Dream Elf Name Generator

The story

The first time Seren entered the market, the stallholder offered her twelve silver mornings for the pleasure of her greatest victory. Seren laughed because she had expected something sinister, perhaps a masked collector with a knife. The seller wore a knitted cap and was trying to stop a paper bag of dreams from walking away. He caught the bag under his elbow and asked whether she wanted the price written down. She said she was only looking. He wrote it down anyway, on a slip that stayed dry when she woke with her face against the rain leaking through her window.

In her waking town she was Seren Lyr-Kin, whose sung name preserved the night she helped draw a stalled river ferry to its landing. The verse named the rope crew, the ferryman, and the hour when the passengers stepped onto the quay. Seren had been one strong, terrified participant among several. The public song nevertheless gave her the pleasure of hearing an actual deed live outside her own head. Whenever she sang her part she felt the old relief arrive bodily: aching arms, slippery boards, then the astonishing release when the boat touched home. That was what the stallholder wanted to buy. The facts and the public melody were not for sale.

Seren wanted to learn to make astronomical instruments. She had wanted it before the ferry night and before anybody thought to sing about her. The workshop accepting new students charged for materials and a small room. Admirers congratulated her when she mentioned it, then offered advice about confidence. Confidence did not pay for brass. At home, her inherited Kin root carried obligations she still recognized: a contribution toward her aunt's household and a regular visit to the cousin who found crowded errands difficult. She could pay those shares or the workshop deposit. She could not pay both and would not let the heroic verse imply that her relatives had become unnecessary.

The market returned whenever she fell asleep facing the window. Each arrival presented one new choice, although the narrow aisle and the seller's cap were the same. On the second visit he offered less money for a small collection of pleasant meals. On the third, a neighboring stall offered a costly loan with terms she could not afford. The recurrence did not let her undo a purchase. It simply allowed her to return while she had not yet purchased anything. She tested that explanation by asking the same question in three different ways. The cap-wearing seller became bored but did not change his answer.

A woman waiting beside the stall showed Seren a painted cup. She could describe the afternoon when her brother had given it to her. She knew where they had sat and what he had said about its crooked handle. She had sold the warmth of receiving it. Now she handled the cup with the accurate interest she might give a museum object. Her brother's later account had restored no feeling. Seren asked whether she regretted the sale. The woman said she had bought passage to see him before he died. She regretted the cost and still wanted the passage. Seren had hoped for an example that would make the transaction obviously foolish or obviously brave. The woman refused to become either.

At home Seren's aunt found the price slip beside the workshop letter. She read it while Seren cut vegetables. Seren prepared to explain that she was making the sacrifice for their family, and then heard how untrue that would be. Her aunt had never asked her to become an instrument maker. Her cousin had offered to change his errand day around the workshop schedule but had asked for no glorious sacrifice either. Seren wanted the study for herself. Her aunt said she would miss hearing Seren sing with such obvious pleasure. She also said she would not forbid it. They ate a rather poorly cut supper without deciding the matter for each other.

On her next arrival Seren brought the workshop's materials list. She asked the seller to identify exactly what twelve silver mornings would purchase in the waking world. The money would settle the deposit and her first term's materials, not guarantee skill, employment, or happiness. The experience sold would be the first-person triumph and relief of the ferry landing. She would keep the factual memory and knowledge that she had once felt it. A later performance might create a different pleasure in singing, but would not return the sold experience. She read the terms aloud. Then she chose. She put her hand on the paper while the restless bag beside the stall made a sound like applause.

Nothing dramatic happened. No light poured from her mouth. She remembered the landing and waited for the old lift in her chest. It did not come. The boards were wet in the account. The rope had cut her hand in the account. The passengers had reached the quay in the account. She could still describe the little child's absurdly dignified bow to the ferryman. The incident seemed complete and oddly far away. When she woke, the workshop receipt lay under the market slip. She cried because the absence was real, then became annoyed because crying had not been listed among the things she expected to do that morning.

The first person who asked for the ferry song was a visiting neighbor. Seren said she could sing it, but could not supply the feeling people had learned to expect in her face. She explained the sale without claiming that education had required everyone to approve. The neighbor thought this strange. Her aunt thought it sad. Her cousin asked whether the workshop began on the same day as their errand. It did, so they moved the errand by agreement. Seren sang the verse later at the quay. Another crew member laughed at the child's bow, and she enjoyed his laugh in the present. The old triumph did not return. She did not pretend that a new pleasant moment had reversed her purchase.

At the workshop she discovered that she was very bad at drawing a clean circle. A student with no heroic name showed her how their instructor wanted the exercise laid out. Seren ruined another sheet, thanked the student, and began again. When she next dreamed of the market, the cap-wearing seller waved her toward a stall offering remembered rain. She walked past. She did not need to declare that she would never buy or sell again to decline that evening. In the waking room, an unfinished brass frame waited beside the song sheet. One described what she had done. The other still required work she had only just begun.