Approaching the Breaking Point, atn. Rytali, Kathleen

[Visar Falmaien]

Rytali leaned against the wooden ladder to keep it steady, an angry grimace on her face. If that snotty brat do try to dump mud on my face again, I do swear I will knock over this bloody ladder myself, consequences be burned!  By the time they were done cleaning this section of the White Tower gutters (which were still low enough to collect leaves year-round), her hair would take over an hour to wash and brush clean, and she didn't even want to think about how long it would take to bleach and scrub her novice's dress back to the required pristine white again.

 

But she kept her complaints to herself while getting her punishment over with, unlike Some people who said just about anything that came to their selfish minds.  Not that Rytali wasn't complaining on the inside.

 

It be no fair!  All I did do was forget to address Melinde Sedai by her proper title once!  One slip of the tongue! I could swear I did use Sedai in the same sentence even! And then Dyrum does have to bloody speak her mind and make things worse for the both of us!  I do swear, I do think she does seek me out and torment my life here on purpose!

 

Again, Dyrum let a handful of muddy leaves fall directly below her, splashing mercilessly onto Rytali's hair.  She all but shrieked despite trying to stay under control, and in desperation sought approval from their Accepted supervisor, though her real motive was to dump plenty of muddy leaves right back on Dyrum when it was her turn.

 

"Accepted Kathleen, I do beseech you," she began in the most polite manner she knew how.  "Might I switch with Dyrum at the top of the ladder?  She has been working up there for almost an hour.  Surely she could use a break?"

 

Although she wasn't sure her attempt at appearing benevolent was genuine, Rytali did her best to emulate that calm, polite tone that was second nature to all of her superiors.  Even if she had to get her hands dirty and brave climbing the tall ladder, anything was better than to be at the mercy of Dyrum's obvious frustration at their punishment.

[DarthRand]

Dyrum cursed furiously under her breath as she dug yet another handful of the disgusting muck from the gutter, tossing it carelessly over the side, just as she had done with Light knew how many other such globules of rotten detritus collected in the Ogier-crafted gutters of the White Tower. With any luck, a few of them managed to hit that wretched commoner Rytali, it was her fault Dyrum was in this situation in the first place after all. She just had to forget the Aes Sedai’s honorific title. They’d been together at the Tower for much longer than Dyrum had any tolerance for the girl, you’d think the simpering servant would learn to remember a simple title. At least Dyrum had managed to figure out the proper way to curtsey to full sisters, it had only taken three trips to the kitchen and a striping from the Mistress of Novices for the young noblewoman to learn that particular lesson.

 

Regardless, Dyrum was convinced that Illianer had been in league with the Aes Sedai on this one. She had gotten such a light punishment for what couldn’t possibly have been the girl’s first infraction. And then Dyrum herself had earned a punishment for pointing out this injustice! The longer she stayed here, the less she liked it. Forced to do menial, disgusting and pointless slave labor was beneath her blood. The only high points were the classes in which she learned to channel saidar, the female half of the One Power. Those classes were pure bliss, but the others, with their constant repetition of proper grammar, history and geography, things Dyrum had mostly already learned as the daughter of a Cairhienin noble, were utter boredom.

 

Dyrum took a moment to look down at her poor hands, already growing disgusting calluses from long hours in the kitchens or scrubbing floors, things the servants, of which the White Tower had plenty, should have been doing! Sighing, Dyrum scooped up another handful of the…stuff that seemed to be festering and moving as she removed it from the gutter and dropped it down below, risking a glance downward, smiling in slight satisfaction as it caught that Illianer wench dead in the face. The girl whined and pleaded with the Accepted, Kathleen, Dyrum thought her name was, but from the top of the ladder, Dyrum had a hard time hearing what her fellow Novice was complaining about this time. Letting out a decidedly un-ladylike grunt, Dyrum returned to her task, hoping to finish it as quickly as possible, her hands would take a week’s worth of soaking and soap and water to be properly clean, and the Tower barely provided Novices with that much to bathe their whole bodies! Beneath her breath she went into a long rant as she worked, just wishing the dreadful task would end quickly. Surely they wouldn’t have to clean all of the Tower’s gutters. Would they?

