TOMB OF MEMORIES

His hands left the paper, though it remained floating in the air in front of him, and he began to write on it as if it had been pressed to a hard surface. Upon finishing, he stowed the writing utensil in a pocket on his shirt and grabbed the paper from the air. He turned it towards her and pointed towards the lettering before pointing back at himself - the letters were familiar, tugging at memories that were buried in the past. She noticed the last word was spelled “wyrm,” though still pronounced the way she had imagined it. He pointed to the words as he repeated what he had said earlier, then pointed back to himself as the realization dawned on her. It was his name. “King…ston Wyrm,” she repeated the words back to him, and his ever-present smile grew brighter and more excited.

He pointed towards her and raised a questioning eyebrow, motioning that he wanted to know her name in return. She paused, her eyebrows knitting together as she struggled to remember. A name was something so simple, and yet it was frustratingly absent from her mind. She wrung her hands together as her eyes darted to the ground, attempting to avoid the gazes of the strangers around her. All she could muster in this scenario in response was a shrug. As she heard other voices begin to chime in, she looked back upwards. She could tell they were arguing about names, about their usefulness - most likely discussing if it would even be worth it to learn her name. It was an extrapolation on her part since she could only make out every other world, but it became clearer as she listened more intently. Perhaps it was a local dialect or some variation of the language she had never heard before, but some words remained unfamiliar to her.

The man, Kingston Wyrm, waved the strangers away, clearly attempting to dismiss them. He turned his attention back to her, bending down on one knee so he was more level with her as she sat on the stool they provided her. He motioned towards her again, pausing to give her a moment to collect her thoughts. The language they spoke was not entirely familiar to her, but she knew one that she believed would be close enough.

She sighed heavily, trying to prepare herself emotionally for the moment. It was an overwhelming situation that she found herself in and questions spiraled in her mind, threatening to consume her. If not for the gentle hand that landed on her shoulder, she might have been lost in her thoughts. Looking back up at him, she shrugged heavily once more before looking at her surroundings. “I… don’t know. Whatever it was… It’s gone.” She trailed off for a moment before bringing her legs up towards her and holding them close to her body, her ears pulling backward as she attempted to avoid his gaze.

She was unsure how much they understood, but they seemed to get the gist of it: like this place, her name had been lost. They turned to speak to one another, and she raised her head to look at the rest of the tomb. The walls around her seemed to layer upwards before closing in a flat ceiling, a portion of which had been only slightly broken. The break revealed only a small glimpse of sunlight, with vines and moss covering the rest. She was in the center of the room, able to see the four braziers in each corner. There were entrances in front of and behind the tomb she had been placed in, though the one behind her was blocked by fallen debris. There was writing on the walls, carved into the stone in a symbolic language whose meanings were far more clear to her, though many were left unreadable due to the passage of time.

She thought of speaking on them for a moment, but some part of her told her it was better to feign ignorance. It was a paranoid tug on her mind, washing her in a feeling that something bad could happen if her knowledge of this place was discovered. She knew not of how she knew this language, what it was, who or where she was, and why - she especially did not know if she could trust the strangers around her, regardless of how kind they may have been. What she knew felt easy and natural, but when confronted with anything unfamiliar her mind and body whirled as it tried to make sense of it.

Kingston looked at her once more, his eyebrows scrunched together as he seemed to be deep in thought. After moments of silence, he returned on bended knee to her. “Is Wolf fine for now?” His voice was gentle, giving her the feeling that he would have been completely fine if she were to deny him here. It was a temporary name, likely based on the lupine aspects of her otherwise human appearance.

She took a moment to think, her mouth moving slightly to the side as she considered her options. It’s not like she had anything else to go on, however, and soon nodded before pointing to herself. “Wolf.” A simple but acceptable name given the circumstances. Her response seemed to please Kingston, as it seemed as if his eyes brightened with her response.