No need. I will protect her.
I will not leave her side.
“I think it was that way,” she says, pointing toward a distant ridge of stone. “Or maybe that way? I don’t know. Everything looks different now.”
The dust stretches endlessly in all directions, the same shifting sea it has always been. But she sees it differently. To her, it is a maze, a puzzle to be solved. She is lost.
Lost, and very far from home.
Perhaps Ain truly did send her. Perhaps there is purpose in her arrival, in our meeting.
Or perhaps the dust simply gives what it will, and takes what it will, and there is no greater meaning.
I try to mindspeak, focusing my thoughts into a clear image: “Where did you come from?”
But it is useless. She continues her restless movement, unaware of my question, her mind sealed away from mine.
She cannot perceive my thoughts. I have tried, again and again, to reach her mind, to share the images that would make her understand. Each time, I am met with silence—or rather, with the chaotic flurry of her own thoughts, sealed away behind a wall I cannot breach.
Yet somehow, she has given me her name.
“Jus-teen.”
The sound still feels strange on my tongue, unfamiliar and awkward. But when she spoke it, pointed to herself and shaped those sounds, an image formed in my mind—a bloom in the dust, delicate and impossible, yet somehow existing. Bright. Beautiful.
Names are sacred. We do not own them. A name is something given, not in sound, but in thought—a mark left in the minds of others.
My name was given to me long ago, shaped by my brothers, my kin, my tribe. The image of me that exists in their minds is simple, unchanging: a stone, steadfast and unyielding, braced against the storm. Alone, but enduring.
Rok.
That is what I am. That is what they see.
But when I think of my name now, with her warmth still lingering against my skin, her scent still in my nose, the image shifts. The winds of the storm grow quieter. The stone is no longer solitary.
It…frightens me.
I am not meant to change. Stones do not bend, do not waver, do not soften. Yet something in me has. Her name lingers in my mind, as if it has carved itself into the stone, leaving a mark that I cannot erase.
“I think I might just have to pick a direction and pray,” she vocalizes, eyes narrowing as she looks around. “Fuck. Shit. I can’t make a mistake in this.”
I do not understand her sounds, but her frustration is clear. It radiates from her in waves, as clear as if she were projecting her thoughts directly to me. She is afraid, though she hides it well behind her constant stream of sound.
She continues speaking, her voice rising and falling in patterns that have become almost familiar. I do not mind the sound as much as I did before. At first, her endless vocalizations grated against my senses, a constant, unnecessary noise. Now, there is something almost soothing about it, like the rhythm of the wind over the dunes.
“Hey,” she says suddenly, turning to face me. Her eyes find mine, and for a moment, it feels as if she can see into me. “I just realized—I don’t know what to call you. I’ve been thinking of you as ‘the alien’ this whole time, which is…well, accurate, I guess, but not very personal.”
I tilt my head, trying to understand. She touches her chest, the way she did in the cave.
“I’m Justine,” she says slowly. “Jus-tine.”
And there it is again—the image that forms in my mind when she speaks her name. A bloom in the dust, delicate and impossible, yet somehow thriving.
Then she points to me, eyebrows raised in question.
She wants to know my name.
I hesitate. Names are sacred, private things. They are not meant to be spoken aloud, to be cheapened with sound. And yet…
I focus on the image that has been my name for as long as I can remember: the stone, unyielding against the storm. I try to shape my lips around a sound that would capture it.
“Rok,” I say. The sound is rough, clumsy, but it is the closest I can come to sharing my true name with her.
Her eyes widen, her mouth opening slightly in surprise. “You spoke again! You…was that your name? Are you telling me your name?” She touches her ear. Not the one with the strange creature trapped in crystal on it. But the other. The one with a stone lodged in it. “I swear I heard it in English. Is this translator thing working? Please, please be working.”
I touch my chest, mimicking her gesture. “Rok.”
“Rock?” she repeats, the sound slightly different from mine. “Your name is Rock?”
Something must shift in my expression, because she laughs—a bright, unexpected sound that sends a strange warmth through my chest. I am not even worried about the shadowmaws hearing. I will fight them all if she would make that sound again.
“I mean, it fits,” she says, gesturing at me. “You’re certainly built like a—wait, no. That can’t be your name. Rock? Seriously? Like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson?”
I do not understand her words, but I understand that she has misheard my name. I touch my chest again.
“Rok,” I say, letting the sound fall short, sharper than the noise she created.
She blinks, tilting her head at me. “Rok,” she repeats, slower this time. Her brows furrow, and I can see her turning the word over in her mind. It is strange. I cannot sense her thoughts, but…I can almost see them through her eyes. “Not Rock. Rok. Same sound, I guess, but…sharper. It feels different.”
Her brows furrow and I tilt my head, watching as she taps her fingers against her thigh. “Yeah, okay. I’ll spell it without the ‘C.’ That’s better. Cleaner. It suits you.”
Her words settle over me like a weight, and something deep inside shifts. She has taken my name—my true name, or as close as her kind can come to it—and made it her own. To hear it in her voice, to see her shape it into something she understands, feels strangely…good. As if she has reached into a part of me that no one else has ever touched.
“Rok,” she says again, softer this time, as if testing it.
The glow beneath my skin flares faintly, betraying me. I have no words for what I feel, but it is enough to know that she has claimed my name in her own way.
She bares her teeth in that strange way I believe is non-threatening, and the sight of it does something to my insides. Her teeth are small, flat, nothing like the fangs of the Drakav, and yet there is something oddly appealing about the expression. I find myself mimicking it, baring my teeth in what I hope is a similar gesture.
Her teeth-baring falters for a moment, as if caught off guard, and then returns, wider than before. She shifts on her feet, a slight hesitation, that strange redness growing in her cheeks again. “Are you…smiling at me? Oh my god, you are. That’s adorable. In a terrifying, wolfish way.”
I wish I knew what her words mean, but the warmth in her voice suggests they are no insult. I continue the teeth-baring, and she laughs again.
“Okay, Rok,” she says, and hearing my name in her voice sends another pulse of that strange warmth through me. “So we’ve established who we are. Now we just need to figure out where we’re going.”
She turns again, scanning the horizon, and I am struck by how small she seems against the vastness of the dust. So fragile. So alone.
Except she is not alone. She has me.
The thought comes uninvited, and with it, a fierce protectiveness that surprises me with its intensity. I found her in the dust. By the laws of Xiraxis, that makes her mine. Mine to protect. Mine to keep safe.