This is a WIP
What I'm going to say will sound like madness. You will not believe it, but I promise you haven't seen this theory yet.
If you want prose and storytelling, I have written an entire series covering the same ideas. We're going to explore the idea that Auri might be shaping Kvothe. In order to start this journey, were going to first examining some interesting on connections between the Fae and the Underthing. Let's jump in.
Recall Kvothe and Felurian traveling through the fae on the way to make a shaed?
So I followed, naked and unprepared. Felurian struck out at a good pace, the moss muffling the sound of our bare feet. ~ Kvothe:TWMF:660
Moss is also the same way Auri describes the carpet in Annulet, which is in Wains, which is part of the Underthing.
plush of the carpet was sweet beneath her feet, like moss... ~ Auri:SROST:28
I can physically feel your eyes rolling in doubt. Just stay with me. Let's let Auri describe Annulet:
Auri brushed off her hands, swung the door open, and stepped lightly into Wains. The hallway was wide enough to drive a wagon through. High-ceilinged and long enough that Foxen’s light could barely reach the tangle of debris that blocked the far end. Above her, bluewhite light scattered off a crystal chandelier. Dark wood paneling hugged the lower portion of the walls, but above that was ornate plasterwork. There were broad frescoes decorating the ceiling. Women in gauze lounged about whispering and rubbing oil on each other. Men frolicked about in the water, flapping around ridiculously in their absolute altogether. ~ AURI:SROST:1:35
Let's make a list of the things she sees:
We know from Kvothe's time in the fae that he went naked quite a bit:
I almost went back to grab my clothes, then decided to follow some advice my father had given me when I was young. “Everyone eats a different part of the pig,” he’d said. “You want to fit in, you’ll do the same.” Different places, different decorums. ~ TWMF:660
And so this painting/frescoe of naked frolicking could be of the fae. Lets return to Kvothe and Felurians trip to gather more information:
I was reminded of a vast, empty cathedral swathed in sooty velvet. ~ Kvothe:TWMF:1343
Frescoes are also commonly seen in cathedrals, the word kvothe uses to describe this area of the fae. Furthermore, the pictures included in the SROST of this room feature arches & pillars just like you would find in a cathedral. Pillars being another descriptor that kvothe uses for the fae:
Light swelled and I caught a moment’s glimpse of our surroundings. Dark trunks of trees rose like massive pillars as far as the eye could see. ~ Kvothe:TWMF:661
The fae has dark wood tree's that Kvothe thinks of as pillars and Auri's room has pillars and *dark wood paneling. What's more, one meaning to the word Annulet is a band encircling a column (or pillar). Back to our list, the bluewhite light and cyrstal chandeliers best fit to the stars Kvothe see's.
Above us, the twilight sky was slowly growing darker. Eventually, the last hint of purple was gone, leaving the sky a perfect velvet black, flecked with unfamiliar stars. ~ KVOTHE:TWMF:660
Though the stars aren't specifically mentioned as bluewhite, likely because blue is a common tint around stars. But as Kvothe keeps walking it becomes pitch black. At this point you should take off your tin foil hat and eat it, you will need the power it provides. Guess where it's also mostly dark? Under the couch in the in Annulet.
A plush couch on a plush carpet. ~ SROST:1:27
Pop quiz, whats the difference between plush and velvet? They are both types of fabric the difference is that plush has a longer pile (raised surface). So he is saying the sky is akin to a fabric, and now i'm (against all reason) telling you that's not a metaphor. Kvothe is double down on his the sky is like a fabric connection by using the word swathed:
I was reminded of a vast, empty cathedral swathed in sooty velvet. ~ Kvothe:TWMF:661
As swathed means to be wrapped in several languages of fabric. Your surprised? Why? You were told the nature of the fae.
