The preternatural landscape was descended upon by fog. Everything around me was hidden in misty grey. Even my own senses seemed distant, as if someone else were feeling for me. I stood on stone, ankle-deep in shallow water. The smell of the sea wafted in from far away.
How did I get here? And where was here? I couldn’t remember anything—not my family, my friends, my home, my dark past or my murky future. Not a thing but my name.
“Andromeda,” I named myself quietly. The word was louder than I thought it would be, breaking through the deep silence. The mist cleared slightly, as if listening, and stony ruins seemed to stretch on around me for miles. A new sound joined my echoing voice—the sound of waves crashing over rocks.
Crash.
Now in the foggy distance, I could see tall, crumbling towers. A pale sun hid behind the cloudy sky. And beyond the cliff’s edge just in front of me—I gasped for a moment—was a drop into the raging ocean. Five hundred feet? A thousand? I’d never been good at distances, but I knew the fall would kill me.
I took a few steps back, each one violating that sacred silence with another soft splash. Below, the waves:
Crash.
A cold wind slammed into me from across the sea, knocking me further away from the cliff’s edge onto the ground. My head spun for a few delirious moments, and my hands grasped at the smooth, slippery stone to push myself up.
“Gwher fhtagn y’osp silm Pso’dau ia…”
I looked around for a moment. Nothing but the ruins around me. Then where was that murmuring coming from?
“…y’osp tsem fhtagn Nor’Jarm Cthulhu Gr’der’si di ia…”
I gasped. It was impossible! My heart pounded relentlessly in my chest.
The stone itself was whispering!
“Fhtagn Nor’Farm Cthulhu Gr’der’si di ia! Ph’nglui ya mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!”
And then I heard something echoing in the distance. A reply. It was a mighty roar from the depths, like the proudest of whalesongs given form! “Gr’dar Iscio jaq’te yr’ra!”
It was so beautiful. Even though I didn’t understand what the words meant, they sang to me. It was a song of freedom and release, of overwhelming joy and individuality. When it ended, the silence came back and I felt emptier than I ever had before.
“Phrgl’nuima krafhys per’cluim nahnk’pui!” The song came back suddenly, longer and more triumphant! It was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard. The voice of an angel.
“SGN’WAHL! SHA’SHOGG! THROD! CTHULHU’AI!”
The ground shook again. I was so lost in that most beautiful of songs that once again I fell to the stone. I peered up from the ground… and marveled.
The ocean itself opened up below me, and rising from it—a vision in glistening emerald—was a gargantuan creature most people might call monstrous. Even through the mist, I could make out what looked to be huge, grasping squid-tentacles upon its face and enormous wings unfurling from its back. Its muscled body was like a man’s, but strange and green-hued in the distance. Yet for all of the peculiar features, its eyes were the most strange and wonderful of all.
They were black but not black. All colors and no colors. Shining and lightless, warm and cold, loving and hating, good and evil, joyful and sorrowful. It was like looking into two glistening orbs of eternity, except on a cyclopean creature of wonder.
Crash, crash, crash!
The creature waded through the ocean with slow thighs, its eternity orbs focused on tiny, little me. Over the rolling sea, it towered above even my magnificent cliff. I watched with bated breath as it grew closer, closer, now close enough to crouch down before me and stare, sizing me up.
There was suddenly a burst of light and wind that knocked me to the ground. My eyes flooded with flashes of color as I tried to look before me.
Oh. Oh my.
On the stone, standing above me, was a boy. Or he looked like a boy, but how could he be? How could someone so perfect be a mere human? He had long, unkempt black hair, so black that it glistened almost blue in the misty light. It whipped about in the wind like a dark flag. He looked down at me with intense green eyes… eyes that seemed strangely familiar. Behind him, the monster was gone. Where was it now?
“Human,” he muttered at me. His voice seemed to echo from everywhere at once… and yet it came from nowhere but him. “Why art thou upon this isle? Art thou a servant of Azathoth?”
“I…” I began, but my voice was caught in my throat. He was so intimidating… and yet…
My eyes made a trail down his lean, muscled chest, following droplets of water down his strong body. He’s like a Greek god…
“Answer me, mortal!” he roared. I winced.
“No, no!” I squeaked nervously. “I don’t even know who Aza-moth is!”
“Dost thou not know Azathoth, mortal?” said the boy derisively. “I find that hard to believe. Indubitably hard to believe.” He turned around to stare out over the ocean, his hair tossing droplets of water.
I stared intently at him. “Who are you?” I asked carefully, startled by my own bravery.
“Who art I?” He stared into the distance. “That is not a revelation for a weak mortal such as thou.”
“But—”
He turned around. His passionate eyes burned with viridian rage.
“BEGONE, DREAMING HUMAN! LEAVE ME TO MY THOUGHTS!”
The stone beneath me crumbled into slabs and the ocean vanished. The towers fell in upon themselves, and the sun dissolved beneath the grey mist.
And I was falling too; down, down, down, down…
~*~*~*~
Down, down, down…
…straight into my bed with a thump.
I lay still for a minute, panting, drenched in sweat. The dream had felt so real! The crashing of the waves, the smell of the saltwater, the monstrous creature and… him.
The boy. The otherworldly boy, with his bewitching emerald eyes, his shiny black hair, his perfect body. The way he looked out across the ocean, as if all the world were his. The way he looked at me, as if I were his…
“Sigh,” I exhaled aloud. I knew why I’d had the dream, of course. It was because of my stupid, awful name. Andromeda. Ugh.
A sacrifice. A myth. A constellation. And the bane of my existence. I loathed it—and shortening it to Andi didn’t help much. Sometimes I wondered how I ever made friends with a name like Andromeda. The chained princess. Only a hero could rescue her from the terrible monster of the deep.
So that’s what I thought then. My dream had been about that handsome hero vanquishing the leviathan, saving me from certain death.
But I was wrong. So very, very wrong. The dream wasn’t just a dream… It was a vision.
Because names don’t just matter.
Names give you… destiny.