Elin Homesickness

[Phelix]

Sitting alone in a small side garden, Elin was exhausted. It was her free day, her first that she actually chose to spend doing nothing. On all of her previous free days, she had buried herself in the Library working to catch up. She might have been born in a small village in Amadicia, but she would learn to read and speak the Old Tongue just as well as any noble. She would learn everything the Tower had to offer her, everything the Tower demanded of Aes Sedai. Elin was determined to succeed. Today, another girl had the book she needed to study, so it was a forced free day.

 

From the Library, she had seen the garden, and decided to explore it. While it was small, only ten yards in diameter, there were large trees that reminded her of the woods outside her village. Obviously, some sister in the past had worked to plant this garden and keep it healthy with the Power. Trees this large never grew so closely together in nature, and if they did, eventually the weaker ones would die off, allowing the strong ones to take all of the growing space.

 

The trees had shed a needle-filled loam that was very comfortable, though Elin was careful to put a small cushion down before sitting herself. She would be punished if there were stains on the snowy white skirts. It had yet to be satisfactorily explained to her why novices were required to wear white. Most said it represented the purity they came to the Tower with, while others said it was to represent their dedication to the Light. Back home, the color white meant one of two things: Fear or mourning.

 

The whitecloaks would come into town with the sun glinting off their weapons, making their white tabards and cloaks shine. They only shined until violence caused them to be stained. Elin could remember several times where whitecloaks came into town pristine, and left with dark stains from mud and blood. That was the fear that came with seeing white.

 

Whenever a friend, neighbor, or loved one died, they were buried wrapped in a white sheet. The survivors would then show their grief by wearing strips of white tied to their arms, wrapped around their necks, or if in deep mourning, as a sackcloth gown. That was only if the person who died was thought to be sheltering in the Creator’s hand. If the deceased was thought to be a darkfriend, wearing white for them tainted you. Mourning a darkfriend told your neighbors that you had sold your soul to the Dark One too.

 

When the fire had died down, Elin’s father and brothers had gathered Nile’s bones from the site of his execution. No one in their family truly believed Nile had been a darkfriend or able to channel, but not one of them dared wear white for him. Elin tore her bed sheet into long strips that she could tie up and down her arm from shoulder to wrist, so the ends would dangle like a fringe all along her arms. Her mother refused to let her leave the house in that manner, so Elin stayed in her room. For days. Her father had snuck her a late dinner each night, but that was all she was able to eat.

 

After half a week had passed, and Elin’s mother had realized how much she needed her youngest daughter, Elin was allowed to leave provided she did not show her mourning. The morning she was freed, Elin wove dozens of strips of cloth into her hair, and then piled it all under the bonnet all Amadician village women wore when in public. No one noticed her quiet rebellion for several days. Until one afternoon, Elin wiped the sweat from her forehead, which dislodged her bonnet enough to let one strip of cloth hang down by her temple.

 

Her mother was incensed. She had dragged Elin upstairs, back to her bedroom, and spent an hour lecturing Elin on her duty to protect the family, on the danger of being seen to mourn a darkfriend, and on the pain a mother felt when a child died. When Elin tried to defend her brother’s honor, her mother just rolled over every objection.

 

That was just after Nile was killed, when Elin and her brother were 13 years old.

 

Over the next years, Elin’s relationship with her mother slowly healed. It was never like it had been before, and nothing like the relationship her siblings had with their mother, but the raw wound of Nile’s death developed a scab. As time passed, that scab was picked time and again as only a daughter and mother can. It grew into a thick scar, and they stopped picking at each other over Nile and their behavior in response to his death.

 

Over those years, Elin knew that her brother’s ghost started coming to her and channeling to make her life easier. The sisters here at the White Tower insisted that Nile wasn’t real. That the warmth and glow she felt were simply the One Power filling her. They told her that the souls of the dead go back to be rewoven into the Pattern, and Nile couldn’t be with her.

 

Elin still didn’t believe the sisters. She knew the Oaths kept them from lying, but they couldn’t be right. They couldn’t know that Nile was gone.

 

Sitting alone in the wooded garden, Elin pulled her knees to her chest and wept. Her bonnet hid her face, and her tears fell onto the white dress. Losing her twin still felt like half of her soul was missing. Nile had been more than just her brother; he had always known when she needed help, when she was sad, or when she was excited. The fact that the sisters said she was just imagining his presence with her nearly broke her.

 

Nearly broke her, but she was still fighting. She would achieve, and she would pass her tests to earn those seven bands across her hems. That was the next step toward gaining the power to stop things like what happened to her brother. Elin knew that the Aes Sedai, the full sisters, knew a weave to detect a man’s channeling, even if women cannot touch or sense saidin. Once she became a full sister, she would learn that weave and go out to help save lives of innocent boys and men.