Any Color but THAT Color (fanfic)

[Leala]

Studies in hand, Torianin decided to fill her lungs with fresh air. She was still woefully behind on the development of the nations on this side of the sea. What had once been an empire under the rule of Artur Hawkwing had flourished into numerous autonomous lands, and she still had no idea how. It was interesting, but it was exhausting work, trying to read up on years and years of history that most everyone knew already. Her current teacher, a fastidious Brown Asha'man, suggested that she write a paper or two on the founding of two of these nations: Tear and Andor. With an arm full of books, Torianin sat on a bench in the Gardens and took a deep breath. She would need to align her thoughts and calm herself. She was beginning to feel overwhelmed, but she would get there. She knew.

The bench where she sat was next to a fountain. The bubbling and trickling of the water helped. Perhaps if she thought about something else, anything else, she would find the peace she needed to begin these essays. Turning her head and pulling strands of her hair from her face, she saw a patch of bright, happy, orange flowers. That would not do. It simply would not do. She tried to keep the memories at bay, and was successful most of the time. But now, when she needed peace, and not memories of pain and humiliation, was she faced with flowers of that damnable shade.

Standing up, back erect, she marched over to the plot of flowers and stared at them. Her sister-turned-sul'dam had forced her to wear flowers of that same color in her hair. But, her hair was not the frazzled mess that it had once been. She no longer wore those "decorations" in her locks. And she would not be defeated by them now. At the same time, however, Torianin knew that she would be woefully distracted with them here.

Glancing at the eight stripes of color on her dress, Torianin remembered that she was Accepted now. She could channel without supervision. And, she had seen an Aes Sedai weave something that she thought useful in a situation like this. She narrowed her eyes until she could see the blurry curves of her pale orange eye lashes, staring at the flowers in front of her. She embraced Saidar and studied her prey now, thinking of her strike.

[Leala]

The weave Torianin was about to attempt looked like it had a lot of potential, and she wanted to try a more practical weave. Taking Air and Fire, she wove a fine mesh that covered the span of the unsightly orange flowers. Maneuvering the weave felt like it was going quite easily. She took Spirit and tied it to the four corners of the weave that she had created. She remembered Water and Earth added as well, toward the end. She thought that was for the color and texture. That was the impression she had gotten by listening to the Aes Sedai mumble to herself. She laid the weave over the flowers and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw a large, striped cloth settle onto the flowers, covering them. She smiled at her work and felt a tightness in her chest that she hadn't realized was there loosen. What was that called? Mask of Mirrors. Yes. That was it. It created an illusion.

Torianin could feel the weave she had created, and knew that under the thick, blue fabric awaited the flowers, but now she could sit at her selected spot and study. Except... Bending toward the weave, she moved her hand over the fabric, and it went through it, and the orange flowers moved with her touch, under it.

Crouched down, she dispelled the weave and stared at the flowers again. Memories of the past began to crop up, but curiosity about the weave tugged at her harder. She studied one bloom intently, taking Air and Fire once more, she made a much smaller weave, this time adding Spirit where the petals were. To the weave, she added a small amount of Water and Earth. She laid the weave on the blossom, and when it settled, she saw that the flower had changed to blue. It was now a rose, and one that was only half-bloomed, rather than a morning glory, but it was also no longer orange.

She thought on this as she looked at her work. This felt very natural to her. Deciding it would be best to pursue this rather than her essays for the moment, she moved on to a set of two flowers in the row. She made the mesh again, adding knots of Spirit where she thought the petals should go, keeping the texture and the color in the second part of the weave the same as she had done before. Two pale blue roses looked at her, a little more out of the bud than the one before them.

She repeated the weave, after dispelling the first two, and tried it on all the flowers, one by one, perfecting the weave. All the while, she wondered why this felt so easy to her. She wasn't perfect, but she felt like perhaps it should come a little harder to her. She would have to study some more on this. Maybe it was a Talent that she had discovered. Maybe her teacher would be distracted by her gift, and not wonder where her work was. She doubted it, though. She came to the end of the row and looked at her work. This rose was a deeper blue and it even had drops of dew on it. It still wasn't quite all the way bloomed, but it gave her something to work with. She would have to see if there were classes for this sort of thing.

Torianin sat back down and tried to concentrate on her paper. She hadn’t gotten as far as Andor’s first queen when she kept glancing up at the bush of flowers that was now not only a different kind of flower, but a different color. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at it. It seemed to her that the Water and Earth made the texture and color. Wasn’t there a way to make things invisible? She set the book down without much thinking about it, and went up to the flowers once more. Torianin embraced Saidar and wove the net of Air and Fire that she had before, but this time let it settle over the flowers. To her surprise and delight, the flowers were no longer there, but she could still tell where they had been, as the air around them was distorted to their shape. Taking Water and Earth, she added them to the weave, and it seemed to distort the air, but just in a different way. What was she trying to do here?

Taking the same weaves of Water and Earth, she tweaked them, trying to make the color and texture the same as what was behind it. It took a moment, especially with Earth being the hardest of the Five Powers for her to work with, but she eventually made the bush of flowers completely visually undetectable. Standing up, she smiled at her work, then went to sit down, to hopefully work on her studies, but this new discovery was strange. The weave used all Five Powers, but she was able to make these weaves easily. It wasn’t that it was a bad thing, really, just unusual. What had she heard about that? A latent talent? Something about a talent that seemed to come naturally. The thought made her smile. She had learned so much about the One Power since coming to the Grey Tower. The sul’dam had learned some since coming here, but not nearly what these Aes Sedai and Asha’man. The weaves that damane performed were so limited. They were trained and controlled in order to grow their ranks and serve the Empire, and nothing much more, really. That wouldn’t have made her captivity any less terrible, but it was something to think about. Something like changing the appearance of something would not have come to their minds. They likely would have found excessive use of it, but it would still have escaped them.

Somehow, this train of thought was not conducive to what she needed to be doing. Sighing and rolling her eyes, she dove back into the book, but looked back up. She smiled to herself once more when instead of the orange flowers, or the blue roses, she saw the tall lilies beyond them. This would definitely be something that she would need to look into. She began to think of all the things that she could do with a talent like that, things to help the world around her, and to help the Grey Tower. As she settled into this thought, she finally settled into her studies, happy that she had discovered something in herself that she could use and develop.