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Chapter Text

Talaan din Gelyn had been teaching the novice class on Cloud Dancing for half an hour when she noticed Bodewhin Cauthon planting herself behind a large bush in the courtyard, apparently settling in to secretly observe the class. It wasn’t that odd to find Bode in strange places, but it was odd to have an Accepted just hanging around in the background watching a novice class, especially in stealth mode. When the last novice had been dismissed and scurried away, Talaan approached the bush.

“Hello, Bode.”

Bode peeked cheerily out from behind the large shrubbery. “Hi Talaan! Good class. I missed the first half – can you tell me why adding more air to a storm can make it calm down? Obviously it works, but it seems like it should be the other way around.”

Talaan glanced at the sky, marking the time. “I have a little bit of free time now, but I really need to use it to clean my room, so we might have to walk and talk.” She looked sidelong at Bode. “I’m honored that you’re interested in my class, but to fully grasp this material you should probably do the Windfinder exchange program.”

Bode’s smile suddenly became a bit fixed. “I’ve asked. You have to be recommended for it, and Tiana Sedai said, and I quote, ‘After what happened with the Aiel, I would have a diplomatic incident on my hands within a week if I unleashed you on the Sea Folk right now.’” She sniffed. “I think she’s being overdramatic. I’m a delight.”

Talaan did not know how to respond to this assertion.

“Anyway,” Bode continued, “If cleaning’s what it takes, I’ll help you clean if you’ll catch me up on what I missed.” Rumor had it that Bode was always trying to find innovative ways to get out of chores, so she must have really wanted to learn Cloud Dancing. Or she was avoiding some even more odious task, which might present problems if Talaan ended up implicated as Bode’s distraction.

Talaan considered whether to accept the offer as proposed. Bode was an infamous trouble magnet, but also generally accepted responsibility if she got caught. And this was almost the most Bode had ever spoken to her one-on-one. Talaan had been raised to Accepted as soon as she entered the Tower, which was unusual, but not unprecedented. This had made it difficult to make friends. The Accepted all knew each other already, and Talaan didn’t have much in common with them besides the One Power. Bode offering to spend time with her was too good an opportunity to pass up.

 “It is agreed,” Talaan said. Her hand twitched up towards her lips unconsciously, but she stopped herself. Bode hadn’t trained with the Aath’an Miere and wouldn’t know how her people concluded contracts, and she’d noticed the shorebound tended to be skittish about formalizing contracts. She didn’t want to scare Bode off.

Bode eyed her curiously but only said “Great! Where’s your room?”

***

As they walked to her room and started scrubbing, Talaan explained to Bode how air had weight and temperature, just like earth or water. And like the land and the sea, there could be more or less of it in particular spots; it wasn’t evenly distributed, or equally thick in all places. Subtle differences between the weight, temperature, and moisture of air led to movement in different parts of the air, which then created weather patterns.

“So, air pressure and wind speed are the key to storms,” Talaan went on. “It’s all about contrast and movement. There are parts of the air that have lower pressure at the center than the areas around them. Air moves towards the low pressure spot – which creates wind – because there’s less air in the low pressure space than outside of it.” She paused, looking for an analogy. “It’s like if you tap a barrel of ale. The ale starts moving out the tap, because suddenly the tap is the one spot in the barrel that has less ale in it than all the rest!”

Bode nodded. “The ale moves from a place of higher pressure to a place of lower pressure.”

Talaan was having more fun than she thought she would be; Bode was a quick student, even if she did clean rather chaotically. “Exactly. And like I said, cold air is thicker and drier than warm air. So when cold air and warm air meet, the warm air rises over the cold air, because the cold air is heavier.”

“Oh, kind of like oil and vinegar?” asked Bode. “The oil is naturally lighter or less dense than the vinegar, so it floats when you mix the two.”

“Yes!” Talaan put down the sponge and gestured with her hands. “The hot air going up leaves a space that cold air rushes into, which pushes more hot air up, which draws in more cold air, and so on. Now, hot air is wetter than dry air. With enough water up in the air, the tiny bits of water kind of clump together enough for you to get raindrops. At that point the rain creates a downdraft, which moves cool air back down closer to the ground where it belongs.”

“So… if you wanted to try and stop a storm, you’d want to make the cold and the warm air stop moving over each other, so that there’s not a huge difference between the pressure of air in different spots.” Bode giggled. “You’d want to plug up the ale tap.”

“Exactly! Of course it gets really complicated, but that’s how adding more air in the right place can sometimes calm down a storm. If you can stop the updrafts of warm, moist air by strengthening the downdraft, you’ve cut off the storm’s source of growth.”

Bode grinned and flung her hands out in excitement. Unlike Talaan, she had not put down the sponge, and she ended up hitting Talaan with a wave of soapy water. “Oh! Sorry!” she said, dabbing at Talaan’s skirt with a clean rag. “This is great. I’m so glad I asked you! How old were you when you started learning all of this?”

***

“Wait, okay, this is ridiculous! Not the bit about my brother, sadly – my brother finding one of your legendary artifacts in an abandoned storeroom and fighting a terrifying boneless monster for it, that’s apparently completely normal for him. He’s probably run into multiple terrifying boneless monsters, all guarding priceless treasures. I’ve heard rumors,” Bode said, sounding a little grumpy. “But your ma had really been researching it practically her whole life?”

“Yes. She knows so much about Atha’an Miere history- not just the Bowl of the Winds, but lots of stories about our people. Even from before the Breaking.” Talaan paused and looked out her small window. She and Bode were back in her room after talking all through dinner, and the moon had risen. It was waxing gibbous, almost entirely full, and it shone brightly.

“She used to tell me that once we had such mastery of the winds and the waves that we could fly to and from the moon! She even said that our people lived on the moon once,” added Talaan.

Bode stared at her, eyes wide. “You mean like Lenn and Salya?”

“Who are they?” asked Talaan.

“Lenn flew to the moon in the belly of an eagle, and his daughter Salya walked among the stars- they’re old gleeman’s tales. I used to love them. Egwene did too.” Bode looked very sad for a moment, a strange emotion on the normally cheerful woman.

Talaan remembered that Bode and the late Amyrlin Seat had grown up together. She wondered how the difference in power had affected their friendship. Had they been close, still, when she died? Although you could no longer be close to someone and still care deeply for them. And simultaneously resent them for abandoning you. Talaan steered her thoughts away from those shoals; these were her problems, not Bode’s.

“I never knew the Amyrlin —Egwene— personally, but she was clearly an amazing woman. I’m sorry for your loss,” Talaan said, feeling a bit awkward.

“Thanks. She was two years older than me, and I barely saw her after she left the Two Rivers, but we were friends before that.” Bode looked out at the moon. “I still can’t believe she’s dead, sometimes. Sometimes I even dream about seeing her and telling her about what’s going on, just like old times. The dreams are so vivid, it feels like she’s right there, same as ever. She doesn’t ever speak, but I feel like she’s listening.”

“I understand that. I still dream about my family. They aren’t dead,” Talaan winced but went on, “well, as far as I know they aren’t dead, but I genuinely don’t know if I’ll ever see them again. I couldn’t let them know I was planning to go to the White Tower. They would never have let me, and I had to go, so I left without saying goodbye.” She was looking at the ground, so was surprised by Bode’s sudden hug.

