University of Cumbria, Humanities building
The rain had just begun to fall outside, soft against the lead-glass windows. The lights flickered faintly from old wiring, and the air smelled of dust and bergamot from someone's forgotten tea.
Greylene Wyrde sat near the window, half-shadowed by the heavy velvet curtain.
The name had been a source of teasing since she was old enough to spell it—Wyrde, like the Wyrd Sisters from the Discworld novels she loved, like prophecy and doom, like every Macbeth joke teenagers could conjure. She was practically immune to it now, the same way a tree might grow around a nail. Still, there were moments—like today—when the old ache pricked beneath her skin. The name fit too well. Too sharply. As if she'd grown into it without meaning to.
Her notebook lay open but untouched. She'd written only one word in the corner of the page—liminality—and underlined it three times. Then added, in small script just beneath: see also: every Tuesday, emotionally.
Her pen tapped once, then stilled.
Professor Kamara Durei was pacing again, her boots clicking sharply against the stone tiles as she gestured with a battered hardback edition of Echoes and Offerings: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Threshold Spirits.
"Remember," ht Professor said, voice rich and deliberate, "a name isn't just a label. In most traditional cosmologies, to know something's true name is to hold power over it. You don't summon the dead with blunt language. You invite them. You ask. You invoke."
Someone at the front scoffed softly. It might've been Theo—bright, always dismissive, always trying to outquote the readings.
Grey didn't look up. She was watching a bead of water crawl down the window glass like it was deciding whether to fall or stay.
"Grey," Professor Durei said suddenly, pivoting toward her, "what's your take? You were the one who argued that names are like boundary markers last week—can you extend that thought here?"
A pause. Grey blinked once, slow as a cat who'd just been roused from a nap she definitely hadn't earned. Then she sat up a little straighter, her voice soft and even—but with the faintest dry edge.
"Some traditions say names must be given at liminal moments," she said, "like at birth, or after death, or during a rite of passage. That's when the soul is most… untethered. Naming anchors it. Or binds it, depending on the intention."
Professor Durei folded her arms, intrigued. "So you're suggesting a name acts like a... ritual tether?"
"Yes," Grey replied. "And in some stories, names are forgotten on purpose. Like a kindness. Or a curse."
She tilted her head slightly, as if she'd just remembered a private joke. "Sometimes both. That's how you get cursed kindly, which is arguably the worst kind."
The Professor gave a slow smile—approving but curious. "Are you referencing the Dartmoor Whispering Path legends?"
"Partly. And something else."
Grey didn't elaborate. She rarely did. The silence she left behind was the sort that made people lean forward, thinking they'd missed something.
Outside, thunder rumbled somewhere beyond the chapel towers.
Theo leaned over to whisper something to the girl beside him—probably smug—but she nudged him sharply in the ribs without looking away from Grey.
After the seminar, the class trickled out into the hall, laughter and umbrellas and the smell of wet leaves trailing behind them.
Grey stayed behind. She was copying something from the whiteboard in tiny, precise print: Names That Are Not Spoken / Spirits That Do Not Knock.
Professor Durei lingered by the lectern, pretending to rearrange books.
"You ever going to turn that field journal in?" she asked eventually. "I know you're recording something special. You just haven't shared it yet."
Grey's lips twitched. Not quite a smile. But the ghost of one. The kind you didn't trust near sharp objects.
"Some names don't want to be written," she said. "They have... editorial concerns."
She slid her notebook into her satchel, collected her half-finished tea, and walked out into the rain without opening her umbrella—head tilted back as if curious what the sky had to say today.