Her maid had left her some cooling milk broth, with bite-sized morsels bread soaking in it, for her constitution was rather delicate. She had no appetite for it, and instead, sat staring out the window, a light breeze stirring her hair across her face. She seemed restless, and tried to ingest some broth, but could nt bring herself to savor it. Turning acerbically through a small stack of intelligence reports brought to her by Perseinde Apeneos, carefully screened as to not contain anything too upsetting, she tried to study what they contained, but she could not seem to parse any meaning. Lastly, she reached beside her foot, and took out an embroidery hoop. She was picking distractedly at the colored threads, when the Foretelling came upon her, as it had throughout her long life, and as it had, strongly, and taxingly just a few scant weeks ago. She had not yet recovered from the strain of that last Foretelling.

Cetreise's artful brow furrowed in awful concentration, and her fingers began working at a ferocious speed, threading needles and pulling the many hued threads with intensity. Her dark eyes fixated upon the hoop, yet not truly seeing anything, as if she was in some herb induced torpor. For the better part of two hours she sat, unmoving but for her handicraft, barely blinking, as her broth congealed and the sun dipped low. Her hands and fingertips became chafed and raw, yet she heeded no twinge of pain.

At long last, her reverie passed, and another of her Foretellings lay in her lap. She peered at it, gasping for breath, great pains wracking her lungs, her chestnut hair coming out in clumps, and falling about her shoulders and to the floor. Even her gums were bleeding, and rivulet of blood flowed unchecked from her nostril. The Foretelling appeared thusly:

A clock's face, rendered in cunning detail, the numerals and hangs clearly made out. A curious fissure splits the face in two, as if it was cracking asunder, with rays of golden and crimson light erupting through, and ribbons of silvery lightning. as if time could no longer hold back some terrific force.%R%TBeneath the clock other images dance, as if in a merry caper. A rearing red horse trampling on what appears to be the remnants of an armored warrior. Dark spots of illness mar the flanks of the horse. In another place, a fulsome, lovely rose, yet with a black orb at its heart, what might just be a spider's egg sac. A woman's weeping face, and one of her eyes is green, the other blue. The White Tower, displayed in impressive facsimile, with what appears to be legions of ants climbing its alabaster heights. Swords clashing, mounted soldiers charging and women flinging balls of fire into the sky. The tapestry is dense with images, and fearsome to behold.

Gripping the cloth in her shaking hands, Cetreise willed herself to stand, and to walk, slowly, oh so slowly, to the door and out into the hall. She managed to make about four paces from her threshold when she collapsed to the blue and white tiled floor.

That was where she found later that evening by a novice, Linde Hadwyl, sprawled, a small pool of her own blood about her head like a sinister nimbus, still gripping the Foretelling. She awoke still later that night, attended by a few Yellow sisters, who informed her that the Amyrlin had concerns for health, and that the Sitters and the Mother had taken the needlework, and were studying it, intently, for meaning.

Leaning at the marble rail, Cetreise gripped her cane, and as ever, Solores Andiamo, the Tairen born Accepted and Cetreise's seeming protégé, waited at her elbow. No one is quite sure what caused this rather flamboyant sister to seclude herself into apartments, but it has months since the Murandian Aes Sedai was seen in her usual locations, the library penning reports, the Spring Garden playing at embroidery, or the dining hall, where she was known to favor a pot of stiff Tremalking Black.

Some whispered that she had simply fallen ill. Others sniggered that the rebellious Blue had earned yet another of endless string of penances, and that the Hall had placed her under some sort of residential arrest. Still others said, safely out of earshot, that she had been taken with her Foretelling, and the act had leeched her of her strength, and her vitality, and her health had suffered greatly.

In any event, Cetreise simply scanned the skies and spires and towers of the city beyond the Tower grounds and hugged her shawl close and shivered in the noon day sun. Solores released several pigeons with instructions from Cetreise a'Sorhen, and then the pair ducked back inside, and returned to the Blue sister's suite. Light knows when she will emerge again.

Stepping neatly back into her apartments with the aid of her cane, she dressed in a simple riding habit of dark blue velvet with narrow, divided skirts, and coiled her hair, now generously rayed with gray, in a tight braided knot at her nape. Over the dress she slipped into a vest of padded leather, costly and supple, yet laced with slim strips of iron to better rebuff the advances of any stray arrows, and also donned a good dark cloak of stout wool, and also a pair of stiffened riding gauntlets. It had been years, decades even, since Cetreise had been in a battle, and now, at the edge of her life, she contemplated it again, only this time, she had no warder, not having the heart to replace her dear Nicos. Her protégé Solores aided her as she made her way down to the stables, and with the help of a groom, she took her place on the back of her massive war-trained destrier, Champion, and with a spur, charged out into the field.