The Hunt

[Jay Carpenter]

Daryen & Trista

Jai was left to his darkness as Daryen strode back towards his light, mirrored torches creating a glowing ball atop the cliff as though a drop of the sun had been convinced to remain and take part in the merriment. Unlike Jai, Daryen was eager to join in. As a child he had jumped from the cliff-side to the distant ocean, not knowing if he would survive the fall only to be swept up in an invisible undertow beneath the ocean's rhythmic waves. Such were the politics of court, flowing predictably on the surface while vicious currents raced beneath.

But you would never feel the rush of survival if you never braved the jump.

A face fell in beside him, floating pale as the moon parting the clouds despite its usual olive tone. Lovely and disturbingly lifeless, his knowledge spared her the flash of saidin that raged within him, and would have felled an unexpected presence. "You know,"
he offered over his shoulder with a smile, "one shouldn't sneak up on a man with a price on his head."


Her eyes, black in the darkness, hesitated on him for an emotionless pause before resuming their constant scan of the surrounding abyss.
"A man with so high a price on his head should not sneak off alone,"
she countered without inflection, and Daryen felt his defiance flare. Defiance at her lack of feeling, so far beyond the serenity of the Aes Sedai and stoicism of their Warders. Tiny still it flickered, a childish mischief quelled by the newness that whispered polite warnings against impropriety.

He stopped suddenly but she was halted in the same step, trained to heel like a true follower. He turned to her and took up one of her hands with his as though to give her the Kiss of Strangers, tiny flowers of blue light blooming to illuminate the darkness around them. Bubbles of fire that swirled in whimsical circles on the breeze, the largest - marble-sized and brilliant - coming to hover between them. "Ah, but would you not protect me from the monsters that lurk?"
He gazed down at her through a space small enough to make most women blush, watching the sparkling reflections dance in her fathomless eyes as if life indeed dwelled there. The transformation of her face was one of living, breathing, beautiful sadness where before there had been only an expression at the end of a sculptor's chisel.

"Daryen,"
her voice was soft, and held a depth of sorrow so profound he was unsure if it was real or imagined. Her hand reached up towards his face as if to stroke the strong line of his jaw, but stopped short as her fingers closed around the little mass of light, suffocating it in her fist. The others fell dark instantaneously, doused with the first to which they were all tied.

"Please don't touch me."
Trista opened her palm and ashes fell away into the night. His hands released her and she turned away with a small quirk at one corner of her mouth- although perhaps he imagined that too. With her face turned away from him the darkness swallowed her. He might have lost her entirely except for her silhouette stepping out into the light of the distant party a moment later. The curtain of her hair hid the curvatures of her face as she called a single, uncaring word back over one slender shoulder: "Coming?"