Hellsborough Exposed

Names in Hellsborough are not decoration, they are declarations — species first, then clan, then function, then, occasionally, a confession. A Xaexs name is two words, an adjective and a natural feature, and the adjective is never a compliment: Dirty Leaves, Filthy Dyke, Rank Water, Cold Bracken, Sour Fen, Black Sedge. She chooses it herself, at whatever moment a xaexs decides such things, and she does not explain it, revise it, or answer to a shortened version of it. Best I can reconstruct the logic: there is only ever one xaexs in a location, ever, so the name has no other xaexs to tell her apart from. It only has to tell her apart from the ground she is standing on — and she has apparently decided that the ground deserves the better half of the description.