esotericas 1484 Share Posted July 27, 2022 THE DOORS OF THE MIND “PERHAPS THE GREATEST FACULTY OUR MINDS POSSESS IS THE ABILITY TO COPE WITH PAIN. CLASSIC THINKING TEACHES US OF THE FOUR DOORS OF THE MIND, WHICH EVERYONE MOVES THROUGH ACCORDING TO THEIR NEED.” (OOC:) The events contained within are known only to those involved, so don’t metagame. This is creative writing, and I can't promise that anything I've written reflects the rp it's based on. Quotes taken from Patrick Rothfuss’s Name of The Wind. Spoiler -=✺=- I SLEEP She knew what needed fixing “First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door.” -=✺=- Manon slept. She slept and she dreamed of things she was afraid to see during the day. Of Edelmir and of wriggling maggots and of guilt seeping under the door like blood. Something was wrong. She needed to fix it. In her dream, Manon rose from her bed and she crept to the door and she knew that whatever needed fixing was on the other side. The floor was wet with seeping guilt and Manon’s bare feet slipped on the soaked boards. She walked slowly, hand braced on first her bed, then her desk. Her bookshelf. The wall. The door did not want to be opened. It stood heavy on its hinges and it stared malevolently at Manon as if it could sense the little rotten thing she kept in her soul for nobody to see. Touching the handle felt like her hand was going to melt into molten metal and freeze into a perfect piece of ice all at once. Opening the door took all of Manon’s strength, and afterwards she turned around, facing her bedroom and checking to make sure all was as it should be. It was a performance. She was hiding. Hiding from whatever was inside the door, whatever needed this much fixing, so much fixing that the nasty little thing inside her was growing, roiling and disgustingly pleased with itself. Manon gritted her teeth and turned around. The door did not open on the sitting room. There was no tiny library, no Ophelie and Austina. The door opened and behind it was crumbling stones and vines and the floor was trailed with blood, as if something dying had walked straight up to her door and tried to get in. The door opened and Manon was somewhere that was Acre and Dobrov and Krusev and none of those places. The stones were icy cold under Manon’s bare feet. The air was heavy and filled with whispers, like the buzzing of a thousand bees telling her to go, to leave. Manon didn't listen. She didn't listen to the whispering bee-voices and instead she took a step forward, following the path of blood-spots up the stairs, down the hall. A turn to the left, then one to the right. She was getting closer, the trail was thicker. Whatever needed fixing was at the start, she knew. Whatever had killed the dying thing that couldn't get through the door was at the start of the trail, and she would find it and she would figure out what was wrong. Down a hallway, up a ladder, through a door that weighed more than anything Manon had ever lifted. She wasn't supposed to be here, but the black evil spot on her soul was growing and stretching its limbs and she needed to do this now. Manon’s steps slowed as she approached what must be the final door. It was different, not rotting or crumbling. Manon knew this door. She wasn't even surprised when she pushed the door open and it slid like butter and she was back in her room. She knew what needed fixing. When Manon awoke, she found herself standing before the empty keep of Krusev, her bare feet bleeding from mindless walking through the woods and her nightgown torn by grasping trees and snagging brambles. Surrounding her, filling the air with rot and lies and guilt, was Edelmir. II FORGETTING “He promised me she wouldn't be hurt.” “Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying 'time heals all wounds' is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door.” -=✺=- “There are some things that not everyone should know. I think I'd be killed if people knew…” Manon stopped, clearing her throat. “... Knew?” “I shouldn't have said anything.” Stories are made by remembering, by telling. This was a story that Manon should have left quiet, hidden in the half-truths she told Francisca, in whatever Ioanna managed to glean from silent stares and escapes into the woods. Secrets should be kept, folded up close like a handkerchief in a pocket. For nobody else. But here she was, turning secrets into stories. Nikolas could be trusted, of course. He wouldn’t tell. He couldn’t tell, or... “Swear I can trust you? You'll not tell a soul?” “Niet a soul.” “I've killed someone.” She shouldn’t have told him. Nikolas wouldn’t tell, but now she couldn’t sleep. She woke and she was not where she was supposed to be and she slept and she dreamed terrible, terrible dreams. Before she told the story it wasn’t a story it was just a sickening memory at the back of her mind but now the secret wasn’t a secret. Now it was a story that Nikolas knew and now it was a nasty little black thing curled up inside Manon’s soul, making itself at home. “He asked me to find someone from Acre, and I knew what he was going to do, but I brought her anyways. I'd be killed if anyone knew. If anyone even THOUGHT.” “Oh,” the boy's voice fell. “Killed someone?” “Please don't hate me. I took her to- to the place in the woods, and it ate her. Told me to turn around, and then…. And I looked back and she was getting pulled into the ground. And it's my fault.” Edelmir was angry with her. It was the only real answer. He knew, somehow. Knew