Hey Aleeza, over here girl:)

[WhiteWolf]

“Now in your last lesson in the Dream world you were taught how to jump from place to place, but only on line of sight, tonight we are going to expand on that lesson and you are going to learn to jump to places you have been before and know well. We will start off with somewhere obvious, the stables in the Stedding.” Aleeza wrinkled her nose, slightly, at this, and Owen knew full well she was not fond of the smell of theStables, which is why he had picked the stables.

 

“Now, the first thing you have to do is picture the stables in your mind, build up the picture until you can actually see the stables, then step into the stables. It sounds more daunting than it actually is, but once you have done it you will find it is an invaluable skill, would you like me to show you first?” Aleeza nodded her head, wondering what Owen had in mind. Taking hold of her hand, the land around them disappeared and in the blinking of an eye they stood on high stonewalls, stonewalls that surrounded a large keep and city.

 

“Where are we Owen?”

 

“This is the capital city of Kandor, it is not fair from here that I lived most of my early life in a small village on the main road to this city.”

 

“So we just stepped a long way, can I do that as well?”

 

“Not at first, and maybe never, remember I have been doing this for a long time and so have the control and skill that a novice, that would be you.” Owen smiled as Aleeza stuck her tongue out at him. “Just imagine this as you would your first weapons lesson, or even the lesson with the Spear. Once you had mastered the basics, you started on the path to proficiency with them. It is the same here, I have no doubt you have entered the Dream on your own since your last lesson.” Owen watched as Aleeza tried to look everywhere but at him, she had not known that Owen kept watch over his student’s dreams and he had caught her twice entering the Dream without permission. “And I have no doubt you are now stronger here than you were after your last lesson, but remember this, you only know a small part of what you need to know to survive here, so do not let over confidence be your downfall.”

 

With that the scene around them changed again, this time they were back in the Stedding, sitting on the bench outside Wolflover’s abandoned cottage. “So, bearing in mind what I have told you, how about you try and move yourself to the Stables, I will be waiting for you there. Oh and Aleeza, try not to land in the compost, it does smell something terrible.” With that Owen disappeared from view, quickly reappearing by the stable door.

 

Owen

 

The White Wolf

 

Ranger Leader

[Guest Estel]

Ooc: version 4 of this post...arg...shouldn’t take me as long anymore

 

Being suddenly alone in the World of Dreams was both intimidating and relieving. The incessant feeling of eyes on the back of her neck had her jumping like a rabbit during the hunt. At the same time, she was able to relax with Owen gone. He was perhaps one of the men she felt most comfortable around, but that was to say she cringe if he came within arm’s reach and didn’t suspect he was going to hurt her at every turn.

 

As for her task, it was no easy thing. She hated the stables and avoided them if at all possible. Not only did the smell make her gag, but she didn’t trust the horses and couldn’t understand why people would sit on their backs rather than use their own two feet. How on earth could they find having their bottoms rubbed sore enjoyable?

 

Having avoided the stables, her memory of them was fairly vague. How many stables were there again? And where was that manure pile anyway? At least the smell was memorable, if not the tiny detail of what it looked like.

 

Closing her eyes, she did her best to picture what the stables looked like. Taking a step she... She went nowhere. Disappointed by her failure, she modified the number of stalls and tried again... And nothing happened. Aleeza growled in frustration and tried again... and again... and again...

 

Having tried half a dozen times by now, her cheeks were tear-stained, her eyes puffy and there were big clods of dirt a good ten feet from their original locations- whoever knew that deerskin boots could dig that much dirt out of the ground when kicked with enough force! She threw herself to the ground when another attempt proved fruitless and proceeded to bask in her misery.

 

However, the sudden vision of Owen laughing at her throwing a temper tantrum like a five year-old had her back on her feet once more. She wiped tears from her eyes before picturing the stables again. She stepped...

 

And landed in the manure heap, much to Owen’s amusement.

[WhiteWolf]

Owen could not help but smile at the expression on Aleeza’s face. “Well it was your first attempt Aleeza, and you did get to the stables without any mishaps, well maybe one, but that is easily overcome. Remember your first lesson, about how to hold your appearance? Well just reaffirm your clothing and the muck will disappear.” It only took Aleeza a moment to change her appearance back to how she wanted it. “I am sure that was not where you intended to land, but it is a good example of why you need to know your location exactly. There is one further problem though.” They had not materialised in the main part of the stables, but inside one of the stalls and this one was locked from the outside and there was no way to reach the bolt. “Unless you plan to spend all night here, I think you may need to get yourself out of here.” With a wink and a grin Owen disappeared and left Aleeza to work out for herself how to get out.

