Moü, nature repeats herself. Just when she seems to perish, she feeds on her husk and revives, restores, regenerates. Her time differs from ours. Only humans live within temporal frames, having lapsed from infinite nature. The union dissolved when humans, wielding language, imposed names on all things. Humans exiled themselves from the natural order, forever estranged.

Moü’s teacher refused to adopt a call-word. 

He answered only to his role: teacher. Prior to that, young man, student, and at times, being. He paraded this seeming sacrifice as proof of his deeper resistance to fixed words. To Choü, he was no different from others. He, too, had a word that referred to him, except that it changed over time. Noēphon, their mode of communication, had its limits. Not even the most highly sensitized among them could single out a recipient for their noēphon. All messages were shared, inadvertently. No, inevitably. Whether intended or not. 

The same held true for him and his desire for Choü’s flesh. Whenever he stood nearby, his lust unsettled her senses. The primal appetite surfaced first in his body. It throbbed against his thick lower garment made of single-horned northern goral hide. Choü would look the other way, only to have his lust leech onto her skin. She abhorred the sensation. He would have detected that abhorrence and known what it meant: rejection. Choü had repelled him before he could make his feelings known. The humiliation stoked his fury, though not without reason, leaving Choü to shudder under the weight of his tangled emotions: dregs of desire, shame, and faintly murderous, fitful rage. 

As members of the same tribe, they could hardly avoid one another. Others sensed Choü’s discomfort. He sensed it too, unconcerned. He took cruel delight in her unease and the disturbing effect of his presence. He went out of his way to loiter in her path. He leered, desensitized to her distress, while Choü’s resentment roiled. 

As tension thickened in the air and pressed upon the villagers, Gorusin sent for Choü. When Choü noēphoned, (Would it be better if I disappeared?) Gorusin shook her head. A simple gesture, noēphon withheld, indicating a firm no. 

Ro. (You’ve done nothing wrong.) 

The guttural noise lent weight to the message. 

Huduseu. (It’s a matter of the heart. He needs time to let go.) 

Gorusin kept circling back to the same sentiment. The noēphon overwhelmed Choü’s senses. Her stomach lurched and her mind reeled, but she could not make it stop. She lacked the power. The right. The justification too. The susurrus of Gorusin’s thoughts coiled through her consciousness: you must understand, you must be patient, you must accept it as a matter of the heart. 

Choü left, heading toward the northern lake. A low mountain range cradled the vast lake, its waters drawn from ancient ice that once crowned the planet’s highest peaks. Whenever her nerves frayed, she floated on its surface, imagining the ice-capped summits. Alone on the expanse, none of her thoughts would reach anyone. Though it was sheer distance that severed the connection, part of her wanted to believe the mountains stood as a barrier. Choü tried to distill her thoughts, to trace the outline of an emotion stirred by Gorusin’s insistence. It took an unfamiliar, unfathomable form. 

Clouds mirrored on the lake slowly blanketed Choü. Their currents tingled against her skin. Eyes closed, she savored the sensation. She turned her thoughts back to Gorusin and the weight of responsibility cast upon the elder’s shoulders. Choü’s mother had left a hundred and thirteen years ago. They had walked along the lake, hands clasped, the day they parted. A low whistle was their only farewell.

(We no longer look like mother and daughter. I’ve set you free in my heart. There is nothing left to say.)

Choü had noticed their reflection in the water. There stood not parent and child but two long-time friends. Could they not live as such? Choü’s noēphon vanished into silence, lost on her mother. It had to be a pretext, a convenient excuse to leave. Before departing, her mother entrusted her to Gorusin, who gladly befriended the daughter of an old friend. This gave Gorusin a complicated place in Choü’s life.

