Ari sat with her fellow Winter Novitiates. There were only three of them. Tiny in comparison to the four dozen Spring Novitiates. But even among all of them, Sabine stood out and Ari couldn't take her eyes off of her.
Ari had taken lovers before, of all genders. Intimacy was not forbidden by the Orders, provided the relationships that one was involved in didn't detract from work and studies.
But never before had she felt such a deep and instant need for someone. It was confusing. She'd never had intention of ever tethering herself to someone, but here, she felt the urge to bow before Sabine and beg for her hand in marriage, an effort likely to result in nothing more than abject humiliation. Ari suppressed the urge.
The Spring Novitiates all stood together and began to recite the Spring Canticle. Ari didn't hear the words, she was still too enthralled with Sabine.
A nudge in her side broke her reverie.
Ben whispered in here ear, "New conquest?"
Ari blushed and shot him a dirty look, "No, it's not like that."
Ben chuckled. "Better pay attention. Sister Esmelda won't be happy if she sees you distracted again."
Ari knew he was right. She was already on the Winter Abbess's bad side. She didn't need to make it any worse.
She snapped her attention back to the podium where the Abbess Prime was waiting for the canticles to end so she could begin her Sermon and announcements.
New novices. This was going to be a long day.
Ari pulled herself back to Brother Stavius's Sermon again.
It was becoming more and more difficult to stay in the moment and she didn't understand why.
She recalled something she'd read in one of the forbidden texts she'd gotten access to after she slept with the librarian. That part of what drove the Threadwalkers mad had been called Slipping, but there'd been no description of what Slipping was, just as there were no texts left describing how to Threadwalk, only describing the effects of it on the individual Threadwalker and on the fabric of reality itself.
She made an effort to pay deeper attention to Brother Stavius's Sermon, and focused on staying present until she could talk to him and get his help re-anchoring herself back to reality.
It was in that moment that Brother Stavius collapsed at the podium. The Abbey broke out into pandemonium.
Ben ran forward, as did Ari. She had no choice but to be present now. Crisis was good for that.
Brother Stavius was an elder, but he wasn't that old. To collapse so suddenly? And just as Ari had noticed that she might be Slipping?
She shuddered at the thought that her own illicit Threadwalking might have led to this. She tried to tell herself that wasn't possible. She'd just been accessing the memories, using her magic to bring her closer to the threads of time so that she could see them more clearly. She wasn't reliving them, she wasn't influencing them. Just observing is all.
Ari smiled. This weaving was turning out quite nicely.
It wasn't her first attempt. She'd reworked the threads again and again, adjusting the pattern a bit each time. Some threads wore through faster than others, knots happened irritatingly often, but years of practice had taught her hands to manage it all with grace.
Splice in a new thread here, weave a change in the pattern there, snip that knot and let the pattern resolve in a new way.
It was almost instinct now.
Done with barely a conscious thought, her mind drifting through threads of memory as she wove the tapestry she'd trained over lifetimes to create.
