There's a subtle shift in the air as they move to the task of naming, and Aquaria feels the tightness in her shoulders loosen somewhat. It's easier to focus on the baby, to keep herself centered on him. Her children have always been brilliant focal points, stars to guide herself by when she felt lost in darkness.
Her eyes too follow the boy, watchful, ready to lend help if needed. It was so rarely needed though, with her offspring. They were an independent lot, to her pride and her mild regret. That was the nature of sailors, though. Children of the sea couldn't help but explore it. She knew the feeling. The bone deep hunger for adventure, new sights, new horizons. A destiny for traveling far from home.
She blinked, lost in her thoughts until Pteron spoke again. Too often her mind spiraled down sad or dark crevices these days. She mustered a vague smile, nodded slowly as she considered the propsal. Dragged herself out of the trench. "Pteron, Torrent. Are you naming him after yourself?" She asked, a touch of humor in her voice.
"I'll consider it," she promised. "It's a good name. Something he could grow into." Certainly better than anything she'd played with so far. She felt a strange twinge of irritation. That he'd been able to come up with such a fitting name without much effort. She should have managed that. It was a basic, necessary thing, and she'd failed.
Her heart wrenched at the lies her own mind spun about herself, her capabilities. Why was it so hard to rebuild confidence once it had broken? She only hummed non-commitally at the comment Pteron made. She didn't feel brave at all. The last two years she'd barely managed to feel anything at all. It was simpler to submit to the flow of her days. The same patterns, the same rhythms, no deeper meaning to any of it. Existence, at its most basic.
Would it be better, she wondered, to leave? Situate Torrent (she was already thinking of him with that name) with his father's family, and dive, dive, dive into the sea. Let the memory of herself live on in the sea foam on the water, in her children. Would that be enough?
@[Pteron]