Choü heard a cry—a baby’s cry. She jolted upward, only to sink beneath the surface. She thrashed her arms and legs, shattering the crystalline lake. Shards of white spray splintered. The cry cut through the splashing. Choü emerged, her bearings restored. She scanned her surroundings. The cry echoed against the mountains, but her senses pointed westward. She swam to shore and sprinted straight into the woods. She stumbled as her heart rushed ahead. The forest darkened with startling speed, as if racing Choü to sunset. Yet the baby kept crying, pulling her onward, guiding her way. I’m here, the baby wailed, without deceit or disguise, disarming in transparent honesty. The wails pierced her skin, coursed through her veins, and struck the chambers of her mind. The shock sent shivers down her spine. Choü trembled. Her body shook as she chased the cry. A singular sensation, unlike the loathsome shuddering he had stirred in her. She sprinted on, even as sharp leaves slashed at her limbs. No matter if a beast was luring her in, or a young cub. Not now. She had to reach it before the crying stopped.

Mother, it’s called fate.

In the woods, she found a human baby—not a cub or a starving beast. The ear-splitting cries cut off the moment Choü appeared. Eyes still wet, the baby gazed upon its finder. Face to face, Choü wondered for the first time how many years had passed since she herself had been an infant. A modest celebration had marked her fiftieth birthday, but she had lost track of time since then.

However many years had passed, Choü still retained the body of a teenage girl. Humans had evolved beyond physical aging. New cells proliferated by feeding on the old, a survival mechanism dating back to a desperate era, when all life had teetered on the brink of extinction. The species had found a way to survive without increasing its numbers. Biotechnology had likely contributed to the process, but none of the records remained. Humankind now differentiated adolescence from adulthood not by the body, but by the mind.

As they aged out of adolescence, humans developed an urge to protect the young and the weak. That protective instinct signaled the start of adulthood. Choü realized she might have crossed that threshold. She lifted the baby into her arms.

What was I like? Back then.

Warm and soft. Eyes, jet-black. Hair standing up like a horn, making me smile. But most of all, soft and warm.

And the sound you made to me?

The baby pressed its palm against Choü’s heart, breaking into a smile as a larger hand closed over hers. The tiny fingers curled over Choü’s as if accustomed to the touch. Choü brushed them with a kiss. Without resorting to noēphon, she surrendered herself to the currents around her—wind, sky, sunlight, grass, dew, insects, lake-soaked body, tiny hand, warm breath—and let them burst forth in sound.

Moü.

Why?

It emerged.

And its meaning?

Moü—it has none. Everything around me brought forth the sound. All that cradled you gave you the call-word.

The tribe set aside a single month for adopting new members. During those thirty days, they observed twenty-hour fasts and communal baths in the lake. The rituals expressed gratitude: for the finite resources that sustained them, and for the bodies tasked with enduring infinite time. Whoever joined during the ritual month was considered a fellow tribesperson, bound to shoulder the sins of civilization together. Newborns were no exception. The tribe accepted infants only when born during this period. All others were cast aside—or expelled with the humans who created them. Excess could only breed disaster. A tribe swollen in numbers would give way to codes and signs. Down that treacherous path lay language. Their greatest threat.

Choü hid by the lake to care for Moü, waiting for the ritual month to arrive. With Moü swaddled on her back, she spent the first few days trying to build a hut. To last five moons in hiding, they needed some form of shelter. Unfortunately, the woods surrounding the lake sat on damp soil. Whenever the villagers built their homes, they mixed mud with straw and laid it in the sun to cure. The mud blocks would otherwise crack and crumble within days. Choü’s mud walls caved as she stacked them. Trees towered overhead, blocking the sunlight, but had she dried the mud blocks by the shore, she would have risked discovery. Choü carried Moü into the woods instead. Whoever left Moü must have taken a path that led beyond the mountains.

The woods closed in, growing darker with every step. The dense brush offered little footing. Moü did not cry. She held onto a lock of Choü’s hair and gazed upward. Like reflections rippling across the lake, her jet-black eyes mirrored the flickering shadows of the trees. 

(Beautiful eyes) Choü noēphoned.

Moü stayed still. Other infants, especially the more sensitive ones, sometimes burst into tears, but Moü did not so much as blink. Choü noēphoned again. Nothing. Were her senses underdeveloped?

Huya.

