On the thirteenth day after planetfall, he woke up with a name.

Thirteen days it had been; he knew, he had been counting. Thirteen intervals of darkness, twelve intervals of inconstant light. The keeping track was easy enough, for a genome is made to store information, and he knew, somehow, that it was important for him to remember these things. It was determining the differences that proved difficult.

During the sixth day, when the sky turned black, he counted another day past-- until he realized that the black mages were not yet sleeping. No, no, this isn't night, they said, shaking their heads. This is rain. And so he uncounted the day, learning this strange new darkness.

Nothing stayed still in this terribly impermanent world. Rain, they told him on that sixth day, was water coming from the sky. Different water from the little stream that ran by his house, they said, when he asked, though they sounded uncertain. Similar, but not the same. Seeking to understand the difference, he wrapped his hands around the wooden bridge-railing, and listened. He could feel the raindrops in his hair, wet and sudden, and cold on the backs of his hands. He could feel the pull and rush of the moving stream beneath his feet. For just an instant, he felt that if he were to let go of the bridge, he might be buoyed and swept up, caught on the moving water, down and away. A genome wasn't meant to suffer such change...

But a genome was not meant to ignore new information, either. So he blinked wet eyelashes and went inside-- feeling he knew a little bit more about streams, and rain, and maybe something about bridges, too.

Rainfall, the black mages called it, clouds bringing rain, water falling. And nightfall, they called it, too, although they couldn't say precisely why. The night descended like the rain descended, bringing the fall of darkness.

It was this logic that he borrowed, calling their journey planetfall: Terra descending to this place, and carrying the genomes with it. To him it felt like the dizzy imbalance of falling-- one moment of the high crystalline stillness of his home, and, in another moment, fire, and Bran Bal gone. Planetfall. But he did not tell the others he was naming things.

Waking with a name of his own was definitely unsettling.

The black mages had tried to give him one, though they had given up by the fourth day. It was not that he was ungrateful; he could sense nothing but kindness from them. But he was not meant to carry a name, none of them were.

He knew that more and more of his fellows were assuming names: Sienna named himself for the color of Bobby Corwen; Twofiftysix giggled when the mages started calling her Sixie for short.

It made his head hurt. Genomes were not made to hold identities of their own; they were empty for a purpose, empty and waiting. He knew that. He told himself that.

Except for Mikoto, of course. She had been Given her name. So what was that odd sadness in her eyes, whenever she looked at him? It could not have been disapproval; he was only doing what he was made to do.

He thought, though no one mentioned it, that the black mages were uneasy with names, as well. On the eighth day, he caught a glimpse of Mr. 44 alone in the garden, digging bulbs carelessly, thinking no one was watching.

And he had seen the numerical stamp on Mr. 44's wrist.

So they had been made!, he realized, with a frightening flash of insight. Each mage had a stamp that he kept carefully hidden; their names were given to them forcibly.

Try as he could, to unthink the thought and erase his heresy, he could not. And just as quickly, a second unbidden realization came to him: Just because no one has told you so does not mean that it's untrue.

He was shocked to stillness for a moment, and Mr. 44 had turned to see him staring. To his surprise, though, Mr. 44 had blinked shyly, and something like a smile happened on his dark face.

He didn't really know what he had learned, in that shared silence, but after that moment it hadn't felt quite so strange to hear the other genomes taking names. Natural, he rationalized. Of course they needed handles to keep track of one another, and if no one would Speak a name for them, they would have to make do on their own.

He even congratulated Rain, on the tenth day, for deciding on her new name. Perhaps she had had a flash of insight all her own.

But nothing had prepared him for that thirteenth morning, for waking up knowing.

Named. It hummed in his mind, the quivering certainty rising in him like the sun.

Time flows and water flows, nothing stays the same. He thought, or maybe hoped, that he might wake another day with some other name, that he had been kept empty for a purpose, that he might yet fulfill his destiny.

But as surely as the color of the air lightened before the dawn, something in his mind had caught fire. He could feel the advent of self-knowledge as simply as he could mark the passing days. He had a name. Perhaps he had always had a name, only hidden. The traitorous notion-- that he had been denied an identity all along-- once planted, grew viciously, sending down roots and spreading its branches to the new sunlight.

There were colors in the sky, now, and shadows growing more pronounced, and he knew that there was no turning back. Not just any word, the very name is afire and the world is burning down--

What frightened him the most was that it didn't frighten him at all.

He rose slowly, feeling the morning dancing along his skin, enjoying the light between his fingers. From his small window he could see a few of the others, and for a moment he did not recognize them. He had never noticed their differences before. Sixie was pulling water from the stream; her hair had grown a little darker, nutshell brown. And Alder, there in the doorway of the shop-- his skin had turned a rich shade of gold, no doubt from walking through the forest every day, under the sun.

He realized that his own hair had grown paler and longer, touching his shoulders, feathery light. Idly he ran his hand through it, merely for the pleasure of it.

Something thick stirred within him then, something fierce. It might have startled him a day ago, but today was already so different he was not surprised. Pride, perhaps. Genomes were not designed to feel pride in anything, much less themselves-- but the familiar strictures were falling away from his thoughts, smoothly as rain sluicing off a thatched roof, or streamwater under the bridge.

When he leaned from his window and waved at Alder, the other genome looked startled, but returned his greeting.

For the first time he could remember, he wanted to smile.

He was looking for Mikoto before he was even aware of it. It wasn't a question, nothing to so easy as something to ask, or an answer to give. But he wanted to see her, and that wanting was enough.

He found her sitting cross-legged by the cemetary, doing something complicated with her fingers, knotwork with colored thread. Mikoto had always been clever with her hands. As she worked (red over blue over red), she spoke something to herself, chanted like a song. He recognized the words with a little shiver, recognized their source. Mikoto had mentioned Madain Sari once, and he had made a point to remember the poem merely out of habit. Listening to it now he actually wanted to laugh. Those Summoners, they were not genomes. Similar, but not the same.

Mikoto hummed, "This is where the fault lines collide. Listen to the planet's heartbeat. Breathe slowly, and calm your mind. Let memories return to you. Memories shape time. Time overlaps. The overlap becomes our memory. Memories construct time. History repeats itself. We must stand in its flow and understand the world. Such is the goal of our--"

She stopped before he reached her, the thread still in her hands. There was no change on her face, but she lifted her head to watch him. Her eyes were like the cloudless sky, and he found his hands were shaking.

"Are you all right?" she said, simply.

Of course. She was Mikoto; she was nothing if not practical. Still, he wondered if her voice weren't entirely steady, wondered just who she was asking.

Standing on the fault lines and wondering just what was colliding, he discovered he was smiling. "I have a name," he said. It was all he could think to say. Some day they might tell the legend, of the one who would unmake the world.

She nodded, setting her weaving aside on the step, and standing before him. He looked down at her, watched her bite her lip. They all thought of Mikoto as the oldest, as their protective older sister. When had he grown taller? "I thought that might happen," she said.

"I wanted you to know." His heartbeat raced, and he wondered why his voice did not falter. You will not forget me. No one will forget me. Each place will bear the scars of my passing, each history stained with my blood.

"What is your name?" The words, so ordinary, resounded through the morning, and there was only one answer, one word left to speak.

"Kuja."

the tree-lined avenue
begins to fade from view
drowning past regrets
in tea and cigarettes
but i can't seem to forget
when you came along