She laughed at my tone. “no. the faen realm.” she waved widely. “wrought according to their will. the greatest of them sewed it from whole cloth. a place where they could do as they desired. ~ Felurian:TWMF:673
You thought it was a metaphor, but glammourie and grammarie makes such things possible::
“It’s for everything. Faerie gold feels heavy. And a glamoured pig would smell like roses when you kissed it. ~ Bast:TLT
Their more real but also lies, more and less, the idiom out of whole cloth means fabrication/lies.
You wanted deep magic, here it is. The only thing in doubt is the scale. Let's leave that for a moment, we have much more to discuss. Auri says the couch is fainting:
Auri lounged upon the fainting couch. ~SROST:130
fainting because she catches her breath on it?
Auri laughed, delighted. “That’s a piece.” She grinned. “Try for more.” ~Auri:NOTW:675
(deep sigh) Faenting? Ok, your not buying it? How about this then, Kvothe describes the darkness like a warm blanket.
By now the darkness was so thick I could almost feel it like a warm blanket around me. ~ TWMF:663
These metaphors seem to align a lot with things that happen in Annulet (The perfect sitting room). Auri actually draps a blanket over places in Annulet:
Auri carried the blanket all the way down to Wains and into her new perfect sitting room. She draped it over the back of the couch. She folded it and set it in the chair. Finally, in true desperation, Auri set her jaw and spread her blanket flat across the lush red rug in the center of the room. ~ Auri:SROST:90
Backing up in the story, it's now important to recall something in Annulet was bothering her:
The tiny wrongness was still there, like a hint of gristle in her teeth. ~ Auri:SROST:39
In her search she notices a tiny whiteness under the couch:
The dark plush of the carpet was sweet beneath her feet, like moss, and when she bent down to run her fingers over the hush of it, she glimpsed a tiny whiteness underneath the couch. She reached deep into the shadows with a small white hand, having to stretch a bit before her fingers caught it. Smooth and cool. It was a tiny figurine carved from a piece of pale, retiring stone. A small soldier with clever lines to show his hauberk and his shield. But his truest treasure was the sweetness of his face, kind enough for kissing. ~ Auri:SROST:28
Now from Kvothe's perspective...
Thinking myself clever, I made a sympathetic binding for light and held my hand above my head as if it were a torch. I was more than slightly proud of this, as the motion-to-light binding is rather difficult without a piece of metal to use as a focus. Light swelled and I caught a moment’s glimpse of our surroundings. Dark trunks of trees rose like massive pillars as far as the eye could see. There were no low-hanging branches, no undergrowth, no grass. Only dark moss underfoot and the arch of dark branches overhead. I was reminded of a vast, empty cathedral swathed in sooty velvet.
There was a soft sound of movement above us, as if someone was folding a huge piece of velvet around a piece of broken glass. Saying that I realize it makes no sense, but still, that is the best way I can describe the sound. It was a soft noise, the half-heard sound of deliberate movement. I cannot tell you why it made me think of something terrible and sharp, but it did. My forehead prickled with sweat, and I was filled with a sudden pure and breathless terror. ~ Kvothe:TWMF
A light, a hand reaches, kvothe senses velvet wrapped over broken glass.
She was full of broken glass and burrs. She was weary and disappointed with all of everything. ~ Auri:SROST:89
And what does Auri bring back from under the couch? A "tiny figuring" Which later she recognizes as a solider:
A small soldier with clever lines to show his hauberk and his shield. But his truest treasure was the sweetness of his face, kind enough for kissing. ~ Auri:SROST:28
And finally she calls a ciridae. Though I suspect she is shaping it to be just that.
She did not know how she had missed these things before. It was a tiny Ciridae. ~ Auri:SROST:146
I mean, what a bunch of crazy consequences...
There was another flicker of lightning, and I saw her standing closer. She pointed at me, grinning delightedly. “You look like an Amyr,” she said. “Kvothe is one of the Ciridae.” ~ Auri:TWMF:194
Lets tally this up
Look, is it madness? Yes. But it's lot of madness in a story we all know and love to be stepped in mystery. You think Auri might be Ariel? I think so to, but she won't be the first by the name. Ariel, is a powerful fairy in Shakespeare's play (The Tempest), whose gender changes from telling to telling. Here hidden under all of everything is a broken girl who has a book of secrets (see srost pictures), just like Jax won from the tinker...