As Choü voiced a sound, Moü stirred and glanced up. Her primitive senses seemed stronger than her transcendent ones.

Huswi. Ho. Swahari. Hira.

Choü let out raw sounds without noēphon. Moü hung on the syllables, giggled as though to a story, and listened again. Then she threw her head back. A beam of sunset ran down her throat and across Choü’s chest. Choü traced the stray light to its source, looking up with Moü. Her eyes landed on a jagged cliff face, where the rock had fallen away and exposed six iron pillars. Concrete clung to the skeletal frames like strips of flesh. From the gaps spilled the light. An earthquake from a few days earlier had collapsed the cliff, laying bare a colossal ruin.

Choü stood before the monumental remains of a structure that had once denied the planet its night. It dated from a bygone era of possibility, discovery, and accelerated speed. The era had also expelled the impossible, the dark, the unknown, and all things slow—committing and condoning acts of violation and extermination. It punctuated fifteen thousand years of human history as a brief interlude: the nightless age. Concrete blocks and iron pillars, blackened as if they had devoured the dark, shrieked that the era had existed. The clangor of steel laced the shrill cries.

What was it like?

Vexingly beautiful.

Which part?

The carvings . . . on the wall. Scratches without any pattern or meaning I could see.

Mother, that was language.

The pillars and concrete provided a sturdy refuge. They sheltered Moü from the harsh sun, gales, torrential rain, and famished beasts. The concrete even tamed the midday heat. Choü braided straw into a snug bed and wrapped Moü in tanned goat hide. Moü took to the gruel she made from foraged grains, ground into a mash. They had little left to fear, provided no human or beast stumbled upon them. Provided Moü stayed alive.

Choü spent more than half of each day watching over Moü. Sometimes, she went days without returning home. Moü grew with miraculous ease, as if she needed no protection. Whenever Choü shielded her from danger, Moü seemed to soothe her in return. The baby would brush Choü’s forehead when she nodded off and smile when her eyes blinked open. Moü gurgled, and Choü longed to reciprocate. She asked if Moü was hungry or sleepy, sang her lullabies, and called her name, but none of the noēphon reached her. She responded only to raw sounds—empty spurts that scattered without meaning, uttered only to vanish without trace.

Lying beside Moü and staring up at the ceiling, Choü could make out faint marks etched into the ashen concrete. Choü found herself tracing their forms and patterns. Whenever a curve, line, or shape stood out with clarity, a migraine would hit like a hammer, sending her spine into a spasm. Her heart raced, bringing with it the uncanny sensation of blood surging through every vein, pulsing through every fiber of her body.

One day, after several moons, Gorusin halted her work gathering tree sap and drew Choü toward a secluded edge of the forest. Choü did not ask any questions. The worry welling within the elder passed through the hand that clasped hers.

Gorusin halted near the volcanic crater known as the Judgment. She surveyed the area multiple times to ensure they were alone yet still took precautions. With Choü’s hand in hers, she sent the faintest silent noēphon.

(Where are you? Doing what? He—no, people talk. They suspect. No more secrets. There are none. There must be none. Talk. To me, at least. When the time comes, then I can help.) 

Gorusin noēphoned in a frantic scramble. 

(Your house sits empty. You don’t return. Even at dawn. I lie for you. The gravest sin. Do not conceal. Do not tempt your fate. What is it? What is happening to you? Choü, lay your thoughts bare. Let me see them.)

Alarm gave way to fear, which curdled into suspicion and uncertainty. Secrets were forbidden. To conceal was to invite the unforeseen. Humans no longer wished to keep watch over darkness—so they evolved. Fear, once a means of survival, had mingled with greed and propelled the world toward obliteration. When fear became their undoing, evolution changed course. Whatever lacked certainty was deemed dangerous and discarded, including imaginations of the future.

Choü noēphoned back to calm her.

Naho. (You’ll see, soon enough. No secrets. No worries.)

Choü intended to bring Moü into the tribe and did not consider this a lie. She sensed Gorusin’s relief. If only the exchange had ended there.

