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Elsa EverPurl
Name: Elsa EverPurl
Title / Role: Eldest of the Clothborn Coven, Keeper of Purl Power
Order: The KnitWitches, the Clothborn Coven
Core Thread: Spirit
Home: The Clothborn Coven, Frays End, and a stool beside the Eternal Loom
Status: Active
Themes: Patience, Constancy, Friendship, Time, The Unseen Side
"Anyone can pull a thread. It takes a lifetime to learn which way to pull."
-- Elsa EverPurl
Elsa EverPurl is the eldest of the KnitWitches, and the oldest witch the Clothborn Coven has ever counted. She is not its leader; that is Noria NeedleNest, the High KnitWitch, and Elsa is quite content to keep it so. Elsa has watched more High KnitWitches knit their years into the shawl above the Coven's hearth than anyone else alive, and has never once wished to add her own.
She is the keeper of Purl Power, the discipline of the reverse side: untying knots that will not come loose, turning misfortune's face, and drawing quiet strength from the underside of things. Like the craft she keeps, Elsa is slow, unshowy and immovable. She is small even for a KnitWitch, bent nearly double, and wrapped in a grey shawl so often mended that no one, including Elsa, remembers its first colour.
She is also the coven's teacher of Spirit, the thread no witch can knit alone. Every apprentice hears her lesson on it, and most remember it all their lives: Spirit must be held lightly, kept moving, and always passed on.
"Vigil is the most stubborn creature in Threadbare. I should know, love. I'm the second."
-- Elsa EverPurl, to an apprentice
Elsa's oldest friend is Vigil, LoomWarden of Spirit, child of Ever. The two are known as the longest watchers in Threadbare: Vigil, who has never left the Eternal Loom, and Elsa, who has kept the Coven's knowledge since before most of its rooms were knitted on.
Every night, Elsa walks from the Coven's hearth to the Eternal Loom with her needles and a flask of something warm. She sits beside Vigil on a stool that no one else is permitted to use, and purls them a night's rest, knitting it on the reverse side of time, where no one sees it worked. A whole night folds into a single moment, and Vigil rests without ever leaving their post. Then Elsa stays a while longer anyway, because she likes the company.
Through Elsa, the Coven counts Vigil as one of the Two Needles, the pair of Elders closest to the KnitWitches (see KnitWitches).
Elsa is the KnitWitches' link to Vigil, and the voice of patience and constancy in the Never arc. When Vigil calls on the coven for help against the Third Denial, it is Elsa who answers (see Threadbare Plot).
For contributors, Elsa is the right voice for slow, quiet strength, long friendship, and the magic that holds things up from underneath without being seen.
- KnitWitches - the needle-and-purl magic-workers of Threadbare
- Clothborn Coven - the house of the High KnitWitches
- Noria NeedleNest - High KnitWitch of the Clothborn Coven
- Vigil - LoomWarden of Spirit, child of Ever, and Elsa's oldest friend
- Echo - LoomWarden of Memory, the other of the Two Needles
- The Eternal Loom - the heart of Frays End, which mends the Weave
- Frays End - the last bastion of hope against the Void