Oaths of the old sort

[Liitha]

Cema sat looking at the firefly's dancing outside the window. This was a night of meditation and choises, through all her time as an initiate from her resistfull start at novicehood through her strugeling to reach her new aim she had held it to herself what direction she would seek in.

 

All in all she had been as surpriced this afternoon of her summon as she had when she where told it was time for her arches. Thus she had run out of time, though the time here she had tried to cover a broad spectre to find what ajah would suit her aims bether, some had been easier to discharge then others. A smile crossed her lips, she was sure none knew what ajahs she was down to or that they where two so oposite in many ways. Her choise this nigth where between the color of grass and that of blood.

 

She stared out in the starfilled night, her eyes shifting up to the moon, on the bed behind her lay a clean accepted dress she had readied for the morning, she would look her best when she went to take her oaths. Drifting on into thougth she listed all the positives and negatives she could come up with once again in her mind for both ajahs. She didnt even really registrer it when she slumped forward her head droping into her arms over the desk.

 

Her slumber ended with the first sunbeams of the day hiting her face, blinking she sat up and streatched, then winched, her muscles was sore from scrubing pots the last day, the test and now lastly sleeping over her desk, none the less she knew they would come and she wouldnt be unprepared. As she washed the sleep out of her eyes and shifted to the clean dress she thougth about her dreams that night. She was enveloped in her thougths as she brushed her hair, then looked in the mirror, should she braid it or leave it loose. Usualy she would braid it to keep it out of the way when working, but she wouldnt be working today and she left it hanging loose around her shoulders like she had used to before coming to the tower, Brandon had prefered it like that.

 

She touched the mirror, he was dead, she had grived and moved on and then she knew her answer, the moment after there where a knock on the door. Smiling she went to open the door, now that she knew what to do she felt secure and ready, and thoug donned in a white dress with stripes on the borders she ignored that imagining beeing back into the kind of dresses she would wear at court. She steped out into the hallway with her back straight, she was ready, she had earned this moment throug almost two decades as an initiate. She folled her escort down halls and stairs treading the same path she had yesterday, towards freedom.

 

When they entered the room she looked at the ter'angreal while her escort split up joining their waiting sisters, making a threesome form each ajah.

 

"Who comes here?" it was the amyrlin, she was standing on the other side of the ter'angreal, the keeper at her side. Cema kept her face straigth as she answered, as a noble playing the games of court you couldnt allow your face to speak for you, this was a skill also all accepted practised to gain the Aes Sedai serenity, and so had she as well.

" Cemarillinin Adaõ"

"For what reason do you come."

She kept still keeping up the ceremony, though she where eager to be through the ter'angreal and to swear her oaths, the be free to be an Aes Sedai, she wouldnt show this thoug, never show your wants to make them your weaknesses, a lesson she long learned

"To swear the three oaths and thereby claim the shawl of an Aes Sedai."

"By what right do you claim this burden?"

"By right of having made the passage, submitting myself to the will of the White Tower." Almost there, Cema bit her tounge not to let a smile pass over her lips.

"Then enter, if you dare, and bind yourself to the White Tower."

 

Steping through the ter'angreal she knelt infront of the mother, the keeper held a pillow with a rod in and she was handed it by the Amerly. Carefully she took the rod in her hands looking at it for a moment, knowing it was more then it looked like. The key to become Aes Sedai. Slowly she spoke the words she had rehearsed so many times, they passed over her lips flawless as a calm took before she felt the oath seteling thigthly into her, for each making it harder to breath.

 

"Under the light and by my hope of salvation and rebirth, I vow that I will speak no word that is not true.Under the light and by my hope of salvation and rebirth, I vow that I will make no weapon for one man to kill another. Under the light and by my hope of salvation and rebirth, I vow that I will never use the One Power as a weapon except against shadowspawn, or in the last extreme of defending my life, or that of my warder, or another sister."

 

It was done, it felt like a restraint yet she wouldnt let it stop her, accepted where expected to tell the truth, as if to practise for this, there where ways around it. There must be ways around the others as well, she would find them in time. She reached the rod up to the mother again, and it was taken out of her hands as the Amerlyn spoke again.

"It is half done, and the White Tower is graven on your bones. Rice now, Aes Sedai, and chose your Ajah, and all will be done that may be done under the Ligth."

 

Words so sweet, they warmed her as she looked towards the reds, they had been in her arches, but the arches no one knew if they showed truth, and her dreams this nigth had told her her heart. Her eyes broke contact and pendled to the other side of the room as she steped towards the greens, she would be a sister in battle, her life had always been smaller or larger fights to gain what she wanted and belived in, it was fitting. She heard the other leave behind her as her choise was finaly known.

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