 

Owen did not have to wait to long before Aleeza appeared outside Wolflover’s cabin and sat down next to Owen, looking slightly ruffled. “Well I think that is enough excitement for one night, I think it would be best if we returned to the waking world and let our bodies rest, I will meet you here again tomorrow night and we can continue. What I want you to do when you wake up in the morning and throughout the day is memorise three locations, the Inn, the main room of the Ranger Barracks and the room in your house. Tomorrow night we will keep trying until you can move both of us to each location without any mishaps, then I will give you three more locations each night for the next three nights, if you can move us to all of the locations on the final night, we will move on to the second part of this lesson, is that clear?”

 

Aleeza nodded her head in response, doing her best to stifle a yawn that seemed to be trying to encompass her head. “I will see you here tomorrow night Owen, that is if I do not yawn my head off before then.” With a small smile, playing around her lips, Aleeza disappeared and Owen slowly stood up, a pure white wolf suddenly appearing at his side. “Well Ice I think Aleeza will do well once she has mastered memorising the locations.” Owen reached down and scratched Ice between her ears, Ice’s head rubbing against his leg in response.

 

Owen

 

The White Wolf

 

Ranger Leader

[Guest Estel]

Upon waking the next morning, Aleeza wasted no time in running to down the stairs to the commonroom. Wall gave her a curious glace as she absently ordered her breakfast, too busy trying to memorize every nook and cranny of the inn to pay attention to what she was ordering. The result was hard-boiled eggs and burnt bacon, the taste of which surprised her when she took her first bite, not having bothered to look at what she was eating before hand. Too embarrassed to reorder, she choked down the food while continuing to study.

 

Wall wasn’t the only one to shoot her worried glances since she spent the entire morning wandering aimlessly around the commonroom of the inn, whispering to herself and sniffing random pieces of furniture as she tried to commit the entire room to memory. Finally after lunch, Wall kicked her out, making the excuse that he needed to some cleaning and so she headed over to the Ranger’s barracks to make a nuisance of herself there.

 

The barracks was a good deal easier to memorize than the inn. There were far fewer pieces of furniture to remember than the tables and chairs at the inn. All the same, she spent some a good portion of the afternoon there before going for a wander in the woods to waste the rest of her free time.

 

After supper, and giving Wall an explanation for her earlier behaviour to curb any accusations of lunacy or a return of the Howling, she returned to her room upstairs. There was little to memorize there, only the bed, the nightstand and candle and the constant pile of laundry in the far corner near the washstand and mirror. She had yet to build her own house and was loathe to do so before she had made absolutely certain she would not leave the Stedding again.

 

That night, in Tel’aran’rhiod, she mastered moving the two of them to each of the locations with only two tries for the inn and she accomplished “stepping” to the other two on the first try. Grinning proudly at Owen, she awaited her next three rooms eagerly. Training in the World of Dreams was so much more preferable to weapons training.

[WhiteWolf]

Aleeza was a quick study and soon Owen found she could easily move both of them to any of the six locations she had memorised over the past few nights.

 

“That will be all for tonight, Aleeza. Tomorrow we will take a break then the next night I want you to come over to my place, just after sundown, the next part of this lesson is more difficult, and has more pitfalls, we will need to be very careful.” With that Owen indicated it was time for them to return to their bodies and reminded Aleeza to get some rest, as she would surely need it for what was to come.

 

Two nights later, Owen and Aleeza were sat on the balcony of his house, the sun having set over the Stedding and the sky was going from a deep blue to purple, with full darkness only moments away. “Tonight we are going to break all the rules I have taught you so far. Tonight we could be heading into danger, we could find ourselves in serious trouble, and we will be vulnerable to attack. So we must both look out for each, guard each others back so to speak.” Owen stopped talking, sensing the doubt and uncertainty in Aleeza. It was a lot to take in, especially as Owen had been adamant that Aleeza should adhere to all the rules he had been teaching her, but this was a special occasion and one that needed to be taught.

 

“What I want you to do when we are in the dream, is to use your need to jump us to something that is important to you, maybe something that you need to resolve, or you need to find. Whatever it is, it will be a strong emotion that guides you, and this is where you have to exercise the utmost care”

 

Owen and Aleeza entered the Wolfdream and stood outside Wolflover’s cabin, Aleeza smelling nervous, and Owen offering words of encouragement. “I know you can do this Aleeza, I have faith in you even if you do not have any for yourself. Now focus on need. Now take my hand and don’t let go, otherwise I will lose you and that would be something you do not want to happen.”

