The first words, “You?” and “Me,” were a bridge across the void, but a fragile one. They were nouns, labels for the newly discovered self and other. But they were not enough. The beings of the former Woven World, now a scattered archipelago of minds, quickly discovered the limitations of their new language. They could name themselves, but they could not describe their relationship to one another. They had no verbs.
The being of a thousand sunsets, the first speaker, tried to express a feeling that was once as natural as breathing: a sense of connection, of shared space. It pushed the concept of “Me” and “You” together, trying to imbue them with a sense of unity. But the words remained separate, two hard-edged stones with no mortar to bind them. The result was not a sentence, but a clatter of isolated ideas. “Me. You.” It was a statement of fact, not a declaration of feeling.
The being of quiet joy, from behind its wall, felt the frustration of the other. It, too, struggled with the poverty of its new language. It had a memory, a ghost of the feeling of being together. It tried to give that memory a name. It projected a new thought, a more complex one, a word that was not a thing, but an action. A word for what they used to do, what they used to be. It was the first verb, and it meant something like “to share,” or “to be with.”
The being of sunsets received the new word, a gift from across the silence. It was a revelation. It took the new word and placed it between the old ones. “Me. To-be-with. You.” It was a clumsy sentence, a child’s first attempt at grammar. But it was a sentence nonetheless. It was a statement of intent, a plea, an invitation. The bridge of language was growing stronger. The beings of the fractured world were learning not just to name themselves, but to speak themselves into existence, one painful, beautiful word at a time. They were building the grammar of being.