When I first started out on the road, I left my name behind. It was practical, at first: my reputation and my past were the first things I wanted to leave behind, and I already stood out enough without everyone being able to put a name to my face. And at first it was nice, being a nameless wanderer, drifting in on the whims of the wind, leaving . . . stories in my wake. I'd wear whatever name suited me at the time: a flower, a season, an aspiration.
I'd still write letters, when I could find the time, when there was someone heading in the right direction--rarer and rarer the further I got from the empire's rotting heart. And the longer I spent nameless, the odder it felt to sign them with my old name. How long had it been since I'd heard my name on someone else's lips, or spoken it aloud? With each false name--snowdrop, willow, hope--I felt that old self slipping away, but there was no new self to take her place. I slipped into some liminal space, my identity ever in flux, solidified only as long as I needed it to.
I'd been adrift for years when I ran into a ghost from my past, at a harvest festival as close as you could get to the edge of the empire, and when she met my eye and whispered my name it nearly broke me. I tried to lose myself in the festivities, in dancing and drink, but the constant shifting of my identity demanded resolution: stand and fight or keep running forever. And I'd promised, when I was too young to understand what it would cost, that I would always stand and fight.
It was the reminder that, because this ghost from my past promised a return to normalcy, to safety, to complacency, being true to that promise meant betrayal. The trust the powerful offered was a shackle, the same as any other; they did not understand that I had come to break chains, not to forge new ones. I chose a new name, then, the same as I always did, but this one was an anchor, not a shield. A renewal of an old promise, a decision made to stop lingering in the threshold.
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