Scrub, Scrub, Scrub [OPEN]

[Jenny]

Larissa

Larissa hardly recognized herself when she looked in the mirror. Instead of its usual Cairhienin updo, her hair fell about her shoulders and framed her face with loose curls. Instead of silks, she wore a pristine white dress that marked her as a novice of the Tower. Most different of all was the lack of tension in her shoulders and the new bounce in her step. Today was the first day of her new life. She couldn't stop smiling.

By mid-morning, that smile had entirely vanished. She had thought that her time would be filled with lessons on how to channel the One Power. Instead, it seemed that most of it would be spent doing chores. At best, novices were treated like necessary nuisances - at worst, like unruly children. It was disgraceful!

Larissa trudged into the laundry room. An Accepted, who had been assigned to oversee the work, pointed at a place between two learning ranks. Obediently, Larissa filled the gap. She scowled as she sunk her arms elbow-deep into a basin of soapy water. When she peered over her shoulder, the Accepted had gone.

She glanced at her neighbors. "This is so stupid. Why do they make us do laundry? Wouldn't it be so much easier with channeling?"

[Daniel]

Nyaine “That is an excellent question”, Nyaine replied congenially, “to which I have yet to find a satisfactory answer. While it would make the work go quicker and at the same time be a perfect opportunity to teach weaves centred around Water, it is just not the way things are done.”

Accepted technically did not have to do chores. That changed quickly if you offended an Aes Sedai or Asha’man or were negligent with the obligatory protocol. It didn’t help that many of the full ranks still clearly remembered her without the Great Serpent ring that was stowed in her belt pouch now and the rainbow of colours on the cuffs and hem of her dress. With the sleeves also rolled up, hiding those cuffs, she might as well have been a novice in her daily routine. At least the frequency of her finding herself doing these had greatly diminished and fortunately they still assigned her mostly to outdoors work after that little mishap she had had in the stables some time ago, which bothered her a lot less than scrubbing pots and floors or doing laundry.

“While I suspect that tradition in actuality constitutes most of the motivation for making us do the work by hand, I have been told, the main factor for it is the conviction that chores build character.” Nyaine gave the newcomer a sarcastic smile. “I have seen plenty of nobles who haven’t done a single chore in their life and somehow all of them have acquired plenty of character.”

[Jenny]

Larissa

Larissa thought of her parents and all of their moral failings. Perhaps this is what her parents had missed: chores! She smiled at the short woman standing next to her. By the look of that white dress, she guessed that the woman was also a novice.

“If that were true, then dishwashers and cleaning women would have the strongest character of all. You’re from Cairhien, yes? I thought so. I am Larissa of House Saighan, though another novice told me that the Mistress of Novices will have my hide if she heard mention of it. Is that true?”

She lifted a piece of clothing from the water and passed it along down the row. A man wearing servant's livery came and dumped another pile of clothing next to them. When he turned away, Larissa rolled her eyes and flicked her fingers at his back so that flecks of soap dotted his uniform.

[Daniel]

Nyaine While she had ignored the servant taking the washed clothes and bringing new ones as usual, Nyaine couldn’t help but grin at Larissa’s playful water sprinkling. Reason told her that now that she wasn’t a Novice any longer, she should probably say something about proper behaviour. But on the other hand, she wasn’t supervising today and she imagined Larissa would get more than her fill of reprimands down the road if this was any indicator of her typical attitude.

“Yes, you are quite correct. Just like you, I am Cairhienin. Nyaine of House Lintelle”, she introduced herself instead, continuing with a shrug. “I have never been told not to tell people my House name. It is a part of who I am, after all. Contrary to your House, mine is of little consequence, however, so maybe that has something to do with it.”

She continued her work awkwardly. Despite having done the laundry a fair number of times by now and even trying to get advice on how to make it go more smoothly, she just couldn't get used to it. Being distracted thinking about how her reply hadn’t been entirely complete didn’t help either. “Come to think of it, I have been strongly encouraged to think of myself as being of the Grey Tower, though, instead of my family and House”, she added, remembering the formal phrases after the raising test.

[Jenny]

Larissa

Larissa grabbed a shirt from the pile and dunked it into the water. Then she squeezed out the soapy water and scrubbed furiously at the brown stain on its front with a sponge. In the years after the servants left, she and her siblings had learned to fend for themselves. She was no stranger to chores, though she had hoped to leave them behind when she came to the Tower.

She nodded her head as Nyaine spoke. It certainly didn’t make sense to abandon who she was, though she could see the appeal. To renounce her name and hold allegiance only to the Tower, to pretend the past had never happened, to wash away the hurt of broken promises and look only towards the future… Larissa forced her thoughts away. Only shame and regret lay down that path, and she refused to wallow in self-pity. She was stronger than that!

Just then she felt a small object underwater brush her hand. Startled, she grabbed it and lifted it out of the water. It was a silver ring, made for a woman. She ran her fingers over the etched symbols on the outside surface, but could not decipher their meaning.

"Look Nyaine! Someone must have dropped this or left it in their clothes."

On impulse, Larissa slipped it onto the third finger of her left hand to test its size. As she did so, she felt a faint vibration, a resonance, emanating from the ring. She looked down at her hand and gasped. Where the skin had been smooth, it was now wrinkled and dotted with sun spots. Her nails were long, thick, and gnarled.

She yanked off the ring. To her immense relief, her hand returned to normal. She stared at Nyaine with wide eyes, too stunned to speak.

