Oh no! *hugs mentor* :( I only just joined and you were so polite and helpful. Seriously, if you were half as friendly to every other newbie its no wonder theres such a lot of WT Div members. Its rubbish that you are leaving on such a bad note-you were quite obviously brilliant at your job. All I can do is wish you well with the future.

An Aes Sedai appeared so quietly that Sial could almost believe that she had zapped herself there with those peculiar powers. Then again, the Cairheinin woman had to admit that she had not been paying as much attention as perhaps she should have been. That damned Tower and its contents-not to mention recent events-were distracting her. Bloody idiot, this isnt the time to loose your wits. Sial shifted her hands on Coals reins, the joints stiff from a combination of cold and strain. She noted rather disconnectedly that the closer she had got to Tar Valon, the more she had seemed to be scolding herself in her head. That didnt bode well.

It wasnt just any old Aes Sedai either, Sial realised. It was the Aes Sedai, the one that she had tried following in Maerone so that she could sell the infomation on. She was still cloaked-not that Sial would have been able to recognise her even if she wasnt-but there was no mistaking that voice. Chilly was putting it lightly. She could probably cool forestfires with that voice, bloody woman. I dont even know her name! Of course, the Aes Sedai was still on her horse and while Sial was no horsetrader, she could recognise a creature that she had spent time following.

”Come child, everyone else was busy so it looks as if you are in my care for now, I will help you get cleaned up and show you where you need to be” the Aes Sedai said. That was a surprise, though Sial kept her expression neutral. Not through any particular skill; by that point her face was so cold, the muscles so knotted with tension, that she doubted she could have flickered an eyelash without knowing about it. Why? she wondered silently in response to the womans words, though she had sense enough to keep that word to herself. The cloaked Aes Sedai had hardly acted overjoyed at a potential novice unwittingly falling into her care, and Sial had no doubts that her own enthusiasm for both her fate and her mysterious cloaked companion had been damp at best.

Some response was obviously called for. Sial was occasionally overbold and stubborn more often that not, but she wasnt stupid. Cairheinin held Aes Sedai in fear and awe and the people of Maerone had been no exception. "Yes, Aes Sedai, ma'am" she replied solemnly and with unusual calm. Inwardly, she winced at her own submission-she had never called anyone "ma'am" in her life!-but she had little doubt that Aes Sedai required manners. Light, let that be enough! She didnt think she could choke out more bloody honourifics. If nothing else, her jaws were complaining of having to work in the cold.

A sudden rush of pluckiness made her open her mouth again. "Aes Sedai? Is it proper for me to call you that? I have never asked you name." The words somehow came out stupidly prim, too prim for a common sweeps daughter, and with her Cairheinin accent, Sials low voice sounded unpleasantly like some noble twit equiring after something they had no idea about but were pretending otherwise. She fought the urge to swear to balance it out. Instead, she gave Coal a nudge in the ribs to warn him that they were about to move on and looked down, seemingly at her horses shoulders. However, the Cairheinin woman was watching the Aes Sedai out of the corner of her eye, gauging. Everyone agreed that Aes Sedai were unpredictable, as well as being serene which made no sense in Sials mind. Which was truth? And, more importantly, was a simple question like a name enquiry about to get her walloped?

Heh, Ill have a whole 5 days to think up something then :) Have a good few days!

Thanks Zemi! For the welcome as well as the compliment :) It would be great to have Sial meet Aeveryn at some point, cheers!

Yay, thanks Eqwina! The thread is something like 'A New Novice (attn: mistress of novices or any Aes Sedai that have been recruiting)' or something like that :)

A bit off topic but I love that pic on DA, Jagen! What programme did you use? The detail is awesome!

I never realised we had a proper WT Org site! *goes to look*

Hello all! Ive made my first ever RP post with my newly invented character, but I kindof wanted to start at the beginning. Has anyone got an Aes Sedai or a Warder free to rp letting my Novice into the tower maybe? I didnt want to just barge into the whole thing.

