The Grey Tower

Herarn strode through the halls still a little conscious of the silver sword pin that felt odd at his collar. It became obvious that he would be doing a lot of teaching as his skills as a channeler had already been rounded out by the Black Tower. His strength was still developing but for the most part he was capable of a great many weaves, a majority of which were Battleweaves. But he also had other skills that he could teach.

It was one such skill that he had been called on to teach and by its very nature could only be taught with a member of the opposite sex, at least for men. Women could teach each other but they still had to learn to circle with men. So the Tower had deemed it simpler to just teach how to Linking with members of the opposite sex.

He had been instructed to try and keep her enthusiasm under control. He hadn’t been informed as to why, but he had been told that she was pressing herself almost dangerously so.

He arrived at Makenna’s classroom and waited patiently until the class was about to be released before he stepped forward, “My apologies, Aes Sedai, but I have been instructed to take Makenna Grenaldi for personal lessons.”

“Very well. Makenna, child, you are to go with Dedicated Herarn. The rest of you are free to go about your day. Don’t be late.” Said the Aes Sedai before collecting her belongings.

Once Makenna had presented herself to him, he nodded and guided the way to a secluded corner of the Gardens. It was a quiet and serene place. Plus he liked the fact that he could sit near a pool of water and not have to worry if another Spear would try and kill him over it.

“I’ve been instructed to teach you how to Link. Because the rules change slightly for a male and female circle of two we’ll start with that. But before we start do you have any questions or concerns?”

Makenna had received notice that she would be receiving these lessons and so she was not disturbed by the secluded nature of their position in the Garden. Smirking, Makenna asked simply, "What would you like for me to do?" She had never been overly snide or arrogant before but since she had arrived at the Tower, a strange side effect of keeping her emotions calm and her focus sharp had been a bitter manner. She did not find it especially attractive to herself but she also wasn't really sure how to go about keeping it under control.

She assumed that she was going to need to be holding Saidar and so she prepared to open herself to it. "Do you want me to embrace Saidar now or wait for some cue from you?"

OOC: Makenna will soften as she goes but she is a little high strung and peevish at the moment.

Herarn nodded. He was glad that she wasn’t going to try and do anything irritating, like kiss up. He had seen others try and do it while he had been a Soldier here in the Grey Tower. He had found it distasteful and sickening. “Not yet. As you might have learned, some of the greatest achievements that the Aes Sedai of the Age of Legends accomplished were done with both men and women working together. Now you’ve probably heard that it’s impossible for a man to touch saidar and likewise with a woman and saidin. But as with all rules, there are exceptions to that rule and this exception is one that we will be working on today.”

“First, let’s cover some of the differences between Saidar and Saidin. Women accept saidar into them like water through a funnel. Men have to pull it in, much like pulling in a rope. Thus the Embrace versus the Seizing. The differences are also subtle in other ways. For example, women cannot sense when a man channels unless they wield a ter’angrel that is purpose built to allow them to sense the use of saidin, but men can with a little training sense when saidar is in use around them. Women have the ability to see another woman’s weaves unaided. Men need to be linked through a woman to see another man’s weaves. I could go into further details but any Accepted or Dedicated should be able to point out the differences.”

Herarn fell into the Void without thinking about it. “Alright, now comes the fun part. I understand that you can touch saidar and channel without too much in the way of issues. So I want you to open yourself to saidar allow it to flow into you. You don’t need much, just a little more than a tenuous grasp should suffice. Indicate to me when you are ready for the next step.”

When Makenna indicated that she was ready, he said, “Now, I want you to pull the One Power through me. The rules for how we handle the One Power don’t change, irregardless of gender. I’ve opened myself to Linking by preparing to touch saidin but I am not holding it..”

Makenna was nodding along and had reached out and embraced the sweet life of Saidar and in that joyous state, she heard him say, "...I want you to pull the One Power through me." She almost lost the Source. Through him? Stopping her negative and destructive thoughts, Makenna turned them around and looked at the man before her. Through him... She considered it and tried to envision it as if she were reaching for a ribbon through the sleeve of a dress she was sewing. He was a sleeve and the Source was a ribbon.

She could not have described the process or what it was that she felt exactly had her life depended on it. What it felt like for her, though, was as if she had closed her eyes and was envisioning and imagining the step by step process of actually sticking her own arm through that sleeve and grasping an unseen ribbon and pulling it back through. The strange feeling of a proverbial handful of something unknown and unknowable made her throat go dry. It was like the one time she had gone fishing with her husband and had caught an eel in the river. Her dear husband had actually made her hold that disgusting and filthy thing before throwing it back in. The urge to shriek and throw it, whatever 'it' really was, was almost overwhelming.

She was really quite proud of her calm and quiet voice with hardly any irrational shrillness. "Now what, Dedicated?"

Much as an Eel would struggle and thrash about to get free of her grasp, so too did saidin it fought her wanting to return to the Source. Herarn looked at her looking for any sign of strain, surprise, or anything else. He noticed a widening of the eyes and a slightly shrill tone to her voice that he would have easily missed if he hadn’t been looking for either.

“Alright. Now I want you to draw in both of saidar and saidin at the same time. Be careful not to draw too quickly you’ll find that the amount you can hold will be greater that what you can hold alone. Once you’ve drawn in sufficient strength, I want you to use Air from saidar and Fire from saidin to create a flame in the palm of your left hand.”

He was setting her up for failure he knew but he also knew that failure could teach more than success could. He wanted to see if she would take the time to feel out saidin some principles of channeling remained the same despite which half of the One Power you were using. For instance the colors of each element remained the same regardless.

By the same token, he was prepared to wrench control of the circle from her if her weaves became unsteady, confused, or dangerous. He would be able to do this through a combination or strength and experience. Much the same as if an Aes Sedai were linked with him.

