Names…those arbitrary collections of sounds we use to point at things, including ourselves.
Philosophically, a name is both nothing and everything. It's just vibration in air, marks on paper, synaptic patterns in brains.
Yet whisper a single horrid name in a crowded room and watch comfort evaporate.
Murmur "mother" to someone who lost theirs and witness either warmth or wound, depending on the history attached.
A name can make strangers into enemies or allies before a single action is taken. It's prejudice and preference wrapped in pronunciation.
In the Earliest Folds, when names still had the power to reshape reality rather than just describe it, THE Living Concept and THE Living Emotive were having one of their rare civil conversations.
The air between them wasn't crackling with tension for once, which should have been everyone's first warning that something significant was about to happen.