 

[Kathleen]

Kathleen despised the days she had to supervise punishments. She loved meeting the Novices of the Tower, the ones who would carry it on, the ones who still had that sparkle in their eye at the new life they started. They always seemed just a little bit excited to be here and they usually had a great deal of spirit to get to the top fast and still had a lot of the individual personality that so many Accepted and Aes Sedai loose behind the serene look they all try to hold from dawn until dusk.

 

Yes, she loved meeting Novices, but not when they had been troublemakers and were being punished. For some, she would be associated with the face of discipline but like these girls, who had obviously done some chores for their behavior in the past, she would just be the one who had to sit and watch waiting for them to exhaust themselves and there temper. It wasn't so bad with only one girl to watch, she usually tried to calm fast and with nothing to press her into anger she would start in on the task with the ambition to get it done quickly and get out. Those ones were hard to sit through, so boring but almost relaxing. A few words of encouragement every now and then and you could sit back for hours studying or just kicking up your feet. It was pairs like this that Kathleen disliked the most; fighting like two dogs over a stick that neither one wanted in the first place.

 

She wished they would have been separated for punishment but she understood that it was a lesson in controlling your tongue and minding your manners. You aren't always going to like being around someone, especially if they have done something to negatively affect your life, but you must remember what you represent and be the bigger person. You must learn to keep your emotions separate from actions and reactions and always know your place. It looked like these two still had a lot of learning where that came into play.

 

They were still angry with each other and they were letting their anger build instead of letting it go and moving on to the task. They were not behaving like the Aes Sedai they would one day be and they were not thinking as such. Kathleen had had just about as much as she could take of the childishness. They hadn't said anything to each other, which was a start at acting in the right way, but their faces said it all. Kathleen didn't expect the girls to have the serene glass face of an Aes Sedai, she could hardly pull it off for long herself, and usually not at all when there was anger behind it. The part she couldn't get over was how these girls seemed to just keep letting their anger build. They wouldn't get anywhere with attitudes like that.

 

After what was clearly an intentional pile of dirt, and certainly not the first, from above hitting Rytali in the face the girl let out a screech and Kathleen knew the girl had had too much of it as well. Kathleen had let it go for a while, some were accidental she was sure but too many more were getting intentional. The girl spun around, wiping dirt from her face and dress and a polite tone, which caught Kathleen off guard having seen the fury at being hit and hearing her shriek, the girl calmly spoke, "Accepted Kathleen, I do beseech you, might I switch with Dyrum at the top of the ladder?  She has been working up there for almost an hour.  Surely she could use a break?" Kathleen was pleased the girl hadn't whined or complained, she had addressed Kathleen in the manner a Novice should address an Accepted, and Kathleen smiled. The girl had come here for forgetting her place and not addressing and Aes Sedai in proper manner. It seemed the girl was back on track.

 

Kathleen knew the girl only wanted revenge but she hid her intentions well, she would make a dangerous Aes Sedai some day. "You are right, she has been up there quite a while, it was very nice of you to offer to switch with her. Let me call her down here for a moment though before you begin again. I think you could both use a little break." Kathleen hated yelling, but she wasn't about to go climbing a ladder in front of two Novices. Not that she couldn't, she used to do that every day in her hometown, but climbing ladders was not something a person in charge does when there are people around. So after a minute Kathleen called up, as  loud as she could for Dyrum to come down. As gracefully as she could Kathleen tried to gesture with her arms in case the girl didn't hear her.

