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Sleep had been impossible to find even as exhaustion from the day’s revelations had gripped his bones. All thoughts and emotions are all snarled up inside him into a tangled knot, which like a scab he can not stop from picking at.
“Sweat” As Zahir had always told him “Is better than wine when it comes to emptying the soul.” In that respect he was right as alone in the moonlight courtyard the ritual of thrust, parry and retreat, the familiar steps as he flowed from one sword form to another allows his heart and mind to calm like ripples in water.
The world she had described to him seems so impossible far out of their reach and yet… and yet… With a heavy sigh he’d given up trying to force his improvised pillow into a more comfortable shape and walked outside to exorcize the questions of what if? From his body and mind.
But even as he danced this deadly dance, he’d learnt from the day he could walk, that he would dance until the day he died, because he knows them by note and verse his thoughts start to wander down paths not taken and choices not made.
Of Nynaeve’s ongoing grief, of her… their loss.
Can he even call it his loss? He has no memories of Elnore, has never lived that life but still there is sorrow there. That’s the question that keeps turning over and over again in his mind.
“Was any of it real?” Distressed he’d asked Moiraine, earlier in her room, as he’d wrestled with this thorny problem. She hadn’t been able to answer him beyond squeezing his hand tightly.
It’s not a question he’s ever really asked himself before, if he’d even wanted a child – although in hindsight in had been a possibility as they hadn’t exactly been careful in Fal Dara. For so long, having a family has seemed an impossibility that he would never have as he’d carried out their mission to find the Dragon Reborn. Even before that there was the Aiel war and before that was his duty to fight the Shadow and avenge Malkier. After all what right does he have to bring a child into the world when they are so close to Tarmon Gai’don? To possibly burden them with the same endless war he’d had fought his entire life?
And yet…
Why does it feel like he failed her by not being there for her?
He shook away the thoughts like a horse dislodging away irritating flies and focuses on the flame and the void. What use is it to consider what might have been? There is nothing he can do then or now. Deep within the void something tugged at his awareness even as his sword is a silver arch in the moonlight as he cuts through invisible enemies.
Breathing hard he lowered his sword, relaxing out of his fighting stance. There was only one person who could sneak up on him so soundlessly. He turned and she’s standing there in the moonlight, cradling something in her hands. A little paper lantern. A lantern for Elnore he realised. Her presence eases the tight knots inside of him. The rightness of it is immediate and terrifying. He doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone so defiant. So tired. So unwilling to let go of what is right in order to settle for what is easy. He offered her a slight smile which she returned with a tentative one of her own.
Tentatively, his fingers shaking slightly, he cradles her cheek pulling her close until her brow rests against his. Nynaeve’s eyes slid shut as she buried her face in his chest sighing tiredly as draws her close.
“I know it’s not Bel Tine…” He can feel her tremble slightly as she had to stop to gather herself. He stroked a tendril of her dark hair that had escaped from her braid away from her face and waited.
“It may not be Bel Tine.” She began again shakily, stopping now and again to swallow hard. “And we’re not in the Two River. But I can’t keep… I need to… I need to find a way to let her go. It doesn’t really matter where or when we do it.” She glanced down at the little lantern in her hand, lovingly put together with her own hands. “I may have another child someday, but I will never hold her again.”
That night against the darkness of the river the hundreds of lanterns had swirled and dance in the little eddies and currents of the river like sparks above a fire. The sparks are trying to fill the shadow, and the shadow is trying to swallow the sparks. It had been such a beautiful sight to find in such a remote location
“May I come with you?” he asked her gently.
Jerkily she nodded; her fingers still buried in his shirt. “You may not be that Lan, but you’re still her father.”
*
The brackish scent of the water was heavy in air as the board river, it's waters a smooth and as polished as a mirror, reflecting the shimmering silver disk of the moon and the few lamps left burning, endlessly winding its way through Falme into the nearby estuary. Elnore’s lantern feels so incredible fragile in his hands as cold breeze picked up in the west, gusting around them.
She knelt down, bruskly wiping her tears away with the back on her hand and reached for the little lantern when he proffered it to her, kneeling beside her as their knees sank into the soft wet sand. Holding it in cupped in one hand she tucked the hair behind her ears in the swift movement he loved.
The lantern was shaking so he reached out to steady it cupping her hand with his. As they both held Elnore’s lantern with a deep shaking breath she lit the candle stub, the amber glow lighting up her face form below with a warm radiance that seemed to draw out some other radiance from inside her; her eyes glittered, and her expression serious and absorbed. The she bit her lower lip; blinking more and more against the dampness welling up in her eyes as her lips moving wordlessly.
Ayend'an Atha'an'shari'a marath allende'nesodhin an'ara'rhiod e'fel loviyagae zavilat'a'veren Ba'asa
Closing his eyes against the sudden wave of sorrow he doesn’t need them to know what she is mouthing. The last words her parents had ever said to her; what she had told her Elnore before the other version of himself had died.
We shall go into the land, he translated silently. so, our children can always hold us and will never be alone.
She took another deep and shuddering breath, her face worked and let the lantern go. Then she put her elbows on her knees and buried her head in her hands. She didn't make a sound, but he could see the tension in her shoulders.
Awkwardly, he put his arm around her. For an instant she resisted; then she relaxed and leaned against him. She felt small and warm and strong. "I'm not crying," she muttered.
"I know."
As he watches Elnore’s lantern drift away, bidding farewell to the daughter he never got to know, the darkness surrounding it seems overwhelmingly oppressive but the little lone pinprick of light remains definitely holding back the darkness.
I’m sorry I never got to know you, Elnore.
*
After a while of walking in silence her hand had hesitantly found his again and he laced his fingers with hers.
“I still dream about her sometimes.” She said quietly after a while of walking through the sleeping streets “But they’re about happier times now. Lan… my Lan, he’s with her. He’ll look after her… until I can.”
As strange as it is to hear her refer to him like that it lightens his heart to hear that she’s beginning to remember the happiness rather than the bitter sting of loss. He squeezed her hand “I’m glad.”
Finally, outside her door, hesitantly, unwillingly he untangled his fingers from hers and withdrew his hand from hers.
"Thank you" she said, almost shyly. To his surprise she threw her arms around him and pulled him close, and his own arms found their way around her. His lips trail everywhere they can reach. Under her jaw, down over her throat, behind her ear, against her cheek. She gazed back at him and it wasn't his imagination he could see the same longing filling her dark eyes and for a brief heady moment he allowed himself to get lost in the emotion in her eyes.
"Goodnight" She whispered, almost inaudibly lifting the latch to her room before turning to gift him with a strained smile. Unwilling to let the moment end he grasped her hand with his. He’s walked away once before and he’s sure that duty will soon part them once again. He may not be the Lan, who was her husband but it doesn’t mean he couldn’t be again in another turning of the wheel.
Do you want me to go? He asked her breathlessly.
She opened the door wider and let him in.