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“Indrid Cold” was the name he was born with.
That’s really what it felt like, at least. It felt strange to say it was the name he was given or that it was the name his mother picked out for him, though they’re both technically true statements. It felt just as strange to say it was the name he chose for himself, though in a way that was also true and had been true and will be true for every day that he did not/does not/will not change it. It was an oddly spooky name, but most people thought of him as an oddly spooky guy. Perhaps it only seemed like a spooky name because it was his. Or maybe the spookiness of the name was something he’d been subconsciously living up to his entire life. It was a real chicken-egg kind of a scenario, not unlike the name itself.
Indrid’s mother (well, one of his mothers) had also been a clairvoyant. This wasn’t uncommon. Magical aptitude often passed down familial lines, whether by inherent genetic gift or by the simple fact that a child surrounded by gardens tends to pick up knowledge about pruning a plant quicker than they might pick up knowledge about fixing an engine. Mama Delphine had been tending the gardens of her future sight for centuries by the time Indrid came along and he watched her parse through them for years before he had his own first vision.
Click click click. He remembered the nervous tick of her mandibles as she froze in the throes of a future so strong she could not stand to ignore it. Her segmented hands grasped tight around whatever she had been holding before the vision took her. A soapy dish cloth. The crisp white paper of a bank notice. A bright red plastic shovel. Her eyes were blank and staring while Indrid sat eating his applesauce in the kitchen corner, hiding under the table in the dining room, digging in the sandbox in the backyard.
Indrid wondered if she had gone into a trance right there in the hospital room, holding Mama Elodie’s hand as the Archivist asked for a record of the new child’s name. He imagined her empty expression and the steady click click click as the record keeper stood awkwardly by and waited for an answer. Mama Elodie cradled him in her arms and Papa Col pointedly ignored the keeper’s questions.
The dream was so vivid. He could hear the ruffle of her wings as she cane out of the trance, the soft chittering of her voice. “Oh, trust me dear, this child’s name is Indrid in every timeline I can See. And I can See quite a few of them.”
It was a logical paradox. Indrid’s name was Indrid because that’s what his mother had Seen. But she had only Seen that his name would be Indrid because she had told the Archivist to write that name down. It was a circular kind of logic. How had the name “Indrid” inserted itself into the information loop of predetermined choices? He wasn’t sure. He had never asked Mama Delphine about it directly, so steeped in the culture of clairvoyance that he’d accepted the existence of logical paradox before he’d even grown his first set of wings.
Sometimes he wondered what else Mama Delphine must have Seen in his future. Had she known he was a man before he’d had the realization, himself? Had she known he would end up here on the other side of the gate? Had she known that her darling little wriggler would grow up to abandon his duties as Sylvain’s court seer? Indrid wasn’t sure. By the time he’d thought to ask the questions, he was already banished: self-marooned beyond the Sylvain Gate and out of reach of her answers.
It was probably just as well that he couldn’t ask her. Asking questions of clairvoyants was always an exhausting and confusing process, anyways.