 

When both girls were down in front of Kathleen she addressed them. "You girls have been working very hard and I believe you could both use a break. Now, I know you are roommates and generally friends. You are both doing well to not holler at each other and these gutters are getting clean. However, I can sense some tension, and I would like to defuse it as soon as we can. If you feel any anger toward each other, or any other emotion," She emphasized her intent so they couldn't just say they weren't angry and walk away, "I ask you to address it now. I know you have things you want to say and it will be better for everyone if we do it here and now, where there is someone to keep it from getting out of hand and not have this animosity grow stronger, until you are alone in your room and someone gets hurt or a friendship is lost. When this conversation is over you will both have said all you need to say to each other, you will let your anger at what happened early and your anger at each other dissolve and you will move forward in your task at hand; these gutters wont clean themselves. You will also be switching gutters when you do go back to give you each a fresh outlook." Kathleen turned to Rytali and looked her straight in the eye with the most warning look she could make, "And I expect there to be far less messy 'accidents' falling from the upper gutter." She let her face fall naturally and spoke calming to both, "Now, girls lets begin. What would like to say to your roommate."

[Visar Falmaien]

Once they were both down on level ground, Rytali eyed Dyrum carefully as the Accepted talked to them, giving them both a break.  She didn't have any clod of dirt in her hand to throw at her now, did she?  No? Good.  If anything, Dyrum didn't look too much better off: her dress was almost as filthy, her hands were rather dirty despite her efforts to wipe most of it on the dress, and while her face was relatively clean, a telling line of wet ran down from Dyrum's nose.  Clearly she was not enjoying herself, Rytali concluded.  Getting some sort of "petty" vengeance was not going to make Dyrum's constant animosity towards her be any better.

 

The Accepted kept referring to them as friends, but Rytali could not have felt that anyone in her life here was farther from a friend.  If not for the fact that they were forced to live together, forced to do chores and classes with each other, she would have tried to stay away from Dyrum as long as possible.  But the Tower, with all its challenging curriculum and hard work, which Rytali took in stride, seemed to want to instill some superhuman form of discipline in Rytali, to the point of somehow being able to work with someone she just couldn't stand.

 

And now the Accepted wanted them to talk to each other about this.  To actually unveil their hostility towards each other openly and without censure.  Rytali hesitated briefly.  Was this some sort of trap?  What if this would make them in even more trouble than they already were? Well, She did tell us to express our anger...She do no know what she just did open, I do think...

 

"Very well.." Rytali started, hoping to get in the first word before Dyrum launched herself into one of her endless tirades.  That would come anyway no matter what she said, but Rytali knew how it grated on Dyrum's nerves that she, a "common servant", would be first to say anything.  And that was exactly Rytali's problem.

 

"I be weary of this, Dyrum.  This whole situation.  I know you do no like me, and I know you do no like living with me.  But we have been fated to share this experience together, and no matter how many times I do try, you do have to make everything difficult.  This attitude of yours... You always do arrogantly assume that you be better than me, simply because you were raised to think that nobles be better than commoners.  You do think I do no have a place in the Tower, training to be an Aes Sedai, but here I still be.  In fact, I do no mean to boast, but this be the first punishment I did have for three months. And this one I did suffer on accident.  I accidentally forgot to address one as Sedai once, and you just had to jump all over that in front of the same Aes Sedai and get yourself into trouble too! How many infractions did you suffer punishment simply because your attitude did demand you to speak out of line or otherwise be difficult?  Fortune Prick me, but how do you intend to stay at the Tower if you do maintain your arrogant, childish attitude?  Why hold onto it at all?  It may have worked with your parents, but it will get you nothing here!  And while you may no want it, you will never have my respect or my friendship until you show some form of humility and grow up!"

 

Rytali and Dyrum glared at each other, and Rytali folded her arms under her breasts, waiting for the tirade to come in full fury.  She felt only a little better after getting that out into the open, but she didn't think Dyrum would care, and knowing her she would find some way to get underneath Rytali's skin once again.

[Amadine]

*bump*