“Oh, that’s so hard! My family wasn’t precisely thrilled about having two of us go off with Aes Sedai, but they understood it was for our safety,” said Bode, releasing the hug and looking at her, big brown eyes concerned. “I’m sorry you had to leave without saying goodbye.”

“It was the only way.” Talaan explained about her family’s position in Aath’an Miere society and politics, and how she knew her own efforts would not be judged fairly for fear of nepotism. “But what hurt most was that my mother stopped treating me as her daughter after I became an apprentice Windfinder, just because she was afraid any affection would be seen as favoring a member of her family. Not just in public —that’s normal, though she took it rather far— but in private, too! I had all of the terrible things about having my family, and none of the good things. It was easier to cut ties altogether and start over. And Accepted training is hard, but at least it’s fair, and no one treats me differently because I’m a din Gelyn. Well, they treat me differently because I’m Atha’an Miere, and we have a complicated relationship with the Tower, but that’s a different kettle of fish.”

Bode nodded thoughtfully. “Thank you for trusting me with all this. I promise I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.”

Talaan was relieved that Bode had brought this up first. “Yes, please don’t tell anyone else just yet. The Aes Sedai know about a lot of it; I’m sure I’ve personally created a ‘diplomatic incident’. But I would rather not have all the details known to the other Accepted.”

“Understood, your secrets are safe with me.” Bode suddenly smiled, eyes merry again. “However, now I really want to know more about this whole thing about the Aath’an Miere living on the moon, since it’s not the Lenn and Salya story I thought it was.”

 “Yes, I guess not…” Talaan looked out at the moon again. “My mother was so precise about it. She always sounded like she was telling history, not stories. She’d point to a specific spot on the moon and tell me ‘right there’! Look, you can see it tonight. You know the face in the moon? It’s a little way out from the left side of the lip, in that dark patch. Right there,” Talaan said, gesturing to the spot, near the left middle edge of the moon’s rim.

Bode followed her motion and squinted intently at the moon, looking as if she would make the legendary moon city visible to the naked eye by sheer force of will.

“And I guess if the Bowl of the Winds was real after all, I can almost believe there’s really a city on the moon,” Talaan said.

Bode straightened and turned to Talaan, grinning and practically bouncing with excitement. “Let’s go see!”

Talaan shook her head, sure she had misheard. “What?”

"You know how to make gateways, right? Open a gateway to the moon," Bode suggested.

 “Stormbringer’s sandy beard, Bode.” Talaan felt herself blushing as she realized she’d said that aloud. It was the strongest swear she knew, though Bode just looked confused, and then thoughtful.

“It can be a small one! We don’t even have to go through, at least not right away. I just want to look.” Talaan stared at Bode as she continued. Was she actually serious? “Actually, my brother used gateways opening high above the ground to look at the Last Battle. That’s probably best, we can see a lot more that way and it’s probably safer.” Bode’s big brown eyes were thoughtful again now. She was serious!

“Hold on, you know the weave too!” Talaan said. “If you’re so eager to see the moon up close, why do you need me to do it?”

Bode pouted. “Oh come on, it’s your story and your ancestors! I’m not going to cut you out of it. What kind of a friend do you take me for?”

Talaan felt a warm glow at hearing Bode say “friend”, though it might not mean to Bode what it meant to Talaan. Bode was popular and likely made friends easily. Talaan wasn’t, and didn’t. But by that token, she couldn’t afford not to follow up on the overture.

“Also, I’m being practical,” Bode continued, ticking points off on her fingers. “You’re a lot stronger than me, you’ve had more practice with the weave, you’re the one with the hereditary ‘mastery of wind and waves’ that’s apparently so crucial for moon jaunts, and you have a better idea of where it might be. This is your adventure. I’m just the ideas girl.”

Talaan found herself drinking up the compliments, despite herself. If she did this with Bode, they’d have a secret that just the two of them knew, until and unless they decided to share it. And not just that – she, Talaan din Gelyn, would do something extraordinary. Well, using the Bowl of the Winds had been extraordinary, but she had just been a single part of the whole, lending power but not direction. This was an adventure she could lead. But the risk!

“We would get in so much trouble for using the weave outside the travelling grounds.” Talaan paused and laughed softly. “Or the world!”

Bode scoffed. “Only if we got found out. Who’s going to find out?”

Talaan looked at her, suddenly serious. “You must swear that if we do this, you won’t tell anyone until we can’t get in trouble for it anymore. I cannot give the Aes Sedai any excuse to put me out of the Tower.” She hesitated, then added, “Unless our lives or other people’s lives are in danger somehow, and the only way to save ourselves or them is to tell someone.” You didn’t keep secrets about immediate dangers to the ship or crew.

Bode nodded thoughtfully. “I promise.”

“It is agreed.”

Gathering her courage, she swiftly kissed her own fingertips and laid them on Bode’s lips, to seal the bargain properly. Bode’s eyes widened in surprise. Talaan blushed again, though luckily it wasn’t very visible on her dark skin. “That’s how we seal a bargain or contract,” she explained. “The words and the kiss.”

Bode smiled. “I understand.” She kissed her own fingertips and tapped Talaan’s lips lightly. “It is agreed.” They looked at each other for a moment. Suddenly, eyes lighting up, Bode spat on her palm and held her hand out to Talaan. Talaan looked at it uncertainly. “This is how we do it in the Two Rivers- you spit on your palm and shake hands with the other person.”

Bode looked mischievous, but then she almost always looked like that, so Talaan didn’t have any real reason to think she was being misled. And Bode had completed the bargain Sea Folk style. In the spirit of cultural exchange, Talaan copied her, spitting on her own palm and reaching for the outstretched hand. Bode had a very firm grip. When they let go, Bode giggled. “Technically, that’s just how men in the Two Rivers do it. My da always does it when trading horses, but I’ve always wanted to try it.”

***

After checking that the door was locked, Talaan stood facing the window and took a deep breath. “Ok, one horizontal gateway over the moon, as you requested.” Bode stood next to her and turned to meet her eyes, looking absolutely delighted.

Talaan opened herself to saidar and concentrated on making the spot in front of her identical to where she wanted to go- which was going to be rather far above the surface, and hardly any bigger than a peephole in a door. With all Bode’s talk of ‘spy-holes’, Talaan figured discretion was in order. The gateway appeared as a thin horizontal line and rotated to reveal a barely coin-sized hole in the room. Talaan saw the tiniest glimpse of grayish-white dust pockmarked with shadowed craters and ridges in impossibly sharp definition, and a flash of perfectly spherical white structures that looked almost like puffball mushrooms, though they had to be the size of large buildings.

But she couldn’t focus on the scene opening in front of her, because a terrible, bone-chilling cold was leeching out of the tiny gateway at the same time the air in the room was rushing out with it, whipping her hair and picking up speed and loose objects and rattling the door and window in their frames. It was moving so fast! She felt her ears pop and as she strained to take a deep enough breath all she could think of was ‘storm protocol’ and she automatically split off a flow to try and equalize the air pressure-

“CLOSE IT!” yelled Bode beside her, her voice sounding strangely attenuated in the thinning air. “TALAAN! CLOSE IT!” She dashed past Talaan and started fumbling with the catch on the window. Talaan snapped the gateway shut, and their ragged gasps and the ‘pop’ of the window catchment finally opening sounded very loud in the sudden silence.

