Her name stirs on his dark lips and it brings something out in Aela. It’s a slight, wisp of a thing that ruminates at the golden corners of her mouth. A fleeting thing - filled with all the running grace of a deer before it slips beneath the treeline.
@[kensley] is the first who has said her named that hasn’t known it.
He’s never heard her voice (and never will) but he’s found her name.
It makes her treasure his all the more. Kensley, she thinks. There is nothing in the word. He doesn’t give it a shimmer of pride. He doesn’t clip the word with anger. He doesn’t hold on it, lingering and agonizing over it as so many lost souls do (she thinks they worry that they might lose their names as well).
And yet, maybe it is not his name? Her ears prick forward and the expression on her face clouds with confusion. It was, he says, a long time ago. Aela, who is a child with no cognition or understanding of time (or her own gifts), reaches up for the storm-gray of his muzzle with her petite white one. When? she can’t ask. Instead of words, it’s another image. She shows him the furthest back she can remember - a lifetime that has only been measured in weeks and months so far.
(A summer night. Purple-blue midnight bruises the sky. Humidity hangs heavy and fireflies light thick on the August air.)
She peers up into his brown eyes, wondering if that might have been the night he lost his name. There is an edge of something that glints behind them and curious, she stares up at Kensley. Aela hesitates for a moment because she has been cut on the sharp edges of memories a few times before. Few times enough to know that she doesn’t like the whiplash of emotion that comes with them.
Aela has no desire to get herself torn up on the tides of other lives.
But the waves behind Kensley’s brown eyes look gentle and as they ripple out, Aela wonders where they will drift away to.
@[kensley] is the first who has said her named that hasn’t known it.
He’s never heard her voice (and never will) but he’s found her name.
It makes her treasure his all the more. Kensley, she thinks. There is nothing in the word. He doesn’t give it a shimmer of pride. He doesn’t clip the word with anger. He doesn’t hold on it, lingering and agonizing over it as so many lost souls do (she thinks they worry that they might lose their names as well).
And yet, maybe it is not his name? Her ears prick forward and the expression on her face clouds with confusion. It was, he says, a long time ago. Aela, who is a child with no cognition or understanding of time (or her own gifts), reaches up for the storm-gray of his muzzle with her petite white one. When? she can’t ask. Instead of words, it’s another image. She shows him the furthest back she can remember - a lifetime that has only been measured in weeks and months so far.
(A summer night. Purple-blue midnight bruises the sky. Humidity hangs heavy and fireflies light thick on the August air.)
She peers up into his brown eyes, wondering if that might have been the night he lost his name. There is an edge of something that glints behind them and curious, she stares up at Kensley. Aela hesitates for a moment because she has been cut on the sharp edges of memories a few times before. Few times enough to know that she doesn’t like the whiplash of emotion that comes with them.
Aela has no desire to get herself torn up on the tides of other lives.
But the waves behind Kensley’s brown eyes look gentle and as they ripple out, Aela wonders where they will drift away to.
AELA
she had a marvelous time ruining everything
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