Stray was born into a large clutch, and Stray knows he is not the most distinctive - especially not next to the twin sister who is so lovely; but Stray also knows that he is special, because he is never alone.
Stream and Stray are free-spirited twins: cheerfully afflicted with a terrible wanderlust, they wander the landscape, delighting in the varied sights they see; quite, quite normal - except they think that they are not two, but one.
They don't think of themselves as two different kimeti, but as one kimeti handily residing in two different forms (sometimes it is easier to reach a cluster of berries in the centre of a bush when you are smaller and slimmer and can reach a little farther; sometimes it is easier to push an inconvenient aside when you are just that bit stronger and sturdier). Doesn't everyone have more than one 'me' inside? Doesn't everyone argue with themselves sometimes? The only difference, after all, is that they do it out loud. They travel ceaselessly, living easily off the land and oohing-and-aahing over the wonders they see; they are not often seen, always on the move, always searching for those strange little places others aren't even sure exist, or would want to venture even if they knew they did, always traveling at whatever odd times they feel like for the day. When they go through areas they know they are likely to meet other kimeti, they tend to split up, knowing that when others see them together they are always addressed as two, and that annoys them beyond belief. Apart, they speak just as they do together, freely and melodically, believing their counterpart speaks with them also. When asked for their name, they introduce themselves homonymically - "My name is Leaves-the/to-Sea/See," the free-flowing trip of syllables eliding the barest difference. Often when those who have met them alone converse to each other after, confusion occurs:
"I met Leaves-t'-See today, and he said -"
"He? I met Leaves-t'-Sea today too, and she's a doe!"
"What?! No! He was definitely a buck!"
And so on. By the time someone figures out there were two of them, they have already moved on to their next destination. When they are together, their private names are Stray and Stream (perhaps a leftover from their early days with the clutch?), but they pronounce it so - Str'y, Str'm, the tail barely distinct (I imagine in kimeti terms that it would be a chirp cut short, one inflected upwards and the other downwards at the end). They trade fond jibes, they wonder, they laugh. When they run together, they run in tandem, side-by-side, that if you see them from a distance, you would blink and think one a shadow of the other. If one chances to properly meet them together and have them speak, they would speak as one - you would hear their voices perfectly harmonized, good-humoured and light and perhaps prone to lyrical hyperbole, but almost eerie in the exact duplication of each other's words. This happens so rarely, few have realized there are twins. They themselves have not yet realized.