They stared at each other, wide-eyed and shivering. Bode was the first to speak. “Blood and bloody ashes,” she said, almost reverently. “I can’t believe you tried to stop it like it was a storm. No, you know what, I can. But it’s so funny it never occurred to you to just close the gateway!”

Talaan laughed weakly. “Now I’m very glad we had that whole conversation about closing the tap in the ale cask.”

Bode started laughing too, and if there was an edge of hysteria to it, Talaan wasn’t going to judge.

Chapter Text

“So yes, now we know, there’s no air on the moon and it’s incredibly cold and we’ll have to figure out how to deal with that. But we’re going back, right? We have to go back to the moon. You saw those big white round things! Your ma was absolutely right, that has to be the moon city.” Bode kept up a steady stream of exhortations as they tidied Talaan’s room for the second time that day, covering up the chaotic debris of their adventure.

“I told you, we’ll go back, but I’m not going to get caught out like that again. What other things are we only going to find out about when they happen to us? What if we can’t react in time?”

Bode pouted but conceded the point, barely. “Fine. What would make you feel more prepared?”

Talaan took the opening. “We need a way to keep air and warmth with us. We need to be able to create a gateway immediately back in case something happens to our first one or we’re in danger, so that means learning the area quickly.”

“Oh, that one’s not a problem,” Bode cut in. “I know a trick for Travelling – once you’ve arrived, create another gateway within eyesight of your first one. You don’t need to know the area to Travel within eyesight of it, but making that second gateway teaches you the whole area well enough to Travel anywhere else from it.”

“That is useful. Ok, so air and warmth, and I should clarify that we need a specific kind of air. I’ve seen vessels and armor designed for exploring underwater, and getting more of the right kind of air, and getting rid of the air that you breathe out, is tricky.” Talaan paused. “I think we can probably figure out how to do it with weaves- like a big bubble of Air and Fire, and maybe Earth to strengthen it, I don’t like how many craters I saw in the ground – but there’s a lot of complicated arithmetic involved in figuring out how big a volume of air we need for any given timeframe. I don’t know all of it.”

Bode waved away the concern. “I’m good at complicated arithmetic, and Astrelle Sedai can help me with anything I don’t know. She likes me, as far as Whites like anyone, and I think she’s still hoping I’ll choose the White Ajah.” Her smile looked a little guilty. “She should really know better, but people see what they want to see. And she’ll genuinely enjoy talking about the arithmetic, and won’t ask questions about why I want to know it.” She shrugged, a little too casually. “What else?”

Talaan felt a little uneasy at this manipulative streak of Bode’s, but set it aside to worry about later.

The rest of Talaan’s moon-related concerns mostly involved suddenly being unable to channel, whether because there might be steddings on the moon or something might happen to make them suddenly lose consciousness, and not being able to hear each other. Bode proposed a solidified flow of Air and Earth that they could sweep or poke ahead of them to detect gaps in access to the Power, and was finally convinced that only one of them should explore at a time, and the other should wait and watch nearby, through a gateway with a shield of air over it.

Bode also suggested some simple hand signs for concepts like ‘danger’, ‘help’, and ‘retreat’, saying she’d seen Maidens of the Spear using them in situations where they couldn’t speak aloud. And they both agreed that they should actually touch down on the surface and test all these things out before trying to enter the city, assuming it was even possible.

***

Two weeks later, after a lot of planning and several more observation gateways, Talaan finally declared them ready to actually set foot on the moon. They flipped a coin for who got to be first. Talaan won, which was clearly an enormous disappointment to Bode, but she bore up well enough, especially after Talaan promised her they’d switch places in a quarter of an hour.

Talaan was nervous, but in an excited way, the way she was after she knew she’d done her best to prepare, and if she just trusted herself it would all come out right. She loved that feeling, and one of the best things about being part of the White Tower was having it regularly again.

Bode set up a weave to keep the air and heat from escaping the room, and opened the gateway vertically inside it, biting her lip in concentration. It wasn’t the first time either of them had practiced this, but it was the first time anyone was actually planning to step through it.

Talaan and her surrounding bubble of Earth-Air-Fire stepped through the protective weave and the gateway and onto the surface of the moon- and then almost tripped, as her tentative first steps still sent her bouncing startlingly away from the drifts of dust on the surface. It was utterly strange, but Talaan gained her balance quickly—you didn’t spend almost your whole life on a ship without knowing some tricks for that—and turned around to sign “I’m fine” to Bode. Bode nodded.

Talaan put Bode out of her mind, then, for she could barely keep up with all the new sights and sensations as it was. For one thing, the horizon here seemed much closer than it did on the ocean. On a clear day, the line where water and sky met was around 3,000 spans out, but here the ground and the starry blackness seemed to meet much closer, about half that distance, maybe. That, and the strange lightness she had here, made her feel a sort of vertigo, like if she bounded too fast in any direction she might fall off the edge of the world. When she looked down to steady herself, the ground beneath her was blanketed in grayish-white dust, like fine, powdery snow, and occasionally pockmarked with craters or scattered with rocks.

She looked up past the horizon and gasped to see the world she’d come from, impossibly large against the moonscape but also impossibly small against the velvet sky. It shone with a blue-white radiance. She could see huge banks of white clouds swirling above the surface, see an enormous expanse of blue ocean, see the edges of the continent that she now lived in the center of, off to the right. That meant that great ocean was indeed the Aryth. She gazed at it and felt tears form in her eyes, which proved a problem, as the tears clung more stubbornly to her eyes than she was used to; she had to scrub hard at her eyes to clear them. Everything had different rules here! She gathered herself and set about the next task. With Bode waiting her turn, and only a limited supply of good air, she couldn’t dawdle.

The gateway had set her maybe 25 spans away from the great white domes and spheres, and she created her own gateway to halve that distance and quickly learn the area. Looking back at Bode, she waited for the nod before she stepped through. Watching Bode’s original gateway close was terrifying, even though the replacement showed up almost immediately just a span behind her.

She walked towards the domes and spheres, noting that some of the spherical ones appeared to be floating in midair and slowly rotating! Others were banked in the ground, reminding her again of white puffball mushrooms. And there, off to the side, was a large sort of sculpture made out of angular arches that cast sharp shadows on the dust. The material it was made of was the same color as the dust, but the shadows made it pop.

She’d seen it from above in one of their many preliminary surveys, and at the time she’d remarked to Bode how much it looked like a compass rose; a four-pointed star with a round center and four smaller arrows at the interstices, surrounded by a decorative, swirling border. She drew closer to it, fascinated by how it looked from this angle, and then suddenly stopped, realizing the other thing it reminded her of – the ter’angreal she passed through to become Accepted. It wasn’t the same design, but the arches, and the sense of something immanent in the structure, were the same.

Talaan felt a strange compulsion to touch it, even to walk through it, which frightened her. It was a ter’angreal for certain, and she knew better than to just walk into an unknown ter’angreal, somewhere around 50,000 leagues and a world away from home.

