Over the course of the next few days I grew better at speech. The four limb also steadily became more comfortable in my presence. She talked for long stretches when she eased towards me, chatting about things like how pretty the green of the trees was or how good some of the fruit from this section of the wood had turned out. Questions too. Many of which I had trouble answering, but the practice of speech made me at least understandable. On the fourth day we had our most interesting interaction yet.
"Do you have a name?" she asked resting on a mossy boulder at the side of a break in the trees. "No." I said as I rested my limbs next to the boulder, all six folding neatly under me so my head could rest on the soft underbrush. "No one ever named you? How did yer family know what to call ye?" "T-t-t-they would've just known which one I was." It was hard to communicate our joined understanding of the world in the limited sounds of the four limbs. But I tried nonetheless. "Would you like one?" She asked sliding off the boulders edge to sit at it's base to my side. "Names.... For greater things. Places, landmarks, great foes, whole races, and for queen mothers. I am just this one. Last of many. I need name?" She cocked her head quizzically at me. "Well I gotta call ya summin diffn't if I'm to tell ya apart from your kin if we find more of ya. Or my kin'll be wantin of somethin to name you by so they know who they speak of."
The idea that I could have a name of my own, let alone be gifted one from a four limb for strange. Almost absurd really. So curiosity pushed me on as I rolled this new idea around in my mind. "You have name?" I asked, wondering at the possibility that four limbs were silly enough to name everything they stumbled across. "Of course I do. Name's Kip, nice, short, easy to remember as my da used to say." At the mention of this da she seemed to deflate a bit. "Rotten bastard as he turned out eh?" It was my turn to tilt my head quizzically. Wiping of her face she tried to recover quickly "Never mind, let's be find'n somethin to call ya by eh?.... Er... I almost forgot to ask ye." She moved a bit to look away from me. Her forearms fidgeted nervously. "I never did get to ask ya, and I mean this in the best way but I don't got anyway to tell really. So... er.... Are you a boy or a girl? Do you even have those from your... er... race?" She stammered out the question. Oblivious as to why she would be nervous I replied simply "I am male."
"Oh! Ya aren't mad at me askin?" She said looking back at me. "Does it matter?" I hummed running my feelers across the damn earth and taking in the smells. "Um. I'm not sure really. I suppose not. Lets see what we can call ya then." She said and looked directly at me head. I turned a little in acknowledgement. "Yer eyes, they're nothin like mine, or anybody's I've seen. Closest thing I can remember is when a funny trader fellow came to the town I used to live in with all sorts of neat stuff ta be showin off." She rambled, bearing her mandibles slightly in a way I've come to learn as enjoyment from the four limbs. "Your eyes look like one of the stones he was showing off to the crowd. Bright, like your eyes, almost white but when he turned it, it was almost as if rainbows were playin cross it's surface. I'm thinkin he called it an opal."
Curious I lifted my head a bit. "T-t-this has something to do with my name?" I inquired. "Yes yes, sorry, I think we should call ya by what that stone was. How's Opal sound fer ya name?" Opal. A name of my own, and also not a name all of my own. "Opal" I said. I was given a name that day. And this was the moment I had said it for the very first time.
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