Nohago. (Have you ever seen language?)

Choü blurted the question, and Gorusin could not hold back—a scream.

Muum was the eldest being—the first seed of their evolution, the Immortal of current humankind. No one worshipped Muum, as worship was forbidden. Yet Choü knew the ban was not perfectly obeyed. Tribespeople merely contained their reverence.

Muum’s preternatural senses set her apart. Sensitivity to noēphon varied from person to person. Some struggled to discern it, whereas Muum perceived minds without it. Nothing stayed hidden from Muum. All was laid bare.

To avoid the barrage of sensations, Muum lived away from the village. At Gorusin’s insistence, Choü went to meet her. She found Muum waiting at the door. 

(You did well to protect the child. I believe so.)

Muum noēphoned without so much as a glance, then disappeared into the house. Choü sensed the command to follow.

Inside, Muum’s paintings covered every wall. Each one featured rectangles of varying shades and sizes geometrically arranged. Choü paused before a particular painting. Muum noēphoned with her back still turned.

(I finished it yesterday. The paint is still wet, but you can touch it.)

Muum knew exactly which painting.

Kiho. (You see without looking?)

Choü noēphoned deliberately with sound, as a warning: do not invade my mind. Muum smiled, bemused by the defiance. Her skin glowed in the shadowed space. Only after sitting down did she face Choü. All tribespeople appeared young, but Muum, especially so. Her face never creased. Sunlight slipped through a crack in the wooden wall and settled on her. Covered in downy hair, her skin shimmered like a sandy beach. Muum, it seemed, was evolving into something beyond their species. 

(All language has failed. Do you not agree?) Muum noēphoned.

Kasak. (You must noēphon with sound. You yourself set the rule.)

(Language will destroy the senses we acquired. Language flattens sensation. It binds thought and judgment to form.)

Mun! (Answer me!)

(I did. You asked me later how language would change us. The language you saw was an illusion. Empty lines.)

(Stay in the present. I will not be mocked.)

Choü sent a silent noēphon so as not to yell, but rage flooded her senses.

(Choü, do not be deceived. All that fails has a cause. Look to evolution and what humanity once called progress. Language enabled categories and institutions—and passed them down. The world marched toward war, poverty, destruction, slaughter, and ruin. Human vision narrowed, and senses dulled. Surrendered to language, humanity doomed itself to extinction. Our brains have evolved since then by discarding language, reawakening what it suppressed—the senses of our prehistoric ancestors. Our sounds resist language. We defy its oppression. Defend our way.)

Muum rose to her feet and came closer. Her hair gleamed like the iridescent scales of a carp, and the fingers that stroked Choü’s cheek were warm and gentle, like hands coaxing milk from a ewe. Muum whispered.

Domdureusamasiheu. (We cannot speak of good or beauty in language of the condemned, language stained with blood. The child is welcome. It is already done.)

*

Once Moü entered school, she got scolded for repeating the same sounds.

It happened again the day Choü learned Moü was unwell. Moü’s friend Blong came running to the riverside, where Choü was mending a fishing net. Moü had been called out of class, she noēphoned. Choü brushed it off—(The same as always). Blong clutched her chest. She noēphoned again, this time with a wail. It was serious. Choü threw down the net and raced to the school.

He was the schoolteacher in charge. Perhaps his fury toward Choü had been redirected toward Moü. When Choü first presented the child, the tribespeople sensed his agitated accusations: there had been someone all along, she had hidden it to play with his feelings, she had feigned purity while indulging her desires. He sulked as if dealt an irreparable wound. The villagers knew that Choü had never been pregnant. Her body never swelled, and no one sensed another life inside her. Then where had the child come from? She arrived during the ritual month, but the villagers hesitated to welcome her. He fueled their fear with his slander.

Umsasiheuraha. (It is evil. I sense evil in that child. Our noēphon does not reach it. It must be a monster or a witch.)