She turned away and started a gateway back to the room, to confirm that she’d learned the area well enough to do so. In her disquiet, she almost forgot to set the protective weave around it, but she remembered before it was too late. She stepped through and let it snap closed behind her, and Bode followed suit by closing the remaining gateway.

“You barely looked at the city! But I guess that means more for me to see.” Bode was bouncing on her toes again. They’d agreed to debrief between visits, but holding Bode back for more than a minute or so was going to be impossible. Talaan gave up trying to brush the very clingy moon dust from her skirts and focused on the only slightly less impossible task that was dissuading Bode from doing something impulsive and dangerous.

“I was distracted by the ter’angreal. It’s that sculpture we saw from above, the one that I said looked like a compass rose? It… it felt like it was still active. Like it wanted me to walk through. I don’t trust it. I think you’ve got the right idea, focusing on the city. So don’t get too close to the ter’angreal; we have no idea what might trigger it.”

Bode looked very thoughtful for a moment, and then studiously neutral, which made Talaan‘s stomach drop. But Bode nodded and agreed to, if not outright avoid the ter’angreal (“We should at least see if it does the same thing to me”) at least not get any closer than Talaan had.

Soon Talaan was the one maintaining the gateway and Bode was literally hopping around the surface of the moon, like an enormous rabbit. It made Talaan smile, even as she expected at any second to have to evacuate Bode and Heal a broken leg, or worse.

***

They went back again and again, taking their separate turns walking all around the silent white moon-city, looking for any kind of entryway or break in the walls. Neither one of them could spot anything. It was intact and apparently completely impregnable. They opened spy-gateways at various angles and levels above and alongside the structure from the comfort of Talaan's room, but even that proved useless.

Bode said that based on her affinity with Earth, she could tell that the city was built on top of a cave or tunnel of some kind, but they agreed not to try to open a gateway into the cave or into the structure- gateways were sharp, and there was no telling what they might accidentally destroy, or step into; they had learned some caution since that first gateway into the moon's non-atmosphere.

More contentiously, Talaan also argued against using the Power to try to dig into the tunnel from above or breach the moon city walls. Bode was stubborn, but surely there was some argument that would convince her. "I know it's safer than Travelling in sight unseen, but it just feels wrong. This place has been intact since the Age of Legends, and maybe even earlier. I don't want us to damage it, or possibly destroy it. What if we cause a cave-in and crush the underground part, and maybe the city above? What if the whole city shatters like an egg when we cut into it?"

"What if the moon was made of cheese?” Bode retorted. “We don't know what will happen until we try. I-"

"Bode! Please take this seriously!"

"I am! I’m not a child! I was trying to say that I can cut in really carefully-"

"It doesn't matter how careful you think you are! Look, you said when we started this that it was my adventure." Talaan squared her shoulders. "That means I am in command here, and I say we're not risking it."

Bode's expression was what Talaan could only describe as 'mutinous', but Talaan held her ground and her gaze the way she'd seen her mother and her aunt do. She hoped it would turn out better than those arguments usually did.

"Well, I don't see why you should be in charge if you won't at least consider all the options," Bode said, rather petulantly in Talaan’s opinion. "Or don't you want to know what's in there?"

Talaan wanted to shake her. Of all the things to say- "Yes! I want to know! This could be more information about my ancestors – and about the Age of Legends – than anyone has ever found before! But if I destroy it, what am I going to learn? Nothing. And then no one else would learn anything either, and I'd never forgive myself, and they'd never forgive me." She clamped her mouth shut, willing nothing else to get out. She knew she was flushing again and hoped Bode would take it as anger rather than embarrassment. It was both, though.

There was a very awkward silence in the small room, then. Bode broke it, hesitantly. At least she looked embarrassed, too.

"I did think of… there might be one other way to find out what's in the city. But you're not going to like it, and so I didn't want to be the one to say it.”

“For the love of the Light, Bode, just tell me.”

”There's one thing we haven't tried." Bode took a deep breath. "We haven't tried walking into the ter'angreal."

"BODE. I cannot believe I have to say this. You are not walking into an unknown ter'angreal."

"Well, obviously! You will be walking into the unknown ter'angreal," said Bode, with a trace of her usual spirit.

“That is absolutely not what I meant and you know it,” Talaan said, rolling her eyes. “Why are you suggesting I walk into the unknown ter’angreal, directly contravening literally everything any Aes Sedai has ever told me about interacting with objects of the Power?”

Bode opened her mouth and, uncharacteristically, shut it again immediately. First she wouldn’t shut up and now it was like pulling teeth to try to get a word out! Talaan glared at her. “Tell me! You said we were friends, and furthermore, we made a bargain. If you have a compelling reason why I should risk my life, or my ability to channel, you need to tell me.”

“Blood and ashes, Talaan! Fine.” She shuffled her feet.

“I really don’t want to get into how I know this, but I saw something like the moon ter’angreal in Rhuidean – the Aiel city – when I was in the Waste. That’s why I’m sure that it’s safe and also why I think it will only work for you. You going in seems like the only way that we’re going to get any answers about this place.” Bode paused and that guilty look Talaan had seen in their conversation about Astrelle Sedai came back.

“I’ll be honest, if I thought it would work for me I’d have insisted on going in much earlier. I’m sorry. I should have said something when you first brought it up. Or after I’d gotten close enough to confirm my suspicion that it would only work for you.” She added, almost to herself, “Some things just aren’t for me. I do know that now.”

Bode was often somewhat incomprehensible, in Talaan’s limited but growing experience, but not usually this cryptic. Talaan was going to have to pry her open like a mussel.

“Bode.” Her voice was blunt and firm as she stabbed it into Bode’s silence. “What in the nine winds did you do in the Aiel Waste?”

Bode just looked uncomfortable and made a great show of picking at the fraying embroidery on her left sleeve, stubbornly clinging to her reticence. Talaan wondered what approach to take next, and decided on all of them in rapid succession. If one angle didn’t work, maybe another would, or all of them together. “I accept your apology for not telling me earlier, and I won’t tell anyone what you say here. I just need more context to understand.”

Bode stopped fiddling with her sleeve embroidery, but still didn’t look at Talaan when she finally said, “I snuck into their ter’angreal.”

Ooof. Talaan had kind of expected this, but it was still a little shocking. And it definitely explained why she’d been forbidden to join the Atha’an Miere half of the exchange program.

“The Aiel had told me not to, of course. Not because it was unsafe, just because it wasn’t for me, it was an Aiel thing, for the Aiel. But I was curious and no one would answer my questions about it, they all just clammed up and told me it wasn’t any of my business. So I waited until no one was around and then I walked in. Nothing happened, but I felt really guilty afterwards and I was also kind of scared that I’d broken it somehow.” She laughed, a bit more dryly than usual.

“The Aiel are really good at making you feel guilty, and they don’t even do it on purpose. They just expect you to be your best, and they’ll be disappointed in you if you don’t, and after a while you start looking at yourself like an Aiel would and being disappointed in yourself if you didn’t live up to their standards, or your own. I squirmed for three days and then confessed. They beat me within an inch of my life, but afterwards they also told me about their ter’angreal. Not anything really detailed, it’s super personal and kind of political and really not my business. But they told me a little bit about what it meant to them and how it worked. Which, honestly, they didn’t have to do.”

