There had only been two children, of theirs. Twins, but each carried by their own mother, begat in magic. Spyndle had birthed a boy – Elecktrum (named for the mixing of metals; he was made in their own form of alchemy, gold meeting silver); and Cordis a girl, a girl who was the dead spit of her, silver and bright and unnamed because before there was a name He was there, taking His fair salvage.
She wonders if they’d had more children if she might not have loved the two they did have so fiercely. But god, wouldn’t she love anything Spyndle made?
(There were other children, too, from other unions – her own Ka, a silver-maned girl who lit off for the territories when she was but a year old; and of course, Spyndle had a few, children whose names she never knew.)
It hurts so, to look at him, to see what history had made – he is a legacy of all the things she’s loved and hated most, and the juxtaposition nearly makes her ill.
Who are you, he asks, and rightfully enough – to him, she is nothing but a stranger wrapped in lighting with a quavering voice, he doesn’t know the things she’s done, the things she’s lost. She is a stranger. They are strangers.
“My name is Cordis,” she says. She wonders if he has reason to know her.
She wants to ask a dozen questions but they’re all wretchedly personal, and she is still the stranger. So she sighs, waits, her name given to him, hoping.
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
Cordis
that no one touches me