[Daniel]

Nyaine The Accepted had been mostly watching her own work, it was complicated enough as it was without looking what her neighbour was doing after all and it was not like that was particularly different from her own tasks. She stopped her cleaning when the Saighan girl asked for her to look and peeked over at her. She had apparently found a ring amongst the laundry. The size seemed to indicate that it was a woman’s or child’s item. Something seemed to be written on it, but from the distance she was at, she could not make out anything.

Before Nyaine had a chance to say anything, Larissa had already slipped the ring on her finger, the same finger that her Great Serpent ring would have rested, had she not put it away for the cleaning duty. To her amazement, the novice’s skin changed from looking young and unmarred to a parchment-like visual. Nyaine slowly looked up, following the arm up Larissa’s body. When she reached the face, she saw the same young woman’s face she had seen before, but had there been strands of grey hair or had she imagined that?

When she looked back to the ring, the other Cairhienin had taken it off again. Reason told her that it must have been something connected with the One Power. What else could it be? Yet she had felt no channelling. Could it have been a man? No, it must have been coming from the ring, so there was only one logical conclusion.

“This must be a ter’angreal”, she stated with certainty. “But if you were to ask me what it was for… I have no idea.” Nyaine cocked her head, mustering the other woman, wondering whether she should delve her and check for physical harm just to be sure.

[Jenny]

Larissa

Larissa’s eyes opened so wide that they nearly bugged out of her head.

“A… a what?” she said in a hushed half-shriek.

She held the ring away from her at arms length, frightened yet fascinated. Now that she knew that the ring wasn’t only just a ring, she realized that it wasn’t really made of silver, but some unrecognizable metal altogether. Another faint reverbration ran up her arm. She felt a tingle of fear and a thrill of excitement down her spine.

“We should try to find the owner,” she said, though her voice held a note of uncertainty. She slipped the ring onto her palm and closed her fingers around the metal. It felt strangely warm. Part of her wanted to keep it. This was her first brush with the One Power since arriving at the Tower. Finders keepers, right? She glanced at Nyaine. “What do you think we should do?”

[Daniel]

Nyaine How new was this girl? Nyaine was certain in remembering correctly that the lectures on what angreal, sa’angreal and ter’angreal were came relatively early in the usual curriculum of novices. So Larissa probably was in her first month or so at the tower, she surmised. It made sense, she had not seen the Cairhienin before, after all. And now she found an object of the one power.

“A ter’angreal is basically an object invested with the One Power. Depending on the purpose and function of the object, they can be used with or without channelling. There is more to it, of course. Your find here appears to be of the variety that require no channelling.” Nyaine had put on her teacher voice, strikingly similar in tone to what her own teachers back own sounded like. “As for what to do with the ring: It should probably find its way to the Indigo Ajah, who specialise in these objects. I suppose the easiest option for your right now would be to hand it to the supervising Accepted.”

That was the reasonable solution anyways. It seemed a useful tool to have. An at-will disguise as an old woman? The question of course was, whether there was any lasting damage. Well, there was a way for Nyaine to start finding out right now. “Do you mind if check whether you have taken any harm from it?”

[Jenny]

Larissa

Larissa’s chin jutted out petulantly and the grip of her hand around the ring became possessive. How was she to know that if she handed over the ring, the Accepted wouldn't take and keep it?

“I can take it to the Indigo Ajah myself,” she said, though she had no intention of doing so.

When Nyaine stated that she was concerned for her health, Larissa became alarmed. She felt fine, but how could she be certain?

“I dunno. How would you check?” she asked. Glancing around, she noted the coordinated bustle of the laundry room. Surely Nyaine didn’t mean to examine her with all these people around. Then a thought struck her. “You don’t mean to use the Power, do you?”

Confused, she took another look at the woman standing beside her. She had assumed that Nyaine was just another novice, but there had been a lecturing quality to the other woman’s voice, along with a hint of authority which Larissa had not expected. The other woman was dressed all in white, just like Larissa, with her sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Then she saw the rainbow stripes at the hem of Nyaine’s skirts, half-hidden from sight by the edge of the laundry basin.

“Light, you’re an Accepted,” Larissa gasped. “I didn’t even realize…”

She clutched for her skirts to smooth them. And in doing so, she dropped the ter’angreal. It fell on the floor, bounced once, and then rolled under a small gap and disappeared beneath the large basin.

[Daniel]

Nyaine “Probably the smallest and quite possibly the newest Accepted in the Tower, but yes, I am indeed one”, Nyaine confirmed, unable to prevent herself from grinning somewhat mischievously, after her eyes had followed the ring clinking on the floor and then vanishing beneath the basin. She was tempted to look for it, but certain decorum had to be maintained. It was also rather unlikely that it would suddenly vanish from under the basin.

“Not to worry, though. I am here to do chores, you are here to do chores, seems like a great equalizer to me”, she said dryly, shifting her attention to Larissa herself, who had seemed at least a bit uncomfortable after her discovery of Nyaine’s rank. “As for checking, yes, I would be using the One Power. It is perfectly safe, completely harmless and painless. In fact, you probably won’t feel a thing.”

Quickly wringing out the current piece of cloth she had been working on, she put it in the basket with the washed things, then dried her fingers on her skirt. She wondered whether she could use the pretence of Delving to use the power to quickly get rid of the rest of her workload. Nobody had actually told her that she wasn’t allowed to use the Power for those chores now that she was Accepted, but somehow it seemed like it just wasn’t done and that since this work had always been manual labour while she was Novice that was what she was supposed to do. She gave the new novice an expectant look, waiting for her reply, while planning out her weaves in her mind. Obviously, if the ring proved harmless, she would feel much less inclined to force Larissa to turn it over to the Indigos. After all, she had given the correct advice already.