She shrugged. “All of that to say: the moon ter’angreal really reminds me of the ter’angreal in Rhuidean. They don’t look alike, but there are a lot of similarities in design all the same. That one was made of glass pillars that caught the sunlight, and this one is made out of ceramic arches that cast shadows, but they’re both made out of the local raw material and built to catch the eye. They’re both in ancient, relatively intact cities. And then there’s the other things— it called to you, and not to me. And you recognized the symbol it made in the overhead view.”

Talaan nodded. “Yes, it really does look like a compass rose design, especially at the center.”

“That’s another reason I think it’s the same kind of thing,” Bode continued, starting to look excited again.

“You see, the ter’angreal in Rhuidean was built to share the ancestral memories of the Aiel with their direct descendants. They used it to judge the character and mental fortitude of potential leaders, because the memories were very surprising. Now everybody knows about the big secret in the memories because of things Rand— the Dragon Reborn did, but it’s a whole big dramatic thing and they still don’t like talking about it with outsiders, and so that’s really all I feel like I should say about it. I don’t know much more than that, anyway.” She looked at Talaan again, eyes briefly serious once more.

“What’s relevant to you is that it’s clearly Atha’an Miere work, since you recognize the symbol. And since it called to you, and you had family stories about this place? I think it’s really likely that your ancestors lived here, and that means you can make the ter’angreal work.”

Talaan was processing all this as fast as she could. “You think that if I’ll walk into it, I’ll, what, see my ancestors’ memories?” Bode nodded.

Talaan’s feelings about the ter’angreal shifted from distrust to excitement. She could barely wait to get started. This was beyond even the kind of experience that earned someone a salt name, this was the kind of thing that would make her famous in her own right. “That would give us… the history, what it looked like when the city was inhabited, what it felt like to be there…”

“Exactly,” said Bode. “And I’m hoping that at some point someone will remember where the flaming doors are and how to get inside.”

Chapter Text

Talaan stood just outside the ter’angreal’s outer limits, closer than she’d ever dared to go before. Bode was watching from an open gateway, but she was under strict instructions not to interfere. Bode had told her everything she knew about the logistics of the Aiel ter’angreal, which wasn’t much – mostly just that you couldn’t stop midway through, you had to go through the whole sequence of whatever it showed you.

They weren’t sure how much time it would take, or if the time perceived by Talaan would be different from the time perceived by Bode. Bode had a lot of half-baked contingency plans for explaining their temporary disappearances, which Talaan was desperately hoping would be unnecessary. Talaan was bringing enough air for a few hours, but it was possible that the physical laws inside the ter’angreal would be different enough that she wouldn’t need that precaution either.

She nodded one last time to Bode, then took a step past the first low wall of white-grey ceramic. Immediately, her bubble vanished and the hair on her arms rose, but there was air, and it was merely cool, not freezing cold. The shadows seemed to spin dizzyingly around her. It was hard to look at them directly, though she could see paths through the ter’angreal quite well, considering. She took another step, and another.

***

Talaan hovered in the body of a strong young man with light brown skin and dark hair. Like her, he was tattooed, though he had many more than she did. He was Kauri Tenadii Arapeta Aes Sedai, only 150 years old, but with a terrible headache brewing. He was using a ter’angreal to take part in a conversation with many people, none of whom were in the room. Slowly, the sense of separateness eased. He was Kauri.

Kauri closed the conference call to Paaran Disen with a sigh of relief. He’d never had headaches like this before the past few months, but it was just stress. He'd go out to the garden soon and that would help. He longed to dig his fingers in the rich brown earth; it was useful work, and a balm to the soul.

Not like that damned conference call! If the Hall of the Servants hadn't closed the Moon to immigration during the entire War of the Shadow, why would they propose doing it now, several months after the Bore had been sealed by the Dragon's Hundred Companions? It was likely just some political move; in Kauri's opinion, the Hundred Companions were not being treated with the respect they deserved for ending the war. He wasn't surprised that Latra Posae Decume's faction was repeating all those rumors and slanders about the Companions committing atrocities, but it was quite another thing to have libel presented as supporting evidence for a policy decision!

Kauri wasn't naive; he knew it would take some time to get off the war footing they'd all been on, and there were bound to be more setbacks. The Uhura moonbase in the Allen Miere had once been just one of many peaceful research stations, thriving urban hubs, and active spaceports on the moon. It was the first permanent settlement and the longest that had been continually inhabited. His own family had lived and worked there for generations. But now Uhura was the only permanent settlement on the moon. 110 years of diverting research budgets and trained personnel to warfare, and the dwindling ability of earth to supplement lunar industrial capacity, had taken their toll on the other settlements, and stressed even Uhura's ability to be self-sustaining.

Kauri got up and stretched, rubbing his forehead a little. He'd stop by his quarters and change into something more suitable for gardening, and then be off. He could almost smell the loam already. As he walked briskly to the Travelling lobby, he approached Lisyth and Zelera, who had taken the call together from their lab. He gave them a cool nod. They'd argued in favor of closing immigration and setting up a barrier to incoming and outgoing Travel. Never mind what kind of havoc that would wreak on his supply chains! They had the gardens, of course, but there were still some things that it was more efficient to pop down to Earth for.

Lisyth and Zelera paused and returned the nod. "You seem to be in a hurry today, Kauri. Where are you headed?" asked Lisyth.

"I'm going out to the gardens. I just need to change first. Can't get dirt on my work clothes!"

They seemed strangely taken aback by what he said, and exchanged glances with each other. Kauri rolled his eyes. "If you'll excuse me?"

They moved aside to let him pass in the narrow hall, but he saw them start whispering together before he rounded the gentle curve. He'd have to watch his back in the next meeting. And he still had no idea why! They were as paranoid as Decume herself.

He reached the Travelling lobby and nodded much more warmly to his sha'rah buddy Binyel Kashain, who was on duty operating the gateway for non-channelers who needed to enter or leave the floating sphere. Binyel was muttering something under his breath and didn't return the nod. That wasn't like Binyel, but then again, they were all a little preoccupied these days.

Kauri reached for the Source, swallowing against the sour taste in the back of his throat that sometimes accompanied his channeling now- another stress symptom, ugh- and opened a gateway to the lobby outside his quarters. When he opened the door, Rona greeted him with a hug, and he swung little Manaia around, eliciting a stream of giggles. "'Mma moon!" Manaia said. "'Mma moon!"

"That's right, little one," Kauri said. "You go around and around the Earth!" He kissed his child on the forehead and changed into clothes more suitable for gardening in.

"What are you wearing?" asked Rona, when she saw him come out of the bedroom. "I thought I threw that shirt out, it's falling apart."

"I know; I rescued it though. I need it to go work with the plants, and I don't want to get my uniform dirty. I'll be back in time for dinner. I just need to go clear my head, and gardening is the best way to do that."

Rona frowned. "I wish you'd talk to a healer about your headaches, and that nausea you sometimes get after channeling. They might be connected. And I never knew you to be so interested in the hydroponics building before. Are you worried about our food supply? I heard a rumor they were considering an immigration ban, and to enforce that they'd need to set up a blockade—"

"We can talk about it in the evening," he interrupted, with a significant glance at Manaia. "I don't want to get into it now."

