It wasn’t ever a conscious choice. Not really. It would be nice if it was, wouldn’t it? If Redana had a moment where she tried to hold onto everything, but found it all slipping out of her grasp like sand, and had to choose what was most precious to her?

No. She’s always been herself. And she doesn’t even notice what slips away. She is the strain of muscles, moving trunks out of dry-dust Plovers at awkward angles. She is the rhythm of a march back and forth, the plip-plap of feet striking the ground over and over and over as one thing after another is ferried from one place to another. She is the hand that helps lift a corner, and she is the work-song of the Coherent rippling up and down the line.

Everyone here is hers. A company, a conglomerate, a crew. The names bleed away easy. They are sensations, images, connections. A warm meal. A proud roar. Advice from below. A birdlike chirp above the crowd. The bell hanging around her throat.

Maybe it will be funny later that nobody really notices her losing her name. She’s listening for the inflection now, the attempt at getting her attention over the din of the work. She doesn’t even notice (it was so easy before, after all). It’s gone. It’s noise. It’s three syllables rising and falling. You could say anything to get her attention, sweat bleeding through her clothes, teeth flashing white through ruddy lips; she’s in the runner’s high, the elation of her body, the need to turn her shoulder to the wheel and make it turn.

Does it matter who anyone is? She holds on to what they mean. Warmth. Friendship. Loyalty.

Love.

She loves the anxious little sheep who makes sure she takes breaks, who pushes a thermos of hot tea into her travel-roughed hands, whose voice is soft and full of care. She loves the lioness who competes with her, who pushes her to work harder, who rallies labor around the toughest jobs and takes position at the front. She loves the woman with the red eye, the sternly hot one, the one who provides a rhythm to her life (a finger tapping a bell, a wagging tail, hushed laughter). She loves her companions, one and all, who she is grateful for, who are going to make it to the end together. She doesn’t need to remember who they were; she remembers who they are now.

(And by night the bells are close around her, and whisper a rising-falling-rising mantra: re. da. na. RE da NA. re-da-na. a pretty three-part meditation. It marks time when they lose themselves in the now, in the ways of move-like-this, in the mouths-and-limbs dance. A name is nothing. Wipe away all signifier and what is important still remains.)

By the time the vehicle is ready, she is the sensation of labor for others; she is the joy of service; she is the vessel of orders rung out from bells. Her colors are red and yellow; she is anxious as she watches the horizon, itching to move. She has to keep moving forward. She’s not going to give up, even if she has to carry everyone to the end. She is a sword, a wheel, a vehicle, a lover, a beast, a thunderbolt. She is all things for her companions, as necessary— and for the sound of bells most of all.

For her, anything. Everything. As long as it is not here forever.