she’d told. She’d really told, not the flimsy excuses (lying was getting easier in ways that made Manon sick) she’d given to Franny. Not the silence she’d given to Ioanna. Nikolas knew, and Edelmir was angry. “He promised me she wouldn't be hurt. Pinky promised, but I knew, I knew. I knew he was lying.” “Have vy told anybody else?” “No.” Manon said, forcing her eyes shut, giving a minute shake of her head. “Nobody. Not really.” “It is our secret then.” Nikolas’s hand in hers was clammy and weak, but he’d been the one to offer it, so she held on anyways. “Alright.” The story was there forever, now. Stories do not die away as easily as secrets. Stories are made to last, to be told, and now that Manon had told it once she worried it would be too easy to tell it again. III MADNESS Sometimes she woke up at night and she wasn’t where she had fallen asleep. “Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.” -=✺=- Nothing in the world was WRONG. This was what Manon told herself, day after day. Nothing in the world wasn’t meant to be there. The Weavers made everything, everything was just as it should be. Each monster in the woods, each puddle of dried brown blood, each rotting, fly-buzzed corpse was there because it should be. The world-thread didn’t decide between good or bad or light or dark. Kindness or cruelness. Everything existed because it should exist, and therefore Manon should exist too. But some days, on the days when Manon’s vision was blurry and the doll’s little whispering voice was altogether too cruel, on days when the sun was too bright and the darkness too dark, when the warm-wood walls of the library felt as if they were going to crush her fluttering heart like a bird in a too-small cage, Manon wondered if she should exist. Wondered if the world really wasn’t all meant-to-be, because what else could explain the wrongness in her head? She wasn’t special. That much Manon knew. She wasn’t Nikolas or Mischa or Vladrik or Sadie. There was nothing as perfectly correct about her as there was about them. She read big books and knew big words and sometimes she talked in ways that made adults look at her strangely, and sometimes she woke up at night and she wasn’t where she had fallen asleep. But there was nothing truly special to go along with these things. Manon wondered why she existed. Many days she had no answers. She didn’t want to be a knight or an author or a poet or a politician. She couldn’t see ghosts or spirits or do magic. She wasn’t what her papa wanted or what her mama wanted and she wasn’t even sure what SHE wanted. (If she wanted anything at all other than to sit by the lake and look at the moon and let everything be quiet for once in her life) The world and the Weavers who wrote all the stories of the world wanted her to be something. She could feel it in the stones and the dew-grass under her feet and in the ache where her new arm connected to her old one and in the little tickle at the back of her neck whenever she was in the right sort of forest. She was supposed to be something. She knew that, on the good days. On the bad days she knew nothing and the world was made of heavy wet cloth that covered her and smothered her and pulled the breath from her lungs like tearing out a tooth. Even on the good days, though, she didn’t know what she was supposed to be. She was not normal enough to be normal but she was not unusual enough to be something altogether not normal, and so she sat in the library and was quietly crushed and she sat in the woods and was quietly afraid. Everything had a purpose. Everything that was anything, everything that the Weavers wove had a purpose, was made to DO something. Manon was not special, this was a fact. A stone-solid truer than true fact. Because she was not special she must be like everything. She must have a purpose set down by the Weavers just like everything else did. But the knot in her stomach and the knot in her throat and the constant pounding inside her head told her no, she didn’t. And she knew they were right. IV DEATH She had awoken and felt Edelmir’s presence and known that something was coming. “Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.” -=✺=- The next time Manon slipped out of her room, Ophelie asleep by her side (to watch her, to keep her safe, to protect her,) she was awake. Bare feet treaded slowly across icy wooden boards, and Manon crept through her rooms, down the halls. Up, up, up to the streets of the city, and then out. This time, she was walking of her own accord. This time, she was going to find Edelmir. Manon’s feet were freezing where her bare soles touched the chilly cobblestone streets. They grew caked in mud as she waded through dew-damp grass. She carried doggedly on, making her stumbling way to the forest. To Krusev, where she had awoken and felt Edelmir’s presence and known that something was coming. The keep was as dead and cold and empty as ever. Manon buried her bare toes in the moss that grew on the broken-stone floors, planting herself firmly, and she looked out at the dead, empty woods. The back of her neck prickled. “I am not afraid of you.” She said. It was a lie. 16 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
satinkira 5795 Share Posted July 27, 2022 Leon thinks on the child in the forest, resting on a bench as the bustle of the city went by. ...I should find her. I believe Cynefrith knows who she is.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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