Rona still looked concerned, but she kissed him and let him go. A good thing too, as he was dying to get out of there and start working out all of this stress. He could almost see the tall stalks of corn entwined with beans, the rows of cabbages and potatoes, the herbs edging each plot and separating it from the grass. He knew he would feel better if he could get out of the warrens of the base and feel the sun directly on his face. His headache would go away and he'd finally be able to relax.

Kauri stepped into the airlock in his gardening clothes, ignoring the bulky suits hanging on the wall. They'd just get in the way. He smiled happily as the airlock blinked through its ready sequence. In a few moments, he'd be deep in the lunar soil.

The airlock began opening, and it was much colder than he'd expected, and much harder to breathe, it felt like his outsides were turning to ice and his insides to fire – but he could see the beautiful green hills of the Moon. He could— he could—

***

Talaan gasped and coughed and shivered and sobbed as she came back to herself. She felt all the horror that Kauri had been too far gone to notice. When she was in his head, Kauri hadn't seemed insane. Was that what all male channelers had gone through? And was every step through the ter'angreal going to end in the memory of an ancestor's awful death? She wasn't sure she could bear that.

But Bode had said the only way out was through, and that mirrored her own experience with the Accepted ter'angreal. Still sobbing, she took another step, kicking up the ubiquitous moon dust under the flickering shadows of the ter’angreal.

***

They were Manaia Tenadii, and they were 23 years old. They were fiddling with the dials on their latest homemade radio when they caught a snatch of what sounded like a human speaking. Manaia was so surprised, they almost dropped the radio, and it took them a long moment to find the right band again.

Manaia knew radio could both transmit and receive speech, of course. They and their friends sometimes sent signals between radio, but they were all using Manaia's machines for that; no one else owned one, and all of theirs were sitting right there on the shelf. In all their previous experience with the machine, the only signals it had picked up from outside the base were the ubiquitous steady hissing or crackling of background radiation; they kept it on through the night for white noise, sometimes. This was unprecedented, the first message they’d heard from outside the Uhura community in 20 years!

They found the right band and the voice hissed out again: “—seek asylum from Earth. We are Marath'tuatha'an from the sunken lands. We have no channelers of saidin, but some who channel saidar. We request permission to land and settle here, if anyone is alive to answer. Message repeats. Hello. Hello. We come in peace. This is the space vessel Mael an'Onir. We seek asylum from Earth—"

Manaia fumbled with the transmitter and responded, voice shaking slightly, "H-hello Mael an'Onir. This is Manaia Tenadii answering from Uhura moonbase. I— I am not authorized to make a decision about your landing. When will you need an answer by?"

"Hello Manaia Tenadii. We are glad to hear there are still people in Uhura. We will need to correct our course in three and a quarter hours if we are not permitted to land on the moon," crackled the voice from the spaceship.

"Do you need assistance? How many are in your vessel?"

"We will not need assistance unless, possibly, we are not permitted to land; we have supplies and materials and are prepared to create our own moon settlement away from yours if necessary. There are 147 of us on board."

"Wh—" Manaia began, but was interrupted by flashing lights and a whining siren. Command had seen the ship approaching on their instruments, then. They had to move fast, or things might get ugly.

"Hang on, I need to take this to command! Keep broadcasting the message!" Manaia said before closing the channel and booking it down the hallway. Luckily they lived relatively close to the Command ready room, and slid in while the door was still open.

"Manaia, now is not the time, please—" said Lisyth Sedai, but Manaia interrupted her, waving the radio and saying "The ship, the one you saw, I was talking to them just now, listen!"

"How do you know about the ship?" said Lisyth sharply, but Manaia started playing the message and everyone quieted.

Once everyone had heard it repeat twice, Manaia turned it off and quickly listed off the time limit, number of refugees, and what they could tell about the ship's capabilities and intentions. "They have supplies and materials and could start their own settlement, but I think they'd rather join us. That's all I know."

"Excellent work, Manaia. You asked them good questions," said Zelera Sedai. She continued wryly, "You have my permission to stay for the argument. Besides, we'll need you and that radio of yours again."

Zelera was right about it being an argument. Uhura had closed immigration and set up the barrier to Travelling a month after Manaia's father Kauri died. He was the first male Aes Sedai on the moon to die as a result of the taint on saidin, but not the last. Not by a long shot. The station had made hard choices to protect itself, and any purely humanitarian impulses had to wait their turn behind practicalities.

As far as Manaia knew, they had the space and production capacity to house the refugees in the moonbase. Uhura had not been at full strength for decades, and there had been attrition just prior to closing immigration, as well as in the years afterwards. Those in favor of the refugees joining them made the same points, as well as some that Manaia had only heard whispered about – concerns about genetic diversity and the lack of certain raw materials on the moon, which people planning a long-term settlement would have brought.

Those against the refugees settling here were worried about the immediate and long-term drain on resources, especially since it was still clearly not safe to go back to earth. Everyone had tracked the long-term (and sometimes terrifyingly short-term) changes to landmasses, and the Earth already looked worryingly different from the maps in Manaia's 25-year-old textbooks. They'd had a satellite's-eye-view of the slow sinking of the Tomakan continent that had sent the refugees out in the first place.

There was also a concern that the refugees would not adjust well to Uhura's culture. For their part, Manaia thought that flying to the moon in an actual physical rocketship was maybe the most Uhuran thing they'd ever heard of, but their opinion was not solicited.

Aware they were the youngest person in the room by a long shot, and more importantly not Command Staff at all, Manaia kept their mouth shut even when they longed to enter the fray. But then Culeon Harolin spoke.

"We could get the best of both worlds, you know. They're trespassing, and they know it. Why shouldn't we claim their spaceship and materials as salvage, and send them off the way we dealt with the mad Aes Sedai?"

Manaia scrambled to their feet so fast their head spun a little. "EXCUSE ME?! Are we Darkfriends now? I don't know about you, but that's not how I was raised. We are a community here, maybe the last standing community of humans, and we should act like one. I wouldn't condemn anyone to die the way my father did, by cold and suffocation. I didn't take you for a murderer and a graverobber, Culeon Harolin. My mistake."

Everyone in the room stared at them. Manaia focused on the familiar faces. Zelera Sedai looked proud. Lisyth Sedai looked thoughtful.

"Manaia Tenadaii speaks truth beyond their years," Lisyth Sedai said into the silence. "Let us confer further with the crew of Mael an'Onir about their supplies and needs, to confirm that we would not be foreshortening the lifespans of both groups by accepting them. But I believe we have the capacity to support them, and they may prove to be a solution to many incipient problems." She turned to Manaia. "If you will open the channel?"

It took more back-and-forth, but in the end, the Command Staff were satisfied with the information they received and the motion to accept the refugees as immigrants was passed. Zelera Sedai even let Manaia convey the news:

"Mael an'Onir, you are cleared for landing at Uhura moonbase. Welcome to your new home!"

