Marketplace

The smoke came slow, the way grilled kebab smoke always does in the cold, gathering before it settles, heavy and warm against air sharp enough to get into the hands. Kedunol stood still and let it come. He lives in a commons, a settlement where people find their names not by choosing them but by having them conferred, given by the world and the people around them rather than picked for themselves. Thirteen days is nothing, and also it is a whole life, because thirteen days ago this same smoke was in the air the day that naming happened to him. Before that there had been no word for what he was, only a shape moving through a commons that didn't know him yet. Then it happened, the way it happens here, conferred rather than chosen, and afterward he carried it like a coat that fit before he'd tried it on. Kedunol. It is strange how a name can feel more solid than the ground.