A book of secrets. A piece of iron that fell from the sky.... ~TWMF:572
And similar they both have a clay mug.
Jax brought out some water in a cracked clay mug. ~TWMF:571
She set the cracked clay cup atop a squat glass jar. ~ SROST:110
The world bends to her will, and what what is it she wills? A candle for Kvothe.
She knew the patient way of things. Grind and boil the waxy fruit. Sieve off the dottle. Boil again and clarify and cool to separate the wax. Even with the proper tools it would be hours of work. Hours and hours. But he was coming soon. She knew. She knew she had no time for it. And even if she had all day. There would be principles inside the wax that were not right for him. He was plum full of anger and despair. And pride... well, he had that in a sure and certain surfeit. There were ways to factor those things out. She knew them all. She knew the turning circles of the calcinate. She could sublime and draw. She could isolate a non-exclusionary principle as well as any who had ever turned their hand to work the craft.
But this was not a time for begging favors from the moon. Not now. She could not rush and neither could she be delayed. Some things were simply too important. It was just as Mandrag said: Nine tenths of alchemy was chemistry. And nine tenths of chemistry was waiting.
The other piece? That slender tenth part of a tenth? The heart of alchemy was something Auri had learned long ago. She’d studied it before she came to understand the true shape of the world. Before she knew the key to being small. Oh yes. She’d learned her craft. She knew its hidden roads and secrets. All the subtle, sweet, and coaxing ways that made one skilled within the art. So many different ways. Some folk inscribed, described. There were symbols. Signifiers. Byne and binding. Formulae. Machineries of maths... But now she knew much more than that. So much of what she’d thought was truth before was merely tricks. No more than clever ways of speaking to the world. They were a bargaining. A plea. A call. A cry. But underneath, there was a secret deep within the hidden heart of things. Mandrag never told her that. She did not think he knew. Auri found that secret for herself. She knew the true shape of the world. All else was shadow and the sound of distant drums. Auri nodded to herself. Her tiny face was grave. She scooped the waxy fineground fruit into a sieve and set the sieve atop a gather jar. She closed her eyes. She drew her shoulders back. She took a slow and steady breath. There was a tension in the air. A weight. A wait. There was no wind. She did not speak. The world grew stretched and tight. Auri drew a breath and opened up her eyes. Auri was urchin small. Her tiny feet upon the stone were bare. Auri stood, and in the circle of her golden hair she grinned and brought the weight of her desire down full upon the world.
And all things shook. And all things knew her will. And all things bent to please her.
It was not long before Auri returned to Mantle with a sorrel colored candle pressed with lavender.
~SROST:145
So much of magic is tricks. Much more then Kvothe believes. The symbols and runes...