Choü insisted on the child’s innocence, but he refused to back down. His vilifications carried enough force to slowly sway the villagers. Had Muum not come to the rescue, had she not cradled Moü in her arms and noēphoned a welcome, he would have turned the people against her and driven her from the village. Muum allowed Moü into the fold. He alone withheld a welcome. Over time, the villagers no longer recalled Moü’s mysterious origins, but he did. He never stopped doubting and despising her. This, Choü believed, was why he seemed especially harsh on Moü. Children naturally enjoyed repeating sounds. Surely not only Moü. Surely not.

When the teacher asked, Syureuha, Moü replied, Jya. He asked again, Bido. His utterances accompanied the same noēphon question: had Moü understood? Moü replied again, Jya. The teacher erupted in a mangled burst of rage. His noēphon lashed the children’s nerves like a whip: (Do not dare repeat sounds!) Several began to cry. When Moü repeated Jya a third time, they squeezed their eyes shut and wrapped their arms around their heads, bracing for the shockwave to follow. Blong noēphoned the terror of that moment, raising the hair on Choü’s arms.

Moü stood in a corner, trying—and failing—to look sorry while digging up damp soil with her foot. Not wanting him to notice, Choü grabbed Moü’s hand and scuffed the dirt back into place. His fear and chagrin were laid bare.

Gogaraswi. (She repeated sounds.)

Uno! (The same sounds!)

Uwano. (Make her stop.)

Nakahaeum. (She must not repeat. She must not make meaning.)

Choü replied, Nyuhokeuduheu. (There is no meaning. Moü is only playing with sound.)

He pressed a hand to his forehead. His refusal to communi­cate any further bore down on Choü, like a lump of iron settling into her skull.

As she turned to leave with Moü, he muttered.

Kuulla. (She is unworthy. Dark and evil. Full of secrets. She will bring a curse on us.)

Choü glowered, imagining her fist in his face. She did not act on the impulse, but her hatred and fury were enough to leave his face burning, as if from a blow.

At the Planegg Crossroads, Choü turned west. The road stretched away from the village toward the lake. Moü followed in silence without projecting any noēphon. No questions, no resistance. Choü looked back. Moü became inscrutable at times, unsettling Choü. His warning echoed in her mind. (She will bring a curse on us.) Did he truly believe one person could curse an entire village? She did not.

The two arrived at the ruins. Like humans who lost the use of language, the ruins had lost their artifice and reverted to nature. Moü had made it her fort, painting the ash-gray walls with mineral and berry pigments and draping the metal frames of furniture with patchwork leather.

Choü sat Moü down on the bed layered with sheepskins. She then knelt down in front of her, clasping her hands. Choü had a habit of kneeling to look up at Moü. Though hardly any years apart in appearance, they were separated by two and a half centuries in actual age. It seemed increasingly unnatural to raise the child at eye level. Choü was beginning to understand why her own mother had chosen to leave.

Choü stroked the backs of Moü’s delicate hands and brushed them with a kiss. Without that touch, Moü often failed to receive her noēphon. She was only slow. Not dark, evil, or full of secrets.

Swihoroamusaha. (Do not take his rudeness to heart. But tell me the truth. Why did you do it? Why did you repeat those sounds?)

Moü replied, still struggling to project her voice with noēphon.

Ma . . . wa . . . ho . . . u . . . a . . . (Mother, what is language?)

Choü dropped Moü’s hands.

Gahu! (You must not ask! Ever! Not a soul. Have you? Have you asked Blong?)

Mo . . . ha . . . u . . . (I just want to know. About sounds with meaning.)

Sasiki. (It belonged to a failed civilization. Language sealed their judgment and caused their doom. Do not seek it. It is forbidden.)

Ma . . . (Mother.)

Nireu! (Do not ask anyone again. Promise me!)

(Then why do we make sounds at all?) Moü noēphoned in silence, prompting Choü to extend her sounds.

Inagoumamupgasamunagaemenagorialleu. (To guard ourselves. To keep our sounds free of meaning. We must stay on guard. So practice. You will learn.)

