The windblown brunette balanced on the top rail of the five-railed fence, blithely unaware or just as blithely not caring about her very precarious position and the fact that the large, muscled equine that paced hot-bloodedly up and down the length of the paddock was a highly dangerous specimen of horseflesh. "What'll we call him?" she asked, turning her head away from the horse just long enough to glance at the equally awed gold- headed boy clinging to the fence beside her.
His boyish face squinched in thoughtful contemplation, sea-green eyes surveying the fine animal with unveiled admiration. "Draythen?" he suggested, squishing together the first syllables that popped into his mind.
The girl swept her thick, slightly puffy mane out of her eyes and tucked her mouth thoughtfully to one side before shaking her head, "No, sounds too...drudgy."
Her blonde companion looked away from the horse to her profile with a scowl. "You're only saying 'drudgy' because the name started with 'd-r.'"
"How about Cynivifar?" she responded, ignoring his scowl.
"No one will remember that name, it's too long and complicated. Besides, how would you go about spelling it?"
"Well aren't you picky!" the girl said, offended. "Cinvera is a pretty name and not that hard to remember."
"Cinvera? There, you forgot the original one already. The name you said ended with 'far.' Do you like Foyreth?"
"Sounds too coily."
"What's that supposed to mean?" the boy demanded, greenish eyes flashing as he glared at her. She turned her head to him and shrugged as best she could while clinging to the fence.
"It doesn't mean a thing."
Feeling that this conversation was going no place quickly, the boy rolled his eyes and suggested another name. It was his usual type, medieval and bold sounding, an odd new concoction of syllables that flowed nicely. It rolled off his lips as a suggestion but rang strangely in the air, beautiful and terrible all at once in his own voice but as a grown man, deep and powerful and demanding respect. The word was the sort that if one does not know it, it cannot be remembered and neither children recalled anything about the composition of the word after it was said, only that it stirred their hearts strangely, as though a great surge of all a person's strongest emotions at once passed through their souls, remembering only the perfect beauty and rhythm and balance of the word before something strange happened, as terrible and beautiful as the word itself.
The world seemed to stop and fill with howls of noise, like a wild wind across the sea unleashed to shriek its freedom to all the earth; the colors suddenly flipflopped and for a moment the trees' trunks were smooth and glimmering silver as they stretched to the very heavens or so it seemed, the leaves trembled and shivered and danced gold and russet under a light as crimson and hot and passionate as the leaping flames in a forest fire, and just as lethal. The entire sky was burnished scarlet shot with veins of gold and smeared with oily clouds of obisidian hue, a terrifying sky that crackled with dangerous electricity or something far worse and more powerful. As abruptly as it had started, it was gone.
Both children lay struck blinded on their backs beside the fence, panting as though having run many long miles on weary limbs. Then the girl rolled slowly onto her side and heaved herself up on one elbow to gaze in shocked dazedness at her companion, who had an arm flung over his agonized eyes and was groaning softly. Her vision had returned, but the vivid, frightening memory of the bloodred sky and crackly gold fuzz that dimmed her vision upon seeing it remained wild and frightened within her eyes. Though the children could not have guessed, a tremor had run all through the world then, at the moment the word had passed through the boy's lips, and all people be they infant or aged felt the change in the air, the sudden and fleeting sense of fear and bewilderment before things returned from normal. A select few others around the world, however, were struck and presented with much the same sort of phenomenon that had been unleashed upon the children, however, and these few, some children like them and some full adults, fell trembling to the earth and did not recover for quite some time.
"Oh man..." At last the boy's senseless groans evolved into some semblance of speech and the girl heaved a sigh of relief.
"Are you all right? Wh-what happened? The world...went all funky."
"No. kidding," the boy responded, gingerly prying himself off the ground and hooking a limp hand on the lowest rail of the face to squint into the girl's face. "Saints alive," he muttered and shook his head, finding her concern and fear redoubled in his own mind and repelling them forcefully. Something odd and beyond his comprehension had occurred, but the boy was at a loss as to what that might be. Suddenly, a voice cut through their stupidly dazed discourse that could hardly be called 'conversation.'
"Are you two going to sit there like geese all day or are you going to do something about it?"
Both turned quickly, startled, growing all the more startled as it became apparent from the lack of humanity in the vicinity that the voice was coming from the dappled stallion.
"Eep," the boy stated, finding no other words to describe his consternation.
The stallion snorted and tossed his proud crest. "As I thought. Well let's start off with something easy, shall we?" he continued, caustic eye showing white for a moment at their silly behavior. "Names, perhaps? I am Kavador...don't look so surprised (the expression of blank shock had not changed on either face). Despite your thoughts to the contrary as was revealed by your mindless search for a fitting name to name me, I already have a name, yes. And yours are?"
The girl was the first to respond, her voice an octave higher than usual and slightly croakish. "Gala," she responded weakly, "N-nice to meet you...Kavador. S-sorry about...trying to name you. We were unaware."
Kavador gave an impatient bob of his lofty poll, brushing off her apology, "A state that you two seem to spend quite some time in, it would appear. How old are you, Gala? And who is the mute boy?"
Gala giggled somewhat hysterically, having trouble keeping the light sound from becoming an uncontrolled shriek of nonsensical laughter. "He's not mute.I'm ten years old."
The boy spoke up at last, still goggling at the talking stallion but finding little logic in keeping silent until the ordeal was over. "I'm Narad," he said in a surprisingly composed voice. "And I'm twelve."