15 Minute Ficlet: Release
Written for 15minuteficlet, with the word of the day
Author: Lyra
Title: Release
Rating: G
Fandom: The Wheel of Time
Synopsis: At the dawn of the Fourth Age, one woman finds a beginning where she'd expected an end.
Disclaimer: Robert Jordan's world. I'm just poking around in it.
Release
Nymue blinked in the bright sunlight as she stepped out of the White Tower’s stable, leading the calm brown mare she’d recently acquired. A swarm of worksmen, both human and Ogier, could be seen restoring the war ravaged White Tower to its former glory as well as hauling obsidian coloured stone to lay a similar foundation for the A’sha’man building. Nymue sighed as she stood watching the progress; the Tower had been her home for nearly two centuries, and she had thought she would die within its ivory walls.
At the Amyrlin Seat’s offer of releasing Aes Sedai from their oaths and sending them to join the Kin, she, along with many other Aes Sedai, had violently opposed the idea. At first. After several months of intermittent meetings with both Egwene Al’Vere and Elayne Trakand, newly crowned queen of Andor, she admitted that there was much good she could do for the Tower in the gained centuries. The idea of no longer being Nymue Sedai, of returning to just Nymue Moriana, began to appeal to her. She noticed others also came around to the Amyrlin’s way of thinking, as sporadic ceremonies began to be held for those sisters who chose to be Released.
Nymue smiled at the ceremony she’d taken part in the night before. It had been universally agreed by the entire Tower that any ceremony for releasing the bonds of the Three Oaths should occur at sunset, to signify the end of a lifetime of service as Aes Sedai. After the ceremony, which was attended only by those the candidate desired, she had slept in a guest room near the Amyrlin’s suite and was provisioned to leave at daybreak, the dawn of a new life as a Kinswoman.
The mare tugged at her reins and Nymue smiled at the animal. “I know, Sybelle,” she said, “It’s time for us to go.” She ran her hands over the saddle bags attached to her mare, then swung up into the saddle with ease. A gentle nudge of her heels had the mare stepping prettily across the large courtyard, and she could almost laugh at the sense of freedom, the lightness of body and soul she had not thought she’d experience ever again. She had been Released, no longer bound to the Tower though the Three Oaths etched into her bones, no longer bound by the fear of scheming sisters at her back. She was independent, only marginally bound, by choice, to the Tower. She was just Nymue Moriana.