Owen

 

The White Wolf

 

Ranger Leader

[Guest Estel]

Owen’s encouragement fell on deaf ears. Aleeza could practically smell her own nervousness and to further upset any thought of concentration, she was forced to take Owen’s hand- which compounded anxiety with fear. Quite honestly, there were few times Aleeza could remember that she had felt this wretched, only during her Howling had this amount of uncertainty and fear plagued her to the point of complete deterioration of her emotional stability- which, while being far from perfect, was at least enough to keep her going in public.

 

‘Breathe, girl. You’ll do fine, just like you did last time. Shh… Calm down…’

 

She had spent the hour or so of preparation time desperately trying to think of something to focus this “need” on. What could she possibly need? Burn her, there were things she needed but not those to be found within the World of Dreams, unless tel’aran’rhiod was somehow miraculously connected to her emotional state. So what could she find here? The things she needed; trust, self-confidence… they weren’t to be found here. What about closure? What about the family that had turned its backs on her when they should have stood by her? Their rejection had plagued her waking and sleeping since it had happened and her inability to move past that prevented her from creating relationships with others. But would they act any different given a second chance? No. There was nothing left for her there except worse heartbreak; they followed the Way of the Leaf and she, by fault of nature, could no longer hold true to that way of life.

 

That wasn’t her entire family, though. True, that was the family she knew, but what about her brother? What about the baby, ripped from Aleeza’s arms as their mother lay sobbing in the far corner of the wagon, curled in foetal position as if it would protect her from the reality of what had transpired. What had happened to him? Despite begin brought up cloistered because the Travelling People were so isolated from the rest of the world, then naivety that she had carried to the Stedding had been burned away when she left and spent time in the big cities. Sadly, she wondered whether the rapist had perhaps sold him to life of the streets or some equally worse fate. Chances were that the only remaining family member who hadn’t rejected her was no longer alive. It was still worth the possibility. If only this could bring her some sense of closure so she could simply move on…

 

Closing her eyes, Aleeza focused her mind on the few memories she could dredge up from that horrible night. However, her emotions kept breaking her concentration and she failed to move them her first try. At Owen’s encouragement, she took a few deep breaths and tried again…

 

… this time succeeding. The wind whipped around the pair of them, seizing Aleeza in an icy grip that set her teeth to chattering. Her toes were frigid in her thin deerskin boots as she stood in snow that reached halfway to her knees. It took a reminder from Owen to change her clothing and soon enough she was draped in a thick bearskin cloak with proper fur-lined boots on her feet.

 

They stood atop one of the many peak in the Mountains of Mist. Here the air was thin and even just standing, her breath was laboured, though truthfully, her breath came in gasps simply because of the view.

 

It was simply breath-taking. From this altitude, she commanded a view miles wide in every direction. To her back lay Arad Doman with its scantily-clad women and before her, the Two Rivers were laid out beautifully. Where the snow-cap ended, a green blanket began; rolling and dipping as if it covered some peacefully sleeping form like her own body which awaited the return of her consciousness back at the Stedding. Speaking of which, she could just barely pick it out by major landmarks and some hundreds of feet below it was Emond’s Field though it looked disturbingly empty in the World of Dreams.

 

A particularly strong blast of wind hit her, nearly forcing her from her precarious place atop the mountain. Like a merchant mapping the best way to navigate through shoal and current, the wind traced a finger directly from her to a massive stone structure nestled in the foothills. Permanent construction of the Citadel had not started until after she had left the Stedding but she had heard enough rumours on the road back to make an educated guess that this was the permanent residence of the Band of the Red Hand.

 

But why was the wind directing her there? Was that where her brother was? Was it possible that, against all odds, he had somehow grown to manhood under the rapists care?

 

She looked to Owen for direction and he explained that this was only the first step. To narrow her search she would have to try again. All her nervousness and fear was forgotten in the sudden rush of excitement in having hope of finding her long-lost brother. Aleeza buried herself in that need to find him, took Owen’s hand and stepped…

 

… into a wide boulevard that felt oddly abandoned here in tel’aran’rhiod as if in the waking world it was normally a source of business. She stood facing the gate that stood sometimes open, sometimes shut. Over her head reared the beginnings of a great keep. So her brother was here, in this Citadel? Why? How? What had brought him here? What sort of man was he living in the headquarters of a legendary army? Too many questions and not enough answers. This was still too vague, surely she could get more specific than this? She stepped again…

 

… and was nose-to-nose with a wooden door. Backing up from it Aleeza realized she was in a hall and that this door was just about the same as any other in the long hallway. When she turned back to the door, it was open as if inviting her to discover its secrets. Not wanting to be rude, she accepted the invitation gladly.