***

Talaan drew a deep, necessary breath as Manaia’s triumph and pride faded from her awareness, though now she felt a strange prickling all over her body. She was relieved this memory had not ended in her avatar’s death, though the emotional weight of an entire continent sunk beneath the sea was almost as hard to process. She had not heard the phrase Marath’tuatha’an before— The People Compelled to Travel? She shivered, and not just from the coolness of the air.

As she looked around, Talaan saw she had moved far deeper into the arch maze than she expected from a single step, and the shadows of the arches around her created an intricate crosshatch that shimmered in a blinding moiré pattern. The geometry was very strange, there were far too many shadows for the number of arches. She took another step forward, regardless.

***

She was Maimouna den Juma, 57 years old, de facto leader of Uhura moonbase, and she was having an extraordinarily bad day.

This morning her mentors, Lisyth Sedai and Zelera Sedai, had died within minutes of each other. On the one hand, it was blessedly romantic; they'd been partners for nearly 600 years, and there was something incredibly sweet about the fact that they didn't want to be parted for even a moment. But it was a blow to lose both of them at once. A blow for her heart— they'd been friends of the family from at least her great-grandparent Manaia's day— and a blow for the Uhura moonbase, which had never needed them more.

Lisyth and Zelera had been the last channelers on the moonbase who had been able to Travel, and their deaths meant that no one could access the bedamned floating spheres that made up a not-insignificant portion of the moonbase. The materials and functions that could be shifted to ground-based buildings had been moved long ago, but there was essential machinery still up there.

Maimouna wished she could reach back into the past and give her ancestors a piece of her mind. Why did they have so many buildings you could only teleport in or out of? What was the sense in that? She'd heard the place they'd originally drilled the Bore, back on Earth, had been a floating sphere like the ones in Uhura, but even larger. Floating spheres were a damn fool place to do anything, and she wasn't surprised that they had led to the collapse of civilization.

They were likely to do it again, too, because this afternoon the bedamned artificial gravity in the lower buildings had gone out. There might have been a way to fix it if they could get into the floating spheres, but they couldn't, and as much as Maimouna wanted to blame the spheres for everything wrong in the universe, she had to admit that she wasn't very confident that they could fix the artigrav even if they had had access to the still-working floating spheres. No one really knew how it worked at this point.

And this was an enormous, enormous problem, because without the artigrav, in 2-3 years they would all lose too much bone density to ever be able to return to Earth and function under normal Earth gravity. Uhura had always been conceived as a long-haul project, Maimouna knew, but in theory they were supposed to be able to immigrate back and forth. They'd even lowered the barriers to Travelling after allowing the Mael an'Onir to land, though only a few people had ever showed up, and none for the last hundred years.

And now, with no Travelling, a fourth of the base permanently closed off, and no useable artigrav, not to mention a whole host of previous shortages, deficiencies, and breakdowns, she was very much afraid that moving back to Earth was a matter of now or never.

She laid out the facts to the assembled people of Uhura. She was a calm, collected leader, for all that she was furiously swearing inside her own head half the time. They agreed with her assessment. She thought it helped that the seismic activity on Earth had been steadily decreasing for years; a small miracle, but she'd take all she could get.

"How are we going to get back?" asked Saeve.

"The way many of us got here in the first place," Maimouna said. "We're going to take the Mael an'Onir."

Calim butted in, as usual. "Where will we land?"

Maimouna grinned, a bit ferally. People responded well to her devil-may-care confidence, and she needed to project every inch of confidence she had to cover her own doubts and fears.

"I was thinking an island, or worst-case, the ocean. The Marath'tuatha'an first rode out the Sinking on the ocean, and at least as of one hundred years ago, we knew other groups of them were still there. And since Uhura did them a good turn by accepting them when they came knocking, I'm hoping the Marath'tuatha'an on Earth will return the favor. We're family, after all."

As she gave the orders to refurbish the Mael an'Onir and begin the rest of the preparations for emigration, she considered again the idea of talking across generations. They still had channelers with them, even if they couldn't Travel. Perhaps they could build a monument to Uhura, a memorial ter’angreal.

Maimouna wanted very badly to believe that they would survive the trip back to Earth, and that someday her descendants might return to the city on the moon.

Chapter Text

Talaan came back to herself slowly, echoes of Maimouna’s mood still floating in her head. The arches had only the normal number of shadows now, and she was standing next to—probably—a different low wall than the one she’d started out in. She thought the crater pattern around the edge looked different, anyway. It appeared she’d made it through.

She felt bone-weary, wrung out from the adrenaline rush of being Maimouna in crisis mode. The people from Mael an’Onir were her ancestors, for sure; Atha’an Miere who had taken their knowledge of shipbuilding and turned it towards a different kind of ship, and a different kind of sea. “Maimouna den Juma” even sounded like an Atha’an Miere name.

But the original moon people were her family, too, even beyond the evidence of blood ties; Kauri and his tattoos, Manaia and their fierce defense of their community. She recognized these elements of her culture. They had survived the Breaking of the World. They had survived the trip back to a transformed Earth. Talaan had done what they’d hoped for; she had returned, thousands of years later, to her ancestral home, and lived the stories of her family.

Talaan began to cry again. I wonder how much of this story my mother knew? I wish I could ask her. I wish I could tell her about this.

Working the protective bubble and Travelling flows through her tears, she headed back to her current home.

***

When Talaan appeared back in her room, Bode was there, looking like she hadn’t slept in a day or so.

“Oh good! You’re back!” Bode said, reaching out to hug Talaan, but falling back awkwardly as Talaan sidestepped her. “You were gone for an entire day, I told everyone you had a headache but I think they were starting to get worried— hey, what’s wrong?”

Talaan scrubbed at the tear tracks on her face, abrading her face and turning her fingers grey. Stupid moon dust. She couldn’t deal with Bode right now. She couldn’t deal with anything right now. “Nothing. Can you go? I want to be alone.”

Bode looked at her uncertainly. “Sure, I guess. If you’re sure you don’t need anything.” She turned to go, but then burst out, “Real quick, though—did you find out how to get in to the buildings?”

Talaan’s frustration and heartsickness suddenly boiled over into rage. “Seriously? Is that all you care about? You’re so nosy, do you even have real friends or just people you want something from?” She saw Bode’s face go white and knew she’d gone too far, but she barely felt the guilt. She needed Bode out of her space.

Bode said in a choked-up voice, “It might have started out that way with us, but I genuinely thought we were friends now. I’ve wanted to be your friend since we sealed the bargain to go to the moon.”

Talaan stared at her blankly, which Bode apparently took for permission to continue.

“I approached you to learn about Cloud Dancing because I was hoping you would eventually put in a good word for me with Tiana and she’d let me do the program with the Atha’an Miere. I figured your recommendation might tip the scales. It was manipulative. But now I know you a little, and I think you’re really great and brave and smart, and I want to be your friend for real now. I have since the bargain. So I’ll go. I’m really sorry. I’ll tell people you’re okay, but sleeping, so they don’t bug you.”

Bode exited quickly, shutting the door behind her. Talaan stared after her. She couldn’t think about this now. She climbed into bed, moon dust and all, and closed her eyes.

***

When she woke up, the light in her room was golden and warm. It was mid-afternoon. She washed her hands and face in the basin and noticed that she had a new tattoo on her right hand. It was a small but perfect replica of the moon ter’angreal design, as seen from space; a compass rose with four spikes and four arrows at the interstices, with the surrounding decorative low walls represented by curving lines.

