Oh Alexa. Brave, true Alexa. You never had time to beat about the bush, did you? Here he is, hardly willing to let the thing into his sight, and now you’ve gone and named it. Don’t the stories say, be careful, oh so careful with names? For by calling a name…

“Yes. I’m scared too.”

…you bring its owner.

“I don’t want to forget everyone. I don’t want to forget who I am. I don’t…” Ah. But that one’s too horrible to say, isn’t it? That one day, he might wake up, and for the first time in years feel the band of gold squeezing ‘round his finger. He might pick up a spoon, and frown, when his grip presses it uncomfortably against his hand. Perhaps he’d remove it, just for a little while. Would he remember to put it back on again?

No. 

Not here. Not even here, shielded by the nicest of company. He can’t name it. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. “Because, we can’t know, right? We don’t know what we’ll lose. Not until we cross, but, then, it’s too late. How are we supposed to remember what we’ve forgotten? What we used to be? We’d be alive, and, ordinarily, I’d think that was cause for hope, but who’s to say we’d ever be able to get any of it back?”

“What if…what if we only remember enough to know that we had something more, once?”

“What if one of us [i]doesn't[/i] forget?”

The more he circles the terror, the wider an arc his thoughts must run, and the more foreign the land beneath him. Morbid, horrified curiosity drags him ever onward, holding him by the neck. Step by step by step. All around the great monster at the end of the galaxy.

“I…you, you deserve better than that, Alexa. I don’t know if I’d wish that on anybody. Ever. It’s not. It’s [i]horrible.” [/i]

And that’s as far as his hooves will take him. Right up to the border, where he might speak what’s in his heart. But no further. A good sheep minds his friends. A good sheep wouldn’t be so greedy as to speak his own name in a wish.