For when a child fell, she no longer felt the hurting of falling — she felt a pain , a noun, an object inside her that could be kept or discarded. When two friends argued, they didn’t speak of differing — they spoke of a grudge , a solid thing they carried between them.
Kael looked down at his hands — no, at the holding of his hands. He had named himself a man , a leader , a teacher — and in doing so, he had stopped manning , leading , teaching . He had become a fixed thing in his own story. nounally
“Is it a stone,” Mira said, “or is it the river’s holding of hardness? Is it a stone, or is it the river’s slowing? You have taught us to name things so we can own them. But you have forgotten: nouns are graves we dig for verbs.” For when a child fell, she no longer
She tossed it into the river. The splash happened — a verb, a sound, a vanishing. Then stillness. He had named himself a man , a