She bent to examine it further, but was distracted by the growling of her stomach.

Talaan didn’t feel ready to deal with multiple Accepted all asking her how she was feeling, but she steeled herself; she’d have to go down to the kitchens to get food. She got dressed, opened the door and found a tray of sweetened porridge, some bacon, and a glass of water left just outside the door. A Keeping had been woven over it, so the porridge was steaming, the bacon was still crispy, and the water was cold. There was a note with it. Talaan unfolded the paper, which read ‘I’m sorry. Let me know if you want to talk. If not, I understand and won’t bother you again. –B.’

Talaan took the food and the note inside her room and shut the door. She wasn’t certain how she felt about the whole Bode situation, yet, but the food was appreciated. As she ate, she thought about it.

Bode was calculating and overly curious and did not know when to shut up, but she did own up to her mistakes and try to learn from them. And Talaan still felt that she could be trusted, in a weird way— Bode certainly did a lot of confessing, but only to her own misdeeds; she didn’t share other people’s secrets. Bode was not naturally good at respecting boundaries – rather the opposite – but she was trying. Talaan did believe that if she never replied to the note, Bode wouldn’t pester her.

And hadn’t Talaan been a bit calculating, too? She’d seized on the chance to get to know Bode better for pragmatic, even strategic reasons. But once she’d decided to try to pursue the friendship, she’d had fun, and done incredible things that she’d never have done on her own. And… she liked Bode, for all her faults, and all her strengths. Besides, there wasn’t anyone else she could talk to about all this.

Talaan put the note in her pocket and went to go find Bode.

***

She knocked on Bode’s door, and was almost blown away by the speed with which it opened. Bode stood there, looking nervous but hopeful once she saw it was Talaan.

“Hey. Let’s talk,” Talaan said, smiling, and Bode sagged with relief.

“How are you doing? Are you still hungry? How mad at me are you right now, on a scale of one to ten, one being ‘we’re fine’ and ten being ‘I will murder you’?” Bode said, gesturing her towards the bed, where they sat facing each other.

“I’m… fragile. But doing better, and physically fine. I’m not hungry now, thanks for saving breakfast for me. And I suppose I’m like… a three on that scale?” Talaan said.

“That’s better than I expected,” said Bode. “On all counts, actually.”

Talaan sighed. “I think we were both using each other a bit, at first. You may have noticed that I’m not a social butterfly. I wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity to have someone as popular as you owe me a favor. But I really do like you, and we’ve had a magnificent adventure.” Talaan took a deep breath. “I believe you when you say you actually want to be my friend for real. I’d like to be your friend for real, too.”

This time, she was prepared for Bode’s bone-crushing hug. “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome. Please let me breathe,” Talaan said, dryly.

“Sorry!” Bode let go immediately, looking contrite.

“It’s ok. And I’m sorry I snapped at you so dramatically earlier. The things I saw… they were so emotionally draining, even though they weren’t all bad, and I was so tired, and I just wanted you to leave me alone. I said things I didn’t really mean, just to make you go away.”

“Well, you were in fact correct, and I should have left the first time you asked and not bugged you. I’ll do better next time, if there is one,” Bode said.

“Thanks. And speaking of what I saw… I’ll tell you all the details later, including the technical bits, but I just want to talk through my feelings about it first, if I can? I’m not looking for advice right now, I just want someone to listen first,” Talaan said.

“I can do that,” said Bode.

Talaan outlined in broad strokes what she’d seen in the moon ter’angreal: Kauri’s death by madness, Manaia’s discovery of the refugee ship full of early Atha’an Miere, Maimona’s decision to return to Earth and commission the ter’angreal.

“It just hit me, afterwards— I’d fulfilled their dream. They’d left this message in a bottle, for me, and I found it, three thousand years later. And I realized that all the things I’d done— finding the city, seeing the history of our people brought to life, proving that my mother’s research and theories were fundamentally true—my mother would absolutely love to know what I know. She’d love to see the moon city and walk through the ter’angreal.”

Talaan scrubbed at her eyes. “I desperately wish I could talk to my mother about this. I care about you and I’m glad you’re here to hear about this, but this would be so meaningful to my mother. Truthfully, I wish I was speaking to her now, instead of you.” She looked at Bode. “But I’m not coming to her with this, obviously, because I don’t trust her anymore, and I trust you.”

Bode’s eyes were filled with tears, too, and she gave Talaan a gentle hug.

Talaan went on, “I wish I could be certain that if I brought this to her, she would act like she loved me and was proud of me, and not just worry about the political implications. But that seems more fantastical right now than what I just went through.”

She smoothed her skirts, looking at the new tattoo on the back of her hand. “I know we aren’t supposed to talk about the Accepted test. But I can’t stop thinking about it. I tested for Accepted the very first day I came to the Tower. Merelille Sedai was one of the administrators, because she was almost the only one there who knew me at all, and she knew how to break me. Not surprising, really, since we’d been broken by the same people, and Merelille is much more competent than I think people give her credit for being.

In the last ring of the test, my mother stood before me and said ‘Daughter, come back, we were too hard on you. What other people think about us doesn’t matter.’

They almost had me on “Daughter”. I almost turned back and was lost in the ter’angreal forever. But I could not believe that my mother would really say the rest of it. That’s what made me choose the Tower and finish the test. I realized that day that I’d lost faith in my mother caring about me, more than she cared about status or propriety.”

Talaan hiccoughed a little, then went on. “This discovery would be hugely important to her, personally and professionally. And it’s something that I did within the context of the White Tower, with White Tower support.”

She looked fondly at Bode. “Maybe, coming to her as an Aes Sedai who independently reconnected our people to this lost information would be enough to make her stop pretending not to know me. For better or for worse, I know how to manipulate political situations. But is it going to change what happened in the past? Is it going to change how betrayed I felt, that I had to leave my family and come here in the first place? I don’t know.”

Talaan fell silent.

Bode spoke. “That’s… that’s a lot for you to deal with. It sounds really difficult. I’m glad you told me, though.”

Talaan gave her a quick hug. “Thanks for listening.”

They sat in companionable silence for a short while, but Talaan could tell Bode was dying to say something, so she gave permission. “Out with it.”

“You asked some questions at the end. Do you want advice about them?” asked Bode. “Totally fine if you don’t! But I wanted to check.”

“Since you asked so politely, I am actually curious about what you think,” said Talaan.

“Your questions were all about your feelings about what happened in the past, and not so much about what to do in the future. I think whatever you choose to do about the moon city, and telling people about it, will be the right choice. But I’m pretty sure that it isn’t going to give you closure with your ma. That’s a separate thing you’re going to have to figure out for yourself. Are you going to forgive her? And if you do, under what conditions could your relationship grow again?”

Talaan looked at her in surprise. “You know, that’s actually very wise. I’ll think about that.”

Bode smiled, clearly delighted. “Well, if you ever want to talk it out, I’m here. I tend to come down in favor of forgiveness, but I’m a terrible person sometimes, so I would say that.”

“Thanks, Bode. You’re not completely terrible.”

“Obviously. I’m a delight.”

***