He never got her name, but when he looks at her he feels like he knows it, like it’s a sound familiar to his lips. His mouth forms an A, the start of something, but he makes no noise because he doesn’t know how it ends, that sound. He doesn’t know how any of this ends.
He never got her name but he has replayed that moment many times, the strange meeting between them where she was so convinced that he was something, someone and he was so convinced that he was not, could not be who she was looking for. And so he had told her as much, and a horrible look had crossed her face, one he could not forget.
(Gods, he’d forgotten so much – why couldn’t he forget that? And why did it hurt him so? She was a stranger, and he was rude, yes, but not horribly so.)
He is surprised to see her, this stranger-not-stranger whose name he almost knows. He had not expected their paths to cross again, and he feels a rush inside him, dueling strikes of shame and excitement. Yet no recognition dawns across her lovely face, and he wonders if perhaps he had made too much of the encounter, if it had matted more to him than it had to her.
“I’m as good as can be expected,” he says rather honestly. He doesn’t know if he’s alright, or even if he’s even been alright.
“You’re the woman from the river,” he says, and it’s not a question. She is so familiar. Should she be so familiar? His heart is beating faster but it’s just nerves. He hasn’t spoken to many since he woke on that riverbank, so full of nothing.
@Agetta