Choü’s senses seemed to spiral—no, they spiraled. Cold air swept through the concrete, stinging her cheeks and grazing her ears. Dust blurred her vision, and even Moü’s faint breath frayed her nerves. She plunged into hypersensitized agony. The turmoil would have transferred to most others, but Moü stayed impassive as she watched.

Choü gripped the child’s shoulders.

Musya! (Moü, you must feel this! My noēphon. My emotions.)

Ma . . . (Mother, tell me.)

Ruswia. (Feel this. Language will dull and flatten these feelings. It severs us from nature. Once we name, define, differentiate, those things become our limits. We will know only through language. And language will so often deceive and fail.)

Choü wrapped her arms around Moü and pulled her close. She tried to transfer her feelings and project her noēphon. Moü’s body remained deadly still.

Ma . . . (Mother, look at me—the wrinkled eyes, the dry skin. I eat half as much as I used to, but it takes me longer to digest the food. My hair is thin and gray . . .)

(Enough!)

(My body is aging.)

(Nonsense!)

(Mother, please. Look at me.)

Moü pulled away to meet her mother’s gaze. She cupped Choü’s face. Choü tried to look away, but they both knew it would not last. Moü waited. Quiet. The light spilling through the concrete cracks crimsoned as she waited. Patient. With a sigh, Choü raised her eyes to meet Moü’s. The sunset blotted out perception, darkness descended as an interlude, and moonlight unveiled the truth, long hidden by the sun.

A day of judgment, followed by three millennia of punishment. Humans evolved in its wake to preserve their species without multiplying their kind. Language had created order and disorder, tolerance and aversion, just and unjust laws, salvation and despair, faith and mistrust, parades and military marches, medicine and murder, security and peril, mobs and masses, humans and nonhumans—together breeding chaos. (Humans evolved by discarding language) Muum had noēphoned, (reawakening their senses. The ones we use now). Once humans abandoned the language that severed them from nature, they returned to a natural state of being. They fed on husks, restored and regenerated. Freed from time as conceived by language, they entered eternal life. As eternal beings, their senses encompassed and commanded all matter. Thus did Choü believe that Moü was as ageless as herself. Thus did all the villagers believe.

With her perception shattered, Choü faced a strange woman.

(How?)

(Do you see me now?)

(You are not the Moü I know . . .)

(Mother, my body has been aging. Slowly, steadily.)

Sound abandoned Choü as she surrendered to noēphon.

(Moü, sometimes I wonder if you rose from a chasm. Days before you cried out, the earth had quaked. Violently, as if setting things right. Villagers gathered in the field for silent noēphon prayer. The last prayer had been held 64,240 days before, after a 247-day spell of drought. We did not ask for forgiveness. We only prayed that we may slowly pay the price for sins. Our sins. Sins against the planet. Sins against each other. Our species will never be washed of sin. The species may perish, but not the stain. But no, we will not be allowed to die. We have evolved to pay the price, in undying penance, with senses attuned to all sins . . .)

(Look at me, Mother. Do not be afraid.)

(I am not afraid.)

(But you are. Look at me. What do you see?)

(Do not ask me this.)

(Mother, I am still alive, but I have begun to flow. Time flows through me. I feel it, the fine threads. Finer than spider silk. I will wrinkle as it brushes past.) 

(Wait. We will tell the villagers, and they will help find a way to make it stop. Nothing is beyond healing. We must simply find a way. Every effect has a cause, and every cause a solution. No more worries, Moü.)

(Mother.)

(Yes.)

(Mother.)

(Yes. Go on.)

(I heard the sounds of language. Now I sense the time it weaves.)

But then, beyond the broken walls, Choü recognized a murder­ous hostility. She wanted to hush Moü, but it was too late. He had sensed their noēphon. His malice mingled with relish; Choü’s dread turned into terror. She rushed out and found him already there. For a moment, he feigned surprise. His lips curled up.

How did you feel? When it happened?

I needed the right language . . . to express that feeling.

Bihagassu! (This child knows language!)

