Were you here to see him?"

Ofelia Sedai sniffed, while beside her Kamella Sedai smoothed her skirts, added a sniff of her own, and then carefully resmoothed the skirts that the initial smoothing had upset. Her skirts were a rich ivory white with golden lace in a diamond pattern about the hem and up the sides, all said a rather ostentatious fashion for an Aes Sedai and not at all a good color for Kamella whatever her Ajah, if one were to ask Ofelia, which one often did if one had an ounce of common sense knocking about the cavernous depths of one's head. Some might call this judgement harsh, but this to Ofelia served only to reinforce the very judgement in question, particularly the part regarding common sense. As a Domani with a lifetime of experience in courts throughout the land, from Cairhien to Tanchico, Ofelia was a recognized expert on colors, fashions, and all combinations resulting thereof. Not that anyone would know based on the utter disregard her fellow Aes Sedai gave to Ofelia's sensible suggestions concerning the subject. Why, an outside observer might reasonably assume without any sort of prejudice that Ofelia was some sort of talking cat, a creature that made a curious and interesting noise but was not under any circumstances to be taken seriously, for all the good her fashion advice ever did for the sorry skirts that swept the halls of Tar Valon. In point of fact, she had once seen a talking cat in a travelling circus act in Tear, a frightfully strange beast with a tail too short and ears too large, making sounds when provoked that bore a remarkable resemblence to a screeched sort of human language. Were she a brown sister she would surely have appropriated either the animal or the circus itself and dedicated the next decade of her life to working out and translating its words, but thankfully for fashion-conscious individuals the world over Ofelia had not been born with the brown streak. No, instead the green had been her calling, adventure and battle and many men to impress with her elegent yet tasteful outfits. If there was one thing Ofelia had learned in her years, it was that any man's eye could be turned with the right application of fabric and lace in just the right places. Men were simple creatures, truth be told, and altogether easy to manipulate in one of several ways, but fashion was surely the best and most lasting path to a man's heart, or at the very least into his own fashions. Ofelia felt a touch of heat in her cheeks and smoothed her own skirts to hide the discrepancy, lest their host get the wrong impression.

"No," she said. "If he cannot be here when I come to see him, then I cannot have bothered to come to see him in the first place."

With that, they left.