“Those are the runes.” I pointed. “Clear as day. And those are metallurgical symbols.” I looked ~ TWMF:226
even the bindings of sympathy, like the pine:
It took me about two hours to figure out that the pine pitch wasn’t necessary. When I asked him, Ben admitted that it was merely an aid for concentration. I think he was surprised that I figured it out without being told. ~ NOTW:79
are simply tricks, methods necessary for the mind to believe what it can simply do:
“But how?” I asked for the tenth time. “Light hasn’t any weight, any substance. It behaves like a wave. You shouldn’t be able to touch it.” Felurian had worked her way up from starlight and was wefting moonlight into the shaed. She didn’t look up from her work when she replied, “so many thoughts, my kvothe. you know too much to be happy.” That sounded uncomfortably like something Elodin would say. I brushed the evasion aside. “You shouldn’t be able—” She nudged me with her elbow and I saw both her hands were full. “sweet flame,” she said, “bring that to me.” She nodded to a moonbeam that pierced the trees above and touched the ground beside me. Her voice bore the familiar, subtle tone of command, and without thinking I grabbed the moonbeam as if it were a hanging vine. For a second I felt it against my fingers, cool and ephemeral. Startled, I froze, and suddenly it was an ordinary moonbeam again. I passed my hand through it several times to no effect. Smiling, Felurian reached out and took hold of it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She touched my cheek with her free hand, then turned her attention to her lap and worked the strand of moonlight into the folds of shadow. ~TWMF:677
Auri understands that hundredth piece, the hidden heart of things. Her candle making is alchemy. And what is Alchemy? Read more here. But here is the heart of it from Pat himself:
Alchemy is a process of extracting like platonic forms from objects. So you can pull the drunkenness from wine, and have it, and put it in something else. Or you could just take the wine and pull the hangover out of it. ~ Patrick rothfuss
Auri says Alchemy is art
Whoever wrought and factored this was living proof that alchemy was art. ~ SROST:52
Felurian and Bast tell you that art is the fae word for magic possible for shaping:
“Okay. Here’s the bones of what I know. They don’t think of it as magic. They’d never use that term. They’ll talk of art or craft. They talk of seeming or shaping.” ~TLT
Seeming and Shaping. Auri is a powerful Shaper. It isn't a candle that is being shaped, but Kvothe. To understand shaping you must understand the feelings that are added and extracted. She is factoring out his pride and anger...
would be principles inside the wax that were not right for him. He was plum full of anger and despair. And pride... well, he had that in a sure and certain surfeit. There were ways to factor those things out.
And while pride and anger can be your downfall, it's also what pushes you to rise, the passion:
Besides, anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to wondrous things.
And Kvothe has anger to spare.
Auri eyed the laurel fruit It was every bit as reverent as one might expect, but it was prideful too. And held a hint of north wind’s chill. That needed to be tempered. And ... yes. There was a thread of anger running through it too. She sighed. That would not do at all. ~SROST:140
And what is in the honey wax?
Auri eyed the melting wax and nodded. It was a drowsy thing. All autumn sweetness, diligence, and due reward. The bells were not unwelcome either. There was nothing in it that she did not want for him. ~SROST:141
Drowsiness, autumn, diligence and due reward. And what is bells?
Oh. But the honeycomb. It was lovely. Not one bit stolen. The farmer loved the bees and did things in the proper way. It was full of silent bells and drowsy summer afternoon. ~SROST:73
silence...
Kote is diligent
A few minutes later Kote returned with a bucket of soapy water. Without looking in the storyteller’s direction, he began to gently, methodically, wash his bottles. One at a time, Kote wiped their bottoms clean of the strawberry wine and set them on the bar... ~NOTW:48
Kote's due reward is the Waystone.
I felt a nervous chill when Hillside was mentioned. I ignored it as best I could and nodded. “You have a lovely inn here. I’d count myself lucky to have one as nice when I’ve grown up.” I handed him the penny. ~NOTW:241
Kote's silence is as deep and wide as autumn's ending:
The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, holding the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great riversmooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die. ~NOTW:605
Auri loves kvothe, she obsesses over him, she doesn't need his protection, she is well and truly capable of doing as she pleases. And it pleases her to forge a new name for him, and one day have him by her side cloaked in mantle:
She smiled. Auri returned to Mantle. She washed her face and hands and feet. Excitement bubbling up inside of her, Auri looked at his bed. His blanket. His bedshelf with the tiny Amyr waiting there to guard him. It was perfect. It was right. It was a start. He would need a place someday, and it was here all ready for him. Someday he would come, and she would tend to him. Someday he would be the one all eggshell hollow empty in the dark. And then... Auri smiled. Not for herself. No. Not ever for herself. She must stay small and tucked away, wellhidden from the world. But for him it was a different thing entire. For him she would bring forth all her desire. She would call up all her cunning and her craft. Then she would make a name for him. Auri spun about three times. She smelled the air. She grinned. All around her everything was proper true. She knew exactly where she was. She was exactly where she ought to be.
