Patrick Rothfuss - The Slow Regard of Silent Things

She folded the blanket carefully then, her hands gentle. She matched the corners and kept it square and true. Then she found the proper place for it upon the bookshelf, and brought the smooth grey stone so that it wouldn’t want for company. It would be cold at night, and she would miss it. But it was happy there. Didn’t it deserve to be happy? Didn’t everything deserve its proper place?

Still, she cried a bit as she tucked the blanket in, settling it on the shelf.

Auri made her way back into Mantle and sat on her bed. Then she went back to Port to make sure her crying hadn’t skewed things all about. But no. She brushed the blanket with her hands, comforting. It was as it should be. It was happy.

Back in Mantle, Auri moved about the bare room, making sure everything was as it should be. Her thinking chair was just so. Her cedar box was flush against the wall. Foxen’s dish and dropper jar were resting on the bedshelf. The brazen gear sat in its niche, indifferent to the world.

The fireplace was empty: clean and trim. Her bedside table held her tiny silver cup. Above the fireplace on the mantelpiece sat her perfect yellow leaf. Her small strong box of stone. Her grey glass jar with kind, dried lavender inside. Her ring of sweet, warm autumn gold.

Auri touched each of these, making sure of them. They were everything they ought to be and nothing else. They were fine as fine.

Despite all of this, she felt unsettled. Here, in her most perfect place.

Auri hurried down to Borough, brought back a broom, and set to sweeping Mantle’s floor.

It took an hour. Not because of any mess. But Auri swept slowly and carefully. And there was quite a lot of floor. She didn’t often think of it, as Mantle hardly needed tending any more. But it was a big place.

It was hers, and the place loved her, and she fit here like a pea in her own perfect pod. But even so, there was a lot of empty floor.

The floor all fresh, Auri returned the broom. On her way back she wandered through Port to check on the blanket. It seemed to be doing well, but she brought the hollybottle over to keep it company too, just in case. It was a terrible thing to be lonely.

She stepped back into Mantle again and set the spirit lamp on her table. She took her three remaining matches out of her pocket and put them on the table too.

As she sat on the edge of her bed, Auri realized what was out of place. She was herself in disarray. She’d seen something in Tumbrel and not tended to it. Auri thought of the three-mirrored vanity and a tickling finger of guilt ran itself along the edge of her heart.

Even so. She was tired down in her bones now. Weary and hurt. Perhaps just this once . . .

Auri frowned and shook her head furiously. She was a wicked thing sometimes. All full of want. As if the shape of the world depended on her mood. As if she were important.

So she stood and made her slow way back to Tumbrel. Down Crumbledon. Through Wains. Through circle-perfect Annulet and up the unnamed stair.

After climbing through the broken wall, Auri looked hard at the vanity in the flickering light. As she did, she could feel her heart rise slightly in her chest. The shifting light against three mirrors, it made countless shadows dance across the bottles there.

Stepping closer, Auri watched carefully. She would never have seen this properly without the shifting nature of the yellow light. She stepped left, then right, looking at things from both sides. She tilted her head. She went to her knees so that her eyes were level with the surface of the vanity. A sudden, sunny smile spilled all across her face.

Back straight, Auri sat on the edge of the chair in front of the vanity. She tried not to look in the mirrors, knowing how she must appear. An unwashed, red-eyed, tangled mess. Too thin. Too pale. She was no kind of lady. She opened the two drawers instead and stared into them for a moment, letting the yellow light and shadows slide around inside.

After several minutes, Auri nodded to herself. She removed the pair of gloves from the right-hand drawer and set them near the mirror by a pot of rouge. Then Auri pulled the right-hand drawer completely free and switched it with its partner on the left. She sat there for a long moment, moving the two drawers back and forth in their new tracks, a look of intent concentration on her face.

Everything atop was disarray, bottles and baubles strewn about. Despite that, nearly everything was just the way it ought to be. The only exception was the hairbrush, which Auri tucked into the left-hand drawer by the handkerchiefs, and a small golden brooch with two birds in flight, which she hid beneath a folded fan.

After that, the only thing out of place was a delicate blue bottle with a twisted silver stopper. Like many of the other bottles, it was laying on its side. Auri set it upright, but that wasn’t right. She tried to tuck it in a drawer, but it didn’t fit there, either.

She picked it up, listening to the liquid tinkling inside. She looked around the room uncertainly. She opened the vanity’s drawers again, then slid them closed again. There didn’t seem to be a place for it.

She shook the bottle idly in her hand and tapped it with her fingernail. The pale blue glass was delicate as eggshell, but dusty. She gave the bottle a good polishing, hoping it might be a little more forthcoming.

When it was clean it gleamed like the heart of some forgotten icy god. Turning it over in her hands, she saw tiny letters etched across the bottom of the glass. They read: For My Intoxicating Esther.

Auri put her hand across her mouth, but a muffled giggle still escaped. Moving slowly, her expression thick with disbelief, she unscrewed the stopper and took a sniff. She laughed openly then, hugely, from deep in her belly. She laughed so hard she could barely screw the top back on. She was still chuckling a minute later as she tucked the bottle deep into her pocket.

She was still smiling when she made her careful way down the unnamed stair and put the bottle carefully away in Port. It liked the bookshelf best, and that was doubly good, as there it would keep both hollybottle and the blanket company.

Auri was still smiling when she climbed into her tiny perfect bed. And yes, it was cold, and lonely too. But that could not be helped. She knew better than anyone, it was worth doing things the proper way.

ASH AND EMBER

WHEN AURI WOKEon the fifth day, Foxen was quite recovered from his mood.

That was for the best. She had a busy lot of work to do.

Laying in the dark, she wondered what the day would bring. Some days were trumpet-proud. They heralded like thunder. Some were courteous, careful as a lettered card upon a silver plate.

But some days were shy. They did not name themselves. They waited for a careful girl to find them.

This was such a day. A day too shy to knock upon her door. Was it a calling day? A sending day? A making day? A mending day?

She could not tell. As soon as Foxen was sufficiently unslumberous, Auri went to Taps and fetched fresh water for her basin. Then back in Mantle she rinsed her face and hands and feet.

There was no soap, of course. That was the very first of things that she would set to rights today. She was not vain enough to work her will against the world. But she could use the things the world had given her. Enough for soap. That was allowed. That was within her rights.

First she lit her spirit lamp. With Foxen’s sweet cerulean to soften it, the yellow flame helped warm the room without filling it with frantic shadows clawing at the walls, all jerk and judder.

Auri opened up the flue and set a careful fire with her newfound tangle-wood. So fine and dry. All ash and elm and spry hawthorn. She soon set it crackling to life.