Iridalle walked towards the large window and settled herself in an elaborately carved high-backed chair. She reached out to the table beside her and picked up a leather-bound journal, its dark leather worn from constant handling. Running a finger across the front of the journal, she smiled. Just holding it filled her mind with the memories that she wrote of inside its covers.
Embracing saidar, Iridalle channelled a small but intricate flow to dissolve the ward on her journal. What lay inside may have been no more than words, but her journal contained her deepest and most personal feelings, and she wasn't eager to share them with anyone who may come across the journal.
Unwinding the leather cord that held the journal closed, Iridalle flipped it open at the last entry, written only yesterday - the day she was raised to the Shawl. Her eyes skimmed over the entry, not paying it as much attention as she may have if it had been more than a day old. Flipping slowly back through the pages, Iridalle eventually came upon the day she had first met Telar. She couldn't help but grin as she remembered...
Turning her head, Iridalle glanced around, wondering briefly where her friends were watching from. She knew that they wouldn't miss it after they had been so insistent on the dare, but she would've wagered that they didn't think it would be so easy.
Laughing softly to herself, she turned back to the task before her. Taking out the roll of thin twine she had brought with her, she began to neatly tie the t'mat back onto their vine. The armful took only a few minutes for her to reattach, and she headed back to the tavern's entrance to get more from its storeroom.
Upon returning with another armful, Iridalle stared at the mess on the ground. All the t'mat she had reattached to the vine lay splattered on the ground; among them lay several red apples, most coated with t'mat juice and messy remains.
Letting her new batch of t'mat drop to the ground, Iridalle hesitantly reached for one of the apples. She glanced around the area slowly, and a flicker of movement from the rooftop caught her eye. The rooftop? Glancing upwards to the rooftop, she could barely believe that there was actually someone up there. With a basket of red apples.
Frowning, Iridalle tossed the apple up to the roof. He stuck out his hand and caught the apple, dropping it back into his basket with a grin. "Thanks."
Iridalle couldn't help but laugh. "Umm... what are you doing up there?"
"Throwing apples." He said it as though it was a perfectly common thing to be doing.
"Is there any reason for that?"
"As a matter of fact, there is. But I could ask the same of you. Did you have a reason for tying those t'mat back on the vine?"
"Well... Not really," Iridalle admitted. "But that's no excuse to ruin my work." She gestured to the fruitish mess around her. "How did you get up there, anyway?" The tavern's roof was quite a way off the ground...
"The vine."
"The vine? Oh... Now I see." With an embarrassed grin, Iridalle set to untying the few remaining t'mat. "Sorry about that."
He just laughed as he climbed down the vine with his basket of apples.
"My name's Iridalle," she introduced herself with a smile when he reached the ground.
"I'm Telar. Want an apple?"
"Uhh, I'll be right thanks. So, wh..."
A bellowing voice from inside the tavern cut her off. "WHAT HAPPENED TO MY T'MAT??!!"
"Uh oh..." Iridalle muttered with a frown. "Well, it was nice talking to you Tel, but I think that's my cue. I'm not sure that I want to stick around to see the innkeeper's reaction to this mess..."
"Good point. Come to think of it, I don't think I want to either. Here, take an apple." He held out the basket to her and she glanced at it, frowning, then finally took one of the apples.
Iridalle opened her mouth to speak, but as she did, the innkeeper charged into view and she and Telar both ran...
Still muttering, Iridalle left the shelter of some kind of leafy fruit tree and looked around at the apple trees. "Red." She sighed and started towards one of the trees.
"Yes, red, but these apples are good to throw off tavern rooftops," a voice told her, coming from behind.
Figuring that the voice would have a person attached, Iridalle turned around and really wasn't all that surprised to see Telar. "Hey Tel, want to help me collect eleven and a half apples?" she asked hopefully.
"I guess," Telar replied with a shrug, reaching up to pick an apple. He dropped it into her basket.
"No, no, no! That apple's too pale, Tel. She wants the reddest eleven and a half apples in all of Tar Valon." Taking the apple out of the basket, she dropped it to the ground.
"Oh. Maybe you could give her t'mat instead?"
"Maybe... But I doubt that she'd appreciate it."
Telar nodded. "You're probably right. How's this apple?"
"Looks red enough to me," Iridalle replied, taking it and putting it in the basket.
Telar smiled triumphantly. "I found the first apple."
"So you did." Grinning, Iridalle added two more apples to the basket. "I found the next two."
"Mine was redder than those two though. Here's a half-apple." He handed her a deformed piece of apple. "What do you think?"
"Hmm... It seems a little closer to five ninths than a half... But it'll do, I guess."
"But if you think about it, it's probably better off this way. You see, a bite too much has to be better than a bite too little, because..."
Iridalle's thoughts began to wander and she only half-heard what Telar was saying. A sudden thought struck her and she irritably waved her hand for silence.
"...and I don't see how that extra bite of apple could serve any purpose in the..."
Iridalle sighed. Her gestures didn't stop or even slow Telar's speech. "Tel? Tel? Listen to me, dammit!" He finally stopped talking and looked at her. "I have an idea... Wanna get bonded?"
Telar nodded. "I'd like that, Iri."