What's In A Name?
"It's too much name for a little girl, there's not even a good nickname for it." Fortuna leans back against the rough bark of the tree where the two of them have been meeting up for years. The leaves are beginning to change and there's a bit of a chill in the air. Valor has a job that starts tomorrow, and she'd hoped that they could have a bit of an idea on naming their baby before his caravan leaves for another month and a half. "There's no good nickname for Fortuna either, but you lived," Valor grins up at her from where he lounges in the grass at her side. She pulls a face at him in response, then looks back at the list she'd written in her small, leather-bound journal. “What about Ivy? It’s simple but pretty. Doesn’t even need a nickname.” Valor props himself up on his elbows, craning his neck to see the page she was writing on. “Come on, you’re not even gonna write it down?” He reaches for the pen and she swats his hand away with the notebook. “It’s a pretty name, but it just ain’t sensible. It'll be hard for a baby to say, and then she's gonna have to learn to spell it when she starts school... I don't wanna give a kid a harder time than they're gonna have to begin with. You know the poor thing's gonna have extra eyes and feathers and horns to deal with. The least we can do is give them a nice, simple name.”
Valor huffs and rearranges his lanky limbs so he's sitting beside her, leaning against the broad tree trunk. “Well, it’s the only name I picked out. I stopped brainstorming 'cause I got it right on the first try.” Fortuna raises her eyebrows at his cocky, lopsided smile, then gestures to the notebook page that he has now noticed contains a second list, headlined with the title Boys. “You picked out one name for a girl and nothin else?” she asks skeptically. Valor shrugs. “It’s a girl. I know it. We’re going to have a baby girl and she’s going to have the prettiest name in the world and I already told you what it is.”
He manages to grab the pen from Fortuna while she's distracted by his words, and she knows better than to stop him as he writes “Rhapsody” into the margin in his big, looping, script, punctuating his words by underlining it.“ Write it all you want, darlin, but that’s not gonna make it happen. And you watch. When it’s a boy I’m gonna have all the say cause you didn’t even come up with nothin'.” "She's gonna be our girl, though," Valor gestures between them as he speaks. "Why shouldn't we name her after something that means something to us? We spend half our time together making music, she could be a song too." "That's real sweet and all, but I'm just not sold on it as a name," Fortuna sighs. "I just want to call her something special, you know? There's nothing wrong with Ivy, or—” Valor peeks into the book “Aster?” He wrinkles his nose up at the name. "Okay, not Aster. But I think she should have something we picked because she's ours, not just because it's sensible."
Fortuna plucks the pen out of his hand and shuts it inside the book as she closes it before he can change his mind and make any more impractical naming decisions. "I'll think about it. But you should try thinkin of some more ideas while you're gone, too." Valor smiles at her and pecks her on the lips. "For you? I'll come up with some other options. None will be as good as Rhapsody, though. That's a guarantee."
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Almost three months later, Fortuna strokes the fine, downy feathers on the crown of her newborn daughter's head. She's exhausted and her body still hurts, but her baby girl is finally sound asleep on her chest. Fortuna's heart aches with the knowledge that her father isn't here to meet her. She wipes tears from her eyes. She's not going to cry, she tells herself. Valor wouldn't want her to cry. She does know what he would want, though. Fortuna kisses her daughter's head gently, right between two perfect, tiny horns. "Good night, Rhapsody."