By Any Other Name

August

The heat is a thing alive, wrapping around shoulders and tangling through legs, thick and rattling with the calls of cicadas. Somewhere nearby, someone is having a party, and the music thuds and whines,  a discordance occasionally pealing with laughter that sounds just a little too desperate to be real. Streetlights buzz uncomfortably and send orange light wandering through the branches of trees.

Two figures have taken to the streets tonight, perhaps seeking wandersome relief from their peers shouting at the party, perhaps slipping out from one of the other houses whose windows flicker blue with television. Or perhaps they have come from nowhere at all. One swings a bottle, occasionally hands it to the other when some unspoken communication indicates that it is wanted.

They walk like they know where they are going, although one occasionally slows to examine a thing that catches her interest: a leaf, a plastic bag, a flower or lawn gnome, a newspaper abandoned in the gutter. They do not speak, and the comfort in the silence indicates that this is a matter of choice, rather than a thing born of awkwardness or dislike. They have spent enough time in one another's company that they do not need to fill the silence with useless noise. Their shadows circle them uncertainly as they pass beneath the streetlights.

The smaller one hurries to catch up to the larger, reclaims her bottle, breaks the quiet that follows them, in spite of the sounds still emerging from the party at their backs. "I wish I could remember my name."
The other pauses, eventually replies, sounding slightly irritated. "What do you need a name for?"
"I don't know. Just feel like I should have one, sometimes."
This seems silly to the larger one. They both have survived this long without names; they are who they are, whether they are named or not. "Should is a strange thing."
"I suppose."  They walk onwards. "Everything else has a name."
"We are not everything else." Now the silence between them grows a twinge of disagreement, which colors the air. "What would you have your name be?" asks the larger, when the air becomes too thick.
"Oh, I don't know that. It's just..." It is a hard thing to try to explain. "The wind whispers. It wonders who I am. And I know who I am, but I can't tell the wind, can I?"
"You can't tell the wind anything. It doesn't listen. It just whispers, then passes to whisper to another." Another pause. "Having a name would not change the wind."

There is no way to explain that she knows that having a name would not change the wind. Nothing could change the wind, which goes where it pleases, does what it likes, and never bows to anyone. But having a name would, perhaps, change the way the wind was heard, make the whispers mean something different. "I had a name," she says finally, because to say anything else seems impossible.
"You lost your name." The bottle changes hands again, one woman to the other.
The statement makes the smaller feel defensive, as though she did something wrong, as though this existence is somehow her fault. "So did you."
"I do not think about it," says the larger, truthfully. Her name, having been lost, is no longer a thing worthy of consideration. But she looks at her companion, and her bearing has changed, and it seems that more needs be said. "You are more than a name."
"Everything is," the smaller agrees, but that wasn't her point, not even slightly. "But everything has a name, regardless."

A passing breeze takes an interest in the two figures who walk as though they know where they are going, perhaps because they don't. The wind likes contradictions, so it pauses a moment to play in their hair and make the branches of the trees dance and hiss. What it whispers in each ear, they will never speak of, not now that each knows what the other thinks.

Underscored by the shouts of revelers, the silence stretches, and it is less comfortable than it was before.

"It's going to rain," says one to the other, as the bottle makes its way back to her possession.
"It's going to storm," the other replies.

And they walk on.