He hollered. Moü stood tied to a wooden pillar in the village square. He ripped the sack from her head, unleashing a deafen­ing noēphon.

Yanomasiamadiaratyusyu! (Behold the child who dared to deceive! Behold the true face—not of a child, but of a witch! A face defiled by language!)

Horror and panic shot through the village. The current surged, reaching Choü, who had been locked in her home. She sprang up from the corner and rushed to the door. She wrenched at the handle, but it would not budge. She pounded her palms against the wood, pouring out noēphon. Hoping it would reach someone, anyone passing by. Her palms split open, gushing blood. Then—scalding heat. A ravenous frenzy engulfed the house. The heat rose from torch flames, not feelings. Choü stopped pounding and glanced around. Could anything extinguish the fire? The eastern well lay too far away. She spotted a knife—a curved blade used for drawing tree sap.

As she grasped the knife, the door swung open. Moonlight spilled in, pooling against Choü’s legs. Muum stood in the door­way. Before Choü could beg for help, Muum stepped aside. As if urging her to run. To hurry.

With no time for questions, Choü dashed out. The blaze had billowed, the heat ready to reduce the village to ashes. Flames flickered toward the moon. Choü sensed a warm wind behind her, carrying an unfamiliar image: Muum holding a baby wrapped in leaves, a newborn yet to open its eyes. Muum whispered to the baby, her lips pressed against its ears. Choü paused. She turned back, but Muum was nowhere to be seen. She had vanished, as though erased from existence.

At the village square, Choü gripped her knife. She took in the scene: him, gloating with a torch in hand, and Moü, tearless despite the flames at her feet. Choü wielded her knife against the fire. Blood, hotter and brighter, doused the flames. The blade had sliced through his stomach and cut through the cords binding Moü. Choü’s skin seared, the creases reminding her of Moü’s wrinkles. The burning pillar collapsed over a house. Walls of grass and mud crumbled and fed the flames. A body caught fire. The pain transferred through noēphon. Everyone writhed, except for Moü. She embraced her anguished mother.

(We must go to the forest . . .)

Moü took Choü’s hand and began to run. Moü’s hand was thin and weathered, all bone and tendon beneath the skin. Yet warm as damp earth and soft grass.

The two ran toward the ruins. Murderous noēphon pierced Choü’s back. He was close behind. Choü wanted to flee beyond the forest with Moü, to enter the world she had never known. But Moü, with her weakened lungs and joints, could not keep pace. She guided Choü to their refuge.

Ha. (He will find us here. He will arrive. Soon.)

Choü tried to warn her, but Moü insisted on taking shelter.

(He will not know. He will not detect any noēphon.)

Moü sat Choü down on the bed.

(But he will not give up. Not until he drives a knife through you. Listen to what I tell you, Mother. You must remember. And record. Never forget the danger. Someday, you must stab him again, all the way through. You must stop his breath. For now, he must not sense where you are. You must guard your thoughts. Let none escape. I will repeat the sound you heard the moment you saw me. It carried your yearning—and I gave it meaning.)

Moü embraced her mother. Choü could see Moü’s draw­ings on the wall. Only then did she notice their patterns, like the shapes of language.

(Mother, Moü means . . .)

“Life.”

The spoken word seared Choü’s senses. It dried her blood.

“The finite breath I gift to you.”

Choü did not fully grasp the sounds as language, as carriers of meaning. Yet they reached her all the same, passing through her eyes, ears, and skin.

“Now that you know language, you will live as I do in its flow of time. Where beings weaken with age, slowing, receding, dwindling. It is a curse. Nature’s curse, pulling humans back into earthly existence. You will no longer know without speaking, but no speech will ever be complete. You will wander the laby­rinth of language, isolated and alone. And yet, I wish you this life.”

Moü stroked Choü’s cheek. Then she whispered in clear noēphon.

(Mother, nothing lasts. Look through the veil. Humans have not evolved. He is right. I am a curse. Because I am, I can inscribe our story in language. For everyone to see. I will start with your words.)

Moü, nature repeats herself . . .