It is quiet, always quiet, in the desert and inside Bella's head.
She knows that it shouldn't be that way, no matter what other people say. She isn't supposed to be alone inside her head. It isn't a good thing that she is.
She wants a background murmur, some comforting sound to keep back the ringing silence, and keeps expecting to wake up and hear the gentle susurrus of voices in the corners of her mind.
But every morning she wakes up, fighting her way through the embrace of sleep to find her mind just as silent, just as alone as before.
Music helps a little, like a band-aid slapped over a gaping wound. Classical music was...interesting, pop music amusing, rock music made her want to sneer, and heavy metal was strangely familiar. The screaming felt-not like home-but familiar in the way that a place you have lived for a very long time is familiar.
There's power in names, a peculiar truth to them that takes hold of reality and sometimes drags it sideways, just a bit.
A name given freely is different from a name taken, and so Bella looks upon this woman, pale and fey in the desert moonlight, and asks, "Do you have a name, oh wanderer of nights?"
The woman, this creature that reeks of blood and death and old pain, licks her lips, more out of habit than necessity, and whispers, "I am called Victoria."
There is something feral, frantic at the sharp edges of her smile.
Bella smiles back, tilts her head and laughs softly.
"Ah," she says, mostly to herself, "What a fitting name."
Victoria is still, posture somehow radiating uncertainty. The part of her that revels in the crunch of bone and warmth of gushing blood as a body stills its last frantic movements, the part of her more creature than not, wants to prostrate itself before this child-shaped being.