Makenna fought the urge to chew her lower lip. The tension building in her shoulders was enough to make her want to shake them out and stretch her arms above her head. But she did neither. The most that she did was to take a very deep and slow breath. Then she held open her left hand, palm up, parallel to the ground, just in front of her. She could not see or feel the power of Saidin directly. She knew it was there like one knows there is water inside a skin, one can touch the skin and even hear the water slosh but one can not reach through the side of the skin and touch the water. So it was with the male half of the One Power. She could not explain the differences she could distinguish in the different flows but they reacted with Saidar and she ... knew.

She could not explain how or why she could pull on Saidin as she did and she did not understand how she could feel the Fire of Saidin wrapped in the Air of Saidar, but there it was. It was awkward and she kept having to rearrange her first two threads of the Power to try to weave them as she thought they should be. Finally she laid the first two threads and began to lay the third. But there was a strange pulsation in the unseeable force held within the flows of Air. Suddenly, and without her really knowing how, the braided forces compressed and there was a ball of raging flame. In her startled panic, Makenna threw the Saidar Air that she was holding at the ball of flame and it shot off of her palm and the walnut sized inferno struck the bushy base of a feathery Pompous Grass cluster.

As calm and composed as she had managed to stay before, Makenna yelped and dropped her hold on the source, both halves, when that grass cluster exploded with flame.

Herarn winced as she abandoned the link and the source completely. Seizing saidin he snuffed the fire with barely a thought. He gave her a calm look before saying. “You did well. You did better than I had anticipated at least until the end when you panicked. As with any use of the One Power, calm must be maintained. Now let’s relink.”

Once they were linked again, he accepted control of the circle, “For every channeler, handling the other half of the One Power that they don’t normally handle comes with its own perspective and challenges. But let’s take a moment to examine the flows for a moment.”

He drew out flows of Air from both saidar and saidin. Linked as they were it was the only way either could see the other half of the Source. “You’ll see that the color doesn’t change. The only real difference is in how they feel. Saidar is a calm power. Think of it as a pot of water at rest. Saidin is an active force that fights you for dominance and any laxity in that use could spell doom for you and possibly others around you. Think of it as a spoon used to stir that pot.”

“For me, it’s always been easiest to allow saidin to pull saidar in the channeling.” Said Herarn as he exhibited the weave he had asked her to do. He did it the same way she had started to weave it, but there was a certain strictness in how he handled saidin. Once he snapped the weave down into place, a small ball of fire about the size of a baseball appeared in his hand before he pulled the fire from weave and allowed the remainder to dissolve harmlessly.

“Now I’m going to hand you control of the link again and I want you to try the weave again. But this time, be firm with saidin, remember it is not saidar it will not flow in the way you want it with minimal guidance. If you succeed, we will work on relinking again until I feel confident that you have learned that part of the lesson. Then we will pass the link back and forth for a while before I’ll have you use both halves of the One Power to do several different weaves.”

“Are you ready?” With that he passed control of the link back to her.

Makenna steeled herself to try again and then pulled four threads of the Power. One each of Air and Fire from each half of the Source. Wrapping the threads of Saidin with the threads of Saidar, she felt the vibrating frenetic energy of Saidin being tamed by the encompassing serenity of Saidar. Feeling the rightness of this way of handling the Power for herself, Makenna began to form the weave the same way she had before. This time when she lay the threads of Air, the weaving solidified and formed a neat bundle that produced the small ball of flame she had been striving for. It hovered there above her palm and she giggled like a girl half her age as she played with it, raising and lowering it and allowing it to dance above her hand, then spiraling down her raised arm and back up to her palm. Eventually, she lowered her arm entirely and just allowed the fireball to float there in front of her.

Looking up to Herarn, Makenna smiled and let the weave collapse and her hold on Saidar fall away. "I am ready to practice linking."

OOC: I had a much longer and more detailed post written... twice. I lost them both times so I gave up. This is the gist. I am sorry. Sometimes, I have to give up on one as a bad post and let it go. Makenna is ready to move on in her lessons but you might want to teach her about how to safely release a Saidin weave.

Herarn watched her weave the small ball of flame. He didn’t critique her method. When it came to channeling the other half of the One Power, one found their own way of doing it. So as long as she managed to accomplish the weave without it blowing up on them.

He smiled as she took pleasure in accomplishing the task. “Very well done. Now we’re going to work on releasing saidin. It is not the same as releasing saidar, instead of releasing we’re going to choke down on the flows firmly but gently. Not too fast of you’ll sever the flow and it’ll snap back on you. Depending on how it snaps, it could be just as painful as having a weave Strike on you.”

“So let’s practice on the Fire flows. Then once you’ve accomplished that, we’ll practice relinking and releasing Saidin.” said Herarn as he considered how long they had been at this. Not long considering. But he wondered how Makenna was feeling. The strain of fighting saidin for control was taxing. Men got used to it as a matter of course, and personally, he theorized that that was why on the average men tended to be stronger channelers.

Makenna did as she was bid. She pulled on the flows of Fire throw Saidin and wove them into a knot that produced nothing. It was an interesting feeling; like kneading dough in the air with no intention of making bread. Once she had a sufficiently thick weave, she began to pinch it... There was no other way for her to describe it. She pinched the flow at the point where she became aware of it and watched it dwindle. When it was well and truly gone, she looked back up at Herarn and said, "That was not as difficult as I had anticipated. It is very different from Saidar but at the same time there is a kind of logic to the way it responds."

OOC: If you share Herarn's thoughts on the strength thing, Makenna might have some thoughts as well. As it stands she is only doing as she is told. :p