 

The room seemed some sort of office and stacks of papers were constantly rearranging themselves on the desk at the same time that the chairs in the room shifted a few feet this was and that. It was furnished simply, in utilitarian fashion with a larger, sturdy desk sitting in front of the window while a smaller, rickety writing table stood opposite it. Looking out the window, she could see that she was some distance above the ground and figured herself to have “stepped” into the keep she had been overwhelmed by earlier.

 

Fascinated, she sat down in a chair facing the window and began reading through a stack of documents found on the desk.

 

ooc: not sure exactly what you wanted here, I hope this works.

[WhiteWolf]

This part of the exercise was always the most interesting and the most dangerous part of Dream training. Using need could often lead to situations where they could be plunged into trouble, or into a dangerous situation. There was no warning, no hint; using need sprang just from that, need. The more a person wanted to know something, the stronger the need. The stronger the need, the more problems that could crop up. Thankfully, tonight, did not appear to be one of those nights, although they had only just started to get closer to what it was that Aleeza needed to find, to satisfy an unquenched desire that possible she had not even been aware of.

 

The mountain top had puzzled Owen for a moment until he realised Aleeza had been scanning the land around them. Obviously this had been the path she had decided to follow to find what she needed. The jumps after that were small ones, and Owen recognised their location quicker than he thought Aleeza did, but he had spent more time here than she had, if she had even been to the Citadel. Eventually they settled in a large room, and Aleeza went over to the desk and started to leaf through the pile of papers strewn on the desk.

 

“Can you tell me why we are here Aleeza? Although it is doubtful any of the soldiers of the Band could find their way here, I would rather not be caught leafing through their papers without asking first.”

 

Owen

 

The WhiteWolf

 

Ranger Leader

 

OOC: Very good post Estel, we can finish this part of the training whenever you are ready.

[Guest Estel]

Aleeza didn’t answer him at first. Partly because she was too busy rifling through the papers to think up and answer and partly because she wasn’t quite sure yet either. Her search of the papers finally provided that answer and she was so shocked, she felt her knees give out and tried to sit down in the office chair. Unfortunately, tel’aran’rhiod picked that moment to shift the chair, so she ended up landing hard on her bottom- much to Owen’s amusement.

 

“Oh Light.” It came out at barely a whisper but for all its quietness was filled with shock, amazement and horror. The paper she held in her hands disappeared the same moment she dropped it but the name scrawled on the bottom of the paper in childish handwriting was branded into her skull.

 

Carnhain Stromblade

Captain General of Cavalry

Band of the Red Hand

 

She didn’t recognize the last name, but the given name was the same. How had he ended up here? Had the rapist, in some attempt at cruel irony, turned the Tinker child into a soldier? And where had “Stromblade” come from? Had that been the rapist’s last name? Had that demon at least taken her brother as a son even if he had twisted the innocent boy?

 

“What position does a Captain General hold in an army?” Owen made no comment of her ignorance of military terminology. His answer shocked her. Her brother held one of the highest ranks in the Band?

 

Aleeza handed a report to Owen. “Read the last name. I decided to use my need to find my brother who was kidnapped shortly after birth. I hadn’t really expected him to be alive and for him to be so close…”

 

ooc: you want to just close up this thread with Owen's reply and move on to the next one?

[WhiteWolf]

Owen was almost as shocked as Aleeza obviously was, but not for the same reason. It seemed that they had more in common then either of them realised for Owen to had thought his whole family dead until he had, one day, come across someone who turned out to be his twin sister. To say that tonight’s lesson had produced some unexpected information was an understatement of gigantic proportions.

 

“Believe it or not Aleeza, I can empathise with you over this, I to thought I had no family and found out that I was in error.” Owen then told her about his first encounter with Ehlana when she was on her way back from Tar Valon. “She had been there to be tested for the One Power, but she did not have the ability. I had just finished the job I had been employed to do and was travelling around aimlessly when I happened to stumble across a young woman being assaulted by some brigands. Together we managed to kill them and then headed north to Tarwin’s Gap. Ehlana had got it into her head that she wanted to join the Army that was forming and encouraged me to do so. For want of something better to do I went with her, it wasn’t until much later that we found out who each other was. But for now we should not tarry here, this has been a trying experience for you and I think it would be best if we left the dream and returned to our bodies. You have done well tonight Aleeza and I think you now fully understand that using need here can have some very unlooked for consequences.”

 

Owen and Aleeza left the dream and returned to their bodies and talked for a while longer before Aleeza headed off to sleep. It was some time later though before Owen turned in for the night. The events of this night brought all the memories of Ehlana flooding back, and it took him some time to regain control of his emotions.

 

Owen

 

The WhiteWolf

 

Ranger Leader