This is my reaction blog for Winds and Truth. Beware of spoilers! Index post here. 

Title: Taking the Next Step
Lots of things this could mean, I don’t have a good guess for which one it’s suggesting for this chapter

Icon: Vedel
Can I hope this means Lift will show up? Alternatively this could be about the attribute of healing, and Kal is going to start mending things more with Lirin and continue improving his mental health.

Epigraph: Okay, the Wind is getting capital letters, and someone knows it personally. Pretty blatant after it spoke to Kaladin last chapter that this is going to be Important, and makes me think that the Wind and Truth title has a whole lot more significance that I initially gave it. While it could happen, I really don’t see Kaladin dictating a memoir, so for now I’m going to presume this is by someone else who also was chosen by the Wind. Whatever that actually means.

Hm. Kaladin draws in and uses Towerlight for his surgebinding, and that light is constantly generated here in the tower. Very convenient for the defending forces, I’d say. Not a surprise that its character and intent results in a different feeling than stormlight. I expect this will be a good thing for his mental state.

I do think it’s slightly odd that everything still runs on Towerlight with no involvement of Warlight after the near-complete corruption of the Sibling and all of Navani’s investigations. I buy it, but I’d have expected some lasting consequences.

Kaladin being easily startled in his PTSD makes a lot of sense, but it does make me wonder if premodern warfare that doesn’t involve firearms or explosions would instill the same reaction to loud noises as we see in soldiers today. Just an idle thought.

Nice, the colors are a code to show that she’s visible to everyone else. Good signal.

And he has an internal Teft to grumble at him and give good advice. The real Teft would be glad of that.

I suspect Oroden’s speech is just being represented as childish, but it is potentially revealing of the Alethi language. Kaladin became GaGadin, Syl come spin became Fyl come Fin.
K→G is more obvious a step than L→G, though the tendency toward repeated sounds makes sense. S→F is not a shift I’d have expected. I can see it, but it’s a further stretch than I’d have thought. We know that Kh, J, and several other consonants are pronounced in ways that don’t match modern English. Maybe their S is breathier than I thought?

Laughterspren. Have we seen those before? They look like “silvery minnows.” And the Tower’s revival is attracting spren of all kinds.Neat.

“You are what I need” says the Wind. 

The blocks are floating for longer, too. Kaladin says it’s because the whole city is infused, so it makes sense that there would be less leakage from an infused item if the “air pressure” of investiture around it is high as well.

Syl has adopted a glove on her safehand.

Dungspren. Yes, that’s something a little kid would find interesting or funny, but do they actually exist? Syl doesn’t even answer the question. I’m assuming they don’t but maybe we’ll never know.

Lirin and Hesina are working to revamp medical doctrine for Dalinar’s entire fighting force. That’s a step up in responsibility.

Syl’s choice to be human-sized is an extra effort for her, in order to be treated more like a person, to be ignored less and respected more. Understandable, and something that’s probably important. Don’t really have much to unpack about it, though.

The Wind is asking him to come find it wherever Dalinar is sending him, which is Shinovar. We know there’s an unmade there. What else might we find? 

Aw, Lirin gives Kal a hug, and they’re surrounded by joyspren. Very sweet.