Sorry if this is a daft post! I just dont want to screw up! :D

Hello Eqwina, Estel and TaeaDawn :) Nice to meet you all!

Even in the dusk, the White Tower dominated Tar Valon. In some peculiar sense, the Tower was more Tar Valon than Tar Valon itself, climbing into the sky as if trying to compete with Dragonmount itself. You didn’t need to be standing mere paces from its gate to appreciate that but that was where Sial Daemoa was.

A cairhienin, Sial would never be called tall and perched on a deep grey heavy footed horse that quite obviously had at one time or another been ploughing fields, she looked smaller than ever. Looking up at that huge white monument to history, she felt smaller too, a feeling she was not used to and did not all together like. She found her eyes instinctively roving for chimney pots. Bloody idiot, of course theres bloody chimneys…She stared deliberately away from the skyline and stared at the gates instead. Well, glared. Glaring came all too naturally to her, despite trying to keep a straight face. Then again, in Maerone, a merchant playing Daes Dae’mar would read as much from neutrality as open crossness. But this was Tar Valon, not Cairhein. She would have to get used to that, and quickly.

A passer by who happened to glance at her would have seen a young, dark haired woman in a green brown woollen dress, an off-black cloak on her shoulders. Had they  looked closer, they might have noticed the smoky dark eyes glaring out from under jet black brows or noticed that her hair, plaited untidily down her back, had several burrs in it and was fighting free of its twist. They may even have seen that her pale skin had a hint of olive about it or that her shoes were muddied and travel worn. Asked to put an age to her, however, and the passer by would have been likely to say sixteen or perhaps a very matured fifteen. They would have been unlikely to guess that Sial could claim 18 years and 11 months of life. They would have been surprised to hear that she was scraping under the Novice age bar by a whisker.

Sial patted Coal absently and shifted in her saddle. Well, not technically her saddle. Or her horse, for that matter. The Aes Sedai who had picked her up in Maerone had purchased both horse and saddle for Sials use when Sial made it perfectly clear that she was not going to leave home on her families only equine, Sooty, an even tempered black draught. Spontaniously disappearing from home in the dead of night leaving only a note of goodbye was one thing. Kidnapping the horse that was so useful to the family business was another thing entirely. Light, she did have some morals. Some.

Where was the woman anyway? Sial absently chewed the end of her plait. It bothered her that she didn’t even know the name of the Aes Sedai she had been travelling with, nor that of the womans Warder.  It bothered her even more that she had spoken so little to both people throughout the whole journey from Maerone. That was not entirely her fault; an Aes Sedai did not socialise with a potential Novice and both woman and Warder had for the most part treated her as a slightly unruly child. It wouldn’t have hurt her to dig a bit though. She wished she had, now. Any information could be used and at this particular moment, Sial wanted anything that could help her in the slightest. What if the Aes Sedai didn’t come back and someone asked her what she was doing? ‘A woman who wears a hooded cloak all the time and a man in a colour-change cloak who isn’t Cairheinin told me I could learn to channel, bought me here on this horse and told me to wait here while they went to find someone to greet me?’ The mere thought made Sial laugh. That is, it would have done if it had not been her.

She glared at the gate harder. She should run now, before people had a chance to laugh at her. Or she should dismount and march up to those gates and demand to be let in right now. Or she should go and look around Tar Valon, then take news of the sweep situation home to her brother and father and uncles. Or she should shout that she was not Aes Sedai material and march off now, on her terms, rather than waiting for what was surely inevitable failure-who had heard of a Sweeps Daughter Aes Sedai?- to send her packing.

She did none of those things. Instead, she sat frozen on Coals back with white knuckles gripping the reins, awaiting someone to open the gate and let her in. Frozen as a rabbit freezes on approach of a hungry fox. Blood and ashes, she was bloody doomed…

Hi! Im totally new to the whole RPG but have now got a WT charrie approved (yay :D). So for no particular reason I thought Id say hello. Hello!

Hoaray! Approvage! Thanks Lavinya :)