The lock

Little clay pins/figure wip

Finally finished this

summary: A small glimpse into Elodin visiting Alder Whin in the Haven — rituals, fractured thoughts, and the thin line between care and confinement. 

warnings: Mental illness / unstable mental state, institutionalization (the Haven), mild distress, emotional angst. 

a/n: my asks are open <3 i’m new at this, but i promise i try my best with every single one. getting asks genuinely makes me so happy, you have no idea. and no, it doesn’t cost anything — i just really like doing this.

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Catwhistle. Bluedown. Tentbones.

Catwhistle. Bluedown. Tentbones.

Catwhistle. Blueodown. Tentbones.

Expecting different results while repeating the same three words was the activity of a madman. So a part of him — a tiny, almost forgotten part hidden at the back of his mind — knew that the worried glances students cast at him as he walked in circles around the tree were to be expected.

Right to do.

Catwhistle. Bluedown. Tentbones.

Left to undo.

Catwhistle. Bluedow. Tentbones.

There were so many possibilities, and each of the separate fragments of his mind thought it had the answer. Each whisper, in a language even he struggled to comprehend, made parts of his head shiver in pleasure — others in pain. He had to pull himself back from it, or he would have gotten lost again. Maybe that was the only way to get to the answer.

He took out the three objects from his robe. 

A whistle no human could hear. A bottle of high-proof rum. A leather bag filled with wood ash.

Right to do.

Then, he put the three objects back in the same order.

Left to undo.

Barefoot, he began to walk to Heaven. He went in as always, with wary and, at the same time, pitying looks from the guards and the caretakers following each of his steps. This time, the door to Alder Whin’s room wasn’t locked. Good. 

His former guilder was curled up in a corner of the room, the furthest away from the window and the bed. He looked the same way he had since they locked him up: too skinny, bare-chested, but with his blanket against his shoulders like a cape. His hair, too long and too messy, covered part of his face, but Elodin was still able to look into one of his eyes. His gaze was the same: not lost, but focused on something Elodin couldn’t see or feel. One of those cracked pieces of his mind whispered at him to let go, that then he would see it too. He felt tempted to, to be again at Alder’s side, but he scolded himself — who would bring Whin the things he needed if they locked him up again? A twisted part of him whispered, They can’t lock us up.

Whin looked up at him at that moment.

“No thunder?” he asked with that shaky but melodical voice.

Kvothe was out of commission for the time being — three ribs broken and a dislocated shoulder. Elodin laughed.

“No thunder,” he replied as he slowly approached him, quickly sitting down in front of him. “But I got you what you needed.”

That made Whin’s gaze focus on him for a moment, long enough for Elodin to hope — to hope that he would be able to take him away from here. But the clarity in his eyes disappeared just as fast.

Elodin took out the objects and put them in front of him one by one, his heart clenching when he saw the kind of wild excitement Whin only showed on the good days. He quickly grabbed the whistle, blowing on it three times with as much force as he could. When he seemed satisfied, he hurriedly took the rum bottle, inspecting it before taking a big swig and ushering Elodin to do the same, which he did. Then he grabbed the bag of ashes, standing up and making a circle around Elodin and his former spot. It took him a while until he was content with its shape, and even longer to go back to his place, every little movement making the ashes shift, which caused him to go back and settle them again time and time again

Once he sat down again, he was smiling like a child who had gotten away with mischief.

“Now you can’t leave,” he said proudly. Elodin’s heart cracked. “I’ve trapped you! I’ve trapped you! I’ve trapped you!” he sang as he rocked from side to side, his smile so wide it was almost scary.

Elodin’s voice was somber as he spoke: “You want me to stay.” he stated, without question.

Whin nodded. “You kept me safe,” he said. “Now I keep you safe,” he added, fiddling with his guilder.

His voice trembled as he answered, his nails digging into the palm of his hands as he tried to school his cracked mind into a single train of thought: “I kept you safe?”

Whin nodded, undoubtedly, leaning closer to whisper to him: “You kept the thunder away.”

Elodin could hear his jaw crack at the force he was biting down with. Damn Kvothe and all the ambitious young men who trusted his knowledge.

“You wouldn’t prefer to come with me?” he offered, as softly as he could, through the desperation that ran through his veins.

Whin’s face fell as he quickly stood up and ran to the other side of the room, the ashes blowing away. “No, no! The cobblestones, the people… here I am safe, we are safe!” he shouted at him with his shaky voice.

Elodin stood up, hands raised as if he were approaching a stray animal, the soles of his feet beginning to stain black from the scattered ashes. “I’m not taking you away, you can stay,” he said, the guilder on Whin’s chest glinting as it caught the sunlight with each movement of his labored breath. “But I can’t stay,” he added.

His former guilder seemed to calm down, but his excitement was also gone. Slowly, he managed to come face to face with him without scaring him away. He raised his hands, gently pushing the hair away from his face.

“Why not?” Whin asked, and for once, Elodin couldn’t name his reasons. He clenched his teeth again, fighting back the tears. 

He settled his right hand over his cheek, caressing it gently. 

Right to do.

His other hand wrapped around Whin’s guilder.

Left to undo.

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a/n: I’ve gone through a fucking rabbit hole to write this. Please don’t take it too seriously — I’ve just tried to make sense of the objects he asks for by reading Reddit posts and looking at the differences between my Spanish translation and the original in English. These are my reasonings.

The whistle… is a whistle. I’m not that imaginative. The idea is that it sounds at such a high frequency that humans can’t hear it, but a cat can. It ties into a recurring theme with Naming—the idea that no one truly hears the Names of things. Kvothe can’t control or command the name of the wind, except in those rare moments when it comes to him: he can see its effects (like a cat reacting to the whistle), but he can’t actually hear it (the sound the whistle makes).

I chose high-proof rum, which is a type of rum with a high alcohol content, because it burns blue — if you want to connect that to the Chandrian, that’s up to you.

The wood ash is something I added because of the Spanish translation. Instead of “tentbones,” it says huesos de palo, which literally means “bones of stick.” Taking into account the importance of ash in the novels, it seemed fitting.

The “right to do” and “left to undo” I took from The Narrow Road Between Desires.

And the true name of Kvothe —Maedre— which means thunder.

ask by: @lockwind

from "seven words that will make a woman love you" to

"seven words that will make a person love you"

Do Lorren keep smut novellas, sex education papyrus and other related stuff in a designated room? Do the scrivs have to copy the illustrations? Did Kvothe hide some of those books to read them in privacy?

Beware my editing skills.