfect as only myths could make believe. Yet reality looked different. Reality held death for anyone whether able to use all his senses or not. He swallowed his own bleak thoughts though, trying to take some gloom off his face when he asked her. “May I ask you who you might be?”

 

~Dorian

most desolate and yet charming trainee ever  :P

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Men, Saline harboured a low view where men were concerned. She did not understand them. Never did, and never will. All those free days during their novitiate Syara dragged her roommates to the outside to talk with the men, she had stayed wary, and frankly felt bored with the naivety in their thankfully infrequent rendez-vous, for the males were pubescent cubs eager to prove their superiority. That this Dorian was a trainee did not impress her. Even trainees the Aes Sedai so adamantly separate them from in the Yard were little above the norm, and in some cases even more hormonal. Not that she did not feel the urge to scream, or give in and wallow in self-pity, or shared the desperate futileness to preserve the moments from inevitable perish. Not by a long shot.

 

However she would have liked to define herself as a person of priorities, obviously there remained a lot wanting to be sorted out; her disposition see-sawed from uncertainty to fury as she struggled to redefine the world around her. Men had always borne the sharp side of her tongue; she would dispense impatient tcha's before skewering them verbally. Like steel clamps, it was almost musical to her ears. If a male crossed her, she would have notified him very very quickly. Her friends would have redeemed her, dispensing any doubts she had about being a brute, for she had a good heart. Except for Timmons the crinkle eyed gardener she had taken a shine to, all her friends were women, and Saline did not feel as if these women could relate to her either. If getting out into society had done anything, she had become a confused individual over the last decade.

 

But lately she had been paying more attention to the lads, they swooped into her consciousness, not in the typical manners of lust or desire, but rather that she was needed somehow to protect them. Small wonder men were on her mind, for she was quite engrossed in a course of study on male channellers that Faile Sedai started teaching this term. Day in and out she researched the stories around the Age of Legends and the Breaking, and men shared every responsibility for each transgression across the Pattern. Scouring the pages she realised how much she had neglected the male presence after her Father disowned her, and the Tinker abandoned her despite his promise. She thought this sudden interest in addressing what she censored for so long could be traced back to the incident with David. A complete and perfect stranger she had not wanted to see, he died unwillingly. Optimists thought this was the best of the world. The pessimist feared that it would be so. In this wonderful world, the marvellous Age that could be restored, was it what she really wanted, to preserve this from the Breaking?

 

And what was wrong with her? Of course she could talk to men. There was plenty of oppotunity after all, as she was an Accepted training here. Though they were not better, her looks were just as good as other women's. So why had her voice turned icy and taut with control as she introduced herself, putting all the feelings of a paraleptic's leg into her name "Saline." Even that name ranked with bitter, wormy rings that dined heavily on her high hopes.

 

Unaware of her loss, he stood laughing at her. For one breathless moment he resembled her Tinker. It's been so long since somebody laughed at her. Careless moments of merriment, this Dorian stared over her head, and she could not dislike him. His voice, a possession so unlike the squeaks she would get from Novices wandering in the lobbies after curfew. It was a different treat from the sonorous notes of Sisters she knew, deeper than the voice alterations and imitations she wove in Intermediate.

 

True enough, she would always miss her Tinker, for he was the first to know her as a person: when he left, he had taken a part of her with him. After him, there was a simple answer in regards to why she expressed no personal interest. She had none, until now.

 

Waving her hand in front of him she doubted his claim to be capable of handling his wits but did not challenge him on it. Taking her anger out on the boy had been foolish, and worse, she did not feel any better for it. Reverting to the common tongue -- and gladly too for she knew very little of the other, she drew a thin trickle of Green, before slipping two fingers cautiously, gently into the neck of her tunic. Together they clutched a densely embriodered handkerchief, and in familiar brushes swiftly dispatched the dust on the angles of his face. A slender hand touched the thick scarf encircling his neck, its ebony presence surprising her in this climate, pulling her awareness from the moment.

 

Perhaps it was too intimate. Startled that she had forgotten herself, Saline gave her handkerchief to trainee. "Here, wipe." The Tinker would have liked that, she knew. But it would not happen again; she could not afford such a lapse. Flinching away, she almost ran, then remembered Dorian, nay -- the trainee -- had the handkerchief her Tinker had given her; it was the last piece he made before he died, and if she could have fought her own sweet roommates for it, she could oust a man as well.

_________________

 

For the tiniest of moments his smile seemed to freeze on his face when the iciness of her introduction hit a nerve that suddenly reminded him – Light so much reminded him – of the very moment he had met Tiegan again and his stomach seemed to turn into an icy knot. It literally took him everything he had to keep his composure and not to crumble in front of the whirl of voices and emotions recurring to him as his thoughts carried him back months to about the same spot in the Yard. The spot where he had finally lost her. Anger and sorrow welled up inside him again and he struggled hard not to let it take over, just as he had then.

 

“It consumes you. Bit by bit it eats on you leaving nothing…” Tears welled up in her eyes, thickening her voice. He felt the urge to take her in his arms again, comfort her, kiss away those tears he knew where running down her cheeks, just like he had so many times before. And yet he stood motionless, looking at her helpless, yet determined. What other choice did he have left? What choice but to renounce her, to send her away to live a life as far away from him as possible? Both of them had known how this was meant to end and yet they had ignored the facts, had lived on, day after day. Living an illusion, Light sometimes Dorian think the whole lightforsaken world was nothing but an illusion!

 

And there they stood and all he could do was tell her to go. “Go, Tiegan please. I think it’s better if you don’t see me anymore. I’m…I’m not…what…who I used to be…I’m sorry but things have changed...” He swallowed, wanting to close his eyes as if that would make her go away and forget him. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I hate too much, maybe this is why I can’t love you anymore. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Dorian swallowed as the memory of that day still haunted him. He hadn’t seen her again since then and day after day painful awareness brought him back to the ground. He knew he couldn’t possibly not love her anymore, no matter how hard he tried to forget her, but he persistently pushed back every memory of her. She would never be safe with him and he had drawn the consequences too late, had hurt her too much. Light, he had sworn that day that he never, never ever would want to hurt anyone like that again. Anyone but the man who deserved every shred of pain a man could possibly endure before he died. He would get his hands on his uncle. Moridin Grey would pay, some day.

 

Her movement close to his face jerked his attention back to the presence and for a second he tempted to back up when he felt her hand dangerously close to the scarf concealing his scar. He caught himself just in time, berating himself about his panicky behaviour and yet he’d prefer her not to see what was beneath the black fabric wound around his throat. He didn’t exactly know how bad it looked like for he didn’t know how anything looked like and yet people’s reaction had been bad enough for him to choose concealment against open display.

 

“I…I’m sorry”, he stammered, feeling more than slightly incoherent as he accepted her kerchief after some feeling around to get a hold on it. Cloth was such a slippery material, especially if you were incapable to see its flowing movements. Having cleaned himself though, Dorian felt some kind of tension in her as she observed him carefully handing back the handkerchief. “Thank you very much”, he said, only dimly registering that his voice happened to have one of its worse days again as it wasn’t more but a scraping rasp. And yet…did her hands tremble when she took the kerchief from him? Something felt wrong about it and even though he was perfectly aware of himself probably making things up in his own rather shaken and disconcerted state, he asked carefully: “You sure you’re alright? …Do you want to sit down?”